Bazooka Cards

A couple of 1971 Bazooka cards that came from my oddball box. Topps made these obviously and used a very familiar picture for the Brooks Robinson card. I've seen the McNally shot as well.

These were the standard sized Bazooka offerings through the 60s and 70s. I would really love to have one of the full box sized cards that they made in 1959, the Billy Pierce in particular.

 Courtesy of eBay here is a complete '71 box with Randy Hundley, Willie Mays and Catfish Hunter featured.

Oh, and if you are looking to get me a Christmas gift you could do worse than this 1965 box with three of my favorite players on the back. Hard to beat a Robinson-Koufax-Colavito trio of cards!

If not White Whales...

...then what should I call them?

These two cards are from the 2004 Maryland Lottery set which paid tribute to the Orioles 50th Anniversary. I've had most of the set for a few years, I think I bought a chunk online and received some from other collectors/bloggers. I was about six or eight cards short a few months ago and frankly I'd forgotten about it until Joe Shlabotnik reported on the ones he has.

At that point eBay and COMC provided all but these two cards. Since then I searched without any luck for the McNally and the Jackson. These were not among the handful of 'short prints' so the scarcity made no sense.

I'm sure most collectors have searched for some item that is supposed to be common but eludes capture for some reason. If it's an expensive or iconic item we call them 'white whales'. The 1959 Billy Pierce Bazooka card is mine. But these Orioles Lottery things are cheap. So are they 'white minnows'?

Whatever we call them I'm glad to have the set completed.

Both of these cards used pictures taken from Orioles team issued postcards. A number of others did as well.

1969 Dave McNally Citgo Coin

Here's something new that Mark Hoyle sent along recently. When he asked me if I had one I thought maybe I did. But when I did a little digging I realized that I was way off on what these were and I most certainly didn't have one.

And seeing how much I love 'off the wall' vintage Orioles items I was pretty happy to receive it. These obviously were service station premiums in 1969. Dave McNally is the only Orioles representative. Much more about these quarter-sized coins can be found on this site.

The checklist of 20 coins can be found here (along with a shot of each of them. I'm not likely to chase down the rest of the set but I love having the McNally and as always I appreciate Mark's generosity.

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!

On this date.....

....something really neat happened (if you were an Oriole fan in 1974). On September 6 of that year the O's got complete-game pitching performances by Dave McNally and Mike Cuellar. The Orioles sweep a doubleheader by stopping Cleveland twice, 2-0 and 1-0. The wins that days were the fourth and fifth consecutive shutouts thrown by the Birds. That established an American League mark by hurling 54 straight scoreless frames.

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.