M116 Sporting Life Chief Bender

A recent eBay discount code day gave me the chance to save some money on a card I've had on my watch list for quite a while. Pardon the lousy photo. My scanner tends to blur and washout cards in PSA holders and I'm never very successful at taking good pics with my phone. But here it is:

The card is a  much nicer copy than what I expected to be able to pick up. Really nice corners, no paper loss, etc. It looks so much better in hand than it does in these pics. I'm not sure but I think this is the only pre-war car I own with a grade of  '5'.

Sporting Life was a weekly publication based in Philadelphia which was in business from roughly the mid-1880s until the mid-1920s. It was a direct competitor of The Sporting News of which many of us are more familiar. The entire run of the Sporting Life is available online through the LA84 Foundation archives. This link is to the 1911 issues. I wish the site wasn't so clunky and difficult to navigate. But checking out some of the pages is fun. Wikipedia reports that the SL focus was on baseball and trap shooting. 

OldCardboard, as usual, is a great resource for some background on this really cool set.  Here is the checklist which has stretched to 400 cards. Chief Bender has three variations in the set. This is one of what is called the 'Pastel Background'. He has a second one with a different card back. He also has a 'Blue Background' version. I'm just happy to have one. I won't chase the other two because I'd rather spend my money on a different career-era Bender.


Back to the set itself...Oldcardboard describes the set with these characteristics: 

• White-bordered cards with player and team listed at the bottom
• Unnumbered set of hand-tinted black-and-white player portraits
• Many player poses are the same as found in the T206 set
• Some pastel and blue background variations
• Cards were packaged and sold in 24 series of 12 cards each
• Each series was distributed in an envelope with the series checklist
• Cards are found with 3 back variations

You'll note that the site mentions that many of the M116 player poses are the same as found in the T206 tobacco set. Bender has three cards in that set as well. One is a portrait and while it is indeed similar, it doesn't appear to be the same pose. I suppose the possibility exists that the original photo was the same and the two artists put their own spin on it. But to me, there are enough differences that I suspect the two cards were based on two different photos from the same session. You can check them out below in another of my crappy cellphone pictures.

I also ran this one on my scanner and, as noted, the label looks fuzzy and the colors are not as pretty. But it is what it is.

I took the plunge

I've been neglecting this little space for a bit but that doesn't mean I've been inactive hobby-wise. Quite the contrary.

At the September monthly card show, I saw a binder of 1961 commons my friend Darryl had behind his table that I hadn't noticed before. I poked through it and saw that there were about 240ish cards, a nice starter set. Darryl being Darryl said he'd give me a really good deal on it and soon I was headed home with my latest vintage chase project. One I had considered but hadn't really committed to until that morning.

Soon after that, I found a chunk of 61s on eBay for a 'can't pass this up' price and I grabbed them knowing that I'd end up with some dupes. On the flip side, the eBay cards looked (and indeed turned out to be) in really nice condition and many of the dupes were just fine as upgrades over those in the binder.

I hadn't really touched it until we returned from vacation late in October and then I dug in. It took me a couple of days to pull the cards from the sheets, sort and collate them and make a want list. I also pulled the '61s I had in my PCs. Unlike a lot of collectors, I don't duplicate cards across various collections except for a few special collections like Billy Pierce, Brooks Robinson, and a few others. It took me another day to track down the '61 Orioles cards I already had. That's a long story with interesting results that I'll save for a separate post.

Last Saturday I took my want list and killed off another 100 or so from my list plus some stars from a collection Darryl had recently picked up. I'm really happy with how this thing is coming along. I have some great memories of these cards. There are some sweet ones among the cards I have in the binder so far. Like the great Wally Moon card that I put up top. Here are a few more:

Roger Maris carries a pwemium, especially a '61 Maris. I have to balance cost and quality. This was a reasonable one that had flaws, but flaws I can live with. The scan makes the creases look worse than they do in the binder page. A low number common might be an upgrade candidate if it carried these scars, but not a Maris.

