Tyler is an Orioles fan and he wanted to get autographs of some of the prospects in Orioles system. We found some nice individual cards, but we wanted to get all of their autographs on one card so we decided to make a custom 4×6 photo.

For the most part Tyler came up with the design and I made it in the GIMP. I used to have Photoshop, but my previous computer died, I lost the disk and key, and Adobe really wasn’t helpful in getting me a new copy. GIMP, while it does not have all the features that Photoshop does, comes really close to the full functionality.

First we sent the photo off to Jake Arrieta c/o of the Norfolk Tides. We included three photos and told him to keep one for himself and that we would be sending the photos to Chris Tillman next to be signed. About 9 days later we got it back in the mail. We opened it up and to our surprise it was signed by Arrieta and Tillman. Jake was nice enough to pass it on and it saved us some postage. So thanks Jake! Oh and they signed all three.

Next we sent it off to Brian Matusz c/o the Bowie Baysox. Bowie is only about 10 miles from our house so we thought it would be a fast return then I remembered it was the All-Star break. Doh. Anyway we ended up getting it back in about 20 days. Still not bad.

From start to finish, it took us about 30 days to get all three autos from the future Orioles aces. Not bad.

Future Stars (Brian Matusz, Jake Arrieta, Chris Tillman)