NY State Of Mind

I'd gone through a long stretch without picking up any cards until last week. Then my long-delayed COMC and none-too-exciting SportsLots packages arrived. Honestly, I'd been concentrating on some holes in my publication collection and hadn't done much with cards other than the couple of football sets that I posted here.

But I got those boxes and I had a good time filling empty binder slots for a day or so. On Monday (Tuesday?...pandemics tend to scramble calendars) an envelope arrived from Western New York. Yup, Night Owl had thought of me and sent along some really choice material.

The envelope was bigger than the usual PWE that folks use. Here's why:

It's a Tommy Davis Johnny Pro Standup! This was a terrific promotional set from 1973 that was sold through the mail as complete sets (I think). They are die-cut and were intended to be 'punched out' and stood up. They measure just a touch over 5x7 which leads me to tell you why I was happy to get Tommy D. I bought a set many years ago, it included a couple of the variations and was really nice. But I was dumb, and not sophisticated as a collector. I trimmed my cards to fit into those two pocket pages. Wasn't a big trim, but it was a trim. So I've been picking up singles when I find them inexpensively to replace the ones I mangled. LOL

BTW...Johnny Pro also issued sets for the Baltimore Bullets and Philadelphia Phillies. 

And, as I told Night Owl, Tommy Davis is one of my favorite 'oh, hey...he was an Oriole?' guys. That group is comprised of short-term Birds better known with other teams, Eric Davis is another fave. Reggie is one of the group (eye-roll emoji here). Fred Lynn, Jim Northrup, Doug Drabeck are a few more. Let's not bring up Sammy Sosa, OK? Thanks!

Greg included some 1967 Topps in pretty nice condition. I think there were six or seven of them but I was anxious to put them in the right slots and realized later that I hadn't scanned 'em. You can't deny you've done the same. I was able to quickly pull these and I present them for your entertainment now. Nice cards from a very nice set.

Oh, did I mention that every '67 that Greg sent blindly ended up being useful? I think five of them filled open slots. One was a definite upgrade. Then there was Phil Roof.

I had three or four copies of this card. None of them were as good as the one NO sent. LOL.

Mike Ryan and Jimmy Davenport were the two I liked most. I'm pretty sure that's a subway train headed past the Yankee Stadium scoreboard over Ryan's shoulder.

Davenport was one of those guys I saw a lot of when I was living in Jersey. My best friend and his Dad were Giants guys and I went along on their many trips to Shea. Jim Ray Hart and Davenport both played third and became my favorite Giants for some reason. Maybe it was my affinity for third basemen.

Greg also included some shiny Birds of recent vintage. The Hayes card bumped a minor league card of his out of my fantasy baseball binder.

I saw Andrews Cashner pitch last year on Opening Day in Yankee Stadium. Seems like a loooong time ago. Hard to believe that the Orioles win two days later (which I didn't attend) was the last time they've beaten the f'ing Yankees. LOL

Finally here is Hanser Alberto. Yes, he's a big-league player. Heck, he homered last night in an Orioles win. The bad news is that the Orioles likely couldn't win a pennant in a 60-game 'season' even if you spotted them p-e-n-n-a and another 'n'. That's how it goes I guess.

 

Thanks again, Night Owl. Your generosity is much appreciated. Hoping you and everyone out there stays safe!

Cards at the Crossroads

As I contemplate what I'm going to do with this blog I need to catch up with a few generous packages that arrived from a pair of esteemed bloggers over the last couple of weeks. Let's do these in the order they arrived.

First up is a group of cards I received from Joe Shlabotnik. 'Joe' killed some of my 1973 needs, quite a few in fact. I've posted a handful of my favorites. Above and below are two Cleveland relief pitchers, Mike Kilkenny and Steve Mingori. Both are rocking the early 70s sideburns and they look enough alike (at least on these cards) that I wasn't sure that I hadn't discovered a Topps error.

Mingori was on his way to Kansas City in June of '73, and he pitched on their '76 thru '78 division-winning clubs.

