Happy Birthday, Earl Weaver

The Earl of Baltimore would have been 83 years old today.

On the day he died I posted a story of meeting Earl a couple of times, one time at a baseball luncheon. It's one of my favorite baseball memories. Earl Weaver was a Baltimore treasure, one of a kind.

This Upper Deck card was part of the package sent to me by CaptKirk42. The rest of the Orioles cards will be posted soon.

Billy Pierce PC

I recently posted the regular 1959 card of Billy Pierce, one of my favorite players, over on my set blog. I thought I'd show some of the other Pierce cards in my collection.

Above is the '52 Bowman, Pierce's second year card from that company. He pitched for the Tigers in 1945 and 1948 before he was traded to the White Sox where he found his stride.

Next up is the 1953 Bowman Color card. '53 was a good year for the still young lefty. He won 15 games for the second year in a row and led the league in strikeouts, The card lists his weight as 115. Now Billy Pierce was a small guy but not THAT small. Given that the '54 Pierce lists him at 155 I'd guess that was what they intended to put on this one.

'54 Bowman. Pierce was coming off an 18 win season in which he posted a 2.72 ERA. He pitched 19 complete games and had 7 shutouts. My, times have changed.

And finally the '58 Topps. This set doesn't get a lot of love but I like how colorful it is and I the logos are cool. I have a soft spot for them because they were the first cards I remember seeing. We were living on Long Island and a girl down the block had a stack of them.

BTW... this is a list of Hall of Fame pitchers with a career WAR lower than Billy Pierce:

Al Spalding
Early Wynn
Hoyt Wilhelm
Burleigh Grimes
Addie Joss
Herb Pennock
Chief Bender
Lefty Gomez
Dizzy Dean
Rich Gossage
Jack Chesbro
Candy Cummings
Bob Lemon
Catfish Hunter
Jesse Haines
Rube Marquard
Monte Ward
Rollie Fingers
Bruce Sutter
Satchel Paige

Beam me up, Scotty

I came back into town earlier this week and found and package waiting for me. In it were a couple dozen cards and this:

The cards in the envelope were eclectic mix of new stuff, Orioles stuff, vintage stuff, red stuff, blue stuff. Pretty amazing actually.

The RAC package came from (if you haven't guessed already) 'CaptKirk42' of the blog of the same name. Kirk also hangs out over at the Trading Card Zone. Like myself his interests are ...ahem... varied. If you don't believe me go check out his 'want list'.

Anyway back to the RAC package. There were too many interesting cards in it to include in one post so I'll put up some in this entry and some in the near future.

The '68 Ron Hansen at the top may not be the world's most exciting card but is may be the most perfectly preserved '68 I've ever seen. It looks like it was sealed up in a time capsule the instant it came out of the pack. Hansen is a guy whose cards I like to hang on to because he was the 1960 AL Rookie of the Year as an Oriole and because of his 1968 unassisted triple play.

I've been accused of 'sleeping with the enemy' because of my affinity for 60's era Yankee pitchers cards and how I tend to slobber all over the '59s I feature that have nice Yankee Stadium backgrounds. Well, I grew up watching games in the Bronx with my Dad and at my age the nostalgia factor is pretty strong. This '64 Young Aces is a great example. I'd bet I saw more Al Downing starts than I did of anyone else on the Yankee staff outside of Whitey 'I Pitch the First Game of Every Sunday Doubleheader' Ford. 

And I played ball with and against a couple of the 'Bouton Boys', Jim's cousins/nephews in Essex County, NJ.

Speaking of guys I saw a lot of, 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.

I got this 1960 Topps Julio Becquer among several others from that set. I love the gold and black reverse sides of the 1960 set. And the 'Season Highlights' are very cool. I just recently featured Becquer's '59 card on my other blog. I am seriously considering finishing the set as my next major hobby project. I have a hundred or so '60 cards so that's a nice head start.

Ron Hunt played for five different National League clubs but the only one I associate him with is the Mets. Seeing him in Dodger gear as on the '68 is always a surprise. He plays a key part in the narrative of the best baseball book I have ever read, A False Spring. He was author Pat Jordan's roommate as a rookie in the Milwaukee Braves' spring training camp in 1959. I blogged about the book previously so I won't repeat myself here. 

Here is another 64, Don Lock. He looks like a friend of mine from childhood. Hell, he looks like a friend from everybody's childhood.

1962 Bobby Shantz

How about this gem, a '64 Roy McMillan. Pretty nice shape and you have to love the glasses and cool Milwaukee batting helmet.

