1958 Topps Sport Magazine All Stars, National League edition

And the other shoe drops today. Here's the '58 Topps National League Squad as selected by Sport Magazine.

Manager Fred Haney appeared yesterday and we don't want him to get a swelled head so we will skip right to the players, and what a crew it is:

That outfield! Robby, Willie and the Hammer. I wouldn't care who you had, if that was my outfield I'd beat you 75% of the time. 

And there are three more Hall of Famers on the infield. Add in Warren Spahn and you have 7 of 10 guys who have a plaque in Cooperstown. Really hard to pick a favorite card out of the NL group. I tend to favor the Stan Musial. It's different than any of the others and Musial has that nice guy smile that I always associate him with.  

Of the eleven Hall of Famers in the complete subset I missed seeing two in person, Musial and Ted Williams. Musial retired after the '63 season and I'm pretty sure I never saw him play in person. The few Mets' games I saw in the Polo Grounds were against the Giants and Dodgers. Williams played through 1960 and, while I saw the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium in the early 60s, I don't think it was before Williams was gone.

I like the Spahn card almost as much as the Musial. There really is no such thing as a non-cool Spahn card. He's all angles and crooked lines and almost always in the classic Braves uni.

This was a fun subset to chase (after I finally had the Mantle in hand!). The rest were easy to find and not very costly. To my eye they are the best part of the '58 Topps set. Now I am free to chase Baltimore Colt cards for awhile. When I get back to Topps subsets I think I'll look to finish one or two others of the 1960 and 1961 subsets that I like, the '61 MVPs or the '60 rookie sets are possibilities.

1958 Topps Sport Magazine All Stars, American League edition

I finally finished off the AL All Star subset by 'finding' Luis Aparicio. He'd been MIA for a week or so but he turned himself in on Monday night.

There are ten players in each league's set of All Stars so I scanned the position players and then the two pitchers. They'd have looked better presented in 'nine pocket sheet' style but whatcha going to do?

First the manager, the Ol' Perfessor (and his NL friend, Fred Haney)

And the players:

And finally, the pitchers:

My favorite is the Mickey Mantle but I sure like the Jackie Jensen card as well. The Mantle was a card I worked very hard to get, bidding on many of them before I hit on one at a decent price in a condition I could live with. Jensen was a guy I casually collected but didn't know a lot about until I dug into his backstory. I touched on it briefly on my '59 Topps blog.

Tomorrow I'll show the National League All Stars.

Odd Things

I just found out on Monday that there is something called the 'Golden Age' Hall of Fame ballot. Ten former players (and an exec I think) are up for election. The names include Dick Allen, Tony Oliva and more. Billy Pierce is also among the nominated players. 

While it would be cool for him to make the Hall I have no expectations of him doing so. To be honest I'm in the 'too many guys get in now' camp. But that's a thought for another day. 

I recently picked up my second 1980 Marchant Exhibit card. These are reprints of the original 'arcade' Exhibits and I discussed them a few weeks ago.

They come in three colors, a 'rainbow' as it were, and I have the red and blue tinted ones now. I need the sepia one. Funny thing is the original Pierce Exhibits are much more plentiful than Marchant's reprints.

I found a listing on eBay for Marchant Exhibit Ernie Banks cards and the photo showed a Banks 'rainbow'. The seller calls them Sepia, blue and brown. That means either the 'brown' is what I've seen called 'red' or there is another color in the 'rainbow'.

The Pierce was part of a two part eBay 'lot' which included this Jimmy Piersall. They cost me $2 total and I was happy to pick up the Piersall. He's quite a story.

Finally here's an oddball Pierce item I found while searching for something else. The stadium cup was listed as a 1996 item. Billy shares the side of the cup with Minnie Minoso and Sherm Lollar. 

Monday Morning Quarterback #37 Chris Weinke 2002 Fleer Ultra

In this ongoing series of posts I am going to feature cards from my fantasy football player collection, specifically the 117 quarterbacks I've had on my team's roster since 1980. I have one selected card for each player in my All-Time Flyers binder. Through the years I've tried to use as many different card varieties as possible while holding on to my preference which is: a card issued in a year I owned the player showing him in the proper team uni in a vertical format. Card availability and my whims have had a big impact on that standard as we will see. 

NFL Info: Chris Weinke spent six seasons playing baseball in the Blue Jays' organization before enrolling at Florida State and playing quarterback there. He won a National Championship and a Heisman and then was drafted in 2001 by the Panters. He served mostly as a backup to Jake Delhomme and spent his final NFL season with the 49ers in 2007. He has worked in the financial arena and co-owns a football camp.

