Five Card Stud

Robert of $30 A Week Habit sent folks five cards. All we had to do is write a 100 word post about them. Here goes....

'59 style Topps Bill Russell. Love Russell. Love pink cards. Love '59 Topps. Fun card!

'75 Dan Dierdorf. Vintage football cards are cool things. That helmet logo bites though. LOL

Arian Foster. Shiny chromified 2011 card. Cool card, odd guy. Goes in my Texans binder.

Rod Gilbert. My first hockey hero! Great skater, wicked shot. The GAG Line, Goal A Game. Gilbert, Nevin, Ratelle. They were awesome!

100 words, on the nose. Thanks so much, Robert!

40 Years Ago Today

On September 24, 1974 one of my favorite non-Orioles players reached a milestone in a way that showed great symmetry (or great something).

Baltimore native and Hall of Famer Al Kaline got his 3,000th hit that night in Baltimore Memorial Stadium off Orioles starter Dave McNally. It was a double into the right field corner for Kaline, the first of two hits he got that night while serving as the Tigers' DH.

The Orioles won the game 5-4 with a bottom of the eight 2-run rally. Reliever Bob Reynolds got the win with two and a third innings of one hit ball. The O's finished the night a half game ahead of the Yankees and won the Eastern Division that year by two games and then lost the AL title to the A's.

Kaline has four cards in the 1959 Topps set. His base card is my favorite:

He is featured on one of the Baseball Thrills subset cards:

A hideously ugly pink and red combo card with Yankee killer and my Dad's least favorite player, Charlie Maxwell:

And a The Sporting News All Star Selection card.

This post is both a tribute to one of the greats of the game and one final plug for $30 a Week Habit's 'best set' tournament. It's a close contest at the moment with this '59 set slightly ahead of the '74 in the finals so your vote may tip the scales one way or another.

In another bit of symmetry here is my 1974 Topps Dave McNally.

Go vote!

Al Capone Sez.......

I thought I'd throw in a plug for $30 a Week Habit's Topps set tournament which has reached the finals. The last two sets standing are two of my very favorites, the 1974 and the 1959.

I love the fact that the color scheme of the '74 Orioles cards matches the teams' colors. That's not true for all the teams in the set but the O's are the only one I care about. In binder sheets the O's team set looks very sweet. 

I have a few '74 Orioles scanned from other posts and here they are:

It's really a great design with some fine photo choices. If it wins I'm not going to complain.

But the other contender, the Topps 1959 set, is very close to my heart. I put a lot of blood, sweat and tears, not to mention coin, into building and blogging it over the course of several years. I've mentioned several times previously that the 1958 Topps cards are the first ones I can remember seeing in person. A kid (a girl!) in my neighborhood had a stack of them that summer and all the rest of us little knuckleheads were mesmerized by them. The 1960 is the first set I tried to collect for myself although I had to rely on the generosity of my parents and grandparents for pack purchases so I never came close to finishing it. For sentimental reasons it's still my favorite Topps set.

But 1959 Topps baseball cards were the first ones I ever held in my hand and could say they were mine. And the set is about as fun as a set can be. I discovered so many great stories while researching my posts and I really came to love so many of the cards. Here are a few of my favorites:

Bob Shaw's card reminds me of spending Sunday afternoons with my Dad watching Yankee doubleheaders.

Not only is Willard Schmidt's card just plain gorgeous with the color combo and the black frame but when I posted it I came in contact with several of his family members, one of which, his nephew, has become a friend.

Then there the superstar cards that I value a lot:

The Mickey Mantle, a key to the set obviously. I was happy to get it for $100. I bet I bid on 25 of these while trying to get a decent example within my budget before I won this one.

The Bob Gibson rookie card which is one of, if not the only, '59 Topps that has survived from coming straight out of a pack into my grubby hands in 1959. And it looks it.

So get on over to Robert's blog and cast your vote for your preference. He's going to put together the set that wins. I won't try to influence you either way other than to note that I can give him a nice boost if the '59 wins. Just sayin'.