Your 2013 Baltimore Flyers!!!!

I had my fantasy draft last Wednesday. I only participate in one league, my league. I've tried one or twice to play in another league but I can never give it the effort I put into mine.

This is our 34th season. As far as I can tell there is only one league in the US that has played continuously since before our first year, 1980. That league is one year older, founded in 1979. Every year I hope they disband. One other group has been around since the mid 70s but for many years they were more of a football 'pool'. At least that's all I can find using the internet and believe me I've tried.

Our draft is always fun. We get together in the Houston Medical Center where one of our owners is a tech director and gets us a big room full of tables laden with computers. It's a lot like the NFL's war rooms.

I have a collection of cards of the players I've had on my team since Day One. Adding my new draftees is Job One the day after the draft and the cards I needed arrived today. So my opening day line-up is complete in my binder. I am willing to overpay to get cards of players quickly rather than wait until more common cards are available. I'm quirky that way.

So, without further ado, here are my '13 Baltimore Flyer starters:

My quarterback is Matt Ryan. I had Peyton Manning last season but dealt him for Ryan a couple of weeks ago. Ryan plays in better weather and is more likely to still be standing later this season. That, plus I was able to move up in a middle round of the draft as part of the trade. Ryan become one of my three allowable 'keepers'.

Here are my other two 'keepers. Both Arian Foster and Ray Rice have been on my club for several seasons. Runningbacks are gold in my league (and most leagues) so having two studs has been very beneficial. Foster has been a health concern this summer and frankly I considered my options with him. But I couldn't get value in a trade and I wasn't about to risk letting him go and regretting it later. So I'm rolling the dice and he's still my guy. Plus, I get to see him play every week, in person or on TV. There is something to be said for that.

The Foster card at the top of the post is my favorite card of his but it will not go into my Flyer binder because it is a horizontal card and in my hierarchy of cards vertical cards of a player in the correct uniform trumps a horizontal one.

Having kept a QB and two RBs I knew I'd have to concentrate on receivers early in the draft. We use three and we combine wide-outs with tight ends (we are a dinosaur league after all) so I grabbed the best guys on my list with my three first picks. Randall Cobb, Torrey Smith and Hakeem Nicks each bring some sort of issue with them but I'm satisfied if not overly happy at the receiver spot. 

I always avoid the 'kicker panic' that seems to grip my fellow owners starting around Round 11 or 12 when someone will grab the highest ranked kicker and most of the other guys start grabbing others from the top tier. I can show you stats that say the #1 kicker is worth only a point a game more than the #12 kicker so I'm usually going to take one with my last pick. And I did again this year. Cowboy kickers are usually a safe bet and I'm OK with Bailey. besides, this gives me another reason to root for the @#$%^&*()(*&-ing Cowboys to stall out just inside the red zone several times a game. 

There seemed to be only a couple of Dan Bailey cards available and they had a premium due to being autographed or being some fancy-assed chrome thing. This one didn't cost much, about $6 shipped but I still hate paying more for my kicker's card than any other one. Oh well. 

Our rosters are 15 players and I won't show every guy but here are my top reserves. 

My tip for late drafting fantasy player who may be reading this.... take a late round flyer on Alshon Jeffery. You can thank me in November.

Football 100 Card Re-pack

I don't remember whether I picked this up at a Target or WalMart. I do know that I was thinking that for $4 I pretty much couldn't go wrong. This isn't a Fairfield product as far as I can tell. The package looks like this:

As advertised there were 100 cards in the pack. If I was going to summarize it I'd say I got a little bit of a lot of different things. Since I do so little football card collecting lots of this stuff was new to me. 

I'm a big fan of Andre Johnson of the Texans. He's a quiet warrior who does everything the right way on and off the field. I don't have any collections of current players but AJ comes closest. The card at the top is a nice shiny Upper Deck card of my favorite current player. Here's hoping for a big year from him. 

I was very happy to get a Gale Sayers card. Sayers remains the most exciting player I've ever seen. He played only five full NFL seasons (and bits of two more) but his short career was pretty dynamic. He played as a tailback and as a kick returner and he was one of those players that was literally a threat to score any time he got the ball. On December 12, 1965 Sayers scored six touchdowns against the 49ers. In the first quarter he caught an 80 yard TD pass for a score. In the second quarter he ran for TDs of 7 and 21 yards. He caught his breath at halftime and in the third quarter he ran for scores of 1 and 51 yards. He capped off his day with an 85 yard punt return touchdown in the fourth quarter. Yikes!

I also got this Bradshaw from the same Mayo Cut Plug throwback set.

The 1990 Pro Set football cards have a lot of nostalgic value for me. I put the set together a pack at a time and through trades with my students. It was a ton of fun. I was surprised to see one lone representative of the set in my repack. It's not miscut, just 'mis-scanned'.

I had not thought about the Pacific football set in a long time. The Vikes have always had issues matching their purples.

There were 95 other cards in the pack and, while a lot of them were run-of-the-mill, some were interesting and I'll toss them out in posts during the football season. Other than picking up cards of my fantasy team players and maybe a vintage pick up or two, I'm done with buying football cards for 2013.