Fantasy Impact: In a word...none. I picked him up on waivers in 2003 immediately after the draft as a 'handcuff' for Jake Delhomme but dropped him after Week One of the season. Why I bothered with him in the first place is a mystery to me now. I drafted four QBs in that draft. Greedy I guess.

The Card: Not bad at all actually. I like the front photo and design in general. I might have done something different with the player name/team helmet area. I'd try deleting the blue element and using the team logo instead of the helmet but all-in-all I'm good with it. The back has what a card back requires, a different photo of the player, career stats (Weinke had only one year to list), his vitals and a short highlight blurb. I've certainly seen worse cards in this era.

1958 Topps All Star Ernie Banks

This is the final card of the '58 Topps All Star subset that I was lacking. I actually picked it up right after the Aparicio but Luis has apparently decided that being scanned isn't a priority and has squirreled himself away someplace on, under or behind my desk. He'll turn up while I'm looking for something else.

Meanwhile Ernie Banks, one of the most universally popular players of his era, is here to entertain and inform. I looked at the stats on the back of his card and noted that of his 43 homers in 1957, 11 came against the Dodgers. And a nearly equal percentage of his RBIs came against the Bums. I suppose that would make sense given the homer total. I went to Baseball Reference and checked Banks' home run log. In '57 he hit two homers off both Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale and twice he victimized Brooklyn with three homers in the course of two days.

He hit 64 of his 503 career dingers against the Dodgers. Interestingly he not only tearted Koufax and Drysdale equally in '57 but he hit seven homers off both Koufax and Drysdale over their careers. Here is the team by team breakdown:

   11 Opponents   
Phi---82
Mil/Atl--71
StL---64
Bro/LA---64
Cin---61
NYG/SF---58
Pit---57
Hou---26
NYM---23
SD---5
Mon---1

His most victimized pitcher played for his most victimized team. Banks had 15 homers against Robin Roberts.

It took me a while to find this Banks because I was determined not to pay more for his card than I did the Mays card. I finally gave in and spent $9 to reel this one in. It was graded and slabbed but I freed him up immediately. 

This is the last baseball subset I'll chase for awhile. I'm going to concentrate my time and funds on my Baltimore Colts project. I already started with a COMC purchase of some 1970 Colts that should land here next week.

A Blogging Perk

What appears to be a routine 1957 Topps card of Cardinal righty Willard Schmidt actually means more to me than that. Ol' Willard has a card in the '59 Topps set and while researching his background for my '59 set blog I discovered that his great-nephew, Jim Schmidt, lived in Houston and was a fellow blogger. But his writing was much more serious than mine. Jim works as a chemist but is also an author with a deep interest in the area of Civil War medicine.

I reached out to Jim and he turned out to be a really good guy. He pointed me towards a couple of his blog posts that touched on his great-uncle. Jim lived in Houston at the time but has since moved to Kansas. I'm not a 'Civil War buff' in the usual sense of the term but I've always been interested in it and more particularly Abraham Lincoln. I have read his book on Galveston Texas' role in the Civil War (fascinating stuff) and some other things he has written. I have another of his books on a shelf in my reading queue.

I regret that I wasn't able to get to any of the forum/discussions that Jim was featured at in the Houston area before he moved. But through the magic of Facebook (this is FB's only redeeming value IMO) I've been able to keep in touch with him. One of these days I hope to get together with him and talk baseball, Willard Schmidt and the Civil War. I'll let Jim lead the discussion of medicine!

I'd been meaning to pick up the '57 Willard Schmidt card for quite some time but I didn't get around to it until last month. And while it's not as cool as the terrific '59 it's still a neat card with Schmidt in the classic Cardinals' gear at the Polo Grounds. And like his '59 card this one has a nice Topps cartoon on the reverse.

So not only do I have a budding 'Willard Schmidt collection', I also have a friend. Blogging can be a cool deal, yes?

1958 Topps Willie Mays All Star

This is the next to the last '58 All Star card I needed to finish off the subset. It is one of the more affordable vintage Mays cards around and if you are not particular about condition you can score one very cheap.

Again, the back is fun to browse. Except for the Pirates Mays knocked around everyone in the NL in 1957. He had seven extra base hits against the Bucs and the Phils but was in double digits against everyone else.

Isn't that a neat write-up as well?