Baseball’s Sad Lexicon
BY FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS
These are the saddest of possible words:
“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”
Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,
Tinker and Evers and Chance.
Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,
Making a Giant hit into a double—
Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:
“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”
OK, until this morning those were 'the saddest of all possible words.' But today I figured we were close enough to the season opener that I should check the Orioles' website for news of their 2018 publications. Every year for the past several they have started selling the O's yearbook, media guide and magazine right about Opening Day. Easy as pie..order, wait, enjoy. I have every Orioles' media guide except the very first one, from 1954. I have every yearbook (they skipped a few years here and there) and at least one scorecard from every Orioles season and postseason series since '54.
Publications..from the Orioles, Baltimore Colts, New York Rangers and others... are my very favorite collectible. I'd give up every card I have before I'd sacrifice my pub collection. Which is why I was very disappointed when the Orioles publication page showed me this:
In case you can't read it the gist of it is no more media guides will be available to the fans in paper form. Oh sure, we can download a file version but that's not the same thing. I can't hold a file in my hand. I realize that everything in the media guide is available somewhere online but grabbing that big, fat usually orange book off the shelf to find Adam Jones's career homer totals against the Tigers was very satisfying.
I also realize that last year's guide has everything I need except last year's numbers but that's not the point. My guides are lined up in two shelves of my hobby room. Not having a 2018 guide is going to annoy me. The fact that media guys get one makes it even worse. Guides will be out there and I want one dammit!
Joe Shlabotnik pointed out via Twitter the fact that there were years that the guide wasn't readily available and I was still able to land one. That's true but that doesn't mean the 2018s will show up on eBay anytime soon. I may have to wait years for some reporter's widow to sell off the guy's hoard. It's depressing.
For the record, I was given many of the guides from the Orioles' early years by my uncle who had connections to the team back then. In the late 70s/early 80s I would call or write the club's pr department and beg for one. One lady actually remembered me from year to year as 'that fan in Texas'. Some years they sold them along with the usual pennants and team postcards via mailorder. I've saved a bunch of the forms I got back from my calls and letters. The rest, mostly the expensive ones I was missing from the mid-50s, I bought on eBay.
Yes, I'm probably overreacting to all this but it sure feels like a big piece of my hobby enjoyment is over. Yup, my gonfalon bubble has been pricked. Oh well.
Since I hate publishing a post without some sort of memorabilia here are my T206s of the "Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds, Tinker and Evers and Chance".
Sweet cards, yes?
I have no idea what a gonfalon is, but I feel your pain. I had pretty much the exact same thing happen with the NASCAR yearbooks when the pulled them from UMI Publications and gave them to some no-name company. I had a complete collection until that point, but from then on I wasn't able to get them, and still can't. The sad part is that they were still available to the public, but the company producing them was too inept to actually deliver them to the people who bought them...pretty sure they stopped making them in 2010.
ReplyDeleteI never had any of those hardcover yearbooks but the Yearbook/Media Guides that sold at newsstands and magazine wracks were the bomb. I had a run of 15 or so that started in 1989 I think. Rusty Wallace in the Kodiak car on the cover. I ended up giving them away when space became an issue.
DeleteYeah, that's kind of bummer (hey, I'm a member of the media, where's my O's media guide?!?). But then I think, I've loved yearbooks forever, but my run of Dodger yearbooks stops at 1985. That's how much they've disappeared from my life.
ReplyDeleteStill I like the IDEA of them.
The '66 Dodgers home World Series program is a classic. Their media folks have always been top notch.
DeleteBummer on the media guide but MAN that is a nice trio of T206s!!!
ReplyDeleteI had them in a neat little display frame at work for awhile but I brought them home when things in the PE offices started 'getting legs'. Back home in a cigar box where they belong nowadays.
DeleteSorry about the news Commish. I hope one day you'll be able to grab these on the secondary market. I've never really gone out of my way to collect media guides myself. I have maybe 10 to 15 that I've acquired through care packages or purchased on the cheap at the flea market, but I think the storage aspect is the thing that held me back the most.
ReplyDeleteTruth be told my two dedicated shelves are packed tight. Maybe that was a sign.
Deleteah, this is sad
ReplyDelete