I dug Chuck Estrada back in his days as an Oriole and loved this card. That trophy!!

League Leader cards with mantle...ouch. Mantle and Maris BOTH? Yikes. I hate paying the price but whatcha gonna do? What I do is buy one with a crease through Rocco C.'s ear.

These next three come from PCs. I had already put the MVP subset together long ago. That took care of a bunch of stars. And I had a seperate Jensen so that one transferred over to this binder.

I had three of this Wes Covington card. This baby elevates the '61 set all by itself. One of the best cards Topps has done.

My Johnny Callison collection was somewhere south of complete so using this '61 in the set binder isn't a big deal. It's another great card though. Maybe not 'Covington great', but great. Nice look at Connie Mack Stadium here.

Roy Face in LA's Memorial Coliseum.

 Here's an oversized look at the back of Callison's card. Full stats (or what passed for full stats back then), three cartoons, a blurb on cards of players with not a lot of stats and, of course, the player's 'vitals'. Couldn't ask for more.

 The manager's cards more or less borrowed the color scheme from the 1960 rookie cards.

Another PC card on permanent loan. Mudcat!!

Another top hat trophy rookie. I had three copies of this Tommy Davis. I can't say why. He seems to show up in cheap vintage boxes and I always bite. At least now one will be put to good use. TD's off-centeredness is very typical of 1961s. Doesn't bother me in the slightest. The only time I even consider it is if I am choosing between two cards for a binder slot. If the corners are equal then I'll use the one with better centering.

Last time I checked I was over 80% complete with the set. If you happen to have any 61s in a box under your bed that you can spare check out my want list at this link or over on the right-hand sidebar.

This chase is going to slow waaaay down as I get into the high numbers. Those can be silly expensive. I'll need patience and lots of luck to finish this one out without killing off my entire hobby budget.

WG5 ... 1913 National Game Charles Bender

I'm so backlogged on new stuff that I don't know where to start. So how about here...with my latest Bender addition. This is from the 1913 National Game set. It's a great way to collect career-era cards of early Hall of Fame players at an affordable price.

As you can deduce these were issued in decks and because they had rounded corners many have avoided damage and can be found in nice condition. They are close cousins to the Tom Barker game cards issued at about the same time. Some great info and the impressive checklist can be found on Old Cardboard.

As much as I love the picture on the 'front' the back is pretty spectacular as well.

As I mentioned at the top I have a stack of stuff that's accumulated on my desk over the past month or so. Some need to be scanned while the rest, mostly graded pieces that my scanner punts on, get the camera phone treatment. I take lousy pictures but my scanner is even worse at capturing graded cards so I'm going with the lesser of two evils.

The Andrews Boys Part 1

I had an idea in the back of my mind for a long time and recently decided to finally act on it. I thought it would be fun to collect a card from the careers of every major league players who shared my last name.

This initiated with this guy (BTW...shout out to Joe Shlabotnik who sent me this card):

...with whom I share a first AND last name. That and the fact that we were born within a week of each other. Anyway, I checked with Baseball Reference and the search turned up 14 players in history with my last name. I'm not including Steve Andrade whose last name I could have carried through life had the folks at Ellis Island not 'American-ized' it when my grandfather's family first came to the US from the Azores in the early 1900s. (For more on that see this post).


