Closet Discoveries

 I've been on a cleaning/reorganizing/purging binge lately and I attacked my hobby closet earlier this week. I opened four boxes from the upper shelves and had a lot of fun. Absolutely the best thing in any of my boxes was this Hank Aaron foldout I got the night he hit homer #712 in the Astrodome in September of 1973.

It opened up to a full four page home run log. There were spaces to fill in  homers 711 thru 715.

 

I filled in the slots (sorta) beginning with the dinger off Dave Roberts we witnessed that night. Jerry Ruess is the missing victim of #713. Jack Billinghan served up #714 and, of course, #715 was smacked off Al Downing. You can see that I underlined Jack Billingham in the listings. I believe I'd noticed his name a few times and was counting them up. Without Baseball Reference in those days we were on our own. BTW...Billingham gave up five Aaron homers thru the years, not early the top mark. Here are Hank's favorite pitchers:

Don Drysdale 17 homers
Claude Osteen 14
Bob Friend 12
Larry Jackson 10
Don Cardwell 10
Roger Craig 10

There was also a career summary that covered a couple of pages and a statistical summary of his career to that point.

I had no idea that this thing had survuved in my storage boxes. I was happy to see it. I still don't have the little paper certificate we received but finding this was a kick.

This piece is just the tip of the iceberg of what I dug out of these boxes and is currently stacked in my home office/hobby room. I've been busy scanning some really off-the-wall items which willkeep me posting for a while.

'67 Star Power

I've had this post on hold as I gathered a few cards for my '67 build. Everything in this post came via eBay or Net54 buys. But not COMC which is where I've spent about 75% of my hobby money over the last few years.

Four months after I requested shipping I got an email from COMC that they were packaging my order. That was two weeks ago, and nothing since. I've hated to criticize any business during this time but COMC had the time and resources to send multiple emails a day touting their latest auctions. Once I get this last order in hand I am requesting a transfer of the money I have there (and it's a lot) to be sent back to my PP account. 

Enough of my bitching, let's look at cards. Yaz' signature look like a few I've seen from 90-year-old former players. Neat card though.

 

 

Here's a relatively young Pete Rose. This set is such a nice one. I can't believe I waited this long to work on it. OTOH...those high numbers will be the death of me.

I scanned the back of Pete's card for some reason. Maybe just to remark on how these backs contain almost everything...vitals, cartoons, a write-up blurb, and yearly stats. Not complete stats by any means but these were the numbers we cared about back then.

The Hammer makes an appearance.

As does Ernie Banks. I love everything about this Banks card.

And the late, great Bob Gibson. I wish my scanner treated these 67s with the respect they deserve. It likes to cut off borders.

Finally it's Vern Law. He's not a star of the magnitude of the others in the post but that shot in Forbes Field!! That's the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning Tower in the background. That's whats lacking in a lot of modern sets...fun backgrounds.

I mean just look at that card. I have a friend who grew up in Pittsburgh and attended many games at Forbes. I always tell him how jealous I am of that fact.

Here's a shot of that building. I just learned that the Pirates sold Forbes to the university who wanted more space to expand their graduate program.

 

 

And here's the view Pitt students had from the top looking down at the 1960 World Series.  "Hey, is that Clemente on second...or Smoky Burgess?" 😏

I'm rolling right along with the set. I'm about 100 cards short, give or take. About a third of them are from the lower numbers but most are from Series Seven. The list is link over on the right. If you have a spare Seaver rookie you don't want cluttering up your desk, hook me up, OK?

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!

1961 Topps Update, also Hank!!

Slowly but steadily I'm creeping up on the 1961 set. And I'm growing fonder of it every day. It's interesting in that it's sort of a 'transition' set in terms of my baseball memories. There are a lot of guys in the '58, '59, and even the '60 set (which I had a lot of as a kid) that were unfamiliar to me when I was acquiring the cards. The '62 set was one where I knew almost everyone on a card. The '61 is kind of in-between.

