Cards at the Crossroads

As I contemplate what I'm going to do with this blog I need to catch up with a few generous packages that arrived from a pair of esteemed bloggers over the last couple of weeks. Let's do these in the order they arrived.

First up is a group of cards I received from Joe Shlabotnik. 'Joe' killed some of my 1973 needs, quite a few in fact. I've posted a handful of my favorites. Above and below are two Cleveland relief pitchers, Mike Kilkenny and Steve Mingori. Both are rocking the early 70s sideburns and they look enough alike (at least on these cards) that I wasn't sure that I hadn't discovered a Topps error.

Mingori was on his way to Kansas City in June of '73, and he pitched on their '76 thru '78 division-winning clubs.

Kilkenny was probably just happy to spend the '73 season (at least what there was of it for him) without having to forward his mail. In 1972 he was with four different clubs over the span of  33 days. He began the year with his original team, the Tigers. On May 9 he was dealt to the A's for first-baseman Reggie Sanders. On the 17th the A's traded him to the Padres in a deal that netted them Ollie Brown. Three weeks later the Padres sent him to the Indians for infielder Fred Stanley.

In '73 Kilkenny made just a handful of appearances for Cleveland and gamelogs show he wasn't very effective in any of them. By May 6, just short of a year since his '72 baseball odyssey began, he was out of the majors. He played in the independent Intercounty Baseball League in his native Canada before getting into owning racehorses and being a golf pro. Some of the rabbit holes you travel through while researching the players on these cards are very entertaining.

And here's Yaz. This is a Yastrzemski card that I don't remember seeing much of. He was just at the point of transitioning into more of a first-baseman than an outfielder, but he had plenty of top-level baseball left in him.

Cookie Rojas has what appears to be the batting helmet cart behind him in this spring training photo.When I was coaching we had these carts aplenty, filled with all sorts of equipment and dragged them to the fields every day.

Dave Giusti in what I'm thinking is another ST photo but I've been to McKechnie Field and that doesn't match my memory of it. Of course, this picture was taken 40 some years prior to my visits.

Ralph Garr wearing a Braves uni top I'm still conflicted over after all these years.

The '73s Joe sent helped get me to the point where I need less than 25 to finish the set. Outside of the 1960 Leaf set (which I'm convinced I'll never finish), the '73 set is the last one I'm looking to close out for the foreseeable future. Yes, that means that I'm done with the '57 Topps baseball and '69 Topps football sets. Hallelujah!

In addition to the 73s Joe included a handful of modern Orioles. Cards I'd never otherwise see. Trey Mancini is the closest the O's have to a household name. And that's a stretch.

These two cards came along for the ride from Virginia. The more Presidents cards I receive the more I realize how many different sets there are out there.

These Goudeys are kind of artsy. When I get some time I'm gonna look closer at the Goodwins from 2017 and find any other presidents.

Thanks for these, Joe. As always they are much appreciated.

The other package came from beautiful Upstate New York and the Night Owl. This card of Cardinals' infielder Tommy Edmon was one I asked him to put aside for me. He had opened packs of this Topps '19 issue and Edmon was in one of them. This was the last card I needed to finish off my fantasy baseball binder for 2019.

I'm the 'crazy cat lady' of fantasy baseball. Because I can't say "No" I ended up 'fostering' seven orphaned teams this year. On three different platforms. Yeech. ONE team is usually too much for me to keep up with. Nobody in America was as happy to see the end of the regular season as I was!

And, like Joe, the wise ol' Owl filled up the envelope with modern Orioles...and a note saying how tough it is to find new Orioles to send. Boy, no kidding! When you suck as bad as the O's do Topps has no need to put them into sets. I don't blame Topps a bit.

I really like this fancy-ass John Means card. It immediately won a spot in my fantasy bb binder, booting out the minor league card I had of him previously.

Throwback style Chris Davis.  Looks like he'll be around Charm City for 2020. I'm OK with that.

Manny. Everyone hates him but I'd take him back in a second!

Ced Mullins took a step (or three) back in 2019. I still have hope, tho.

And a nice mini A&G Brooks. I recently got around to putting my Orioles mini cards in tobacco card pages. They look good in pages, much better than shuffling thru them by hand. 

Thank you, Greg. And thanks to both you and Joe for much enjoyment via your excellent blogs.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. It's the only holiday I really look forward to. Our plan is to spend it at the home of my recently widowed mother-in-law (RIP, Dad) and it has the potential to be a disaster. Let's hope it exceeds my expectations, shall we? And I hope yours is special.

See you somewhere down the road on the flip side.

1973 Topps Kickoff

As noted in my last post, I'm far enough along with my '74 and '57 sets that I can start to deal with what is likely my last set build for a while.

As has occurred a few times before, this one sort of fell into my lap via a starter lot that I couldn't pass up. Prior to coming across that box, I'd never really given any thought to collecting it other than in a general, 'I'd like to do more 70s sets' kind of way.

1973 was an interesting year in America, more interesting than the '73 Topps design for sure. Secretariat, the GOAT of racehorses, won the Triple Crown. George Steinbrenner bought the Yankees. LBJ passed away. Spiro Agnew resigned as Veep. The Orioles won the AL East but someone else won the World Series, I forget who it was. ;-) The World Trade Center and the Sears Tower opened in NYC and Chicago, respectively. The Watergate hearing began. And OJ Simpson ran for 2000 yards, the first NFLer to do so.

The box (unlike that damn 1974 starter pile) had about 300 cards in it, and (hooray!) no dupes.  It included many star cards and overall the cards were in nice shape. It's probably the first starter lot I've bought which lacked any cards that immediately said: "upgrade me!".

