Dexter Press Andy Etchebarren.

A year ago I was in the process of pulling things from old binders, especially those that had some ancient PVC-laden 2 & 4 pocket sheets that held many of my postcards and 5x7's. This post from last April documented that only one item had been damaged by those nasty pages, an Andy Etchebarren Dexter Press postcard. I love all the Dexter Press items. I think they are beautiful and unique. So I was determined to find a replacement for my Etchbarren postcard.

I have a saved search on eBay for 'Dexter Etchebarren' forgetting that he also had a 5 x 7 photo issued. Early one morning before I had my coffee I got the email alert that there was an Etchebarren Dexter Press item available so I immediately put in a bid. I won and was pretty happy until the envelope arrived and I realized that I had bid on a signed 5 x 7 rather than the postcard. I already had a 5 x 7.

Oh well, at 6 bucks it was far from being my most costly eBay mistake. And then I saw a Certificate of Authenticity in the envelope and looked again at the pic and saw it was signed.

Now I'm as skeptical as the next guy about COA's but hey, who the hell would bother faking an Andy Etchebarren signature? So there you go. It turned out to be not as bad of a screw-up as I thought it was. But I still need to remember that bidding before I get off the edge of the bed is usually a mistake.  

If you didn't click the first link here is the item I am actually trying to replace:

Fuji's H-Town Takeover

I got a great manila envelope from Fuji a week or so ago. He always sends some cool stuff. He sent cards that hit a bunch of my collecting habits. The two highlights are bookending this post.

Isn't that an awesome '67 Topps card of Andy Etchebarren? There is no mistaking that face. Etch is wearing the O's '64/'65 home uni. The last time these were worn was Spring Training of 1966 so that may be when this shot was taken. I love the 'Yoo-Hoo' sign on the outfield fence. Our fantasy football league used to award a ceremonial bottle of the stuff to our champion each year. But it got harder and harder to find so we ended that tradition.

Ryan Minor is the guy who 'replaced' Cal Ripken at 3B for the Orioles. He also was a big time basketball player at OU. I believe he is still in the Orioles system in some non-playing capacity but I'm not sure about that.

Remember 'Pogs'? They were all the rage when I moved over to elementary school teaching in the 90's. These things came from the Ted Williams card sets. I've never seen them before. When I was a kid the glass milk bottles that we had delivered to our door had round disks inserted into the opening on top and they frequently featured baseball or football players. That brings back some memories.

These next two cards are Topps Museum Collection items. This Brooks Robinson is one of those textured deals. It looks a lot better in person than it does in the scan.

I still put Raffy cards into my Orioles 'star' box while railing against Hall of Fame votes for Clemens and Bonds, etc. Sue me.

The fact that this next card features the great John Mackey of the BALTIMORE Colts far outweighs the fact that it also has a guy from that other place. It goes in my Mackey pages...I'll just try to look only at the top half of it.

And now to address the H-Town Takeover reference in the title. Fuji sent along some signed cards of Houston Cougars! My Cougar collection has been stagnant for the longest time. I believe now is a good time to kick-start it.

Gee Gervin is the son of Hall of Famer George 'The Iceman' Gervin. Gee played a couple of seasons for the Coogs, ending in 2000. He averaged 19.2 points a game which is 10th all time for UH. He played for the Globetrotters for awhile and he plays in Sweden now. 

Tim Moore played in the mid-90s here and averaged just over 19 PPG. I was still a ticket holder during Moore's time at UH so I saw a lot of him.

And the coolest card of all of them is this Case Keenum auto/swatch card from Upper Deck. Case is one of the best players ever to don a Houston uniform, a regular folk hero among UH fans. And he's a helluva guy to boot.

Case wasn't drafted by the NFL after his time here but Gary Kubiak, then with the Texans, immediately signed him to the Houston practice squad. He ended up playing eight games for the Texans in 2013. He then moved on to the Rams, back to the Texans and then back to the Rams for 2015 where he again found himself as a starter. He's beaten some long odds and negative perceptions in carving out a spot as an NFL qb. He doesn't have a huge arm but he makes the throws he needs to, doesn't make mistakes and can manage a game well.

I hope he continues on this path as the Rams head west for 2016. He deserves every bit of success that comes his way.