Kilkenny was probably just happy to spend the '73 season (at least what there was of it for him) without having to forward his mail. In 1972 he was with four different clubs over the span of  33 days. He began the year with his original team, the Tigers. On May 9 he was dealt to the A's for first-baseman Reggie Sanders. On the 17th the A's traded him to the Padres in a deal that netted them Ollie Brown. Three weeks later the Padres sent him to the Indians for infielder Fred Stanley.

In '73 Kilkenny made just a handful of appearances for Cleveland and gamelogs show he wasn't very effective in any of them. By May 6, just short of a year since his '72 baseball odyssey began, he was out of the majors. He played in the independent Intercounty Baseball League in his native Canada before getting into owning racehorses and being a golf pro. Some of the rabbit holes you travel through while researching the players on these cards are very entertaining.

And here's Yaz. This is a Yastrzemski card that I don't remember seeing much of. He was just at the point of transitioning into more of a first-baseman than an outfielder, but he had plenty of top-level baseball left in him.

Cookie Rojas has what appears to be the batting helmet cart behind him in this spring training photo.When I was coaching we had these carts aplenty, filled with all sorts of equipment and dragged them to the fields every day.

Dave Giusti in what I'm thinking is another ST photo but I've been to McKechnie Field and that doesn't match my memory of it. Of course, this picture was taken 40 some years prior to my visits.

Ralph Garr wearing a Braves uni top I'm still conflicted over after all these years.

The '73s Joe sent helped get me to the point where I need less than 25 to finish the set. Outside of the 1960 Leaf set (which I'm convinced I'll never finish), the '73 set is the last one I'm looking to close out for the foreseeable future. Yes, that means that I'm done with the '57 Topps baseball and '69 Topps football sets. Hallelujah!

In addition to the 73s Joe included a handful of modern Orioles. Cards I'd never otherwise see. Trey Mancini is the closest the O's have to a household name. And that's a stretch.

These two cards came along for the ride from Virginia. The more Presidents cards I receive the more I realize how many different sets there are out there.

These Goudeys are kind of artsy. When I get some time I'm gonna look closer at the Goodwins from 2017 and find any other presidents.

Thanks for these, Joe. As always they are much appreciated.

The other package came from beautiful Upstate New York and the Night Owl. This card of Cardinals' infielder Tommy Edmon was one I asked him to put aside for me. He had opened packs of this Topps '19 issue and Edmon was in one of them. This was the last card I needed to finish off my fantasy baseball binder for 2019.

I'm the 'crazy cat lady' of fantasy baseball. Because I can't say "No" I ended up 'fostering' seven orphaned teams this year. On three different platforms. Yeech. ONE team is usually too much for me to keep up with. Nobody in America was as happy to see the end of the regular season as I was!

And, like Joe, the wise ol' Owl filled up the envelope with modern Orioles...and a note saying how tough it is to find new Orioles to send. Boy, no kidding! When you suck as bad as the O's do Topps has no need to put them into sets. I don't blame Topps a bit.

I really like this fancy-ass John Means card. It immediately won a spot in my fantasy bb binder, booting out the minor league card I had of him previously.

Throwback style Chris Davis.  Looks like he'll be around Charm City for 2020. I'm OK with that.

Manny. Everyone hates him but I'd take him back in a second!

Ced Mullins took a step (or three) back in 2019. I still have hope, tho.

And a nice mini A&G Brooks. I recently got around to putting my Orioles mini cards in tobacco card pages. They look good in pages, much better than shuffling thru them by hand. 

Thank you, Greg. And thanks to both you and Joe for much enjoyment via your excellent blogs.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. It's the only holiday I really look forward to. Our plan is to spend it at the home of my recently widowed mother-in-law (RIP, Dad) and it has the potential to be a disaster. Let's hope it exceeds my expectations, shall we? And I hope yours is special.

See you somewhere down the road on the flip side.

Catching Up

I've been 'offline' for a bit. No posting and almost no reading so I have to get up to speed here. I have a couple of way overdue thank yous to send out to bloggers/friends who gifted me with cards over the last month.