I'm at the point where knocking off needs is slow going. I'm at a little over 96% (566 of 587) but of the last 21 I need, 20 are high numbers. Those have been difficult. Not because they are hard to find, but because they are hard to find at a reasonable price. Some of them just seem to carry a premium for reasons I can't figure out. But I'll get it done. My goal is to finish before the end of the year.

Here is a look at the high numbers I nabbed off COMC earlier this year. It's just coincidental that all are pitchers. Not much to say about these other than they were all in pretty nice condition. '61s, in general, don't seem to show the wear that other sets from back in the day show.

Frank Baumann is wearing one of my favorite ball caps. I really like the S-O-X logo when it's got that red outline. Baumann, who split his career between the Red Sox and White Sox (with a few games with the Cubs to make it interesting), was the AL ERA leader in 1960.

Larry Jackson was a 5-time NL All-Star who led the league in wins in 1964. He was a politician and lobbyist in his native Idaho after baseball, once running for governor.

Barry Latman, according to Wikipedia, had to stop playing baseball for several years when he turned ten because his parents wanted him studying for his bar mitzvah. Indians had some sweet unis back then.

Don Cardwell was traded from the Phils to the Cubs on May 15, 1960. Two days later he pitched a no-hitter for the Cubs over the Cardinals.

Here's a guy who was new to me. Jim Archer had been an Orioles farm hand for years (I had no idea) before he was traded to the A's near Opening Day in '61. Topps had time to get his pic in KC gear for this last series card. He had a really nice rookie season in '61. He was among the top ten in several categories. He developed arm problems and had a brutal follow-up year in 1962 and was gone from the game soon after that. Like Larry Jackson, he dabbled in politics after he retired.

Bill Fischer was the guy who, as an off-season job, filled my Dad's car at the Flying A station on Flatbush Avenue while us kids sat in the backseat. OK, that's probably not true but I can see him doing that.

In truth, Fischer has a nine-year career with four clubs in the AL. He spent some time as a starter with the nats in the early 60s but did most of his work from the pen.

Saving the best for last....

Henry Aaron was the second to last star card I needed. I'm not counting the high number, Mays and Banks, All-Star cards.

That's Seals Stadium in San Francisco. Baseball unis don't get much better than those classic Braves' duds. Entering the '61 season Henry Aaron was 26 years old, just hitting his prime.  Just in case you were unaware...he's the all-time leader in RBIs and total bases. And in class.

Other than the two All-Stars the last star I need is Juan Marichal. The '61 is his rookie card, so you know how that goes. I have a handful of copies in an auction sniper bid group. Hopefully one of them falls to me.

Let 'Em Breathe!

I picked up two more All-Stars for the 1961 set build. I almost always go after raw cards but sometimes you find a graded card at a reasonable price. My normal procedure is to let them stew in their cases for a few days and then throw a 'freedom party' out on my workbench.

Ever since I damaged a '59 Killebrew rookie with an overzealous screwdriver I've been more careful doing this. I did ding my '62 Willie Mays but overall I've had success. What I normally do is stick the label (I've learned it's called a 'flip') into the binder on the back side of the card.

This morning I went from this...

...to this...

...and finally to this...

Now that I look at the scans I think I'm going to pull the flips out of the binder pockets. Viewing three of them on a page is kind of annoying. #retiredguyproblems :-)

Progress report: I'm at 538 of the 587 cards in the '61 set (92% give or take). 34 of the cards I lack are high numbers including three All-Stars (Aparicio, Banks, Mays). Of the 15 lower series cards a couple are stars/rookies including the Marichal rookie. I'd also like to upgrade one card... I have a Mantle World Series Game 2 (card #307) which is trimmed.

I made the hotel show this past Saturday but I've pretty much exhausted the supply of  '61s that my friend Darryl had available. I picked up both of Bill Mazeroski's cards from him.

Overall I think I've made pretty decent progress on this thing. From time to time (particularly when looking at high number cards of lesser-known players) wonder how I could have let myself get into the chase for this. But it's been fun. I have a goal (a soft goal!) of finishing it this calendar year. We'll see.

1961 Topps Stamps (Revisited)

In late October I posted my 1961 Topps Sticker Album, You can check it out at this link. I've been chipping away at these for a while. I hate the fact that I have to pay over a buck for some of them. Even a dollar seems high but whatcha gonna do?

