TTM Stats
- Sent: 2/26/2020 | Received: 3/5/2020 | 9 Days
- ’90 Upper Deck, ’91 Score, ’91 Topps, ’92 Topps, ’93 Fleer
- Address: Home (address from Sports Card Forum)
The Story of the Autograph
Bill Sampen is a former right-handed pitcher in the major leagues. He played for the Montreal Expos, Kansas City Royals, and California Angels from 1990 to 1994.
Sampen is a native of Illinois. He went to MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Illinois and was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 12th round of the 1985 MLB Draft. He never made it to the majors with the Pirates and was selected by the Expos in the 1989 Rule 5 Draft. He made his major league debut at 27 years old on April 10, 1990.
His rookie season was his career year. He went 12-7 with a 2.99 ERA, but amazingly while that seems like a starters record, he did it in 59 games and 90.1 innings pitched with only four games started. But in another interesting twist for the Expos and their 1990 season, on a staff that included starters Dennis Martinez, Oil Can Boyd and Kevin Gross, he led the team in victories.
In his follow -up sophomore season he put up a 9-5 record. The Expos traded him to the Royals in the middle of the 1992 season. Unfortunately for Sampen and the teams he played for from 1992 on, he only had four more victories in the majors for the rest of his career.
These days, Sampen owns an instructional baseball program call Samp’s Hack Shack in Indiana. In 2016 he started the Indiana Expos, a youth travel baseball program.
The Score on Bill Sampen – 5.5
Bill has a fine signature, but it’s really small. It looks like he takes the same approach as Tony La Russa. His signature is small and it seems like he tries to put it in a spot on the card where it will be seen. I think the difference is that Tony tends to turn the cards if needed and Bill uses a similar angle for each.
Thanks Mr. Sampen! I’m giving this a 5.5 overall.
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Information gathered using Wikipedia and Baseball Reference.