First up is a 'foodie' variation, an Utz version of the Topps 2019 Trey Mancini card that came from 'friend of the blog' and Twitter mainstay, Mark Hoyle. Utz Potato Chips is an east coast brand that put packs of these (4 to a pack?) into chip bags or multi-packs. I read that there were 100 Utz-branded cards. It struck me that if someone didn't want to deal with collecting the whole Topps flagship set and the extraneous stuff that comes with it that nabbing the Utz cards would be a neat alternative.  All riff, no raff.

Here's Trey:

Thanks, Mark. In my neverending effort to have as much variety as possible in my fantasy league binder this one will make a great addition.

Another bunch of cards came from Night Owl. As is usually the case with envelopes I get from Greg, it contained a wide assortment of stuff. All of it fits into one of my collections or another.

First up..a '57 Don Newcombe. Now Greg stuck a Post-It to this one noting that Newk had 'issues' and might be a filler. No, Newk has taken his spot in the '57 set binder and there he will stay. One thing I don't remember mentioning since I was doing my '59 blog...'gifted' cards get an automatic 'grade' boost. Getting a card from a friend or fellow blogger, especially one for a set build or special collection, means a lot to me. They go in the binder with a little label over on the inside edge of the nine pocket sheet and the sender's name. I've missed a few here and there but for the most part, I can go through my sets and tell who sent me what.

And then there is this...

...Elizabeth Taylor from the 1953 Topps Who-Z-At movie star set. Yikes. And to think that once upon a time I wondered what the big deal was with Liz Taylor. LOL, Yes, I'm a donkey.

I have about a half dozen of the 80 cards in this set. With some luck and legwork, I could put it together without a lot of expense. I previously posted a few of these. The beautiful duo of Greer Garson and Cyd Charisse are in this post. And Eve Arden is here in this one.

The rest of Night Owl's manila envelope contained Orioles of various types. Here is Tony Batista alongside a swatch of his uni. His career fell completely within my baseball 'black hole' period.

Brooksie from the Heritage set of 2019. Topps did capture that 70s' feel.

When I posted these on Twitter N.O. chimed in with a mention of Kyle Hudson being a product of Mattoon High in Illinois. I have to admit I missed the significance of that fact. Lil help? He's also a former Dodger farmhand, signed this card (sort of) and has his position listed twice on the front.

Now that I've finished my '75 set I've begun to organize the minis I gathered along the way. Ross Grimsley here is a buyback. The pic is from the days before he wore a huge perm. At this point, he still looked like half my high school friends.

1969 Dave May. Yankee Stadium batting cage in the background. I've tried really hard to figure out who that is in the cage taking his hacks but I'm stumped. My first thought was Paul Blair based on the body language but when I blew the scan up it doesn't look like him.

Jeff Conine, dressed as a Marlin, credited as an Oriole. Here is something I probably shouldn't admit: when I looked at Conine's BR page I saw the Fla-NYY World Series line and I thought "how did two AL teams play in the Series?" It was interesting to see that he went back and forth between the O's and Marlins a couple of times.

And what do we have here?

It's Trey Mancini...same card, different version. Greg included the Opening Day Topps Mancini. If you look closely at the cards side-by-side you can see the slightly different cropping.

The OD version has somewhat richer (printing term?) colors. Other than the numbers the backs are the same.

Thanks again to Mark and Greg for the surprise packages. Both were very much appreciated. One last thing... one of the reasons I was out-of-pocket for a few weeks was a trip to St. Louis to help my best friend celebrate a milestone birthday. There was baseball involved.

Here is what we found under the Gateway Arch on the day we arrived...

Vintage baseball is played there regularly. I failed to get a pic of the guy in the period suit and top hat who manned an info table and was happy to talk about it all. He gave us the rundown on the teams including the fact that the 1890s version of the Perfectos went on to become the Cardinals.

We also made it out to Busch Stadium and watched a Cardinals victory over the Pirates. I was impressed by the place. I'll post a few pics in some future posts.

Border Crisis

My 1971 set build has been a 'stealthy' one. I don't think I've posted anything about it on here other than putting my want list over in the sidebar. Over the last month, I've been knocking down some of the base cards and dipping my toe in the high number water.