The Andrews' are listed here in no particular order with dates of big league service and the teams they played for:

Mike Andrews (1966-1973)	Franchises: BOS,CHW,OAK
Shane Andrews (1995-2002)	Franchises: WSN,CHC,BOS
Rob Andrews (1975-1979)	Franchises: SFG,HOU
Ivy Andrews (1931-1938) aka Paul	Franchises: NYY,BAL,BOS
Nate Andrews (1937-1946)	Franchises: ATL,STL,CLE
Ed Andrews (1884-1891) aka George	Franchises: PHI,IND,CKK
Clayton Andrews (2000)	Franchises: TOR
Fred Andrews (1976-1977)	Franchises: PHI
Stan Andrews (1939-1945)	Franchises: LAD,ATL,PHI
Jim Andrews (1890)	Franchises: CHC
John Andrews (1973)	Franchises: STL
Hub Andrews (1947-1948)	Franchises: SFG
Wally Andrews (1884-1888)	Franchises: LOU
Elbert Andrews (1925) aka Devore	Franchises: OAK

Finding a 'card' of each of them turned out to be impossible for several reasons but I did manage to dig up something for each. I'm going to spread this out over a few posts to keep the length reasonable. Let's kick it off with the headliner. I will link each name to their BR page.

Rob Andrews.... my namesake and the one I saw play most often. I love that he was originally signed by the Orioles although he never played for them. After a fine year at AAA in '74 he was dealt to the Astros in the trade for Lee May. He spent two seasons here in Houston before moving on to the Giants. His brother Mike is on the list. In addition to the card at the top that Joe sent me I have a couple of others.

This SSPC came from Joe as well. I have another one in the set binder.

Hub Andrews... He pitched a total of 11.2 innings for the NY Giants in two brief stints in 1947/48. He didn't get any decisions. He worked in the insurance industry after his playing days. He has no known cards but I found this autographed index card on Net54.

Mike Andrews... Rob's older brother who played 8 seasons in the AL, mostly with the Red Sox. He was part of the Red Sox Impossible Dream club of 1967 and then won a Series ring with the Athletics in 1973. He had four hits in the '67 Series. He hit .293 and made the All-Star team in 1969. This card came from a card show cheap vintage box.

Stan Andrews...He got into 70 games over four seasons as a backup catcher for the Boston Braves, Dodgers, and Phils beginning in the late 30s. He had a long minor league career and some solid seasons there. He appeared in the 1941 Goudy set but I haven't found one that was in my price range although they are not especially costly. He has cards in some reprint and oddball sets. This one I own is an 'art card' from what is called the 2017 Carl Aldana San Francisco Seals World War II Commemorative set. I'm not sure of why he's included since he never played for San Francisco and only had one very average season in the PCL with the Hollywood Stars as far as I can tell. I'm not sure what I'm missing. Either way, I may try and do better in terms of a card for Ol' Stan.

Wally Andrews... He was a light-hitting first baseman in the 1880s for the Louisville franchise of the then-major American Association. He has cards in the N172 Old Judge set which was issued in the late 1880s. He earned them with a .400 season with Omaha in 1887. Needless to say, I doubt I'll ever have an actual one in my collection. The Trading Card Database has a card showing for him which is actually of Ed Andrews who will be seen here in another post.

These are supposedly copies of Wally Andrews' N172s. But I wouldn't count on them being authentic. In any case, I'm just going to assume they are legit and list them as his only cards. The top two are different scans I found of the same card.

That's the first batch of Andrews'. I know you can;t wait for the rest of them!

I am not worthy (Pt 2..from Brian) Oh...and Blogger sucks

This is the second of two remarkably similar card packages I received last week. This one came from Brian who pens Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary. The blog title alone would be worth 1860 points when hitting a triple word score in Scrabble.

Both Brian and Joe Shlabotnik sent me a substantial stack of very, very nice 1979s, modern Orioles and they both sprinkled in something for a different set I'm working on. Joe sent 1970 Topps Hoops, Brian went with '62 Baseball.

I had sent Brian some 59s for his set build but I gotta tell you that those cards were no match for the beauties he sent my way. Leading off you can check out Lou Clinton. What a sweet card. It's in great shape. In fact, all three of the '62s Brian included are probably two 'grades' better than the majority of what I have in the binder. Let me put it this way...I couldn't afford to collect the set if I was only going after cards as nice as the ones Brian passed on to me.

