Nostalgia Is A Helluva Drug!

Everyone that reads card blogs, frequents card-related forums, or checks out the various hobby publications has seen these lines many, many times:

"That's the first set I remember (collected/opened packs of, etc)!"

"I loved that set growing up!"

"My father (or older brother) had that set"

And so on. If I had a buck for every time I've read those, I'd own a '52 Mantle. Heck, If I had a buck for every time I've said something along those lines I'd own the whole '52 Topps set. No doubt nostalgia for things that bring back fond memories drives a segment of this hobby. For me, it drives about 90% of what I collect. What I collected and enjoyed as a kid is largely what I collect today.


Which brings me to this latest Net54 purchase of mine. I sprung for some cheap Challenge The Yankees cards. I wrote about this game previously, particularly in this rundown of all the card/dice/electronic baseball games I've owned through the years.

Challenge The Yankees was the simplest of them all. You rolled the two dice and read the results off the hitters' card. Who the pitcher was made absolutely no difference. Hank Aaron's chance of a homer was the same against Marshall Bridges as it was against Whitey Ford. But that didn't matter to my friends and I. We liked it more than the Cadaco All-Star Baseball game of the era that used a spinner. Dice never 'landed on a line' like the spinner could, which always led to 'debates'.

There were some cards to pull when you rolled a 'ground ball' result and some other enhancements. But for the most part, it was just you, the dice, and the player cards. 

CTY was issued in both 1964 and 1965. Many of the same players appeared both years but the rosters did change a bit. I had the '64 edition. I remember that the aforementioned Marshall Bridges was included.

The players' cards were all the same format for both editions. The Yankees had blue at the top.

The Yankees of this era liked catcher/outfielders. Johnny Blanchard, an aging Yogi Berra, and Elston Howard all fit that mold in the early 60s.

After the days of Joe Dimaggio and Allie Reynolds, my father latched on to some of the lesser Yankee regulars. He was a Hector Lopez guy.

The All-Stars were green.

A few years back someone tried to revive the Challenge The Yankees game with a crowdsourced edition through Indiegogo. I backed the project but it failed to make the minimum, and we were refunded. I was pretty disappointed. Sports Collectors Daily had a story about the game and the folks behind the attempted re-boot. The rosters from both editions of the game are at the bottom.

The cards of some of the star players from the game, Mickey Mantle in particular, can get pretty pricey. My originals are long gone. These 'commons' will serve to remind me of the hours I spent with my father and my friends playing this (and the other) baseball board games.

1953 Red Man Tobacco Warren Spahn

I wish I'd had the chance to see Warren Spahn at his best. The huge windup and high-legged delivery were still in evidence when I finally was able to watch him in person in his final season as a player. He was no longer one of the most dominate pitchers of all time but he was still Warren Spahn and that was pretty cool.

I actually saw him twice in 1965, once as a Met and late in the year when he made one of the last starts of his career as a Giant at Shea Stadium. That game I saw him pitch as a Met was a loss to Don Drysdale and the Dodgers and came in front of one of the larger crowds I was ever a part of at Shea. I remember it because my friend's father explained how the Mets used a different ticket pricing scale for games against the Dodgers and Giants. This was the first I'd ever heard of that practice.

This Red Man card was an impulse buy from a dealer who had some very reasonable 1964 Philly Gum football cards. The sets (Red Man produced then for four consecutive years) are not difficult and in most cases not expensive either. They make for an easy way to add vintage stars to your collection. I guess they compare to the 1964 Topps Giants in that way. The ones without the 'tabs' along the bottom are even cheaper and who misses the 'tab' anyway?

I never really set out to become a Spahn collector but through the years I've really gained and appreciation for both him and his cards. I've joked in the past that Spahn cards are just collections of different angles...his cockeyed cap, crooked smile, bent nose and prominent ears make them unique. Add in the classic Braves unis and it's hard to pass up a Spahn card in a bargain bin or online at a good price.

It occurred to me as I typed this that this card is a 'night card'.You paying attention, Night Owl? My scanner did weird things with the back of this card. In hand it is just the usual color of 50's cardboard with a ghost-like hint of 'bleed-through' from the ink on the front. But my scanner gave me this:

I'm going to need to inventory my Spahn cards. I doubt I'll ever become a Spahn 'completist' in the same way I am with Billy Pierce but there are worse ways to fritter away one's retirement savings.

Something completely different

Part of the cache of 'stuff' that yielded the Fernando Valenzuela button I posted awhile back was a stack of concert ticket stubs from the early 70s. Some of these were concerts my wife attended, some were mine and some were concerts we went to together. Generally the ones from 1975 or later were shows be saw as a couple. 

I don't collect stubs as a rule and I'll toss these out in my next 'purge'. I have stubs from some baseball games I attended as a kid and some Orioles World Series and playoff games as well. I originally planned on keeping all the Houston Texans tickets but after a couple of seasons they became a pain and other than the ones from their first game I've tossed them out as well.

