Pulp Fiction

I used to read a lot of sports related publications back in the day. Most notably Sport Magazine and The Sporting News. Every spring I had a copy of Street and Smith's Baseball, too. But my friends and I would also pick up the occasional cheap baseball rag. I have been looking to pick up one on eBay for awhile now. I wanted any of the ones that I remembered having when it was published.

I finally found one, Baseball in Action from 1965.

I had cut out that cover picture of Brooks Robinson and pinned it to the cork-board over my desk. And I cut out and saved the Wally Bunker feature. He was a real favorite of mine. Finding a copy of it on eBay was pretty neat.

You know you had a cheap baseball mag when you saw the cover story teasers that sounded like the stories your mom read on the mags in line at the checkout stand. Sandy Koufax: As good as new? Whatever. And the paper stock would already be turning yellow by the time your dad borrowed it to read on the train (or in the bathroom).

They were entertaining though. Lots of black and white pics to take up space and stories that promised controversy but delivered platitudes.

And one of the best parts was reading the ads. Here is a blowup of the ads on the page above.

The one touting a way to hear 'whispered secret conversations ... though solid walls' is a classic that seemed to run in every cheap baseball mag. The ad soliciting 'New Story Ideas' is one I don't remember. I wonder how many ideas Leslie Goodwins got?

These Strat-O-Matic ads were everywhere in the mid-to-late 60s. There was a smaller version in every single issue of The Sporting News back then. I was always fascinated by a friend's APBA board game but the Strat ads just made it sound better. I finally saved enough to buy the game in 1967.

Charles Atlas usually advertised his muscle building methods in these mags. If he wasn't there you could count on his less famous competitor, Mike Marvel.

"Yes! The girls laugh at you now when you take off your shirt--they'll be breaking down the doors...blah blah blah." Just $1.98!! And a Free! 'Secrets Of Attracting Girls'!  

Oh wow. classic stuff. Sadly the mag, which came in nice condition other than being yellowed, fell apart in the process of scanning. No matter, I got my moneys worth in nostalgia.

Guys On The Phone

Over the past few weeks Bob Lemke has been featuring cards from niche collections he created from the huge cache of mostly 1990's cards he acquired through his work at Krause Publications. I made a comment on one of his posts and mentioned that I had collected a few off beat collections as well. One of those was cards featuring athletes 'on the phone'... players using sideline and dugout phones and headsets.

Bob replied that he had a very similar collection scheduled for a post on September 2 so I thought it would be fun to dig my 'phone guys' out and present them here on the same day. And here we are.

Most of the 40 or so cards in this little collection of mine are of NFL players shown on 1990 era Pro Set and Topps cards. But there are quite a few more off-the-wall cards included. I'd forgotten about some of them.

Some of the cards show Hall-of-Famers possibly talking to their brokers. Cal Ripken for example, on a big ass early cell phone. I remember being amazed at these contraptions. They were (to me) the second generation cell phones as they followed the 'phone in a bag' things that I remember a buddy carrying around the golf course.

A few more HOF guys using electronic stuff during games.  Brett was still years away from sexting pix of his well, junk to female reporters. He quite possibly was engaged in an intimate conversation with Phyllis George.

More football players including Dan Pastorini likely scrounging up a date with a runway model. He was cool that way.

And a couple more 49ers. Maybe communication was the key to their glory days.

The NBA Hoops set featured all the draft picks on the phone. They were either taking 'the call' from the team that drafted them of dialing mom with the good news.

And I somehow had added a few oddball cards along the way. I have no idea where I came across this card of boxer Bill Castillo. But I would be willing to bet he didn't 'dial' that call!

And finally we have Michaelangelo calling in a pizza order. I know this card was originally in my kids' binder. They loved the TMNTs.

Back when I was doing this I had many of these cards displayed in my school's gym, clipped to a long, coiled old-fashioned handset cord. My kids would occasionally bring me cards that they came across for the collection. Fun times.

Back Home Again

Back in 1998 I drafted Peyton Manning in our fantasy football draft and stashed him away while he took his rookie lumps. I rode that arm for awhile and then traded him off.

Wednesday night I ended up facing a decision as the quarterbacks slid away in this years draft. It came down going back to Ben Roethlisberger who I've had for a couple of years, gambling on rookie Robert Griffin III or taking creaky old Peyton.

I took Manning and later backed him up with up-and-comer Jake Locker and Matt Cassel who has quite a few weapons this year. I hope I don't need either of those guys.

"With My 1st Pick in the '84 draft..."

Tonite marks the official start of my fantasy football league's 33rd season. Yup, we've been at it a long time. The owners in my league are my college friends or friends of my college friends who have been involved for many years. Half the league will be together here in Houston for the draft, the other half will be drafting online. Such is the way of the world these days.

