Old Time Hockey

This 71/72 O-Pee-Chee Norm Ferguson was a one dollar card (shipped) and worth twice that <grin>. I enjoy the expansion era NHL clubs (the expansion that brought the league from 6 to 12 clubs) and the Oakland/California Golden Seals were saddled with ugly unis, a stupid name and terrible colors and were therefore pretty cool to me. I don't remember Ferguson from his days with the Seals but I saw him play in the WHA for several teams in Houston against the Aeros. He appears to be stoned on this card doesn't he?

Maybe the most fun I've had in sports venues was during the heyday of the WHA Houston Aeros during the 1970s when they played in the decrepit old Sam Houston Coliseum in downtown Houston. Those games were just a blast. The WHA was a rough and tumble league of NHL castoffs and has-beens mixed in with a few young and established stars that the league somehow was able to sign away from the NHL with big money contracts. The franchises seemed to shift every year and I recall more than one team folding during a season.

The Aeros had Gordie Howe and his sons and they captured back-to-back Avco Cups in the first few seasons of the franchise's existence. My college buddies and I loved those teams and going to the games. How could you not? The rival Minnesota Fighting Saints always lived up to their name (the 'fighting' part, not the 'saints' part) and building rocked when they were in town. In their second year they had a guy named Gordie Gallant (isn't that the coolest hockey name ever?) who was a cheap shot artist and enforcer who would whip the Aeros' fans into a frenzy.

At the Coliseum the visiting team would have to walk a gauntlet of fans between periods and at games end, trudging on their skates up a rubber mat along a path formed by a couple pieces of rope to the locker-room. It passed right through the concession area. Fans would give the Fighting Saints (we had another 'F' word that we used instead of 'Fighting') a real going over. I'm surprised that none of us ever got clobbered with a stick or kicked with a skate.

After three or four seasons the Aeros moved to the shiny new Summit (now Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church)  and a lot of the fun went out of it. Oh we still loved Aeros hockey but losing the Coliseum took away some of the charm of the whole thing. Eventually the NHL absorbed four of the WHA teams but not our beloved Aeros.

One last WHA story... It occurred the day after the Aeros won their first Avco Cup. A good friend who worked at a department store that had a tie-in with the team was headed into work when he spotted the Avco Cup trophy sitting all by itself on the loading dock. Just sitting there apparently after being delivered by the team for a promo. No one was paying any attention to it as it sat just feet from the morning downtown workers hustling by. Hard to imagine the Stanley Cup in that spot.

It's the People You Meet (pt. 2)

A few weeks ago I got an email from Mike M. who has been reading this blog and was a Billy Pierce fan from Illinois. Mike roots for the Sox and attends the Sox' fantasy camps every winter. He had an autographed Pierce card he wanted to send me and was including a 'bonus' card as well.

Mike's cards arrived yesterday and the Pierce is a TMCA/Renata Galasso signed by BP in his always recognizable (to me) hand. It's a nice addition to my collection. It comes from Galasso's 1977 Series One set of 1950s stars. I have a few scattered cards from several different Galasso sets, mostly Orioles, but didn't have this one. I do now and it's signed!

The second card, the signed 1990 UD Kevin Hickey, requires a bit of background. Included in the envelope Mike had a very nice handwritten letter (who takes the time these days!?) explaining how he had met Hickey at several of the Sox' camps. At one he got a clean single up the middle off the lefty who proceeded to whiff him in his next at bat with a wicked curve that broke so far it hit Mike's foot. LOL!

Anyway, I remembered Hickey as a member of the 1989 'Why Not?' Orioles club that finished second in the AL East rebounding from the impossibly awful '88 season. Hickey contributed to that club out of the bullpen with a few wins and saves and an outstanding ERA. His career fell off after that and he was gone as an active player after 1991.

But the true story of Kevin Hickey, who died far too young in 2012, isn't really about his baseball numbers at all. His is a remarkable story of opportunity, despair, redemption and love. If you look at Hickey's record you see that there is a six year gap between his last big league days as a pitcher with the White Sox and his stretch with the Birds. What happened during that gap is only matched in drama by Hickey's tumultuous early life and his discovery as a player for his hometown White Sox (a tryout after being discovered as a softball player). Toss in his post career recovery from homelessness and poverty and his story reads like fiction. But that's not even getting to his work on a major movie and eventually to becoming a wildly popular BP pitcher for the White Sox. So popular, in fact, that the team voted him a full share of the championship winnings in 2005.

