Happy Presidents Day

If you have the day off I hope you are enjoying it. Here are a few presidential items I have in my collection.

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'58 All Star Program

I thought that the 1958 All Star Game program I bought at the recent TriStar show was worth a closer look. I'm just going to post some highlights rather than very page. I don't want anyone nodding off while I indulge my love for old publications!

As with so many of these types of vintage items the cover is the best thing about it. I have a hunch that the player/ump illustration was based on a photo. I tried to find the original picture via Google and Getty Images with no luck. Of course it likely wasn't originally a shot of an Oriole player sliding to tracking it down was a dead end from the start.

The covers shown were scanned but the inside pages are pics I took. I learned the hard way that pressing these vintage paper pieces onto a scanner platen is a mistake. 

Commish Ford Frick welcomes us to the '58 ASG with an inspirational message. I hadn't realized that this was the 25th annual game. There was no ASG in 1945. '58 was the last of the 'one game' All Star breaks for awhile. From 1959 thru 1961 they played two each year.

The old ads in these can be a hoot. Check out the one for Alan Ameche's place. I could go for a Powerhouse burger myself right about now.

The longest feature on the book was this article on the first ASG.

Cameos of the managers. They had faced off in the '57 World Series and would do so again that fall.

Bob Maisel was a legend in Baltimore baseball writing. His father Fritz was a player for the Yankees and Browns.

Unlike modern programs the ones back in the day were published locally and very close to the game. That meant you would find the actual elected squads pictured. The AL lineup had a local guy, Gus Triandos.

The original owner of the program kept score! It wasn't as hard to score an ASG back them. Managers didn't feel the need to sub in every player available.  It's hard to see in the pic but the scorer listed Al Kaline as entering the game for the NL(!) in the 9th. I thought it was just his/her quirky way of noting subs but you can see that Lee Walls was entered correctly.

BTW...if you check the entry for this game on Baseball Reference you'll see that Haney only used three position players from his bench.

This NL starting group was pretty stout! In all there were 9 future Hall of Famers in the starting lineups.

All the reserves got a photo included on a page similar to this one. Hey, I spy Billy Pierce!

This is a nice way to fill a page. "Hall of Fame Candidates" indeed!

Some of the NL reserves. Spahnie got the start making him the 9th Hall guy.

Old fashioned line scores and batteries from the previous 24 ASGs bring up the rear of the program.

Check out the Rolex featured in the Stieff Company ad. Only $125 for a Rolie! Plus the band of course. I'm from Baltimore but I don't remember the Stieff Company being a big thing. Seems it was.

And finally the back cover presented by Gunther Beer! Now Gunther I remember. Their ad was on top of the old scoreboard at Memorial Stadium. The company is long gone but the brewery was made into a fancy apartment building.

Ernie Harwell was in his fifth year as an Orioles broadcaster. He moved on to the Tigers after the 1959 season. Herb Carnel was in his second season as Harwell's partner. He stayed through the beginning of Chuck Thompson's time as lead man in the Orioles booth.

In addition to this '58 program I picked up yhe '93 issue. I may post that soon. Much bigger and fancier but it can't compare to the '58 in nostalgic charm.

The Best Thing About Card Shows....

...is enjoying them with friends, both old and new. I hit up the TriStar show here in Houston this past weekend. I thought it was one of the better shows they've had in awhile. That may be because there didn't seem to be the huge autograph lines that I've encountered in the past. Mostly I think it was the quality of the dealers in attendance.

And I mentioned friends. I met up with Bru who pens the entertaining Remember The Astrodome blog. Great guy and I enjoyed talking collections as we walked. If you check his latest blog entries you'll see he did pretty well at the show. Local collectors like him had a real bonanza of Astros 'stuff'' to drool over. Winning a title does that. I'd like to hit a Baltimore area show one day. I'd probably go broke.

I also bumped into one of oldest friends. Bobby has by far the best collection of vintage cards I've ever seen. He's considering selling off a chuck of it and it was fun to watch the dealers go bug-eyed when he showed them what he had in his case.

As for me..well this was one of those rare shows that I left without having bought a single baseball card. But I did end up with this:

I've had this 1958 All Star program on my want list for many years. I never seemed to be able to find on in decent condition with a price tag I could live with. One of the show dealers had a terrific variety of vintage publications, and what a display it was. I paid dearly for this but he also had a '93 ASG program so I made him an offer on the pair. He accepted without counter-offering which makes me think I could have gone lower but it was worth the cost.

Both programs came with ticket stubs from the games. Pretty good selling point!

I'm going to do a separate post on the '58 program so I'll save the details for that one. But there was more at the show than just programs.....

Bro surprised me with a sweet 8x10 of Milt Pappas. My collection of Orioles photos needs to see the light of day so Bru's gift (he got it in a lot of pics at an estate sale) inspired me to snag a box of binder pages for them. One of my retirement projects is to organize my photos. I love the fact that this one was taken at Yankee Stadium where I saw so many Orioles games as a kid. That's Herm Starrette in the background.

Next to the programs my biggest purchase was a stack of '70/'71 Topps basketball cards. One dealer had multiples of most every common and some SPs in wonderful condition. His prices were reasonable so I knocked about 50 cards from my wantlist.

It's a weird and wonderful set full of odd poses, reversed jerseys,dopey expressions and tons of color. I love it. I'll just post a handful here.

Jim Barnes as an Olympic gold medal winner with the US team in 1964 and led an interesting if somewhat tragic life.

