Oddball Orioles Stuff #7

I took advantage of today's Houston area "Ice Shutdown" to organize my publications. With a memorabilia show this weekend I plan to poke around and maybe fill in some missing slots in my collection. There are not many dealers who travel to these shows carrying programs and yearbooks but I usually find a couple.

I made a spreadsheet that lists my Orioles, Baltimore Colts, New York Rangers, Texans and University of Houston publications so I can see what I'm lacking. Maybe I can avoid my past problems that have led me to own a dozen 1966 Orioles game scorecard/programs and similar foolishness.

Going through my shelves I came across this 45 RPM record, Orioles Magic. I have no idea where I got it, or when, but I could vaguely remember the tune. I don't have a turntable handy but I was surprised to find the song on YouTube. The videos are below.

The scan up top shows the side with the 'vocals' version, the flip side is instrumental.

Here are blow-ups of the pertinent label details:

And the record sleeve:

Finally, a couple vids using the song. The first is a tribute to Orioles stars, the second uses actual birds and was assembled by Baltimore's National Aquarium. 

Heeeeey...Get your Pink Thing.....Get your Pink Thing here!!

I used to make it up to the old Arlington Stadium a couple of times a year to catch the Orioles as they rolled through North Texas to play the Rangers. Those were fun trips. I had college friends who lived up there so I always had a place to stay if I wanted it and sometimes I scored free tickets (great seats, too). But usually I'd head up with John, a fellow Orioles fan/collector who I met at Houston card shops and became great friends with over the years. He had a black Pontiac Firebird and drove like a madman but somehow always avoided getting a ticket. Considering how many radar units would hang out on I-45 between Houston and Dallas that's nothing short of a miracle.

Games up there were always fun. I saw some of the most ominous storm clouds I can remember rolling across the skies over Arlington Stadium. I only recall a couple of rain-outs though. Behind home plate the screen extended straight up and it lacked the usual section that angles back over the top of the seats behind home plate. Foul balls hit straight back would frequently hit the wall behind those seats and ricochet down into them with tremendous velocity. Seasoned Arlington Stadium goers who sat behind the plate knew they had to instantly 'duck and cover' when a batter nicked one back over the screen. You knew the rookies. They were the ones who turned to see where the ball was going. Ouch!

You could take your own beer into the stadium in those round thermos jugs like this one:

A stop at 7-11 on the way to the ballpark for a couple of quarts of Miller High Life or Coors was always on the to-do list. One of the many unique things about Arlington Stadium was a frozen ice cream novelty that vendors sold in the seats which was called a 'Pink Thing'. I never got one but they were pretty popular. Turns out they were unique to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area and mainly associated with the Six Flags Over Texas amusement park. That makes sense since Six Flags was literally next to the stadium.

We liked to get to the park early and hang out in the lot between the stadium and the nearby hotel which was where the Orioles (and other visiting clubs I suppose) stayed. Players would walk through the lot and were easy pickings for autograph hunters (of which John was one for sure). That's also the lot in which I heard Eddie Murray speak for the first time. Up until the moment he answered John's request for a signature with an "OK, but just one" I had been nearly convinced that he was a mute.

All of this is a long roundabout way of getting to the card I posted up top. That's a pink Jared Crick chromey, shiny-type Topps card. I collect pink cards, I'm a Texans season ticket holder and Nebraska is my son's school so the card was a nice pick-up.

Here's a picture of the Pink Thing ice cream 'treat' from the link above. And yes, that's exactly how I remember it. Looks pretty nasty.

A Koufax and a Jensen by Bob Lemke

I've mentioned before that if you don't regularly read Bob Lemke's Blog you are missing out. He has a long history in the hobby having worked as editor and publisher of the sportscards and memorabilia periodicals and books at Krause Publications as the editor of the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards. 

Bob's posts mix sports history, vintage cards and his own 'homebrew' cards. His cards are very high quality and calling them 'homebrew' is probably a disservice. Bob doesn't cut any corners and the attention to detail is pretty impressive. 

After deciding not to make the cards available to collectors for awhile Bob has (thankfully) reversed course recently and put them up for sale once again. "Cards that never were" may not be your thing but I enjoy Bob's work and have made a couple of purchases. The latest one brought me the '57 Topps-style Koufax seen above. 

He used a great photo of Sandy with the Ebbets Field scoreboard in the background. He discusses that card some in this blog entry. I have previously purchased two other of his Koufax cards and posted them on this blog.

Another card I obtained in my recent purchase was this 1960 Topps-style Jackie Jensen. The more I researched Jensen for my '59 Topps Blog the more interesting he became to me and I started a small PC. I am happy to add this one. I love the 1960 Topps set as it was the first set I actively collected pack by pack. 