We used to all be together and draft at someone's home or apartment or occasionally at a restaurant that would give us a room to use. One of our favorite things was drafting on Labor Day with the Jerry Lewis Telethon as a distraction and sending out for pizza or grilling burgers.

Those of you that can't remember life before the internet will have to trust me when I say that back in the Dark Ages not everyone had the latest football info or up-to-the-minute cheat sheets and depth charts. Most guys bought a copy of Street and Smith Football or a similar magazine printed months earlier and drafted from the dated info it contained. Drafting a guy who'd been cut the week before wasn't unusual, especially if you didn't track the transactions in the paper every day.

If you made the effort to find a Pro Football Weekly season preview issue you were way ahead of most everyone else. Those things usually hit the shelves a day or so before the draft. I can remember checking for it at some pretty sketchy downtown Houston "newsstands" the night before the draft.

Given all that I guess it shouldn't have been a surprise when, during the first round of our 1984 draft, one of our owners took Dolphin runningback David Overstreet. He's been a star at the University of Oklahoma, played a couple of seasons with Montreal of the CFL (including a Rookie of the Year 1981 campaign) and, after finally settling his contract issues with Miami, showed promise with the '83 Dolphins.

Then as now runningbacks were a valued fantasy commodity and drafting a young star in a keeper league like ours could pay dividends for years. So, all in all, Oversteet made sense as a first round pick. Except for one small detail. David Overstreet, you see, had died about three months prior to our draft when he ran off the road on a north Texas highway and plowed his car into a gas pump island.

The instant the Overstreet pick was announced by the sadly out-of-touch owner eleven sets of eyes locked on him. I guess we wanted to see if he was making a poor attempt at fantasy football draft humor. After a few seconds it was apparent that he had made a serious pick of Overstreet and hilarity ensued.

I'm not proud of it, Overstreet's death was the cutting short of a promising life and he left behind a young son, but I have to admit that the 1984 Ed Hughes League draft will forever live on among our league's treasured moments.

The posted card is, as far as I know, the only card of David Overstreet ever issued. It's from the 1981 JOGO set of CFL players. I picked it up on eBay earlier this summer.

The '81 set was the first for the company. Last season they issued their 31st annual set. On their website they claim to be the second longest continuous run sportscard brand. I think it's pretty cool that they link to the photographers they use for their cards.

Sorry for that Sosa thing

In order to make up for the disturbing Sammy Sosa pic posted Sunday here are some more of the lovely ladies of the Garbaty Cigarette Moderne Schönheitsgalerie card set.

A Pair of Sosa Rookies

With a couple of major leaguers recently being tossed for having excess testosterone I got to thinking about how many cards of players who ended their career 'under a cloud' I have in my box of junk wax era stars.

When I googled Sosa this picture came up. WTH??

I wasn't planning to post these

But after reading Night Owl's latest entry I feel empowered. It IS my collection and if I want to show off some off-the-beaten-path cards then dammit that's just what I'll do. Normally I'd keep these mid-30s era German issued cards under wraps. They show European and American actresses and singers.

But here they are. I found them at an antiques mall while my wife was looking for a headboard. I bought a bundled lot from a guy for about $10. There were 35 of them and I've seen them go for a couple of bucks apiece on eBay.

We enjoy old movies and recognized about half of the subjects shown on these cards. Frankly, the cards themselves are pretty darn attractive. Colorful, embossed, and they contain really nice artwork. Whoever did the colorizing of the original pictures has a nice eye.

A little research turned up some amazing background on these cards and the issuing company, the Garbaty Cigarette Company. This vintage card website tells an interesting tale of the company's founder and his family being forced to flee Nazi Germany in 1938, a few short years after these were published.

From that page:

In the center of Nazi Germany's pre-war years, the Garbaty Cigarette  Company released three sets of incredibly striking cigarette cards: Moderne Schönheitsgalerie (Gallery of Modern Beauty) in 1934; Galerie Schöner-Frauen Des Films (Gallery of Beautiful Women in Film) in 1936; and Film-Lieblinge (Film Favorites) in 1937. Each card has a full color, embossed surface, while the back of each card informs the collector of how to purchase an album (cost: one Reichmark) to house the cards. A cigarette brand logo and other information about the cost of the cigarette boxes in which the cards were inserted also appear on the backs. Interestingly, the word “Garbaty” is nowhere to be seen. While most cards measure 2 1/16 X 2 7/16, a select forty in the 200-card Film-Lieblinge set are much larger, measuring 2 7/16 X 3 1/4.

A few of the nicer cards and an assortment of card-backs:

OK, if you're still reading I can give you a sports tie-in with these. See the top card, the beautiful Leah Ray? She was married for more than 50 years to Sonny Werblin, owner of the New York Jets.

Now you can make fun of me for having these in my collection. But I have to tell you that I'm very secure in my manhood. I've been known to wear a pink golf polo without shame.