Card Show Sig..... Ernest Givins

At the TriStar show this past weekend the usual array of high priced autograph guests were brought in. I'll spare you my rant about the nearly $200 price tag on a Roger Clemens signature but needless to say I didn't pony up for any of them, not even the $35 to be photographed with some skanky fake wrestling bimbo diva.

I did however take advantage of the fact that former Houston Oiler wideout Ernest Givins had a table out among the dealers and was selling photos and such that he was signing. A quick phone app check of my fantasy football database (Dropbox is awesome) showed me that I had Givens on my team three different times. So I walked over, selected a picture and asked him if he'd inscribe it with that info.

He laughed about it and asked me why I had drafted him so often. Then after he'd signed the photo he said "You missed my best seasons!". As I expected he turned out to be a very nice guy. The small fee for his photo and sig made for a much more memorable moment than the time a Hall of Famer whose name I won't mention signed my baseball at a show and then rolled it back across the table to me without looking up.

Cheap Vintage!

I actually came away from the TriStar show last weekend with some baseball cards, I mean besides those I got for a couple of peoples wants. I guy had small 'bricks' of vintage cards marked at $1 and $2 and they were listed as having Hall of Famers and 'stars'. Hey, for a buck or two you really can't go wrong.

I picked up a couple. This bunch is from a package of twenty 1983 Topps cards that cost one dollar. I have about a dozen of the Murray already but I grabbed the brick anyway. Just because he's such a badass. I felt it my moral obligation to buy a dollar brick with Murray on top.

Then there's Joe Morgan as a Giant. He played the game the right way. He broadcast it the wrong way.

I like this Blyleven card. You get the bearded and the un-bearded Bert B. Every time I see him on a card I think of an interview I heard on the Sirius baseball channel a few years ago. He was campaigning HARD for Hall votes.

Powder blue was big back then.

Phil Niekro. He's still in the majors, right?

Smiling Gary Carter. I miss the Expos. Tuesday was the third anniversary of The Kid's passing.

I wish Fisk had played with the White Sox during a different uniform era for that club.

Palmer only looks marginally different now than he did in 1965.


The other bunch of cards I nabbed were 1978 Topps. There were thirty in this brick and they went for $2. The cards were not as nice as the '83 package either in condition or 'star power' but they were well worth the price.

Don Sutton All Star. Four years into the future, on the last day of the '82 season, Earl Weaver's last game, Don Sutton broke my heart.

Ted Simmons, a.k.a Simba. I don't think he ever got his due. He was a really good ballplayer.

There were quite few non-stars in this bunch but Biff Pocaroba at least had a cool name. I think he's looking over at Bobby Cox and wondering when the manager is coming out to lift this old Niekro guy.

The '77 Mets as seen on their '78 team card. My all time favorite Met, Ed Kranepool, is in the center on the row behind the guys sitting on the grass. To the left of him is Joe Torre. I forget about his time with the Mets. Jerry Grote is to the left of Torre. Another '69 Champ leftover. Lee Mazilli, Bud Harrelson and Bobby Valentine are there someplace. That's quite a few future big league managers.

Larry Parrish finished with the Red Sox and managed the Tigers. I forgotten about those things, too.

Rusty Staub, Le Grand Orange! He was hot stuff for a couple of expansion teams for sure. Posing for a card picture wearing a tucked in windbreaker is so 1978.

Steve Garvey All Star card. I think he's a Hall of Famer. Not enough writers did. I think they just didn't like his persona.

When Bruce Sutter was at the top of his game he seemed un-hitable. I mean really un-hittable. I remember one All Star Game where he was making the AL guys look silly.

If anyone has some needs in completing either of these sets send me your list. I'll be glad to send any I have your way.

Card Show Pick-ups I love the 70s!

I spent Saturday morning at the Tri-Star show in Houston. Pretty typical TriStar show, lots of folks selling new card boxes, plenty of signed memorabilia I could only drool over and a few of the regular guys who put out bargain boxes. Love those bargain boxes!

My own want list has become so specific and esoteric that I didn't even bother to print it out. I kept an eye out for oddball football items in hopes of finding something old and Colts-centric but for the most part it didn't happen.

I did find a table (actually a whole row of tables) belonging to a dealer with box after box after binder after binder of vintage baseball that were priced very reasonably. His stuff attracted plenty of set builders and it took awhile before I was able to commandeer a chair.

I picked up some things for other bloggers and then found some 10 and 25 cent hockey cards that made me smile and 'forced' me to buy them.

Pete LaFramboise played primarily with the California Golden Seals in the early 70s. That's a great head of hair, isn't it?

George Pesut played for a decade in Germany after a short NHL/WHA career. He looks like a Wizard of Oz character I can't quite put my finger on.

Brian Glennie was a hard hitting defenseman for the Leafs for about a decade. He's the only one of the above guys that I've heard of. He looks like he's had a really bad day.

And finally here is Jim Neilson, long time Rangers player. He was a solid D guy and a fan favorite. Somewhere along the line he grew out his hair and quit looking like the rough-and-tumble banger he was. Such is the pull of fashion.

