Musing about my five collecting interests: All things Orioles and BALTIMORE Colts, 50's Baseball, team publications, Japanese cards and even some football and hockey.
You might find some beautiful women, soccer stuff, presidential pins and life advice from time to time. I don't charge extra for any of those.
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.
Daniel, over on his It's Like Having My Own Card Shop blog, is having a contest to celebrate nine years of blogging. He has asked other bloggers to enter by concocting a nine card post, theme TBD. That sounded easy enough to complete and a post of cards I've scanned/blogged of players who wore the number 9 popped to mind. I haven't gone through the other entries so it's highly possible that this isn't the only such entry but so be it.
Anyway...here they are. (I wanted to hit the Big Four sports but a basketball entry eluded me. Outside of Bob Pettit (look him up, kids) I can't even think of a hoopster who wore that number much less find a scan of a card of one so I went with the other sports.) These are in no particular order other than this is how I came across them.
Roger Maris came to mind quickly and I was going to use the card from Topps' 1961 MVP subset but that scan was awful. I considered his 1959 card but he wore #3 with the Athletics so I went with my third choice. The 1960 All-Star cards have grown on me since I built the set.
In my mind the #9 in baseball means Ted Williams. His '58 All-Star card is likely the first career-era Teddy Ballgame card I owned as an adult collector.
Here is a Dexter Press postcard of my favorite #9 Orioles player, Don Buford. He was an underrated member of the great Orioles teams of 1969-71. These DP postcards (anything by Dexter Press actually) are things of beauty.
Reggie Jackson wore #9 in his brief Orioles stint. Here he is, my least favorite Oriole wearing their worst uni combo on a modern Topps card.
Jim McMahon on a Pro Set wearing a Chargers uniform. This looks wrong.
I'm a huge fan of Philly Gum football cards. This is the 1967 Sonny Jurgensen. If you don't know much about him you could do worse than spend some time checking out this NFL Films feature. He was a great one.
And now on to hockey for a pair of cards.
Adam Graves has his #9 in the Madison Square Garden rafters. We are currently working on plans for a fall trip to the East Coast and at least one Rangers game in on the agenda. I can't wait.
And finally Mr. Hockey. Nowadays you can't read a sports-related article in print or online without some clown throwing the 'G.O.A.T.' label on somebody. Just know this.....if someone uses it in reference to Gordie they are correct.
So there are my nine cards, all of players who wore that number. Congrats to Daniel on his milestone. Nine years of blogging is something to celebrate for sure.
And what better way to wrap up this contest entry than with my favorite John Lennon song. The same song that inspired the title of this post.
In my previous post featuring the '62 Willie Mays, I mentioned that these three posts were of cards I'd wanted for awhile. That's not technically true in the case of this '54 Ted Williams card.
What I HAD wanted was to upgrade my 1958 Ted Williams card. From time to time I had hit the usual places looking for a nicer copy at an affordable price. I pretty much knew that wasn't going to happen but whatever. During one of my visits to eBay, I came across this Ted from 1954...the #1 card on Topps' checklist for that year's set. I'm thinking it popped up because I did my search for 'Williams #1' since the '58 Williams is also card #1.
This one (its one of two Teddy Ballgames in the '54 set) had a really decent price so I put it on my watch list. The more I thought about it the more it made sense to forget the '58 upgrade. If I did find a better '58 Williams it probably wouldn't have been much of a bump given what I hoped to spend. And in the end, I would have two mediocre copies of the same card. So when eBay did one of their 20% Off days I grabbed this '54.
It'll probably stay in the shell because I have nothing to gain by breaking it out. Looking at the back it occurred to me that when I was growing up I loved cards with full career stats on the back. But now that stats are so easy to find anywhere I'm happy that there were wonderful cartoons like the ones on the back of this great card.
The third and final post of these graded cards will feature a card of an iconic player whose absence in my collection had bugged me for an awfully long time. I'll get that one up early in the week.
I hate spending more for postage than I do for the card I'm buying and because of that I find myself buying 'add-ons' to make my transactions 'worthwhile'. I can't recall what I was picking up or where when I grabbed these '86 Sports Design Products cards.
These have popped up on other folks blogs from time to time. They use photos from the collection of J.D. McCarthy who did postcards for sale to fans and players over the course of several decades. I love old McCarthy postcards and have quite a few in my various collections. Hobby icon Bob Lemke purchased the McCarthy archives and was in the process of cataloging it when he passed away about a year ago. So we may never see much more of that huge treasure trove of photos any time soon.
