"Give that fan a contract!"

Brooklyn Dodger righty Rex Barney smiles towards the heavens from the front of his 1951 Bowman. This is one of my favorite vintage cards. It's damn near perfect. Great portrait set against a blue sky with the stadium lights in the background. The whole thing tells me that this is a guy who enjoys being a major leaguer in 1951.

Rex pitched six seasons for the Brooklyn Dodgers, just five full ones. He broke through for 15 wins in 1948 and pitched a no hitter against the Giants on September 9th of that year (there ya go Night Owl). His 3.10 ERA that year was by far the best of his career.

Rex struggled with control throughout his career (1948 seems to be his baseball 'Harmonic Convergence') and was hampered by a leg injury which led to a shortened career. But while he was through with active baseball duty after 1952, he wasn't through with the game.

He worked as a broadcaster and then in 1974 came to Baltimore as the public address announcer at Memorial Stadium and then at Camden Yards. He became well known for two expressions. "Give that fan a contract." was heard when a fan made a nice play on a ball hit into the stands, and his post-game 'Thank Youuuuuu' always meant that you were free to go fight your way out of the horrendously gridlocked Memorial Stadium parking lots. Rex worked for the O's until his death in 1997. By the time he passed he was an iconic figure in a town where he had never thrown a pitch.

My scanner cut off the bottom border of this one and turned what is a slight printing hic-up into what looks like a crease across Barney's right cheek. The corners and colors are almost as they were when they came out of the wrapper. Only a couple of stains and a chip on the reverse spoil it.

1966 Orioles Tribute Set

I was drilling down through my hobby closet and found this set in a binder. I've had it in there so long that it was in the old 'side-load' type pages. The kind that sparked the "They Will Damage Your Cards!!!" panic of the 1980s.

Like so many oddball sets of that era I can't remember how I originally picked this one up but I'm guessing it was through the classified ads that ran in Baseball Collectors Digest back then.

I don't know much about it other than what I can gleen from the reverse side of the cards. It was put out in 1981 by a company called 'The Franchise' based in Bel Air, Maryland. A bit of googling came up with a few references, the first were this long expired Worthpoint auction listing and a recent eBay sale. The Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards by Bob Lemke lists the set and one other by the same company that focuses on Brooks Robinson.

The first two cards are shown at the top, #1 being a line drawn rendering of the famous (at least to Orioles fans) photo of Brooks Robinson's leap towards Dave McNally and Andy Etchebarren. Card #2 is the team picture.

The remaining 30 cards are individual cards of all the team's players and coaches. The backs list the usual vitals, the player's 1966 stats, lifetime stats and a paragraph or so about the player's contribution to the '66 season or World Series.

The set isn't worth anything monetarily but it has a kind of eclectic mix of posed action shots, portraits, game action shots and a couple of neat old fashioned squatting catcher pics. Many of the pictures used are spring training shots. The cards bring back some good memories for this long time O's fan.

2013 Topps Archive Paul Blair Auto

"I don't know if he's in a class by himself, but whatever class he's in, it don't take long to call the roll."

That great line was uttered by Bum Phillips in describing Earl Campbell. And that's how I'd describe Paul Blair's fielding prowess. Is he the best? Dunno. He's as good as anyone I've ever seen, that's for sure. The cliche was that Blair could go back on the ball so well he could play very shallow and take bloop hits away from opposing batters. Like a lot of cliches, that one was based in fact. And my Dad, who saw DiMaggio and a young Mickey Mantle was always duly impressed with Paul Blair. That's enough of an endorsement for me.

I don't usually go after autographed cards but I liked this one and it was dirt cheap so I bit. I have always liked the way the '74 Topps Orioles cards reflected the team colors. 

The back reflects the original card back and has Blair's facsimile autograph. It sure looks different from the Archives '13 version, doesn't it?

Fairfield Bubble Pack from Target, Part #2

The cards from the other side of this plastic hanger package from Fairfield were more interesting than the first ones. And here are a few:

1986 Topps Glossy Fernando Valenzuela. Back when he broke in with such a splash even my in-laws got caught up in Fernandomania. We saw him pitch in the Astrodome and he lost to the Astros' Don Sutton. In all the years since Fernando left the scene I've never seen my father-in-law so much as glance as a baseball game.