If you never read any other link I post on this blog I urge you to click through to this remarkable obit/tribute/remembrance that appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times after his death.

So thanks again, Mike M., for sending the cards my way and for opening my eyes to the both heartbreaking and inspiring story of Kevin Hickey. I hope you are enjoying camp and can get yourself another single up the middle. But lay off the big curve.

Post-ing Memories

Back in the days when these Post cards were issued on cereal boxes I had a routine. Most evenings while my Mom was busy in the kitchen I'd wait on our front steps to see my father walking down the block as he made his way home from the bus stop (#32 DeCamp Lines bus out of the Port Authority). He's have a late afternoon edition of one of the New York papers, usually the Daily News. I'd grab it and read as much as I could before supper was served. In those days there was more day baseball and sometimes if the Yanks were at home and had played in the afternoon there would already be a game report in the paper.

While we ate we'd have the radio on (no TV allowed during meals!) and more often than not we would catch the nightly 15 minute sports report done by Stan Lomax on WOR. His is one of the voices of my youth. He'd been a sportswriter who had entered the world of radio very early doing all manner of play-by-play and had one of the longest running daily shows in broadcasting history by the time he retired.

I found (and cherish) one .mp3 sample of his work. It's not typical because it's a drop-in segment from a gig he did with the talk/comedy show duo of Bob and Ray. And it is from late in his career (1976) when clearly his best days were behind him. But it certainly displays his unique cadence and inflection. 

I especially enjoyed his show during baseball season. He would give recaps of day games played or in progress and he's give the batteries for the upcoming night contests. I'd listen intently as Lomax would click off homers and starting pitchers for the Orioles and Phillies (yes, I followed the Phils for a bit back then). 

Lomax also spent a lot of time on boxing and college basketball, two sports I followed as a kid (almost entirely due to him) but which barely register with me now.

Here is the minute and a half audio clip of Stan Lomax which I posted to YouTube:

All of this is a roundabout way of getting to the three 1962 Post cards up top. Frank Malzone just seems to typify baseball of the early 1960s era. Good bat, good glove and a member of the hated (by me) Red Sox. His was a card I didn't seek out but I did appreciate. Much more so that that of Albie Pearson. Whenever I heard his name mentioned the only thing I thought of was how small he was.

Now Art Ditmar...he's a Stan Lomax-type guy in that I associate him with weeknight games at Yankee Stadium. Whitey Ford always seemed to pitch on Sunday but Ditmar was the guy we would catch when we made a game on a Tuesday night. He was also the guy my friends and I mocked for reasons I can't really remember. He was my 'Dooley Womack' before I actually had Dooley Womack to make fun of. I have previously shown off my Art Ditmar collection. 

The '62 Post above and '61 that follows are the latest additions. 

Nostalgia is a Pain in the Butt

Last Saturday after we left the bowl game in Birmingham we headed to a highly recommended ale house kind of place in a trendy tucked away corner of Birmingham (yes, there are trendy areas of B-ham. I was surprised, too). While enjoying a really tasty burger and downing a few glasses of an excellent Alabama beer I kept an eye on the TV above the bar which was showing the Chiefs-Colts game.

As the Colts made their rather ridiculous comeback, and with my football season having ended an hour or so earlier, I was haunted by a twinge of ... oh, I don't know... regret, maybe. I wished the Colts were still in Baltimore and were still my team. It was a silly thought but I still do somewhat carry a torch for those heady days of Johnny Unitas, Ray Berry, Lenny Moore and John Mackey.

Ironically I recently picked up a Mackey card and it was waiting for me when we got back to Houston on Sunday. The 1970 Topps Mackey isn't one I remember having. I don't think I was collecting football cards much back then in what would be college underclassman days. And it's not one of his best cards but I grab cheap football cards when I come across them and this was cheap.