These are obviously a riff on the 1969 Topps cards. At least the fronts are. The backs are spare and look pretty amateurish compared to the front side. These remind me of the sorts of cards I'd see alongside Broders, Bammers and phone cards back when card shows attracted lots of 'dealers' looking to cash in on the sports card/memorabilia boom.
I think the seller had most of the set available but I just grabbed these because they struck my fancy. I don't have a favorite but I sure do like this shot of Sandy Koufax.
Just to slide a bit off-track I found a postcard that would seem to be from this same photo session. It's a McCarthy postcard. You can see his logo in the lower left corner. He used that on most of his postcards but not all of them.
Back to the cards at hand..... aren't those stirrups on Roberto Clemente grand?
I add Whitey Ford cards to my collection from time to time because he was a favorite of my father. And because I saw him pitch more times than I could count. I can't decide if this shot comes from his playing days or not. Ford had a couple of stints as a coach with the Yankees and I know he spent a lot of spring training time with the team after his retirement.
Looks like Yaz' picture was taken on the same day as Ford's. Maybe McCarthy drove from Ft. Lauderdale to Winter Haven one day in the mid-60s.
This last one, listed as #1 in the set's checklist is a bit different in that there only the rounded frame mirrors the '69 Topps theme. If you clicked on the Wrigley Wax blog link above you saw that the other duel player card in this set, Banks/Hodges, uses this same design. This one shows J.D. McCarthy himself posing with Ted Williams. I'd never seen McCarthy in a photo so I added this to my 'stack'.
There isn't much online concerning this set. Sports Designs put out a two part set in the years prior to this one. It used artwork by Doug West. It was featured in a couple of posts on The Oddball Card Collector blog.
For those interested here is the SDP/McCarthy checklist:
1 J.D. McCarthy / Ted Williams
2 Lou Brock
3 Carl Yastrzemski
4 Mickey Mantle
5 Roger Maris
6 Walter Alston
7 Ernie Banks
8 Billy Williams
9 Hank Aaron
10 Brooks Robinson
11 Joe DiMaggio
12 Casey Stengel
13 Juan Marichal
14 Jim Bunning
15 Matty Alou
16 Eddie Mathews
17 Sandy Koufax
18 Roberto Clemente
19 Gil Hodges / Ernie Banks
20 Duke Snider
21 Robin Roberts
22 Willie Mays
23 Willie Stargell
24 Whitey Ford
I need to apologize for these photo laden TCMA posts. I have a hard time narrowing down the cards I think are scan/post worthy. So many fun ones...and quite a few 'dogs' as well. I really believe that's part of the attraction of these things.
Anyway here are some more from the TCMA Stars of the 60s Series II set. Recapping...it's a 188 card 'extension' of the 1978 Series I offering. It has lots of posed action and portrait shots like the original but adds some group/multi-player cards, game highlight cards (which I dubbed "TCMA Now") and some action photos. There is also a nine card subset of big leaguers of varying career success levels in their minor league uniforms.
Some of the better action shots are seen on horizontal cards.
Jose Tartabull in the yellow and green of the KC A's.. He's the father of a major leaguer, Danny Tartabull and the guy who won a big game for the Red Sox in August of 1967. Tartabull caught a fly with one out and Chicago's Ken Berry on third in the bottom of the ninth. His throw to Ellie Howard nailed Ken Berry at home and the game was over. That 1967 AL race was something else.
Dick Egan pitched in 70 games for the Tigers, Angels and Dodgers. In his career he allowed 13 homers. Not a single one came with his team behind on the scoreboard. I have no idea what that signifies but I found it interesting.
Bob Moose, a guy I collect. I saw his no hitter at Shea in 1969.
Yup, Teddy Ballgame gets a card in this one. He retired after the 1960 season so technically he qualifies as a 60s star. Hey, if you have a nice shot of Ted Williams in the batting cage in Sarasota you use it. Ted gets a nice one paragraph career wrapup on the back.
Like the previous editions this TCMA release is comprised mostly of portraits. They run the gamut from mundane and/or poorly shot to damn near artistic. I've scanned some of interest for inclusion here. Such as this gem:
Rick Reichardt was an accomplished baseball and football star at the University of Wisconsin and the bidding war for his services led to the baseball draft being instituted. He hit the first homer in Anaheim Stadium according to Wikipedia.