Monday Morning Quarterback #50 Steve Young 1998 Upper Deck

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. 

NFL Info: A lot of people think of Steve Young as a quarterback for the 49ers. They forget (or never knew) that after his days at Brigham Young he played in the USFL and for the Tampa Bay Bucs and a couple of seasons backing up Joe Montana before his 'glory days' in San Francisco.

Wikipedia lists his career records and awards:

NCAA

• Davey O'Brien Award (1983)
• Consensus first-team All-American (1983)
• College Football Hall of Fame inductee (2001)
• NCAA Silver Anniversary Award (2009)
• BYU Cougars #8 retired

NFL

• 7× Pro Bowl selection (1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998)
• 3× AP First-Team All-Pro (1992, 1993, 1994)
• 3× AP Second-Team All-Pro (1995, 1997, 1998)
• UPI Second-Team All-NFC (1996)
• 3× Super Bowl Champion (XXIII, XXIV, XXIX)
• Super Bowl XXIX MVP
• 3× NFC Champion (1988-1989 1994)
• 1992 NFL MVP (AP, PFWA, SN, MX)
• 1994 NFL MVP (AP, PFWA, NEA, SN, MX)
• AP NFL Offensive Player of the Year (1992)
• 2× UPI NFC Player of the Year (1992, 1994)
• 2× Kansas City Committee of 101 NFC
• Offensive Player of the Year (1992, 1994)
• San Francisco 49ers #8 retired
• Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee (2005)

His post-football playing career includes work in philanthropy, private industry and as a talking head on ESPN NFL shows.

Fantasy Impact: I had Young rostered in 1988 (bench, no starts), 1989 (bench, one start and a playoff start which I won) and then again a decade later in 1998. That year he started the maximum number of games for me and helped me make the playoffs. He was outstanding that year, averaging just about three TDs a game.

The Card: Upper Deck had some really nice cards back in the day. I like this one a lot. May be a bit busy design wise but the grey side borders, the clear pictures and full stat section all are good. I don't know if the 'Game Dated' designation marks a subset, a separate set or what. Who knows if the photo is really from the stated date but in any case I like the card.

#walletcard with a trophy

Thursday night at the University of Houston-SMU hoops game they had an introduction of sorts of new Houston football coach Tom Herman. He talked to the crowd at halftime, players were signing posters for kids, that kind of thing.

On the concourse they had the Cougar's bowl game trophy from their heart-stopping win in Ft. Worth over Pitt. I took the opportunity to snap a shot of Brisket Howard basking in the glow of a hard earned win.

Brisket is still sore at me for forgetting to pose him with Andre Ware's Heisman Trophy two weeks ago when it was on display at a booster reception for Houston coaches on National Signing Day. Cool photo-op lost.

1971 Kelloggs' John Unitas

This '71 Unitas is the last one I needed for the small group of '70/'71 Kelloggs cards issued for Baltimore Colts. The 1970 Kelloggs are seen on a previous post. The '71 are a bit harder to find than the 1970 version because they were not available through the mail as they had been a year earlier.

Kelloggs' cards from that era tend to crack and Johnny U. is about as badly cracked as one can get but that made it very cheap and hey, it's Johnny U.! The backs of both editions of the Kelloggs' football cards are crammed with info. What sets the two issues apart for me is the fact that the 1970 cards are much more appealing to me visually. There is 'more picture' on the 1970s since there is no border of stars around it. And the blue helmet is a better choice although that may just be because it looks better to me next to the blue Colts jerseys.

Pretty impressive 'wall of numbers' on the back, no? Until just now it hadn't dawned on me that they don't have the team listed on those yearly stats. Except for the sets that have only the previous year and career totals lines I can't think of an instance where this is the case.

I Miss Earl Weaver

I was adding a Buck Showalter postcard to my managers binder the other day and I got to looking at some of my Earl Weaver cards and postcards. I thought I'd post some just because, well, it's Earl Weaver! With a trip to Spring Training coming soon I'm getting more and more into a 'baseball mode'. 

So here is a little dose of my favorite manager. 

This early 70's team issued postcard shows Earl as I always think of him. 

Some vintage Earl thanks to YouTube
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I've related these stories of having met Earl a few times before but I'll repeat them. The first time was at the baseball winter meetings in Houston in 1973. I had finagled press credentials from the college paper and skipped a week of classes to hang out with all the baseball bigwigs.

The highlight of that week was a press lunch that I attended and sat down at Earl's table. He had some great stories. I brought up an Oriole-Yankee game from 1970 that had been the best regular season game I had ever seen. Earl picked up the game story from me and went on and on about that game. Amazing day indeed.

Some years later I was waiting for my luggage at Hobby Airport here in Houston when a couple of brown tweed bags with embroidered Oriole emblems emerged. I was amazed to see the guy next to me reach for them! I turned and saw it was Earl. I spoke to him and he was genuinely interested in talking to an Oriole fan in Houston. He even remembered (or so he said) the press luncheon discussion from several years before.