I'm not bringing this up again to show off new stamps but rather to add some info to what I had previously written. It turns out that not all teams were created equal in the Topps Stamp world in 1961. I was wrong in that previous post when I noted that each team had twelve stamps issued. That is the case in the NL...8 teams, 12 stamps per team to fill ten album slots. So there were 96 NL stamps to fill the 80 spots on the NL pages.

But the Junior Circuit, with two clubs debuting in '61, gummed up the works. Over there 5 clubs got 12 player stamps...the Red Sox, White Sox, Tigers, Indians and the Twins who had just slid in from Washington. My Orioles got 11 stamps. More on that in a bit. The Yankees (no surprise) and the Athletics (big surprise!) had 13 stamps each. The two expansion clubs, the Angels and Senators (who replaced the departed for Minnesota version) got 7 stamps each. That's 111 stamps (or 112 if you count Al Kaline twice as he got a stamp in both colors).

The other aspect of the stamps that I hadn't given much thought to was the color. Obviously, there were brown and green stamps and it's easy to see that the league designation had nothing to do with which player was done in which color.

           But the two colors actually give us the notion that there were two 'series' of these. The Twins stamps can be used to show this. The green Twins have the team listed as Minn.-St Paul. The Twins with brown stamps carry the whole new name, Minnesota Twins. According to Wikipedia, the Twins' name was announced late in November of 1960. Too soon for the first series of stamps to carry it.

The 'green early/brown late' also tells us why the Orioles got jobbed by having only 11 and the perennial doormat and unofficial Yankee farm club Athletics had 13. In January of 1961, those two clubs pulled off an eight-player trade. Whitey Herzog, already a green A's stamp guy, went as part of the deal to the Orioles. Heading the other way was outfielder Bob Boyd who appears on a brown stamp as an Athletic. It would make sense that the deal was too late for Topps to change Herzog's stamp but they were able to show Boyd as a member of the A's. Boyd was supposed to be the Orioles 12th stamp.

Here they are in my album with future A's manager (and twice-an-Oriole) Dick Williams in between.

I figure the Yankees got an extra stamp because there was a slot to fill to complete the printing sheet and they are, after all, the Yankees.

I've 'completed' three team pages. And others are getting close. Below are a few of them. I have a brown Kaline stamp. Likely he replaced a player scheduled for the later series but was removed and so he has stamps in both colors.

The Athletics' page is full, all 10 slots covered. I actually have 11 different A's players but Bud Daley came too late to make the album. I haven't decided what to do with the 'latecomers'. I don't want to squeeze them onto the team pages. I may do what I figure I would have done as a kid, stick them on the inside front cover pages where there is some open area. We'll see.

The Braves were the first team to have a full complement of 10 stamps. I have Henry Aaron, Spahnie and Ed Mathews on the page. I would have held open a slot for any of those three had I needed to.

Over on the right side of the blog, I have added a page link for my 1961 Stamp build. Much of the info I typed here can be found there along with a checklist/needs list and more. I will not link to the Oldcardboard.com site which characterized these as 'bland' and praised to 1962 stamp set. That one was full of murky, out-of-focus pictures. Not even the fun team logo stamps that were included could make it as sweet as the 1961 bunch. Some folks just don't appreciate classic beauty.

TCMA The 60s Set Series II (Pt 1)

The weird and wonderful TCMA Stars of the 50s and 60s sets ended with the 1981 issue of a Series II for the 60's set. It picked up the numbering at #294 with nine minor league players (including a Sparky Anderson card) and ran through #482.

The 'Big Leaguers' begin with this Maris/Mantle beauty at #303.

There is no card numbered #319 but there were two #399s so the speculation is that one of those was mis-numbered. Makes sense. Here are the two cards involved:

The numbers on the backs are tough to read. Be forewarned of that if you have to sort these. LOL My 64 year old eyes were not happy!

Here is a better look. 