As I typed this I was struck by the irony of all the Baseball Hall of Fame noise being made this week. For many years Mackey was denied entry into the Football Hall because of the resentment felt by the football 'establishment' over his activism while serving as president of the NFLPA.

He finally made it, the Colts are long gone from Charm City and I shouldn't long for the 'good old days'. It's pointless. But those beers were very good.

A Koufax Autograph...... I had to do it

I'm not really an autograph collector. Oh I have some, and many of them mean a lot to me, but if I were to list things I covet memorabilia-wise autographs wouldn't be one of them.

But I do like to have one signature of each of my favorite players. I have many Brooks Robinson autographs, most of them I obtained directly from Brooks one way or another. I have one Johnny Unitas aoutgraph that I won through a charity auction and had framed with a picture.

But one autograph I have wanted for a long time was a Sandy Koufax. They are prohibitively expensive for the most part. And I am dubious of some of the cheaper ones. But I have patience. Recently three of these 1998 Donruss Significant Signature Koufax cards were on eBay. I used an auction snipe program and loaded up all three auctions with lowball bids. I figured I had nothing to lose.

Luckily one of them hit and here it is. Before I bid I did a bit or research into the set. Apparently there are a couple of variations of this card. Some picture Koufax with an LA Dodger cap. These Brooklyn versions were supposedly to be used as replacements or something. Some were sold via auction when the defunct Donruss' inventory was liquidated. I'm not sure about any of this and I don't really care. It's legit, it was reasonable, and it's on-card.

I'm pretty happy.

Three Billy Pierce Vintage cards

1964 Topps Billy Pierce. he's a San Francisco Giant and it just seems odd. Love the card though. Typical Pierce with that grin. Nice team-related colors and the blue sky sets off the uniform well.

The back is a different story. I'm OK with the 'wall of stats'. In fact I enjoyed reading through these numbers on veteran players' cards when I was a kid. What I didn't like (and still don't) is the orange on white format. I have a hard time reading these things. Funny, the cardback takes on a darker hue when the scan shows up on my screen. Holding the actual card next to the image shows quite a contrast. The image onscreen is waaay easier to read.

1963 Topps '62 World Series subset Game #6

That's Pierce out there working in the Candlestick Park wind, mowing down Yankees left and right. In Game Six the Giants were against the wall trailing the Series three games to two and they called on Pierce to even it up. Which he did. He had lost Game Three in Yankee Stadium despite a fine effort through six innings (see this post from last week for details). Back for his second try Pierce didn't disappoint as he scattered three hits in the 5-2 win. Pierce was perfect until Roger Maris touched him for a homer with one out in the fifth. The Yanks collected their second run in the eighth on a Clete Boyer double and Tony Kubek single.

Even with a rested bullpen Alvin Dark kept Pierce in the game and he was rewarded as Pierce retired Bobby Richardson to end the threat and in the ninth he got Tommy Tresh and Mickey Mantle on flyouts and whiffed Maris to send the Series to a Seventh Game.

For about $5 shipped I was glad to add these two cards as I close in on finishing my Billy Pierce collection.

And finally, a late edition to the collection that was waiting for me when I got back home on Sunday night. The 1962 Post Billy Pierce. I nabbed this as part of a small lot that included a couple others that I'm shipping off to someone who may like them. The Post cards from the early 60s bring back some good memories for me. I collected these with a fervor back then. I made sure I went on my mother's grocery trips so I could have 'input' on which boxes we bought. But I'd never have as many as a family down the end of the block that had about five boys and went through cereal boxes like there was no tomorrow. Those kids had Post Cereal cards to burn.

Hello Birmingham!

As this gets published we are in Birmingham, Alabama to watch the Houston-Vanderbilt bowl game, whatever the hell it's called.

This is a Houston Cougar mascot manu-patch or something. I don't collect stuff like this normally but hey, it's different, it's my Cougars' mascot, and it was cheap.

Over the last two years I've gotten to know Houston coach Tony Levine a bit. He's really a class guy and I'm proud as hell to have him leading my school's football program. With a new stadium opening this coming fall, a true freshman QB having that year of experience now and lots of returning lettermen I'm looking forward to both today's game here at Legion Field and especially the 2014 edition of the Cougars.