Astrodome Postcards

I'm not sure where these postcards came from but they bring back some fond memories of great events. The top one was taken during the first game played there in April 1965. The person who wrote the blurb on the back was either not using tier glasses or looking at a different photo. Check it out:

First of all, it seems odd to mention the time the game started at all. Clock clearly shows 7:46

This sure looks like the lineup card/ground rules meeting.

 But whatever. It's a neat card.

This one is closer to my heart. It from the October, 1970 Houston Cougar football game versus Alabama. The Coogs lost with me somewhere over in the stands on the left, the student section. But the Coogs went on to an 8-3 record and a Top Twenty finish. A couple of years later I would watch games from the press level. That was fun. But the view you see right here is the one I had for years as a young alum. This was my group's favorite spot. It gave us a perfect view of Coach Bill Yeoman's veer offense.  It was up here where I also watched the basketball Game of The Century. This one brings back some great memories.

Dome Sweet Dome

I saw more games in the Dome than in any other stadium and I had a love/hate relationship with the place. When it was full and the crowd was into the game it was really a rocking atmosphere. But no place I've been to could be as dead as the Dome during a meaningless, sparsely attended game.

A week ago I attended my first meeting of the Houston Chapter of SABR. I've been a member for a few years but never bothered to go to the monthly gatherings. The chapter is named for Larry Dierker and lo and behold he attended this meeting as a guest and I was seated right there with him. He was very cordial. He signed some items that people brought (I hadn't considered doing that for some reason) and participated in the discussions.

One of the items that was passed around at the meeting was the book shown at the top. I had a copy stored away and when I saw the one last week I was reminded of how cool it is. Nearly three hundred pages long it chronicles the short history of the Houston Colts/Astros, the building of the Dome and much, much more.

There is an Astros 'yearbook' incorporated into the thing as well as sections covering the MLB teams, all the NFL teams including a whole Oilers section. This despite the fact that the Oilers were still years away from moving into the Dome. Also in the book are pages covering a wide range of tenants the Dome was hosting including the Billy Graham Crusade, University of Houston football and the Houston rodeo.

It's really a remarkable volume and I wish I could do it justice with scans of more of it but I hate taking a chance of breaking the spine. I'll settle for pics of just a few pages.

I love this feature on the various colors of the seating levels.

I should have fixed this photo but with this and the next photo you get an idea of what the Astros' section looked like.

American League teams got one page each. The NL teams got a two page spread. There is a large baseball records section in there, too.

George Blanda and the Oilers! One of the speakers at the meeting reprised a locally famous quote from Oilers' owner Bud Adams: "The Astrodome may be the 8th Wonder of the World but the ninth wonder is the rent!". It took Roy Hofheinz and Bud Adams until 1968 to agree on a deal to get pro football into the Dome.

Meanwhile the U of H was playing football there. The Cougars get a nice section in the book, nearly a dozen pages. Our big star, Warren McVea is featured.

In the photo below you can see the late Phil Hoffman in the upper right. He was UH President in my first go round as a Coog. I have a funny story that involves him, me and some drunk friends of mine, an open dorm window and a water hose hooked up to a shower. I'll need to check to see if the statue of limitations is up before I get into it though.

And finally here's a page with a nice full color picture of some of the Astros' staff. I'm glad they got rid of those 'H' caps once the season started.

This post just doesn't do the book justice in any way. What a deal it was for just a dollar in 1965. I didn't pay much more than that many years later. You can find them for $10 or less pretty easily. Waaaaaay more entertaining than a Topps Now card at the same price.

The Shabotnik Retort

The Shlabotnik Retort...get it? Clever, yes? I sent Joe Shlabotnik something, he sends something back..a retort. I've been wanting to use that title! Woohoo.  OK, so much for that, let's look at what Joe sent me. 

Yes, that's the 1970 Carl Yastrzemski. This is one of a couple of needs Joe filled from this set build. It's moving along nicely. And one less star is on my needs list thanks to Joe!