I've never really gotten used to seeing Lou Brock as a Cub. Nice pic though.
It's a pensive Duke of Flatbush with the Mets at the Polo Grounds in 1962.
Len 'Boom Boom' Boehmer He had a cup of coffee with the Reds after a long minor league career and then got about a hundred at bats with the 1969 Yankees. He rented a house that summer in Nutley, New Jersey which was where I grew up and isn't much of a hike to the Bronx. I was living down the Shore by then but when I visited friends in Nutley we attempted to find Len in my old neighborhood. We were unsuccessful.
I think this is a sweet shot of Ron Fairly. That first baseman's mitt looks huge!
Billy McCool is here for two reasons. First. I always thought that was a fun name. And second there is some sort of wheeled vehicle on the field with him. Tractor? Motorcycle? Dunno.
If I drew up a list of big league pitchers I'd hate to face on the mound Don Wilson would be fairly high on it. He could bring it and he had a touch of Don Drysdale in him. Four years ago I posted this with another Wilson card:
"......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."
Bo Belinsky...sorry for the lopsided scan. His New York Times obit is an interesting read. Bo got a lot of press for a lot of off the field notoriety.
Who else but Don Mossi? Mossi pitched his last minor league season in 1953 in Tulsa. His manager was Joe Schultz.
Wally Bunker whose Rawlings glove I grew up using. I'm thinking of having it refurbished.
A nice shot of Richie Allen sporting the 'windbreaker under the jersey' look. If you think he's Hall of Fame worthy I won't argue with you.
Paul Blair wearing the number that Eddie Murray made famous in Baltimore. PB wore it in 1964 and 1965 before switching to #6.
Nelson Mathews played 157 games in center field for the A's in 1964. He hit .239 with 14 dingers and 60 ribbies. He led the league in whiffs as well. Why am I having a hard time even remembering him. Or the sharp uni the A's wore in 1962?
Bobby Shantz during his brief stint with the Houston Colt 45s in early 1962. Even at 92 he remains one of the surest TTM signers around. I oughta send him this card. It would look nice signed.
TCMA had some really nice portrait shots in their files. This one of Jim Bunning at Yankee Stadium is terrific.
Tim McCarver...batting practice shot. There are a handful of these in the set. I liked McCarver a lot more as a player than I did as a TV color man.
Bud Harrelson and Al Weis in one of those simulated infield action pics that you usually associate with the 1950s.
Tommy McCraw. I just like this card. The powder blue Sox uni is nice. McCraw made the last out and got the last hit for the Washington Senators. And while his one year playing for Ted Williams wasn't very productive he always credited Ted for teaching him the 'mental aspect' of hitting.
Larry Burright was a Dodger signee who was dealt to the Mets for the 1963 season. He got about a hundred at bats and was shipped to the minors before losing the 2nd base job to Ron Hunt. His nickname was 'Possum'. How does a kid from California end up with that name?
Wally Moon was Rookie of the Year in 1954 with the Cardinals, went on to win a Gold Glove, make two NL All Star teams and finish as high as fourth in MVP voting.
Don Hoak, another '1957 Topps-esque' card. the more I look at it the more I get a 1961 Topps vibe out of it.
The great Billy Williams. Can a Hall of Famer be 'underrated'? Maybe. Or maybe Williams was just a quiet guy who we never really think about these days.
Roy White. Whenever I see him I remember the great catch my father and I saw Frank Robinson make at Yankee Stadium in June of 1966. He robbed White of a game winning homer as he fell over the short right field railing. Ralph Houk got tossed out of the second game of the DH that evening during the lineup card exchange because he was giving the umps hell over the call. Houk could really pitch a fit when he needed to.
Joe Moock. I included this card because I'd never heard of the guy. He was a September call up in 1967. I'd moved to Houston (first time) in August of that year so I just missed him when I was going to Shea that summer. In the minors in 1966 he had 191 hits including 23 homers and 130 RBI. Never did anything approaching that before or after. In 1998 Steve Rushin of SI wrote The Ballad of Joe Moock about the Mets never-ending search for a good third baseman.
So that's a look at the third piece of the TCMA Stars sets. I received 6 of the final minor league cards I was lacking yesterday. When the last one arrives I'll scan them and post them. All I need to do now is page these things up in a binder. It's been fun.
