More Odds & Ends

More random stuff I grabbed from my 'to-be-sorted' boxes recently. Just going to toss in a few words on each as I await my Amazon delivery of a case of white binders. Once those arrive I've got some work to do!

First up, a George Brace photo of Billy Pierce.

There is nothing on the back except for Brace's ID of Billy P. in his usual manner.

Paul Richards' '51 Bowman is just so damn odd that long ago I had to go grab one. It's nothing like the painted photos that make up the rest of the set. There have been a few discussions on various card forums as to why Bowman went with a caricature instead of the standard photo but nothing has ever been decided as far as I can tell.

One of our usual haunts for cheap dinners out with the kids was a burger place near us that had a big selection of vending machines and video games. My boys took their loose change and always spent it all on sports team stickers and gumball helmets. I'm sure that's where this Bears sticker came from.

Dormand postcards are one of the great overlooked collectible of the 50s. Allie Reynolds, as I've mentioned several times, was my father's favorite pitcher. I'd have bought this even if that wasn't the case.

I found a stack of Dexter Press 5x7s in a box of photos. I have no idea where I got them from but it included Yaz, Al Kaline, Joe Pepitone(!) and this creased Willie Davis. Another under-appreciated issue.

It's about to be hockey season and I am pumped! I'm excited to watch the rebuild my Rangers are in the middle of. I already bought tickets for their game in Dallas in March. And for the first time in years I signed up for the Rangers package on NHL.TV! I have had MLB.TV for years and I realized that over the last two seasons I probably hadn't spent more than a couple of hours with it. I found the place where they buried their opt-out for auto-renewal and cut the cord.

Bailing on the Orioles for awhile might cause me to be viewed as a shitty fan but honestly I can't see pouring money into a 100 loss hole anymore.

This Topps Ripken medallion card weighs more than any card I've ever held in my hand. If I was 'Commish For A Day' one of the things I'd do was take Landis' name off this MVP award. I'd do that right after I decreed that the majors would no longer use 'superballs'.

I met Vince Young at the Roger Clemens charity softball game a few years ago. He just walked up to my wife and I and introduced himself. He's had a difficult time post-NFL. I hope things are good for him these days.

Lastly, a Ted Williams Company item. It's hard to tell from the picture but these are die cut faux-milk bottle caps. If you look at this cropped image you can see what is supposed to be the 'pull tab'.

When I was little we had milk delivered to our homes on Long Island and later in New Jersey. The bottles had these sort of caps on them under a paper shield that covered the top of the bottle. They've been reissued as 'pogs' and in various other forms over the years. Slurpee disks are sort of the same thing. Here is a picture of an original milk cap I found on the 'net. These are the type I remember and collected.

That's it for today's randomness. I think I heard my binders being dropped off!

Shablotnik Sent Me Stuff

Well, this is discouraging. I had this post completed on my iPad with the Blogger Pro app and I come over here to post it and boom, it's gone except for most of the images. OK, I'll re-do it here since I don't trust that app anymore.


I was gifted with a package from Joe Shlabotnik last week, the second one he's sent in less than a month. The star this time was this 1971 Lou Brock. Perfect card? Nope. But it fits perfectly into my set build.

I can't think of Lou Brock without thinking of his semi-famous 'invention', the Brockabrella.

I actually wore one of those once thanks to my friend Sam whose Cardinals love runs very, very deep. I'm jealous of that ice cream Sundae that Lou is about to enjoy. I wonder if it came from Ted Drewes.

The Brockabrella appeared in the 1984 Fleer set. I've put that card at the bottom of this post. BTW...Joe also included another '71, Al Fitzmorris, but that image went 'poof' and I don't think I need to go dig it up from my files. Brock can rep the set without any help for sure.

This next card is a Heritage Hi# SP (or so I'm told). So it's as rare as Orioles wins in Minute Maid Park. But unlike watching the O's lose I can get some use out of this baby. It's going in my fantasy player binder.

As is his want, Joe sent along a stack of Orioles from sets gone by, mostly from the 90s and 2000s.

And a new-to-me Cal Jr.