BTW...Lou Clinton was in right field for Boston on the last day of the 1961 season. He watched Roger Maris' #61 sail over his head and into the rightfield seats at YS.

Phil Regan poses at Yankee Stadium. I always like to imagine I was there the day these photos were taken. Hey, you never know. I was there a lot.

Regan was nicknamed 'The Vulture' by Sandy Koufax during his time as the Dodgers' closer. He managed the Orioles before Dave Johnson and was active as a minor league pitching coach well into his 70s.

Wayne Causey began his career as a light-hitting third baseman with the Orioles in 1955. He struggled to reach the Mendoza line and spent some time in the minors before he re-emerged with the A's in 1961 following a big off-season trade. He had found his hitting stroke and had some respectable years in Kansas City before moving on to the White Sox.

The modern Orioles card Brian sent was an Eddie Murray bat relic. The guy who glued the slice of Eddie's bat onto this card appears to have been hungover. Nonetheless, it fits nicely into my Murray pages in my Orioles star binder.

And finally here is a representative sampling of the '79s I received. Between the stack that came from Joe S. and this one I'm down to just over 100 needs for the set (edit made...never compose a post in the middle of the night).

This is one of my favorite Nolan Ryan cards.

Steve Carlton's BR page is pretty impressive.

Nolan Ryan and James Rodney Richard were on the same Astros staff for half of the 1980 season. Then J.R. was struck down in July.  A quick look at the team's game logs showed that they didn't pitch back-to-back at any point. That would have been unfair to any opposing NL teams.

Mick the Quick. He was with the Rangers by mid-season. Did you realize he had a .295 career average? I sure didn't.

I have no memories of Bud Harrelson as a Phillie. He was a spare part by this time. Nice shades though.

I also have no memories of Steve Yeager wearing a beard. I bet Night Owl does.

I scanned this card of Sixto Lezcano for two reasons. One, he has such a cool name, and two, he looks like someone but I can't put a finger on who it is..

And finally Billie Jean King's brother Randy. It's interesting (I guess) that her Wikipedia page doesn't mention her younger brother. He was a pretty decent reliever for the Giants through the 70s. He pitched for the Astros in 1982. That was a club with a strong staff and lousy hitting. And that was the year before I got married when I lived within walking distance of the Astrodome. I saw quite a bit of boring baseball.

Thanks again, Brian. The cards were all super and very much appreciated.

Oh, I almost forgot...the title. About three months ago I realized I was no longer receiving email notifications of blog comments. I dealt with it for awhile by just checking my past few posts every few days. But then I received an email from someone who had asked a few questions of me on one of my 1959 Topps blog posts and wondered why I hadn't responded. I dug around and flipped a few 'switches' and recently found that I had apparently switched over to Google+ comments...whatever the hell that means. I turned that off and nearly all the recent comments on my blogs disappeared. Add that to the fact that Blogger is unusable on an iPad as far as I can tell and doesn't work well with Firefox and I'm not happy at all.

I'll keep plugging along though but don't be surprised if one day this whole thing gets either blown up or shuffled over to WordPad.

Five For Fighting

I've read some blogs lately that revolved around a Blog Bat Around-ish theme..."Which aspects of your collecting would you keep if you were limited to five?" Or something like that. Gavin's entry was the first I read although I'm not sure his was the first posted. Robert followed up with his and I'm sure there are others.

This sort of thing is right up my alley. I like lists. I particularly like lists related to collecting. I thought this would be an easy one. Turned out not to be so. I spun my chair around in my newly re-done hobby room/office and jotted down my hobby 'interests' in broad terms. I tried not to put too fine a point on it. I mean would my Billy Pierce collection be an 'aspect' or is it part of my larger player collection? See, I was over-thinking it all. This is not the LSAT. And when I think about it this will be very similar to my post in response to Night Owl's 'Hobby Projects' theme.

