Both Brian and Joe Shlabotnik sent me a substantial stack of very, very nice 1979s, modern Orioles and they both sprinkled in something for a different set I'm working on. Joe sent 1970 Topps Hoops, Brian went with '62 Baseball.
I had sent Brian some 59s for his set build but I gotta tell you that those cards were no match for the beauties he sent my way. Leading off you can check out Lou Clinton. What a sweet card. It's in great shape. In fact, all three of the '62s Brian included are probably two 'grades' better than the majority of what I have in the binder. Let me put it this way...I couldn't afford to collect the set if I was only going after cards as nice as the ones Brian passed on to me.
BTW...Lou Clinton was in right field for Boston on the last day of the 1961 season. He watched Roger Maris' #61 sail over his head and into the rightfield seats at YS.
Phil Regan poses at Yankee Stadium. I always like to imagine I was there the day these photos were taken. Hey, you never know. I was there a lot.
Regan was nicknamed 'The Vulture' by Sandy Koufax during his time as the Dodgers' closer. He managed the Orioles before Dave Johnson and was active as a minor league pitching coach well into his 70s.
Wayne Causey began his career as a light-hitting third baseman with the Orioles in 1955. He struggled to reach the Mendoza line and spent some time in the minors before he re-emerged with the A's in 1961 following a big off-season trade. He had found his hitting stroke and had some respectable years in Kansas City before moving on to the White Sox.
The modern Orioles card Brian sent was an Eddie Murray bat relic. The guy who glued the slice of Eddie's bat onto this card appears to have been hungover. Nonetheless, it fits nicely into my Murray pages in my Orioles star binder.
And finally here is a representative sampling of the '79s I received. Between the stack that came from Joe S. and this one I'm down to just over 100 needs for the set (edit made...never compose a post in the middle of the night).
This is one of my favorite Nolan Ryan cards.
Steve Carlton's BR page is pretty impressive.
Nolan Ryan and James Rodney Richard were on the same Astros staff for half of the 1980 season. Then J.R. was struck down in July. A quick look at the team's game logs showed that they didn't pitch back-to-back at any point. That would have been unfair to any opposing NL teams.
Mick the Quick. He was with the Rangers by mid-season. Did you realize he had a .295 career average? I sure didn't.
I have no memories of Bud Harrelson as a Phillie. He was a spare part by this time. Nice shades though.
I also have no memories of Steve Yeager wearing a beard. I bet Night Owl does.
I scanned this card of Sixto Lezcano for two reasons. One, he has such a cool name, and two, he looks like someone but I can't put a finger on who it is..
And finally Billie Jean King's brother Randy. It's interesting (I guess) that her Wikipedia page doesn't mention her younger brother. He was a pretty decent reliever for the Giants through the 70s. He pitched for the Astros in 1982. That was a club with a strong staff and lousy hitting. And that was the year before I got married when I lived within walking distance of the Astrodome. I saw quite a bit of boring baseball.
Thanks again, Brian. The cards were all super and very much appreciated.
Oh, I almost forgot...the title. About three months ago I realized I was no longer receiving email notifications of blog comments. I dealt with it for awhile by just checking my past few posts every few days. But then I received an email from someone who had asked a few questions of me on one of my 1959 Topps blog posts and wondered why I hadn't responded. I dug around and flipped a few 'switches' and recently found that I had apparently switched over to Google+ comments...whatever the hell that means. I turned that off and nearly all the recent comments on my blogs disappeared. Add that to the fact that Blogger is unusable on an iPad as far as I can tell and doesn't work well with Firefox and I'm not happy at all.
I'll keep plugging along though but don't be surprised if one day this whole thing gets either blown up or shuffled over to WordPad.
Well I can comment again, so that's progress.
ReplyDeleteBaseball cards again proving to be more valuable than wikipedia. Who knows how long it would have been for me to find out Randy Moffitt was Billie Jean King's brother if it wasn't for baseball cards.
Your mention on your blog of commenting issues prompted me to go back and fix this thing.
DeleteDuring my time as an elementary school coach one of the classroom teachers came to me and said she appreciated the fact that we gave trading cards to the kids because it was encouraging them to read. I always figured it was the one saving grace of my days among the rugrats.
I have no trouble reading or posting from my (really old) iPad, FWIW. Or do you mean it's unusable on an iPad for posting your blogs?
ReplyDeleteReading blogs isn't an issue for me. But I've never been able to do much on my iPads with this Blogger platform. And that goes back thru numerous generations of the thing. Trying to compose or edit (complete) a post never works. The page won't scroll no matter which browser I use. I've never had any success via the apps, either. I even paid for a Pro version and it wan't much help.
DeleteI disliked 1962 Topps for years, but later came to realize that my view was skewed from hatless 1962 Mets cards. Cards like this make me realize I need to give the set another chance.
ReplyDeleteAs a kid I thought it would be cool if Sixto indeed had six toes. :-)
I collected a few years before '62 but that set is what I remember connecting me to kids at my new school. It's a long story but we moved late in that spring and I made friends with other collectors and some are still my friends, at least through the internet.
DeleteOn your screen where you compose posts, there is a comments option. Click that, and it shows them all in reverse chronological order. I've never used an email notification to check my comments.
ReplyDeleteI only receive a percentage of comment notifications for my blog. I try my best to go back to recent blog posts and check/comment manually.
ReplyDeleteAwesome! I have a version of nostalgia for the 1962 set - I was collecting 1987 Topps as a kid, and 62 shares that same wood grain style backdrop. Lots of hatless cards and the tint variations have made the set less appealing to me in the past, but I do think there are many underrated gems in the set.
ReplyDeleteHappy I could put a dent in your set building as you did the same for me!