Arthur Rhodes bulked up a bit as his career evolved. He looks almost slim here. Eric Davis had a short (two season) tenue in Birdland as he made his comeback from his cancer fight. Unfortunately for me, it came at a low ebb in my baseball fandom.

Andrew Cashner has had for bright (and not so bright) moment for the O's this year. He was beaten up on Opening Day when I saw him pitch at Yankee Stadium. He was much better Saturday night here in Houston against a depleted Astros team. 

Mancini had a lousy weekend against Astros pitching. But I'm glad to have this card. I don't fully understand what the purpose of  Topps' Opening Day set. Seems pointless.

1981 Fleer Eddie Murray.  I loved collecting this set.

I don't think I had this Drake's Murray. When I delivered the Newark Evening News in Nutley, NJ back in the day a package of Drake's Yankee Doodles and an RC Cola was the usual post-route treat.

Union Craft Brewing in B-more is producing a beer they call Steady Eddie. I'd love to give it a try, or at least grab a can to display.

Mike Mussina..welcome to the Hall of Fame! I hold no grudges.

Joe always tosses in a NY Ranger card or two and this time was no exception. I'm fired up about the return of John Davidson. With JD manning the tiller I think good things are ahead for my Blueshirts.

Here are a few more shots of Lou and his Brockabrella.

And the Fleer card of Jay Johnstone. I'm mildly surprised that the Bud logo made it thru the approval process at Fleer.

There were more cards but these are the ones I scanned. All are much appreciated. Thanks, Joe!!

West Coast Gifts

Along with about 753 other bloggers I recently received a jam-packed manila envelope from Fuji of The Chronicles Of Fuji fame. (Sidenote...hope you back feels better soon my friend)

He crammed the envelope with all sorts of Orioles goodies. Some of this, a little of that, a scattering of those, etc. Rather than scan and post every card I figured this was the perfect opportunity to test my new scanner. I could see if it clipped white borders like my printer/scanner did. And I could gauge scan quality across many types of cards. I changed setting between scans and some differences are pretty obvious. Here is a representation of the different types of cards Fuji included.

Like these two:

Brooks and Boog from the 1987 Hygrade All Time Greats set. Brooks scanned at 300 dpi, Boog at 600. Kind of a fun little oddball set. The green border first series of 50 cards was followed by and orange bordered followup a few years later. I can't recall seeing the orange borders before I google'd these.

Cal Ripken K-Mart card. These K-Mart cards always take me back to when we first moved into this area. It was much more rural than it is now and the only stores in the vicinity were a grocery, a Five and Dime (ask your folks, kids) and a K-Mart.

This Murray is from a 60 Years of Topps subset/promo set, etc. You probably know more than I do about it. Murray is always looking badass, right.

Here is a 90's Fleer Jeffery Hammonds and a 2016 Adam Jones that Topps wanted to look like a 90s release.

Ripken on a Fleer boxed set from the 1986. Back then I had a big box of boxed sets. Gone with the wind.

I'm not a huge fan of these Triple Play cards but ya know, this Wieters is pretty sharp!

Here is my first scanner 'fail'. Tim Bascom is surrounded by so much chrome that his signature sort of fades away. Much better looking in hand obviously. To be fair this scan is worlds better than what I got from my old Canon printer/scanner.

1994 Cal Stadium Club. The back has a cartoon of Cal and lists it #4 of 12 so without looking I'm guessing it's some sort of special subset or something. Cool card.

Here is one of the few cards I already had. I really liked this Heritage set of guys in throwback gear. I bought the Orioles out of it a few years ago. That O's cap and sleeveless jersey are fantastic on Mussina with the Memorial Stadium facade as backdrop. Dy-no-mite!

Another Cal commemorative card. It's from 2010 Topps History of the Game.

Fuji also sent some more current cards which is great because I never have much luck pulling any thru my rather limited pack buying.

That fact that I missed a lot of Brian Roberts Orioles career is kind of a shame. Note how the foil washes out. I'm working on successfully scanning these types of cards.

Allen and Ginters, Machado looking constipated.

Topps Attax Adan Jones. Does anyone every actually attempt to play stuff like this?

Nick Markakis. The fact that he plays for the Braves just doesn't sit well with me.