I'm only a card or two from completing my Johnny Callison PC. Here is one I've wanted for awhile. The '66 Power Plus with Callison and Wes Covington. It's one of a couple of Callison 'specials' I had been lacking. Is it creased? Sure, but the crease is across Covington, not Johnny C. so I'm happy to mark it off my want list.

A big tip of the cap to Kirk. I'm post more from the RAC package soon. The next one will feature the cool Oriole cards he included. 

Am I the un-hippest guy in America? Alternate title: "I got Sandcastled!"

I made a rare trip into my local WalMart awhile back and decided that a trip down the card aisle would help keep my mind off the long lines and rampant stupidity in there.

I have seen enough 2013 baseball cards so I figured I'd get a pack of football. Afterall, training camps are open and I have been thinking that I need to get my fantasy league cranked up.

So I bought a pack of Score '13. First of all I thought the whole set was made up of cards in the '89 Score style. It looked that way to me from the box. 

Wrong. The base cards are like so:

About three cards into the pack I was struck by these two, back-to-back:

First thought: WTF?
Second thought: I got two versions of the same card in the same pack? What?
Third thought: This guy looks a lot like Richard Pryor!

Fourth thought: WTF?
Fifth thought: There is something goofy going on here. Then I turned it over and read the back.

Turns out, as I'm guessing everyone else was aware of, Leon Sandcastle is the creation of  Deion Sanders for some sort of NFL Network promo commercial that ran during the Super Bowl. Since I don't watch much of the SB commercials and once the blackout occurred I lost interest anyway, I guess I missed it. I actually get the NFL Network but I don't ever watch except when they run games and sometimes the shortened game replays they run during the season.

Here's the back of the Sandcastle cards. Of course the text gives the joke away, more or less. I like how Panini lets us know that "This design is a tribute to the iconic 1989 Score design." I mean I like it, it's why I bought the pack, but whatever.

Here are some of the fronts and backs of some of the rest of the pack. They are OK, some pretty nice photos. But nothing about them makes me want to go back to WalMart right now. 

Art Donovan, One Of A Kind

NFL Hall of Famer Artie Donovan died Sunday. He was a member of the Baltimore Colts' Championship teams of 1958 and 1959. The Baltimore Sun, in their obit piece, said that Donovan spent 12 seasons in the NFL and the rest of his life telling everybody about it. I was about 10 when he retired so I don't have many memories of him playing specifically but I was a huge Baltimore Colts fan and I can remember the glory days of that wonderful franchise. I used to spend fall Sunday mornings in church praying for my Baltimore Colts.

Here is a really nice piece that ran in the Sun following his death. Some really funny stuff there. But then again Art Donovan was a really funny guy. And I can't fail to note that he was a member of the United States Marines and saw duty in the Pacific as an antiaircraft gunner on the U.S. San Jacinto.

Donovan was always called 'Fatso' and that was the name of his autobiography. He probably garnered more attention as a guest on the late night talk shows in his retirement than he did as an active player. I got to meet him once after his retirement back when the Baltimore Colts trained at Goucher College in Towson near Baltimore, probably around 1981 or 1982. I always made it a point to watch a practice when I was in town for my summer trip.

There was a little rope fence that separated the fans and the field and one day Donovan came down the line slapping backs, shaking hands and telling stories. I didn't get him to sign anything that day but a few years ago I picked up this commemorative Baltimore Colts mini helmet signed by six players from those great teams including four Hall of Famers, Donovan, Raymond Berry, Gino Marchetti and Lenny Moore.

A couple other Donovan items from my Baltimore Colts collection:

1961 Fleer Art Donovan. One of my only regrets is that I never saw a regular season Baltimore Colts game in Memorial Stadium. Just looking at that card drives that home. What a place it was.

2001 Topps Team Legends Autographed

I have a decent Aparicio collection. I can't remember if I bought this or won it in a box break a few years ago when I was participating in that sort of thing.

Either way it's kind of a neat card. Luis has that chaw going on. Either that or he is having some swollen jaw problems. Is there anyone out there that doesn't like the 1956 design?

2009 Topps Heritage Dave Trembley

I love how these managers cards are based on the 1960 Topps managers cards, one of my favorite subsets ever.

Dave Trembley managed 20 years in the minors for the Pirates, Padres, Cubs and Orioles systems. He spent almost four seasons managing the Orioles themselves. He coached junior college baseball. He is now the third base coach for the Houston Astros.

My conclusion. He's scene waaaay more than one guy should of crappy baseball, up close and personal. Trembley seems like a very nice man. The Houston Chronicle recently ran a lengthy feature story on him and how he coped with his firing in Baltimore and has tried to help keep the struggling Astros upbeat through the long losing season. Unfortunately the story is behind the pay wall on the Chronicle's actual newspaper site and I can't get to it online.