So after reading and rereading those notes, I came up with the following list in (almost) no particular order (and subject to change at any moment):

1) Orioles and Baltimore Colts Publications.

This is, and always has been, my hobby priority. When I was a kid I got a program at every game I attended. My Dad always brought me to Manny's Baseball Land before games in the Bronx to check out the yearbooks. And so on. I've completed my Colts publication checklist and am nearly there with the Orioles.

2) Fantasy Sports Player Collection

This is my longest lasting and most extensive card project. In 1980 I started a fantasy football league among my college friends. We are still going strong as we get set for our 39th season. I began picking up cards of players I had on my team about a year after we began. I've kept it up ever since and now I also collect cards of guys on my fantasy baseball teams and the other FB teams I've managed. It's been fun, alternately frustrating and satisfying. Especially over on the football side. Pre-Internet days meant you had to hunt for cards at shows and through hobby publications.

I enjoyed tracking down obscure cards of obscure kickers and backup QBs. The Jose Cortez saga is the perfect example. I put out an APB for his one and only actual card one day on this blog and not four hours later I got a response and soon had the card in my binder! I was so happy I thought I'd cry! (Thanks again, Raz!!!) Sometimes I had to to make my own custom cards and with my sad graphics skills, that's an ordeal. Then there's the whole Randy Burke fiasco.

I have too much invested (in time and dedication if not money) to give this collection up.


3) Vintage Set Collecting 


The chase is the thing. As a collector there is no feeling like getting down to the last few cards needed for a vintage set. I'm inside of forty cards needed to finish off the 1962 Topps set. It's by far the most difficult of the sets I've attempted. Those woodgrain borders and terrible centering make finding acceptable yet affordable cards a challenge. The 'green tint' and photo and numbering variations throw you a curve when it comes to deciding on what a complete set consists of. But it'll be worth the effort when I can flip through the filled binder pages.

Another fun thing about set collecting has been blogging them. Yes, I'm way behind of the '58 and '60 blogs but I'll get them back on a regular schedule soon. And doing the research is a kick. Perhaps my favorite post ever on any blog I write is the one for Don Rudolph's 1959 card. Warning: That link will introduce you to Miss Patti Waggin, Don's lovely wife.

Oh, and I'm considering all my vintage sets here. I dig old basketball sets.

And non-sports sets. Is this fudging the five area limit? My post, my rules I guess.

I collect the Philly Gum sets from the mid-60s. Only have 1964 finished as of now.

More non-sports.

And chasing hockey is fun, too.

Yup, vintage sets and the collecting of same has to be one of the five areas of the hobby I'd continue with.

4) Player Collections

It would be impossible to sacrifice my player collections as I bet it would be for every hobbyist. If I really was forced to consolidate I could give up collecting some players. After all, I really don't need to chase Ed Charles cards, do I? But my Billy Pierce collection is sacred!

As are my Johnny U.....

....Charles Bender....

...Connie Hawkins....

...Dennis Martinez...

....Sandy Koufax...

....Brooks Robinson....

..and Elston Howard Collections.

5) Non-Sports Sketch Cards

I'd keep collecting sketch cards because I find them so much fun. Seeing all the different versions of  Batman, etc is a kick. And to be honest some have been fairly pricey and that's a consideration.

Luckily I'm not going to have to face this type of decision. Because if I did I'd be giving up a bunch of stuff. Out the door would go my postcards, presidential pins, bobbleheads, Starbucks mugs, Baltimore-related glassware, pennant collection, commemorative coins (state and park quarters, mostly), Orioles stars binders, Orioles and Colts oddball items, signed 8x10s, etc, etc. That would be a sad day indeed.



Oh, the title of the post? I was vaguely aware of a music act with that name and I thought it was appropriate. I had to look up the group and I'm still unsure if it's one guy or several. No matter, he/they sound like the Dave Matthews Band to me (and that's not a compliment). I did recognise this tune though. For whatever that's worth.