I wasn't collecting this set in '71. I had gotten my fill of commuting across Houston to college classes and I was a dorm resident at this point. I was working at the Houston Post and had a couple of part-time campus jobs that helped with room and board. I was still heavily involved in sports (I worked for the Athletic Department and I certainly followed my favorite teams), but life was coming at me pretty fast and collecting wasn't a focus anymore.

I think I remember seeing this set when it was on the shelves but I'm sure I never owned any. And that's too bad because I've come to really enjoy it. It's certainly unique. The colors and photos pop off the black cards. There are plenty of stars in the checklist and my Orioles were coming off their 1970 title so the whole thing is right in my wheelhouse. That's the good part.

The bad parts are pretty well known among vintage collectors. A high number series with SPs and even a semi-high number series make this thing a bit more costly than you'd expect. And there are 752 cards to collect. But the killer is the black borders and how hard it is to find really nice cards that are not chipped and dinged. The little flaws that are inherent in most raw vintage cards just jump out at you in the '71 set.

Which makes me glad I'm not very concerned about card condition. I have a target in mind when I buy these things and it splits the difference between these two gems:

The Ron Bryant card is about as good a card as I can find in the stack that currently sits on my desk. The Campaneris represents to the low side. These two came from either COMC, the TriStar show, eBay or the last three hotel shows. LOL, I can't remember. I've really ramped up my purchases lately and I grabbed these things from a lot of different places.

I'm at about 83% give or take. I have about 600 of the 725 with about 30 needs coming from the low series (1 thru 5) and the rest being semi-high or high numbers.  I scanned some from this stack to show here:

I may take this Dierker to the next SABR meeting I attend. He's a semi-regular attendee. I sat across the table from him at my first meeting a few years ago. I always have a few signed cards in my sets and to get one signed in person is the best way. He's got what I first thought was a golf shirt on under his jersey. But I think it's just one of those windbreakers with cut off sleeves.

The odds are most definitely against it but I'd like to think this photo of Bobby Murcer was taken on the day my friend and I saw him hit four dingers in a doubleheader against the Indians.  I know the Topps photographer was there because Vada Pinson's card photo was taken that day, the single most fun day I've ever experienced at a ballpark.

Murcer's card is a classic and the familiar Yankee Stadium background shows up again on Yaz' card.

My scanner did this Jackson card a favor. The edges are not as sweet as they look in the pic. But that A's gold and green uni is as cool as it gets.

John Bateman was playing as part of Eddie Feigner's The King and His Court four-man softball team when I saw them in the late 70s.

Pete Rose is just a bit off-center, but then again, aren't we all?

Roger Repoz was one in a long line of Yankee outfield prospects who was supposed to replace Mickey Mantle. Jack Reed, Ross Moschito, and Steve Whitaker were others.

This Ray Culp card shows him wearing that Red Sox jersey with the red outlined lettering. That always looks weird to me. This has to be a 1970 spring training shot since the 100 Year MLB patch that was worn in 1969 isn't on Culp's sleeve. Another windbreaker here, as well.

Speaking of Culp... he had some really good years for the Red Sox. they fleeced the Cubs when they traded for him. I think there's a chance the Cubs could have held off the Mets in '69 had they still had Culp in their rotation.

And here is Dick Billings because why the hell not?

And finally, The Major.

Another neat Yankee Stadium shot. My lasting memory of Ralph Houk and that place came from July of 1966. My mom put me on a train into NYC that afternoon and my father met me at Penn Station after he got off work. Off to the ballpark we went. Usually, we made it in time for the first pitch but this was a weekday doubleheader and we arrived in the middle of the first game.

Here's how it ended...

Of course, Houk, the fans, the Yankees (and me) went nuts. What I recall is that Houk came out to bring the lineup card to the umps for the second game and he was still arguing. So much so that he got tossed right there at the plate before the game even started. Good times!

My '71 set chase will pick up once I'm done with the last dozen 1961's I'm looking for. I have some of the inserts that were included in packs that year. Those were the coins (which I love) and the Scratch-offs (which I don't). There are only a handful of known variations and none of them are particularly notable. I have no plans to grab any of them.

Oh, I almost forgot...Night Owl collected and blogged this baby over several years and he did a great job with it. If you haven't already checked it out you should go read some of his posts. Fun stuff.