Lot's of good shows represented with these stubs. I used to work at Hofheinz Pavilion on the University of Houston campus and was able to see every show that came thru that venue. No stubs from those I'm afraid. But there is some great 70s music represented below.

I've always been a fan of Janis Ian. I loved her voice and she's still producing good music on a limited basis. Mostly now she's a frequent Facebook Liberal gadfly and for that I still love her. Notice that the Wings ticket was a 'general admission' entry. What a mistake that was. I remember being pinned in close to the doors waiting for them to open that evening. It got pretty crazy. The other tix are from a Rolling Stones show that I have no memory of (nor does my wife, at least that's her story) and Jose Feliciano who created the original National Anthem controversy.

For you youngsters the second set of tickets represent shows by Santana, America, Linda Ronstadt and Traffic. Some of which I actually remember.

The concerts I enjoyed the most from that terrific era of music are not here. Like Springsteen playing for three and a half hours. Billy Joel was a one record wonder playing in a tiny downtown venue. CSN&Y headlined a July all day stadium festival that saw people overcome with the heat being laid out on the concourses. One really fun night saw Isaac Hayes (one of my very favorites!) 'upstaged' by an imposter who walked right by me and onto the stage and  before the law dragged him off. Good times.

Big concerts demand big prices these days and are are much more judicious in our entertainment spending. We still love live music.

Nostalgia Is A Helluva Drug

I worked at the Houston Post newspaper from about 1971 or 1972 until 1991. I left to do other things during that time but I kept coming back, working part-time or full. Sometimes just as a summer fill-in and sometimes as a second job. I loved the Post. Especially during the years the paper was owned by the Hobby family, one of Texas' most distinguished. The Hobbys sold the paper in 1983 and it was never the same.

The Post passed on to the Great Press Room In The Sky in 1995 leaving behind a quirky building and a lot of upset employees who had been given no warning of the closure. But I digress.

I have a few mementos of my time there....some pencils, stationary and this comic-sized booklet intended to be used in schools through the Post's Newspaper in the Classroom Program. It was printed in 1972-ish and features a two page spread on each U.S. President through Richard Nixon. I'd forgotten all about it until I was clearing my work desk drawers last week. It's printed on stock that is about one step up from standard newsprint. 

It's discolored over the years but it's not fragile like a regular 45+ year-old newspaper would be, I was reluctant at first to scan the thing because I figured that folding back the pages and pressing it to the platen would damage it. But It seems none the worse for wear now that I'm done.

The cover:

The graphic wraps around to the back cover:

The Presidential Seal is awesome. Makes me wish we still had a president.

I stuck GW's portrait up at the top. Appears to be the same portrait as is seen on the dollar bill.  I took a photo of the JFK spread for perspective.

Here is GW's 'fact page'/bio. It's funny how a some pages have aged differently than others. The discoloration is slight with some but others have turned a much darker shade of orange/brown. I'd guess that two different qualities of newsprint were used to print this and combined in the collating process.

Honest Abe. He lost the popular vote and yet went on to become arguably our greatest President. Sigh.

I don't think any President has led a more diverse and entertaining life than Teddy Roosevelt. Public Service Announcement: Read This Book.

My man, LBJ:

The last President in the publication is Richard Milhous Nixon. Another fascinating and complex character. A few years ago I watched a lecture on the 1968 election and how George Wallace's presence siphoned off votes that likely would have put Hubert Humphrey in the White House. How would Viet Nam have played out? No Watergate? It was pretty interesting.

Back to the Post. This is the building as seen in my time there:

The building inside was as interesting as it appeared from the outside. We called it the 'Castle'. The Houston Chronicle bought the Post properties many years ago. They immediately began using the presses but it wasn't until a few years ago that they moved their main offices from their downtown Houston location to the Post building southwest of town. They then put their name on the outside. I drive by often but I can't even look at it now. In the 70's there was a real rivalry between the two papers, the Chronicle was our 'enemy'. I've been reading the Chronicle since the Post died but I've never gotten over that. LOL

Lastly a note about a memorable day at work. In May of 1976 a tanker truck fillied with liquid ammonia was speeding through the elevated interchange of US 59 and the 610 Loop right outside the Post building. It crashed thru the guardrail on the upper ramp and crashed. I'll never forget being herded upstairs to the third floor but not before telling my drivers (I was Ad Services dispatcher then) not to return to the building. I had them take their company-owned delivery vehicles and head home.

Here are a few pics I found and following them is a video done by my late friend Judd McIlvain who was a reporter at KHOU back then.

You can't see our building in the first one but it's behind the elevated freeway ramps.

The Pearl distributor was across the Loop and a block south from us. The Post would be just off to the right.

It was a hell of an explosion. Shook the building something fierce and broke this concrete pillar.

There's the Post  between the pillars in these next two pics.

Here's the KHOU video. If you've read this far thanks for indulging me on my trip down memory lane.