Wade Miley. At times last year he was the Orioles ace. Which goes a long way toward's understanding why we finished fifth.

There were more cards. Quite a few more actually but these are the ones I scanned. Thanks for your generosity Fuji. The blogosphere continues to be a wondrous place, both because of the generosity of the bloggers and the fun  writing. You are a league leader in both categories.

The Good Fight

I spend the last week or so in a race against a failing CPU as I scrambled to salvage everything from my desktop before it headed to the Computer Graveyard.

It was slow going and I'm lucky that I've been pretty good about backing up my stuff. There was only a couple weeks worth of scans, pictures and documents that needed to be saved. But when you have to reboot every twenty minutes it seems like a lot more than that.

Then it was a trip to Micro Center for a new machine and the real work began....getting this thing set up like I want it and wrestling my printer/scanner into submission. This will be my first post typed up on my new computer.

During the height of the shit storm that was changing machines I received a couple of packages in the mail. Both were similar in that they contained cards for my 1970 set build plus shiny Orioles. First we'll take a look at the one from Brian at Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary.

That 1970 Willie Stargell at the top had the (dubious) honor of being the first card scanned with my new set up. No card in history has probably endured more verbal abuse that that one. But it's a great card, right? I saw Stargell hit a simply ridiculous homer in the Astrodome in this 1972 game. It banged off the scoreboard in centerfield and sent the game into extras. The Pirates won in 17 innings.

I had a well worn Joe Morgan so this one from Brian is a welcome upgrade. I wish the 'Stros would go back to those 'shooting star' unis. They wore them as throwbacks a time or two a few seasons back. They are sharp.

A couple more '70s from Brian:

Bernie Allen and Cookie Rojas. Rojas' card isn't miscut like my scan makes it appear.

Rick Reichardt is #720 in the set, the end of the checklist. I only wish it was the end of my needs list! The smaller, cramped font Topps used for his position makes this card look odd.

Cisco Carlos always reminds me of my Strat-O-Matic playing days. He pitched for the White Sox and Senators which were always in my 6 team solo leagues.

Shiny Birds! Cal and Manny whose card is retina scorching for sure.

I wonder how many Bowman cards Topps produces every year. I have received a ton of these and no two are of the same player. The Donruss Cal Jr throws back to his rookie card design.

Thanks so much Brian!

The second package came from Fuji who is a fellow teacher and like me is enjoying a bit of a break from the grind.

Fuji's cards dovetail quite nicely with Brian's....70s Topps and some recent Birds. First up is a nice high number Jim Lonborg.

I had to look twice at the front of Lonborg's uniform shirt. I had forgotten about the red trimmed lettering the Bosox wore back then. Dressed To The Nines tells us that they wore these roadies from 1969 until 1972. 1973 marked the beginning of the doubleknit era and a new look for the Sox' jerseys.

Another 1970 is Padres manager Preston Gomez. He is most remembered for twice sending up a pinch hitter for pitchers who were hurling no-hitters. I hadn't remembered his partial season as Cubs manager in 1980.

The more I see of Dylan Bundy the more I think he looks like a young Tony Dow.

'Chromafied' Hyun-Soo Kim grabs a slot in the fantasy baseball binder.

Man this Adam Jones card is ..... bright! And that's clearly Camden Yards reflected on his batting helmet. You think Topps could call 'exclusive' on showing stadiums, too? I mean if you have to Photoshop out a team's colors is showing their stadium crossing the legal line as well?

Here's a Fleer Mickey Tettleton from 1990. That was about the last year I collected cards until a few years ago. It wasn't too long after this card was issued that baseball and I agreed to a trial separation.

I looked Tettleton up on Baseball Reference. I was shocked to find he was only an Oriole for three seasons. I'd have sworn it was double that.

Thanks so much Fuji. You and Brian are both among the truly good guys in this hobby. I appreciate your taking the time to send these my way and especially for chipping away at my 1970 set needs.

Final disclaimer: In the mess of the last week it's entirely possible that some of these cards got 'crossways' and I am crediting Brian for a card Fuji sent or vice versa. My usually foolproof system was pushed to the limit and beyond.