Thanks a ton, Fuji. Just a great group of cards.

Spring Leftovers

The big 5x7 Dexter Press photos are among my favorite memorabilia items. I love the clear colorful shots of my Orioles taken during the franchise's glory days of the late 60's. OK...so '67 and '68 were not so good but you get the idea.

Each shot was taken in the exact same spot on their spring diamond in Miami. I've shown most of them but I don't think I ever posted these two. 

Andy Etchebarren played on four Orioles World Series clubs. He won two rings. He was an All Star in 1966 and 1967, the two years he spent as the nearly full time starter. For the rest of his time with the Birds he was a platoon catcher. Etch was a coach and manager, primarily in the minors until he retired a couple of seasons back.

Russ Snyder played seven seasons with the Orioles, mostly as a starting outfielder. He hit .280 during his stint in Charm City. He was no All Star but he was a solid dependable player.

Camp Happy Bird

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. -Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

The 1964 through 1971 Orioles. Oh, how good those days were. Even the crappy '67 Birds managed to entertain me, in a razor blade cutting sort of way. Other than that team the Orioles were in contention or winning outright the AL/AL East. The Robinsons, Jim Palmer, Boog Powell and Paul Blair were the stars. I loved them, but I also loved the 'other guys' just as much.

Here is a look at postcards of a couple of players that rank high in my baseball world. These all come from my huge stash of Orioles team issued postcards from that era. Back in the early 80s I collected postcards like a man possessed.

I just might be the owner of that cap on Andy Etchebarren's head. My then-uncle picked up a game hat from Etch at some banquet back in the late 60s and gave it to me. I doubt it's that exact cap but I like to pretend it is. Of course with it being about a size 7 and me being a size 8(!) I've never worn it and I doubt I could even find it without tearing apart my hobby closet.

Moe Drabowsky just looks like a cut-up doesn't he? Drabo is, according to Chicago columnist and baseball fan Mike Royko, "still considered the best pitcher that Ozanna, Poland, ever produced."

Dave Johnson, one of my all time favorite Orioles. I have never figured out why he was 'Dave' Johnson as a player but 'Davey' Johnson as a manager. Whatever. If Peter Angelos had fired himself instead of Johnson in 1997 the franchise would have been much the better for it.

Dave McNally is rocking the Orioles sleeveless unis that they wore at times in 1968 and 1969. They were the perfect alternate unis IMHO, different enough to be cool and worn infrequently enough to be fresh when they did.

McNally pitched the fourth and final game of the 1966 World Series and beat Don Drysdale, 1-0. I remember that like it was yesterday. He also hit a grand slam in the 1970 Series and gave up Al Kaline's 3000th hit. Kaline is a Charm City native, so that's fine by me.
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Small note following up yesterday's Don Zimmer post: Tim Kurkjian wrote a terrific piece on Zimmer that ran yesterday on ESPN.com and I think you'll enjoy it if you haven't already.

Orioles Dexter Press Postcards.... and a lesson learned.

Lately I've been pulling more and more items from my 'hobby closet'. Lots of stuff I have not touched literally for decades. I had my Dexter Press Orioles near the top of a box because I had scanned and blogged a few some months back.

These are just beautiful items. Rich in color and featuring an easily recognizable Memorial Stadium as a backdrop (at least for most of them). And the set comes from the best days of the Orioles franchise. If you look to the right of Moe Drabowsky you can even see the famous white houses that sat out behind the hedges on 36th. When I went to Baltimore to see the O's my uncle usually got seats in the upper deck behind 3rd but those wooden bleachers in left field was where I sat for the '69 Playoff games and the '83 World Series. Wonderful memories for me.

But back when I stored these in binders the four pocket pages I used contained PVC. They pretty much all did back them. Ultra Pro pages were not widely used until later. While I put most of my cards in quality sheets some things remained in the cheap ones and these postcards were in that group. I have managed to remove the bulk of this set from the crappy four pockets without much more damage than a loss of gloss. But the Andy Etchebarren postcard was a victim of too much PVC and not enough TLC while removing it. That's a nice rip in the upper part of the card as you can see.

I don't have many regrets concerning the hobby and how I have collected stuff but not heeding the warnings about cheap vinyl sheets is one of them.