Factoring in the Orioles team set I already had plus some stars I've picked up though the years I'm at 341 of 660 cards, about 52%. When I was done sorting and check listing I wound up with about 25 dupes, almost all were stars and Orioles. All the cards in this post are part of my stack of dupes and some are a bit rough around the edges, literally.

The only 'high ticket' card is, of course, the Mike Schmidt rookie. But I've been lucky in the past in finding reasonably priced  star/rookie cards and hopefully the Schmidt won't be the exception.

There is also a set of unnumbered team checklists almost identical to those that were issued in 1974. They are cheap and easy to find.

There are a few 'errors/variations' in the set, different coloring for some managers/coaches cards and 'broken' black borders around the photos on a few others. Nothing that sounds like it needs to be included in my binder.

That Mike Marshall card is interesting in that he had been with the Expos since 1970 and yet Topps airbrushed a photo of him in a Tigers uni. His days with Detroit ended when he was drafted by the expansion Pilots in October of 1968. So the photo is from spring training of '68 at best.

This is one of my favorite Boog Powell cards. Classic Powell swing on a bright Baltimore day with batboy Jay Mazzone in the background.

Like the Bob Moose card, this Lindy McDaniel is a dupe because I casually collect their cards. He was in his 19th season in the bigs and his 160+ innings were the second-most of his career.

I've put my '73 want list over in the right-side column. If you can help me out let me know. I'm sure we can work something out!

1973 Topps Carlton Fisk

Carlton Fisk, hero of Game 6 of the 1975 World Series. Any baseball fan old enough can in all likelihood tell you about where he or she was when they watched that dramatic blast. I know i can. I was in a friend's room in the dorms at the University of Houston. Big crowd of buddies watching. I don't even remember who I was pulling for, probably the Sox. But I remember the uproar when Fisk hit it out off Pat Darcy to force the Reds into a 7th game.
I'm not a big fan of the '73 set but I've got a nice size stash of them. This is Fisk's second card, he shared a '72 rookie cards with Mike Garman and Cecil Cooper. The Topps 'Rookie Bowl' trophy isn't as cool as the 'Top Hat' one but it's still a nice addition to the cards.
Here is a video of that moment including a postgame interview with Fisk.

Hammer Time #1

From my stacks of slightly worn 'vintage' cards comes the first of three Hammerin' Hank Aaron cards. There is no special reason for this short three post tribute to Henry. It's not his birthday week, I'm not a Braves fan (except for their Milwaukee-era caps) and I'm not heading to Atlanta as far as I know (in fact I'll be in Chicago later this week).

I simply was going through some cards and came across three Aarons and figured 'why not?'. This is, of course, the 1973 Aaron, numbered 100 in the set. It brings out mixed feelings in me. First it's good because it's Aaron, one of the greatest players of his or any era, a guy I was lucky enough to see play many times.

OTOH it's not a one of the classic Aaron cards. For one thing he's listed at 1st Base. For another he's wearing that goofy Braves' kit that featured sleeve feathers. I might not have hated it so much but for the fact that the Braves have had some great uniforms through the years. This isn't one of them.

And the '73 Topps set in general kind of leaves me flat. There is that generic silhouette, the odd color combos and most of all, ABSOLUTELY most of all.... the 'action' photography, much of which appears to be taken by an 11 year old from the box seats on Camera Day.

But I dig the Aaron. It's much more tightly cropped and it has one of my favorite card features... a huge ass wall of stat text on the back. All those wonderful numbers lined up in columns. They were just begging to be compared and contrasted by the 'much younger and more into stats' me.

To be fair, not every '73 live action type card sucked. The Jim Palmer is one of my favorites of him.

Random Hank Aaron Fact: On June 14, 1952, Aaron made his professional baseball debut at Carson Park with the Eau Claire WI. Bears.

There is a bust outside that ballpark commemorating that.

Chris Stufflestreet, Quite a guy

It's been a busy last seven days and I was away from this place for most of it. Needless to say I was surprised and saddened to read of Chris Stufflestreet's death last week. I'd had some correspondence with Chris through the years as he has been well known in vintage card circles for years. When I began blogging the '59 Topps set Chris was helpful through his voluminous online resources and in answering questions I posed to him. He was always ready to set me straight with a comment or email when I "stuck my foot in it". I really appreciated his thoughtfulness and considered him a friend even though we never met in person. 

On the net Chris seemed to be everywhere. He had a couple of regular baseball card blogs, two music blogs and my favorite Stufflestreet spot... the Vintage Card site which contains a wealth of info on sets going back to the hobby's earliest days.

Chris was not yet 40 and leaves behind a daughter. As others have said far more eloquently on other blogs... RIP, Chris. You'll be missed.

My own little tribute to Chris consists of my posting some vintage cards including three of my collection of '73s and a few others. I'm pretty sure he'd have appreciated them.

My Worst Brooks card (is there such a thing?)

I came across this thing in my box marked "Oriole Junk". It's a '73 Topps Brooks Robinson and it's a nice card in the early '70s Topps mold. I sometimes think Topps just told their photographers to buy a cheap ticket and sneak down into the box seats to take their pictures.

The thing that distinguishes this card is how off center it is. No doubt it's the worst balanced card I've found in my collection. And as a guy who has collected the '59 Topps set, that's saying something. It is weird though that the front is so much better than the back. I always expect the two to be in sync border-wise.

The stats on the backs of baseball cards were always a big part on their appeal to me growing up. There was no better way for me to pass time on a rainy day than to pour over card backs. And the longer the columns, the better. I was interested in how guys' numbers ebbed and flowed over the years.


EDIT... I was sitting at my car dealers' service department waiting on an oil change when I originally wrote and posted this today using the Blogsy app on my IPad. I haven't ironed out the kinks in my IPad blogging skills yet. But I'm working on it.