The 'set' I bought was minus the minor league cards. The eBay listing only mentioned that there were nine cards missing without further explanation. When it arrived and I saw what I needed I was afraid that the minor leaguers would be some sort of scarce short prints that would cost me dearly. Turns out only the Sparky Anderson card carried a premium. The rest were available for under a buck for the most part. A quick trip to COMC and SportsLots garnered me the nine I was lacking and that was that. 

The first of the minor leaguers that arrived at my door (the only ones so far) are these two guys from the Buffalo Bison, a Mets farm club in the 60s. Scanning them I noticed that the backs are printed upside down. Just another bit of quirkiness. 

This is infielder Cliff Cook. He played in parts of five seasons for the Reds and Mets.

Craig Anderson was an original Met who was picked up from the Cardinals in the expansion draft. He pitched in 50 games in 1962 for New York. He worked mainly out of the bullpen but did make 14 starts. Here's a weird fact. Out of the bullpen Anderson won both ends of a doubleheader against the Braves on May 12. He had won another game as a reliever six days earlier over the Phils. Those three wins in the span of less than a week were his only wins of the season. He lost 17 others as well as recording 6 blown saves.

The rest of the set is chocked full of the same type of goodies that the previous TCMA sets contained. There are however more action and multi-player cards then were seen in Series I of the 60s set. 

The multi-players cards come with one caveat, two actually. All except one feature photos of either the Yankees or Mets.

Fairly easy to name the players without looking at the back. Here is the outfield that the 1969 Series made famous... Jones, Agee and Swoboda. Bleep 'em all.

This next one is id'd as being from spring training of 1962. It features the Bombers from the 1961 team: Maris, Berra, Mantle, Howard, Skowron and Blanchard.

And they were not all 'players'. We get the photos of the two NY clubs that include the staffs. This Met's pic is actually a Dodgers reunion shot with Casey, Gil Hodges, Charlie Neal, etc. All of whom were one time Brooklyn Bums.

The Yankees coaching staff smiled for the camera. Well some of them did.

And the guys on these cards were not all star players either. Look kids, it's Ron Taylor and Don Shaw!

The oddball of the group is this one of the Cardinals brain trust. 

I'm a bit disappointed that the back makes no mention of what appears to be a t-shirt cannon prototype but is undoubtedly a ball launcher.

Also sneaking into the mix are some actual game action cards. 

This one of Roger Maris greeted at home plate has game details on the reverse. Here is an expanded view for easier reading. Does this remind anyone of a current phenomenon? Let's label this one as a TCMA Now card.  And note the pencil check marks. Some of the cards with more than one person shown have these marks. My guess is that someone tried to guess who was pictured and was checking their work.

Here's another TCMA Now card...Gil Hodges and Ed Vargo...

...with the action annotated...

Most of the 'in action' cards were simply regular cards without the gory details. The Hammer got an action photo as a regular card in the set....

As did Steve Whitaker....

Ditto for Cardinal Ray Washburn. He once told my then 9 and 11 year old younger brothers to "Go to hell!" as he jogged on the warning track pregame in the Astrodome. All they had done was call his name asking for an autograph. If I hadn't been there to witness it I wouldn't have believed it. He was an ass but he knew how to wear a uni. Nice stirrups.

And there are others which seem to be cards taken during spring practice or game warm-ups as well as a few that are hard to classify...

The Yankees' Stan Bahnsen

Senator pitcher Barry Moore. He was one of those 'his card was in every damn pack!' guys in the late 60s.

The Astros' Hector Torres got a spring training photo on his card. Torres couldn't hit a lick (career .216 average) but he used his fielding skills to carve out a nine year career in the majors. He's a baseball lifer and his current job is the hitting(!) coach of the Bowling Green Hot Rods. They are the Class 'A' Tampa farm club.

Casey Stengel got his own card. There are quite a few managers and coaches in this series. Below is Danny Murtaugh enjoying spring training life.

and Ed Lopat in the gold and green.

I have a lot more interesting cards scanned but I'll save those for the next installment. I'll end this one with one of my favorites in the set. 

This shot of Ted Savage would look perfectly at home on a 1957 Topps card wouldn't it? Great posed photo in front of an empty Polo Grounds third base grandstand.