Pages of Talent

One of the really fun things about putting together smaller vintage sets like the '57 Topps is the incredible concentration of amazing players that get grouped together on binder pages. If collecting encased, graded cards is your thing, that's fine. But for me there is nothing like flipping through a set and just seeing stars on top of stars.


The first two pages in this wonderful set are perfect examples. Here's the very first one:

Teddy Ballgame, Yogi, Aparicio, all Hall of Famers. Plus some really talented 'other guys'....Sal Maglie, Don Mossi (a blogger favorite!), Dale 'Eight Straight Dinger Games' Long and one of my Dad's favorites, Hector Lopez. BTW... I'm looking to upgrade that Maglie.

And when you turn that page you're faced with this...

Willie Mays, Robin Roberts, Don Drysdale the underrated Dick Groat and three, count 'em, three Orioles!!  Here's something I bet you didn't know...Groat is the color guy on Pitt Panther basketball broadcasts.

I bit deeper into the binder comes this one...

...Bob 😒 Clemente, Gil Hodges, Jim Piersall and Lindy McDaniel. Those bottom three cards are all beauties, yes? And don't overlook George Crowe. He had an interesting and accomplished life. His SABR bio is well worth the time it takes to read it.

OK, so this last page doesn't have the star power of the other three but I'm including it because it holds the cards of three players I love, Warren Spahn, Moe Drabowsky and Ellie Howard. Not to mention a great card of Larry Doby.

As I zero in on the last couple of dozen cards I need to finish off this set it's really becoming a favorite. I didn't appreciate it nearly as much going in as I do now. I'm really glad I took it on.

Camp Happy Bird

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. -Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

The 1964 through 1971 Orioles. Oh, how good those days were. Even the crappy '67 Birds managed to entertain me, in a razor blade cutting sort of way. Other than that team the Orioles were in contention or winning outright the AL/AL East. The Robinsons, Jim Palmer, Boog Powell and Paul Blair were the stars. I loved them, but I also loved the 'other guys' just as much.

Here is a look at postcards of a couple of players that rank high in my baseball world. These all come from my huge stash of Orioles team issued postcards from that era. Back in the early 80s I collected postcards like a man possessed.

I just might be the owner of that cap on Andy Etchebarren's head. My then-uncle picked up a game hat from Etch at some banquet back in the late 60s and gave it to me. I doubt it's that exact cap but I like to pretend it is. Of course with it being about a size 7 and me being a size 8(!) I've never worn it and I doubt I could even find it without tearing apart my hobby closet.

Moe Drabowsky just looks like a cut-up doesn't he? Drabo is, according to Chicago columnist and baseball fan Mike Royko, "still considered the best pitcher that Ozanna, Poland, ever produced."

Dave Johnson, one of my all time favorite Orioles. I have never figured out why he was 'Dave' Johnson as a player but 'Davey' Johnson as a manager. Whatever. If Peter Angelos had fired himself instead of Johnson in 1997 the franchise would have been much the better for it.

Dave McNally is rocking the Orioles sleeveless unis that they wore at times in 1968 and 1969. They were the perfect alternate unis IMHO, different enough to be cool and worn infrequently enough to be fresh when they did.

McNally pitched the fourth and final game of the 1966 World Series and beat Don Drysdale, 1-0. I remember that like it was yesterday. He also hit a grand slam in the 1970 Series and gave up Al Kaline's 3000th hit. Kaline is a Charm City native, so that's fine by me.
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Small note following up yesterday's Don Zimmer post: Tim Kurkjian wrote a terrific piece on Zimmer that ran yesterday on ESPN.com and I think you'll enjoy it if you haven't already.

Orioles Dexter Press Postcards.... and a lesson learned.

Lately I've been pulling more and more items from my 'hobby closet'. Lots of stuff I have not touched literally for decades. I had my Dexter Press Orioles near the top of a box because I had scanned and blogged a few some months back.

These are just beautiful items. Rich in color and featuring an easily recognizable Memorial Stadium as a backdrop (at least for most of them). And the set comes from the best days of the Orioles franchise. If you look to the right of Moe Drabowsky you can even see the famous white houses that sat out behind the hedges on 36th. When I went to Baltimore to see the O's my uncle usually got seats in the upper deck behind 3rd but those wooden bleachers in left field was where I sat for the '69 Playoff games and the '83 World Series. Wonderful memories for me.

But back when I stored these in binders the four pocket pages I used contained PVC. They pretty much all did back them. Ultra Pro pages were not widely used until later. While I put most of my cards in quality sheets some things remained in the cheap ones and these postcards were in that group. I have managed to remove the bulk of this set from the crappy four pockets without much more damage than a loss of gloss. But the Andy Etchebarren postcard was a victim of too much PVC and not enough TLC while removing it. That's a nice rip in the upper part of the card as you can see.

I don't have many regrets concerning the hobby and how I have collected stuff but not heeding the warnings about cheap vinyl sheets is one of them.

Autographed Orioles B&W Postcards

While I was digging around for yesterday's post subject, the Dexter Press postcards, I found these and four more just like them in the same binder. Normally with any type of Orioles memorabilia, particularly something I have several of, I'd remember where I picked them up. Or at the very least I'd remember having them at all.

Not so with this lot. If you had asked me on Monday if i had any signed black and white Orioles postcards I'd have said no... and felt pretty confident in saying it.

The Paul Richards card and the George Kell have standard postcard backs with a divider between the block for the address and the greeting along with the stamp block. These early cards are classified as 'Real Photo" postcards and are said to have glossy fronts although my Kell is much less so than the Richards. The borderless ones resemble Exhibit cards.

These next two, Jim Hardin and Dave Leonhard, are black and white versions of the team issued postcards that I collected with a frenzy years ago.

I have the identical cards in their color versions (although that typeface on the Hardin is unique (much smaller) among my Oriole postcards. I don't know if the team gave these B&W cards to the players to send out with autograph requests. If so, why not use the color variety that are so prevalent? The two guys who have compiled checklists of Orioles team issued postcards don't even list black and white ones. Interesting.

Both of these are blank-backed as were all the color versions from that era. Also blank-backed is the Harvey Haddix card below. It's interesting in that it it appears to follow exactly the format of almost all Orioles team-issued cards from my collection. But Haddix' time with the Orioles ended in 1965. I have no Oriole postcards in that style from earlier than 1970. I know the team issued them since 1954 but I have never seen one from the early/mid-60s in this style. Looks like some detective work is in order for me.

UPDATE: The Whitey Herzog postcard below was on eBay and follows the same style as the Haddix. So it looks like the Orioles used that same typeface and style quite a bit during the era of B&W postcards.

Bonus card... digging further in my binder I came across this Moe Drabowsky signed card stuck in the back with some color cards. It's a JD McCarthy card as evidenced by the name block and the 'JMD' logo that all his stuff has. I touched on the history McCarthy postcards a little bit in a previous post.

Gotta love Moe Drabowsky. Rare is the picture that doesn't show him grinning. He's make for a fun PC. Sounds like a plan.