Floating Heads!! 1962 Rookie Parade

If there is one thing I'll always be grateful to Topps for it's floating heads cards! As I wind my way towards picking up the final 60 cards in the 1962 set I've found myself tracking down decent yet affordable copies of these fun things. The '62 set wasn't the debut for these with Topps. They used the 'floating heads' style with coaches cards in the 1960 set. But I recall being disappointed at getting coaches cards in 1960. Not so with the Rookie Parades of 1962.

There are eight of these that bring up the set's rear. They are 'sorted' by position and feature pitchers (3 cards), infielders (also 3 cards) and one each for catchers and outfielders. The NL drew the short straw however as two of the three pitchers cards AND two of the three infielders cards were devoted to AL players. The poor NL had to make due with one of each. The outfielders and catchers cards had players from both leagues.

As with Topps Rookie grouping through their history, the players featured went on to careers that vary widely.  This AL pitchers card is a good example. 

Bo Belinsky and Jim Bouton are well-known names, mostly for off-the-field reasons. Dave Stenhouse and Dan Pfister saw most of their action in 1962 (Stenhouse made the ASG!) and Joe Bonikowski came and went quietly with one year of major league service.

These four AL infielders (two Twins and two Yankees) all had long careers. Trivia time..... which of these four players got consideration in the 1962 AL ROY balloting? Answer at the bottom.

Sidenote: Joe Pepitone dated a friend's older sister for awhile while in the mid 60s. She was what was referred to back then as 'fast'. The family was Greek-Italian and very...ahem...colorful. My friend was about a few years older than most of the kids on our block. And he'd 'been around' if you know what I mean. But he was a geat guy, a good friend and the best ballplayer I knew. He was the guy everyone wanted on his team, our version of Benny 'The Jet' Rodriguez.

Of the NL infielders, Denis Menke and Hot Rod Kanehl had the best careers. Amado Samuel stuck with the Braves for three seasons. Jim McKnight had 91 big league at-bats.

The catchers card is the most costly of the subset. It features Bob Uecker. I was lucky to find this one at a (relatively) good price. It's going to stay in the case until I work up the guts to free both it and my graded '62 Willie Mays.

My favorite head belongs to Bob Veale on the card at the top of the post. I always love his glasses. I'm currently awaiting the arrival of the second AL infielders card. I nabbed it off eBay after failing to find it at the TriStar show over the weekend.

I did locate a copy of the outfielders card at the show but the dealer was mighty proud of it. I can wait.

The eighth card of the group features Sam McDowell and four other AL pitchers. It may be awhile before I buy that one. The reason is that one of the 'other' pitchers is the Orioles' Art Quirk. I have one of those cards....somewhere. I have all the 1962 Topps cards of Orioles but at the moment they are eluding my grasp. I have all my original Orioles year-by-year team sets in a box but the '62s are missing. I've done thorough searches on two occasions and come up empty. It'll be just my luck to pay $40 or $50 or more for a copy of that #591 and then find my other copy the next day. I'm in the same boat with a couple of other O's from the set who appear on higher number cards. Chuck Estrada for one. The other Orioles I had second cards of in player binders or came cheaply. 

BTW...Art Quirk was an interesting guy. I looked him up the other day and found myself going down a fun 'rabbit hole'. He was featured in Sports Illustrated during April of 1962. He was a Dartmouth grad and after his brief baseball career led an interesting and productive life.


Trivia Answer= Bernie Allen. He finished behind Tom Tresh and Buck Rodgers. He was tied with Dean Chance and Dick Radatz. In the NL Ken Hubbs won the award over Donn Clendennon. Of the seven players who received votes only Radatz appeared on one of these floating heads rookie cards.

More $$$ for cards!

In my last post I casually mentioned my new 'TV setup'. About a month ago I made to move to 'cutting the cord' as it's called. I'm not completely there yet since I still have a minimal cable account for reasons too convoluted to go into here. But I do most of my viewing thru my Amazon FireTV Box using the Sony Playstation Vue app, the Netflix app and a bunch of others. 

Bottom line is I'm paying about $60 less a month than I was with our top shelf  AT&T Uverse plan. And I actually have many more viewing options. I'm not really planning to spend the savings on hobby stuff but that would be fun!

I did take some extra cash to last weekend's hotel card show but the plan was to spend it on a bulk lot of 1958 Topps cards should I come across one. I'm about 90% sure that the '58 set will be my next project. I bought a handful but there were no bargain lots around so that project will wait a bit.

