Cards Just Because

When I go to a card show and dig thru boxes of cheap vintage I will sometimes  always  pull cards out that just strike me as cool. Either I like the composition of the card, dig the photo or get some pang of nostalgia from it. Happened again this past Saturday at the monthly (now twice monthly) hotel show.

Bob Turley was a favorite of my father and I think sometimes he was more enthused about seeing him pitch at Yankee Stadium than he was about Whitey Ford. We always got to the games early so I was very familiar with the Yankee Stadium batting cage. I wish I could figure out who that is behind him on this '61 Topps.

I had completely forgotten about his having won a Cy Young Award until I was checking his bio the last night. He was also #2 behind Jackie Jensen in MVP balloting after that terrific 1958 season. I was too young to remember his days with the fledgling '54 Orioles but he won 14 games on a team that only won 54 overall.

I already have a nice '61 Billy Pierce but if I ever decide to collect the set I need a dupe Pierce to slide into the slot on the binder spine. Now I have one. Plus it's another Yankee Stadium shot. I always like to think I was there the day they took these shots. This is classic Pierce.

I grabbed these two rookie related cards as well. Julian Javier has that great Topps top hat trophy and Fritz Brickell got the star that designated him as a rookie in 1961. I'm not sure that was actually the case (he played for the Yanks briefly in '58/'59). The real reason I bought the Brickell card was the 'windbreaker under the jersey look'. That used to be common. Not anymore.

Brickell's dad Fred was a big leaguer in the 20s and 30s. He died at the age of  54 the year his son's card was issued. Fritz died just a few years later of cancer at the age of 30 in 1965.


Breaking my pattern of 1961s was this Casey/Woodling '63 special. I like the original Mets' clean pinstripe look and the Polo Grounds background. Too bad had forgotten that I already had this card. I could have spent the 50 cents on some other vintage gem.

All in all another great Saturday morning spent with baseball cards. I sunk $85 into 1958s. Oh, did I mention that I'm now committed to collecting that one? Well I am. More on that soon.