Two Signed Billy Pierce Cards

This 1957 Topps Billy Pierce is among my favorite vintage cards. The '57 is the last Topps set that I have no childhood memories of. Therefore it is kind of majical in my eyes. Does that make sense? Maybe someday I'll make a decision to chase the whole thing. I've got the Orioles including the Brooks Robinson rookie, the Frank Robinson rookie, most of the Dodgers including the Koufax and Drysdale, a couple of other special cards and maybe 35 commons and semi-stars. But completing it would be a big expense and I doubt seriously I will undertake it any time soon. It would be fun as hell, though.

Anyway, it's a cool picture of Pierce in a warm-up pose at Yankee Stadium and it's signed in his usual neat hand. The only thing that could make this a better card is if I had been able to get him to sign it in person.

This next one is a Pacific Legends something or other that I got off eBay not long ago.

The picture is one that I think they used when casting the Pierce statue at Comiskey Park and was given away one night last season (or this season, I'm not sure). I've got one of those, too.

'51 Bowman and '56 Topps Billy Pierce

I guess I'll just declare this Billy Pierce Week and post some of my better Pierce cards today and Thursday. My fantasy football draft is Wednesday night and after that I'll be consumed with finding cards of my team.

First up, the '56 Topps. The background shots on this set are one of the most interesting things about them. This card has Pierce breaking out of the batter's box and heading to first, presumably after laying down a bunt. 

The nice portrait of the smiling Pierce and the three cartoons on the reverse are bonuses. This one is my second copy. I picked it up recently to replace one I've had that was pretty beaten up. I don't upgrade many PC cards but I like this one so much, and this copy was so cheap for the condition, that I went ahead with it.

Is there such a thing as a lousy Bowman card? I don't think so. That's Comiskey Field behind our boy on the '51. You can tell by the 'windows'.

The back of the card write-up is pretty cut and dry. Just that facts of Pierce's career are here. But the front of the card overcomes any issues with the back.

Here are a few shots of old Comiskey with the distinctive 'windows visible...

I'm down to a couple of Pierce's cards in my scanned cards folder. They are my autographed ones. Stay tuned and wish me luck in my draft!

A Pair of Pierces

These are Billy Pierce's two Topps cards from 1960. As much as any other set this one brings me back to my days as a kid collector. I loved the gold colored backs and the 'Season Highlights' fascinated me.

I hadn't noticed until I scanned these that both card back illustrations refer to Pierce's near perfect game effort of June 27, 1958. Ed Fitz Gerald of the Senators was the 'two-out-ninth-inning-single' bad guy in that one.

Oddball Oriole Stuff #4

I was rooting around in a box of Oriole items I hadn't looked at in awhile and found a few things that I've pulled out and put back on display in my 'office'.

I think I picked these up in '83 when I traveled to Charm City for the World Series. That was a fun trip, especially sitting in Section 34 for the second game. Being part of 'The Roar from 34' was definitely memorable.

This button is every bit as lame as it looks. it's a 'button of buttons'.  Of those featured pictures I have all but the Scott McGregor (@ 11:00 o'clock on the button) and Rich Dauer (@ 5:00) on individual buttons.

 Frank Robinson is a 1966 Spring Training shot. That's an Orioles '65 uniform that they wore through Frank's first training camp before debuting the more modern and familiar unis on Opening Day.

 A Series souvenir. That season's Game One was the first Series game I'd ever attended in person although I'd been to several ALCs and NLCS games in Baltimore and Houston prior to that.

That Game One was memorable for a couple of reasons. The Phils won 2-1 with all the runs coming on solo homes. Jim Dwyer hit one for the O's before Joe Morgan and Gary Maddox solo'd for the Phils off Scott McGregor. John Denver sang the anthem and then sang Thank God I'm a Country Boy from the dugout roof in the seventh. There was a loooooong delay in the top of the seventh because windbag Howard Cosell was interviewing Ronald Reagan and the network didn't want to let the game proceed until that was over. I just remember that everyone was booing. Some were booing the delay, some were booing Cosell, I was booing Ronald Reagan. 

The Orioles won Game Two with Mike Boddiker on the mound. I was wearing my game-used Tim Stoddard jersey and late in the game the goofy and generally drunk fans around me were telling me to go warm up, just in case. Jerseys like that were not nearly as common back then and it drew attention. Sitting in Section 34 was a lot of fun even though, according to my uncle who was a regular, a lot of those sitting there were not part of the usual crew. A homer by fan favorite John 'Brother Lo' Lowenstein sent us into a delirious frenzy. 

I had a chance to go to Philadelphia for the middle games of the Series but chose to head back to Houston instead. If I had known that would be the last Orioles World Series appearance for 3 decades I would have gone. Game Two was the last post-season game ever played in Memorial Stadium. I miss the old girl. 

R.I.P. Wild Bill Hagy

Heeeeeres Johnny!!

For lack of anything else compelling in the hobby these days I've spent the last few weeks trying to find cheap additions to my non-Oriole PCs, namely Sandy Koufax, Roger Maris, Johnny Callison and Billy Pierce. As you probably have figured I had no luck finding cheap Maris or Koufax cards.
But Callison and Pierce are a different story. Here are a couple none too exciting (but important to me) Johnny Callison cards.

I already had the '68 Topps but a cheap upgrade is always a good thing.  Callison was in his next to last season with the Phils in 1968. Following the '69 season he was dealt to the Cubs in a trade that sent Oscar Gamble to the Phils.

The '73 Callison is his last issued Topps card. It's sure not my favorite. But it does use the cartoon to relay the info nugget that both Callison and Boog Powell have the same first and middle names. I'm assuming that Boog is represented bu the large partially seen fellow on the left.