This LBJ card comes from a 1976 Rainbo Bread set that was new to me. Doing a bit of checking sent me down a rabbit hole in which I discovered that Rainbo sponsored two separate but similar sets. One was this Presidential set and the other honored 'great' Americans. I now own the later but the Presidential set will have to wait for some free time.

5 Tool cards...the Topps subset. A natural for me. I don't have a checklist for them (though it would be simple to find it) but I do put them in my 'keepers' box when I get them.

Joe knows Score and sent me this Cal Jr. Was he ever this young? It's a great photo.

Modern cards of Orioles past and present, mostly Brooks!

The Heritage card (lower left of the four) uses the photo which was used on Brooks' 1957 rookie card. A question arose not long ago (in a comment on my blog I think) concerning the orange-ish background of that card. Did Topps pose Brooks in front of an orange backdrop? Did they re-color the sky for some reason? Looks like now we know.

Next come three UH athletes. I haven't added to my Cougar binder in awhile. Maybe this will motivate me.

You never see 'Clyde The Glide' in Cougar gear on a card so this is pretty cool.

And now for something totally unexpected. A Strat-O-Matic game Billy Pierce! I played Strat for decades and still have boxes of player cards from the 60s thru the mid 80s. Every once in awhile I'll pull out the game and give it a whirl. I'm not sure why it never occurred to me to add a Strat card to my Pierce collection. 

Stratheads will note that this card and the others Joe included (most of the '62 Giants team set) are from the basic version that doesn't include the advance version on the reverse. Leads me to believe that these are original cards and not from a reprint set. I only played the basic game, btw. 

I put the Giants (except for Billy Pierce of course) in my free agent Strat box. I use them when playing for fun. I just dig in and build teams from whatever comes out in my hand.

The rest of Joe's envelope was stuffed with Orioles, shiny and new and otherwise. 

Never knew that Bowman produced two-sided cards. Here's one. The back side is above. Hunter Harvey graces the front.

2017 Bunt. Heaven's light shines on Zach. Hurry back!

One of the great names in the game, Storm Davis. And one of my favorite 80s sets. Cards like this make me nostalgic for Memorial Stadium.

Foursome of Bowmans including an Adam Jones.

A Chrome Jones.

Next card is from when Machado was just a gleam in Orioles' fans eyes.

I don't know much about Jake Lemoine but his card is bright enough to light up a small city. Scan doesn't do it justice.

I think that wraps it up. A great group of cards from a great blogger! Thanks again, Joe!!

Archives Bull Durham Card of Robert Wuhl

I bought two 'jumbo' packs of 2016 Archives, paid too much for them and picked up a couple of mildly interesting cards. But that's a subject that'll I discuss in another post.

What we have here is an eBay purchase. That's Robert Wuhl, my long time friend and college roommate at The University of Houston on his '16 Archive subset card. The subset consists of  seven cards including one of screenwriter/director (and one-time Orioles farmhand) Ron Shelton.

Robert played pitching coach Larry Hockett as seen here drinking a beer, something Robert has never done (or admitted to) in real life.

The card back alludes to the 'candlesticks' quote that occurs during a mound meeting with catcher Crash Davis played by Kevin Costner and pitcher Nuke Laloosh, played by Tim Robbins;

(quoted at IMDb)
Larry: [Larry jogs out to the mound to break up a players' conference] Excuse me, but what the hell's going on out here?
Crash Davis: Well, Nuke's scared because his eyelids are jammed and his old man's here. We need a live... is it a live rooster?
[Jose nods]
Crash Davis: . We need a live rooster to take the curse off Jose's glove and nobody seems to know what to get Millie or Jimmy for their wedding present.
[to the players]
Crash Davis: Is that about right?
[the players nod]
Crash Davis: We're dealing with a lot of shit.
Larry: Okay, well, uh... candlesticks always make a nice gift, and uh, maybe you could find out where she's registered and maybe a place-setting or maybe a silverware pattern. Okay, let's get two! Go get 'em.

