Happy Presidents Day

If you have the day off I hope you are enjoying it. Here are a few presidential items I have in my collection.

😄

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!!

Summer of '74

Matthew Prigge cranked up his blog, Summer of '74, in February. It's a consistently good read and Matt is also a prolific Twitter-er (? LOL) and has authored a bunch of other things worth checking out. He also recently sent me a package full of really neat and unexpected items. First up is the Gino Marchetti signed card shown above. Gino is a Baltimore legend, one of the toughest and most relentless defensive players you could ever hope to see. The story that tells his tale best is that he broke his leg in the famous '58 NFL Title game versus the Giants but refused to let the team trainers cart him off to the locker room. Instead he made them put the stretcher down so he could watch the game from the sidelines.  

Matthew also sent me some presidential buttons for my collection. I don't think that's happened before. These 3" LBJ and RFK pinbacks are fantastic additions. Lately I've been working on ways to display my pins and buttons. Office wall space is at a premium but it'll get done. 

My research says the LBJ isn't rare but it's brand new to me. I've never seen either of these before. 

Of course Bobby Kennedy died in June of 1968 while campaigning for the Democratic nomination. Turbulent times in America.

Matt also stuffed the package with a stack of Orioles cards. Most all of them came from a time I wasn't collecting so they are welcome additions to various binders. I'll show and comment on just some of them including all these Cal Ripken cards:

This may be my only 2000 Topps baseball card.

I bailed on collecting in 1990 so the '91 Upper Decks sprinkled thru the post are all new. I really was a big UD fan when they came on the collecting scene. It's ironic the their phony bologna Ben McDonald rookie 'error' is the card that ended my collecting back then.

This Paul Blair is one of those Topps reissues. I always loved this card and the design.

More '91 UDs and an '84 Topps Mike Flanagan.

'87 Donruss Fred Lynn. Do Red Sox fans blink when they see Lynn in orange and black? Is this Donruss' best design?

Giving all the card makers equal time here is Dave Schmidt on a Fleer card next to Brady Anderson.

Billy Ripken, '90 UD. No cuss words visible.

Finally the Oriole that Orioles fans love to hate, Mike Mussina. This was a nice simple design for Leaf. Boring? Maybe..but I liked it. I don't think I have many of them though.

Matt's blog title got me to thinking of what I was doing in the summer of 1974. I was working two jobs, one on campus at the University of Houston Rec/Athletics and the other at the Houston Post. I was also pondering life as a 'single' again after briefly not being so. I was probably drinking too much (those last two items are inter-related). And I was contemplating how I was going to explain to my folks why I still was facing an uphill climb to graduate.

Luckily all that was a long time ago. And I'm here to thank Matt for the generous package. It's much appreciated.