And the 1960 card back design (and color scheme) is my absolute favorite. The cards with the 'Season's Highlights' fascinated me back in the day. Bob's '60 Jensen is a fabulous card.

Hard to imagine a guy retiring just a season removed from an MVP Award and back-to-back RBI titles. But that was Jensen. He attempted a comeback in 1961 and he had a Topps card that year but he was not in the 1960 set. Bob explores Jensen's career and his new card in these posts. 

I picked up another card in this batch but I'll save that for another post.

One Step Closer

I recently came a bit closer to completing my BALTIMORE COLTS Press/Media Guide collection by adding this 1955 edition. It's really in outstanding shape, better than the scan of the cover makes it appear. For some reason the shiny silver material reflects the light in such a way that the thing looks crumbled. That's kind of weird, it looks so much better in person. It's so nice I was not afraid to flatten it out to scan it as I would be with some of my other guides which are in more delicate condition.

Anyway, here is a peek inside:
Inside the front cover we see Ernie Harwell and Chuck Thompson. Two of the greatest announcers ever. Ernie of course gained fame as the Voice of the Tigers but most forget he was in Baltimore for years doing Orioles and Colts games. And Chuck Thompson, well he is Baltimore to me in so many ways.

The Colts were an All-America franchise before they were in the NFL. This two page spread tells some of that story and features the team's fight song.

Yes, I said fight song.

Personnel pages follow.....

That office secretary, hubba hubba

Lots of stats. I found it interesting that they included sections for the team's days in the AAFC. And they pointed out the best performances from that league.

Several pages of player bios. I love the helmets without facemasks. Some players on this club went on to fame with the Colts' championship teams that came a few years down the road.... Ameche, Berry, Donovan, Dupree among them.

The team roster takes up the centerfold. I had never heard of Frank McDonald yet he came from Nutley, N.J. where I spent most of my growing-up years (edit: it turns out McDonald was an All American from Miami U. and was cut by the Colts late in training camp). Alex Esquivel from Mexico Sity College? His bio (above) says he was the first NFL player drafted out of Mexico. He was a 24th(!) round pick in 1955. A bit of Googling on Esquivel showed he was actually from Alvin, Texas (not far down the road from me) and went to Mexico City College on a scholarship, and after football settled in Montebello, California where he was honored at the age of 71 for his civic contributions.  

There are a couple of pages devoted to ancillary groups like the Colt Marching Band and cheerleaders.

 Back cover... first one in my collection that has a stamp and addressee like this one. Harold Weissman served as the Mets' PR Director after his sports-writing days at the New York Mirror.  

Adding this leaves me four short of a complete run of the Colts' NFL guides from 1953 when they were reinstated as a league member until 1982 after which dipshit drunk lying asshole gutless Robert Irsay stole out of town in the middle of the night taking my team with him. I lack '56 through '58 and oddly, the 1977 guide. I never see the '77 for sale anywhere but it'll pop up sooner or later.

The Colts played in the AAC until 1949 and there are guides from that franchise but I don't have plans to collect those. They played in the NFL in 1950 before the franchise went belly-up and remained inactive for two seasons before cranking up again in 1953.

There is a 1950 Colts Press Guide from their first year in the NFL but it's very rare and close to being out of my price range and I don't have it on my wantlist. There is one on eBay with the seller asking $250. Maybe some day.

Robert Irsay R.I.H

Not 'Selfies", these are 'Shelfies'!

I'll leave the pouty faces to teenage girls and silly baby memes and post a couple of pics of what's currently on the walls on my home office. I guess you can click the pics to view them bigger.

Up top, my replica Orioles game give-away bronze statues. From left: Jim Palmer, Earl Weaver, Eddie Murray, Frank Robinson and Brooks Robinson. The Cal Ripken is on it's way via an eBay win. I had waited that one out because the prices were too high. I finally found one for a reasonable price.

The pennant is one I picked up in Cooperstown at the Hall of Fame shop years ago, It's one of those nice heavy felt embroidered ones that commemorates the 1966 Series. The date is behind Frank in the picture and you can't really get a feel for the quality of the thing in a picture.

I rotate my bobbleheads as the mood strikes and here is what currently sits on the shelf. From left: 'Lil Red' the Nebraska mascot, both of my Sandy Koufax bobbles, Cal Ripken, a Gold Glove commemorative Brooks Robinson, Guy V. Lewis, Frank Robinson (as a Red), Johnny U., a very sweet ceramic S.A.M. Brooks Robinson bobble, Jim Palmer and Shasta, the Houston mascot.

I had a Jim Palmer S.A.M. ceramic at one time. They are really high quality and I bought them for my boys who are named for those two Oriole stars. Sadly my Jim knocked the ceramic Jim off my desk and into 10,000 pieces not long after I bought him. That's what I get for letting clumsy pre-teens get near my 'stuff'.

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.