I rummaged through the cheap card boxes and came up with a few that were calling my name. The Frank Robinson at the top of the post is from TCMA's 1986 All Time Orioles set of 12. I love Frank Robinson cards, I love oddballs and TCMA stuff in particular. I wasn't familiar with these but I've since found the set for sale on eBay very cheap so I might need to pick it up. I've also come across a color version of at least one (Jim Palmer). I don't know the story on all that and I'm not really interested. 

Here is the reverse of the Robinson card. BTW...I saw references to the set with blue back printing being a reprint set.  A reprint of a TCMA set? I'm not even sure Larry Fritsch would try to pull that one off. 

A few other random things I brought home. 

1981 Topps Bob Griese. Did he steal those cheaters from Michael Caine?

I forgot to scan the back but it mentions that Griese coaches his kids' youth team. I guess that would be Brian Griese.

Next is a card of one of my UH friends, Otis Birdsong. That's an '86/'87 Fleer which was a cool and colorful set. Always nice to add a card of a Houston star. Particularly Bird who is such a great guy.

This next one is a Cooperstown from Panini showing Roy Campanella in his Baltimore Elite Giants uniform. Campy played with Baltimore from the age of 16 over parts of eight seasons.

Had that been Campy in a Dodgers uni I might not have grabbed it but you don't see many cards with him during his days in Baltimore. That's the old Orioles Park in the picture.

And I grabbed a nice copy of Topps' 1966 Jim Bouton card. I'm not even sure why I did. I don't particularly collect Bouton but I have enjoyed his books, saw him pitch numerous times as a kid and even played Little League against his young cousins in New Jersey.

Sure, he's a Yankee but most Yankee traditionalists hated him. Even the dealer I bought it from, a Yankee fan himself, had a smart remark about this card. LOL.

I'll post the '58s next time so everyone can tee off on them (and me for collecting them).

More Cheap Cards (from the Hotel Show)

Continuing to post a few of the cards I picked up last Saturday at the hotel meeting room card show. Total cost=$12 plus gas, tolls (yes, tolls) and lunch. Total take=30 cards, give or take.

Fred Talbot and Joe Schultz played prominent roles in Jim Bouton's groundbreaking book, Ball Four. I got that book as a graduation present from my best friend's family. Hard to believe that'll be 45 years ago this summer. Seems like yesterday.

I pulled the Talbot because I like those old A's uni's so much. I like the road grays as much as, or maybe more than, the gold ones. Good stuff.

But a couple of cards later I saw the Schultz. I'm not sure why I made the instant Ball Four connection but I did. BTW... Ball Four is almost required reading for baseball fans. I know some call it the best baseball book ever. I wouldn't agree with that but it's certainly right up there among them. Bouton seems to update the book every time he has five minutes and a cup of coffee, I believe it's up to Version 10 or so now.

1975 Topps Mike Newlin. This one made me stop as I was shuffling through the stack. My goodness. I remember him but I don't remember him looking that much like a caveman. Newlin was with the Rockets when they came to Houston in 1971 and I saw a ton of games since they were playing on the UH campus. He was a loose cannon on the court. And off the court as well. I was playing in a softball league one summer and Newlin along with Houston Oilers center Carl Mauck and a few other local pros he was friends with were on a team in that league. One night they were playing the game before ours and Newlin barrel-rolled into second base (who the hell slides in slo-pitch softball?!?!) and broke the other team's infielder's leg.

I don't collect Robin Yount but I know a few guys that do. I snagged this because I have never seen a Gardner's card and it's a Hall of Famer on vintage oddball for a quarter. If you want it, say so.


I only bought one or two football cards. For one thing I'm knee deep in Baltimore Colts cards at the moment and for another I'm trying to be more baseball-centric with my Spring Training trip coming up.

But Joe Morrison was one of my father's favorites. Seeing this card brought back memories of listening to Giants' games with my old man. Marty Glickman was a fabulous broadcaster.

I'd forgotten about these Kelloggs' Rold Gold* old timers. Most of the set was in one of the boxes at the show. Looks like Walter Johnson is warming up in Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. So it's a time-traveling Hall of Famer card. Cool.

*=Credit to Mark Hoyle for pointing out the Johnson was possibly a Rold Gold card from 1970. Kelloggs' reissued the set in 1972 under their own banner.

This is a Brooks Robinson Rawlings card of some sort, probably a glove promo card that came attached to a Brooksie model. Finest in the Field. And he was.