Robert pretty much ad-libbed the scene from a real life conversation he had just prior to filming with another college friend of ours. He had asked her for wedding gift suggestions and her response was pretty what you see in the quote above. To bring this full circle, that friend, Barbara, passed away quite unexpectedly this past February. In May Robert came to speak at the University of Houston Alumni Gala at which she was to be honored for her volunteer work in the community. The honor, of course, became a posthumous award. It was a bittersweet night. 

He's a huge baseball fan and picked up some sweet seats for an Astros-Mariners game through Roger Clemens. Here we are, right behind the catcher with my wife already checking her phone three pitches into the night. LOL

I also snagged a red-bordered variation. The prices for signed versions of these cards were kind of silly. When they first hit eBay I saw a red border sig card with an asking price pushing $400. They are down to the $85 range now. That kind of kills my plan to buy up all the ones I could find, get them signed and sell them. Robert was all for it. I was only half serious when we discussed it. LOL

Robert doesn't have any of the cards and said Topps paid him $20 for each card he signed. 

As for my Archives pack purchase.....I got no Orioles. I NEVER get any Orioles. But, as I noted I got a couple of keepers. I need to scan and post them soon.

Fuji's H-Town Takeover

I got a great manila envelope from Fuji a week or so ago. He always sends some cool stuff. He sent cards that hit a bunch of my collecting habits. The two highlights are bookending this post.

Isn't that an awesome '67 Topps card of Andy Etchebarren? There is no mistaking that face. Etch is wearing the O's '64/'65 home uni. The last time these were worn was Spring Training of 1966 so that may be when this shot was taken. I love the 'Yoo-Hoo' sign on the outfield fence. Our fantasy football league used to award a ceremonial bottle of the stuff to our champion each year. But it got harder and harder to find so we ended that tradition.

Ryan Minor is the guy who 'replaced' Cal Ripken at 3B for the Orioles. He also was a big time basketball player at OU. I believe he is still in the Orioles system in some non-playing capacity but I'm not sure about that.

Remember 'Pogs'? They were all the rage when I moved over to elementary school teaching in the 90's. These things came from the Ted Williams card sets. I've never seen them before. When I was a kid the glass milk bottles that we had delivered to our door had round disks inserted into the opening on top and they frequently featured baseball or football players. That brings back some memories.

These next two cards are Topps Museum Collection items. This Brooks Robinson is one of those textured deals. It looks a lot better in person than it does in the scan.

I still put Raffy cards into my Orioles 'star' box while railing against Hall of Fame votes for Clemens and Bonds, etc. Sue me.

The fact that this next card features the great John Mackey of the BALTIMORE Colts far outweighs the fact that it also has a guy from that other place. It goes in my Mackey pages...I'll just try to look only at the top half of it.

And now to address the H-Town Takeover reference in the title. Fuji sent along some signed cards of Houston Cougars! My Cougar collection has been stagnant for the longest time. I believe now is a good time to kick-start it.

Gee Gervin is the son of Hall of Famer George 'The Iceman' Gervin. Gee played a couple of seasons for the Coogs, ending in 2000. He averaged 19.2 points a game which is 10th all time for UH. He played for the Globetrotters for awhile and he plays in Sweden now. 

Tim Moore played in the mid-90s here and averaged just over 19 PPG. I was still a ticket holder during Moore's time at UH so I saw a lot of him.

And the coolest card of all of them is this Case Keenum auto/swatch card from Upper Deck. Case is one of the best players ever to don a Houston uniform, a regular folk hero among UH fans. And he's a helluva guy to boot.

Case wasn't drafted by the NFL after his time here but Gary Kubiak, then with the Texans, immediately signed him to the Houston practice squad. He ended up playing eight games for the Texans in 2013. He then moved on to the Rams, back to the Texans and then back to the Rams for 2015 where he again found himself as a starter. He's beaten some long odds and negative perceptions in carving out a spot as an NFL qb. He doesn't have a huge arm but he makes the throws he needs to, doesn't make mistakes and can manage a game well.

I hope he continues on this path as the Rams head west for 2016. He deserves every bit of success that comes his way.

Thanks a ton, Fuji. Just a great group of cards.