He bounced around the NBA and carried with him the nickname of 'Bad News'. I love that Topps used it for his cartoon in this set.

Here's a closer look:

Nate Thurmond may be the most overlooked star in NBA history. He could flat out play. When I was coaching my sons in youth basketball one of the opposing coaches came over after a game and said "Your big boy rebounds like Nate Thurmond!" When he said that I knew the guy knew his hoops.

This is one crazy card though. 

Gus Johnson was a fun guy to watch. He played for the Bullets when I was a fan of the club and would fly down the key and rattle the rim with slams. He was like Connie Hawkins with a bit less 'flash'.

And again Topps did a great job with the cartoon.

Behold! "Gus has a gold tooth."

Topps also threw in actual un-retouched photos like this one. Like I said, a weird set!

I also came one card closer to finishing off my 1972 Icee Bear NBA set. The Hawk looking very badass.

My last purchase was a spur of the moment thing. One of the bigger private signing outfits always has a large table at TriStar shows and sometimes sells off excess merchandise at good prices. I have a rather tattered copy of the actual SI cover but I wanted this Big E signed photo-copy for the UH wall in my home office.

I like the big card shows but they are hard on my hip and back. I'm looking forward to the upcoming small hotel shows. I'm sure I won't leave the next one of those without at least one baseball card!

The Mick

That's a 1998 Fleer Tradition Mickey Mantle. I'm not a Yankees fan and I don't collect Mantle but isn't it a gorgeous card? This came my way as a 'bonus' from an eBay dealer who botched an order. He made good on the cards I'd paid for and included a couple of extras which I appreciated. Nothing valuable but nice cards nonetheless.

I scanned this one and was saving it for when I had nothing else ready to go. I'm in the middle of a couple of projects and I'm behind in my scanning (the past weekend's TriStar show didn't help me catch up) so tonite is Mickey Mantle Night here at the ol' 5 Tool blog.

Fleer sure packed a lot of tiny type onto the back of this one.

Let's Go Rangers

As this gets posted I'm on my way to Dallas to watch my New York Rangers take on the Stars tonight. Normally this would be one of the great events of the year. I've made this trip every year since the Stars arrived in North Texas.

But this year is going to be different. The Rangers are playing HORRIBLY lately and I see no end to the death spiral they are in. Normally my wife or my sons go with me but the schedule didn't work out for my guys and my wife is buried under her contract work this week. 

Wednesday Edit:

Well, best laid plans and so forth...I woke up Monday morning with the flu (Influenza Strain B to be exact). I never made it to Dallas or any farther than the Redi Clinic and pharmacy for that matter. I was able to cancel the post using my phone which is a minor miracle. But I had these cards on the post so I'll leave them right here.

And the Rangers' death spiral continues, tonite a 6-1 loss to the Bruins! At home no less. In 1970 losing 6-1 to the Bruins at home would have had me in a very dark place. But the Rangers and Bruins are no longer mortal enemies. (I've never lost the animus but most everyone else has apparently). 

So tonite it's just another crap performance in a string of them for my guys.

Here are two Rangers cards about which I can't think of anything positive to say tonite other than they are nice cards.

And last night my wife asked me how the Rangers did on Monday. When I told her they lost 2-1 to the Stars she said...and this is a direct quote..."So you didn't miss anything!" She doesn't really 'get' sports.

That Salada goodness

I've been fighting a bug for the last few days and haven't had much energy so I dug through my scan folder for something to post. (Tell me you've never done that).

I picked these Salada coins up off eBay a few weeks ago. I really only wanted a Colts example for my Baltimore Colts collection but Ol' Milt called out to me so I added him to my cart and checked out. These were issued from 1962 through 1963. I believe both of these are '63 vintage. A 'parallel' set of the baseball coins as well as hockey versions were available in Canada under the 'Shirriff' brand name at roughly the same time (and later that decade). I have the Salada Billy Pierce but the Shirriff one has proved to be elusive.

Jimmy Orr was a big deal in Baltimore during his 10 seasons there (then again every Colt was a big deal to Charm City fans). He always seemed to be catching TD passes from John Unitas in the right-hand corner of the endzone of Memorial Stadium's south end. That corner was dubbed 'Orrsville'. 

And with the Super Bowl coming up tomorrow it's appropriate (though painful for me) to note an infamous moment of Colts' lore. From Wikipedia:

Orr is known for his part in a play in Super Bowl III against the New York Jets. On the last play of the first half, Colt quarterback Earl Morrall handed off to Tom Matte, who threw a lateral back to Morrall in a flea-flicker play. Orr was wide open and waving in the end zone, but Morrall did not see him (perhaps because Orr was camouflaged by a backdrop of uniformed band members outlining the end zone). Videos of the play reveal that on an otherwise overcast day, the sun mysteriously came out just before the play, and shone directly into Morrall's face, while Orr was downfield in the shadows. Morrall threw instead to fullback Jerry Hill, but the ball was intercepted by New York Jets safety Jim Hudson.

I loved Milt Pappas before he was traded to the Reds for Frank Robinson in December of 1965. I was kind of disappointed that he was gone. But I got over it. 

As noted on the reverse of these coins they came in packages of Salada Tea and Junket desserts. I don't recall having either product in our home growing up. I do remember hearing and seeing commercials for Junket Rennet Custard. I had no idea what that was and didn't until a few minutes ago when Google enlightened me. Apparently the same company that now owns the rights to that name also owns the rights to the Salada Tea brand. Whatever.