I did it anyway

I had promised myself I wouldn't resort to digging through old boxes of hobby 'stuff' to find posting fodder. And I really wasn't intending to do it for this post but here we are.

I went looking for somethings I intended to send out to another blogger and pulled a plastic storage box from my hobby closet. Remarkably what I was looking for was actually in the box! You'd really be impressed by that fact if you saw my hobby closet. But there were also a bunch of cards I hadn't seen in awhile and some of them sparked my interest and immediately I saw a post might come from them. A timely one at that.

There were a boatload of my Pro Set football dupes from '89-'92. I'm posting two from the 1991 set. Up top is the Whitney Houston Anthem card, #350. It shows her National Anthem performance at Super Bowl XXV earlier that year. That was an anthem for the ages. Oddly just this morning I came across a story that ran in USA Today on Thursday concerning that performance. It makes for an interesting read, especially if you remember that goosebump-inducing few minutes.

Next is the '91 Bill Belichick. Back then he didn't look like a guy you'd cross a downtown street to avoid.

1989 Marion Butts for no other reason than the fact that it was the best football card in the box. Oh, and I had Marion Butts for a couple of years in my fantasy league. He seemed to have his best games on the weeks I didn't start him. I always said "Marion Butts makes me nuts."

Now on to a few baseball cards. A K-Mart Cal Ripken from some long forgotten boxed set. Back when we first moved out here there was not much around. A K-Mart served as 'big box' retailer for the area. I bought lots of their boxed sets. I gave away most of the cards but kept the Orioles

Here's brother Billy on his 1992 Stadium Club card. I seem to recall being some sort of charter SC member and getting small boxed sets in the mail. Or maybe I'm imagining that. I know I have SC cards marked Charter Member or words to that effect. This isn't one.

I'm posting this Dave Parker for the same reason I posted the Marion Butts. I think it's the best baseball card I dug out of the box. It's from the 1991 SC set which I think was the first. I have absolutely no recollections of Parker with Milwaukee. He's a Pirate to me, or a Cincinnati Red. But his BR page reveals a very solid season with the Brew Crew in 1990. I hadn't thought about him with the Athletics either until I looked at his page and remembered him playing in the World Series.

I'll show the card back because it includes his awesome 1974 Topps.

"Any Spahn card is a cool Spahn card" ©

I've said that a million times it seems. And even this 1992 Ziplock Spahn fits the bill. Spahnie is all angles,... his cap, nose, grin, and eyebrows. I have no idea where I got this card. There were only 11 different ones issued and supposedly they came on boxes of the plastic bags. Heaven knows we used a lot of sandwich bags back when my kids were in school so it's possible I actually got this from a box.

And one more card....

A 1990 Payne Stewart. He, along with Fred Couples, was a favorite of my sons and me. My boys loved him because he always acknowledged them at the Shell Open. They would stand between the 11th green and 12th tee and wait to say hello to every golfer that passed by. Stewart never failed to smile and high five them no matter where he stood on the leaderboard.

I was a fan because he had (like Couples) an exceptionally smooth, fluid swing. It was something that back in my frequently golfing days I was always trying for but never close to achieving. His affiliation with the NFL also makes this an appropriate card to post on Super Sunday.

Here is a bonus. It's Whitney Houston's Tampa SB performance. It is and always will be the best Anthem performance ever. Enjoy!