The back makes it known in no uncertain terms that this is a 'Promotional Replica' and it contains 'No Gold Content'. I'm glad they did that because for a few seconds I thought I'd struck gold. Meh.

Lastly, another oddball food issue. A Cap'n Crunch Cal Ripken. I've never tried Cap'n Crunch. I'm not sure why. Not sure why I bought this card either. It's the least interesting of them all, at least to me.

Beam me up, Scotty

I came back into town earlier this week and found and package waiting for me. In it were a couple dozen cards and this:

The cards in the envelope were eclectic mix of new stuff, Orioles stuff, vintage stuff, red stuff, blue stuff. Pretty amazing actually.

The RAC package came from (if you haven't guessed already) 'CaptKirk42' of the blog of the same name. Kirk also hangs out over at the Trading Card Zone. Like myself his interests are ...ahem... varied. If you don't believe me go check out his 'want list'.

Anyway back to the RAC package. There were too many interesting cards in it to include in one post so I'll put up some in this entry and some in the near future.

The '68 Ron Hansen at the top may not be the world's most exciting card but is may be the most perfectly preserved '68 I've ever seen. It looks like it was sealed up in a time capsule the instant it came out of the pack. Hansen is a guy whose cards I like to hang on to because he was the 1960 AL Rookie of the Year as an Oriole and because of his 1968 unassisted triple play.

I've been accused of 'sleeping with the enemy' because of my affinity for 60's era Yankee pitchers cards and how I tend to slobber all over the '59s I feature that have nice Yankee Stadium backgrounds. Well, I grew up watching games in the Bronx with my Dad and at my age the nostalgia factor is pretty strong. This '64 Young Aces is a great example. I'd bet I saw more Al Downing starts than I did of anyone else on the Yankee staff outside of Whitey 'I Pitch the First Game of Every Sunday Doubleheader' Ford. 

And I played ball with and against a couple of the 'Bouton Boys', Jim's cousins/nephews in Essex County, NJ.

Speaking of guys I saw a lot of, when we moved to Houston and went to games in the Dome it seemed like Don Wilson was always the Astros' starter. He was a 'take no prisoners' kind of bad azz dude. His no-hitter in May of 1969 against the Reds came a day after Don Maloney had no-hit the Astros. Knowing Wilson the general assumption was he getting some revenge for the previous night's humiliation. But in this great game story from the Houston Chronicle it's clear that Wilson carried much more than that into the game.

I got this 1960 Topps Julio Becquer among several others from that set. I love the gold and black reverse sides of the 1960 set. And the 'Season Highlights' are very cool. I just recently featured Becquer's '59 card on my other blog. I am seriously considering finishing the set as my next major hobby project. I have a hundred or so '60 cards so that's a nice head start.

Ron Hunt played for five different National League clubs but the only one I associate him with is the Mets. Seeing him in Dodger gear as on the '68 is always a surprise. He plays a key part in the narrative of the best baseball book I have ever read, A False Spring. He was author Pat Jordan's roommate as a rookie in the Milwaukee Braves' spring training camp in 1959. I blogged about the book previously so I won't repeat myself here. 

Here is another 64, Don Lock. He looks like a friend of mine from childhood. Hell, he looks like a friend from everybody's childhood.

1962 Bobby Shantz

How about this gem, a '64 Roy McMillan. Pretty nice shape and you have to love the glasses and cool Milwaukee batting helmet.

I'm only a card or two from completing my Johnny Callison PC. Here is one I've wanted for awhile. The '66 Power Plus with Callison and Wes Covington. It's one of a couple of Callison 'specials' I had been lacking. Is it creased? Sure, but the crease is across Covington, not Johnny C. so I'm happy to mark it off my want list.

A big tip of the cap to Kirk. I'm post more from the RAC package soon. The next one will feature the cool Oriole cards he included. 

Jim Bouton Upper Deck Game Worn

It's too bad they can't tell you which game(s) this jersey was worn in. I saw Jim Bouton pitch quite a few. I wouldn't have normally picked this up except it has a pinstripe on the material and I did see Bouton pitch. 

When I was playing Pony League baseball back in Nutley, New Jersey one of the guys on our team was Danny Bouton, who was either Jim's nephew or cousin. I don't remember much except he was good. And being related to a big leaguer didn't do anything to diminish his reputation. 

I'm in the middle of a trip back to New York City including a visit to my old hometown of Nutley. It was a great place to grow up in the 50s and 60s.