There were four other cards from this subset in the pack including Ryne Sandberg, Dwight Gooden, Kirby Puckett and Teddy Higuera.

1990 Donruss Gary Carter. Sure it's junk wax, but it's Gary Carter! Everyone liked Gary Carter, didn't they? Interestingly the 'Contract Status' text on the back notes that he was released by the Mets in October of 1989. Carter played for the Giants in 1990 and the Dodgers in 1991 before a return to the Expos for one final season in '92.

Here are a pair of Fleer rookie cards from 2006. Chad Billingsley and someone named Boof Bonser. I would have bet money that Bonser was Fleer's version of Sid Finch but he turned out to be a legit player. See, I learn so much from these cards.

As noted both are Fleer, both are rookie cards but they have different formats. I see the 'Tradition' notation on the Billingsley so I guess that's why they are different. Both have blank space on the back that says '---No MLB Experience---' but both have text blurbs that point out the respective player's debut in 2006.

I really like the Billingsley card, it's got sort of a '63-ish Topps vibe.

1997 Topps Chipper Jones. Jones put together a Hall of Fame career while I wasn't paying attention. I pretty much bailed on baseball in 1994 and didn't come back until two or three years ago. Next thing I knew there was a Chipper Jones Farewell Tour going on and I was left wondering what I had missed. Turns out I missed a lot.

I hadn't remembered seeing any '97 Topps that that were green but this is a pretty sharp card. Was green an 'alternate' color?

After I scanned this 1988 Fleer Gwynn/Coleman and have added it to this post I remembered that I never cared much for this se . But Gwynn's a H-O-Famer and you can read his undershirt through his jersey. So there ya go.

I'm pretty sure this is the only Mariano Rivera card that I own. This and the next card made the price of the pack worthwhile. I'm no Yankee fan but to deny the greatness of Mariano Rivera is silly. Plus, the few times I've heard/seen him speak he has come off as a pretty genuine guy. So all in all i was happy to find this among the flotsam and jetsam of the Fairfield re-pack. The only thing I don't like is the dark gold foil which is incredibly hard to read without turning the card at an angle.

And finally:

A 1989 Cap'n Crunch Darryl Strawberry. Cereal cards are so cool! I've got Post Cereal cards, and oodles of Kellogg's' cards and I even have a 1930's Wheaties football card around here someplace but I never had seen a Cap'n Crunch card. Oddball stuff can be fun, especially when it is of a player with some 'star power'. But I wonder why the card has an airbrushed cap. The card carries the Topps logo so wouldn't they have a license to show the mlb logos? Or is it incumbent upon the distributor/sponsor, in this case the Quaker Oats Company, to obtain a licence no matter who published them. Whatever, it's a fun addition to my pile of 'stuff'.

Among the other cards I'm not showing were cards of some of my favorite players, Kevin Bass, Rick Dempsey (as a Dodger :-/ ), and Jesse Orosco. All in all I don't regret spending the $4. maybe I'll make this a yearly treat.

Newest Presidential Pins

I'd been ignoring my presidential pin collection lately, probably because I'd been chasing the State/Territories Quarters set. I finally finished that one off so I picked up a couple of new pins.

The one at the top is of Averell Harriman, the quintessential career diplomat. I don't normally chase pins  of candidates who didn't get their parties' nomination except for a select few. I'd heard Harriman's name so much growing up that I bid on this one and won it cheap. As mentioned in his Wikipedia entry (sampled below) he was a two time Democratic hopeful in the 1950's. Pretty unremarkable pin overall.

Averell Harriman (November 15, 1891 – July 26, 1986) was an American Democratic Party politician, businessman, and diplomat. He was the son of railroad baron E. H. Harriman. He served as Secretary of Commerce under President Harry S. Truman and later as the 48th Governor of New York. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1952, and again in 1956 when he was endorsed by President Truman but lost to Adlai Stevenson both times. Harriman served President Franklin D. Roosevelt as special envoy to Europe and served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union and U.S. Ambassador to Britain. He served in numerous U.S. diplomatic assignments in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. He was a core member of the group of foreign policy elders known as "The Wise Men".

And I can never turn down a Kennedy pin. Next to LBJ he takes up more pages in my binder than any other president.

Three Aces

I bought a pack of 2013 Gypsy Queen before I went on vacation a couple of weeks ago and they came out of the pack looking a lot like the previous versions. Nothing wrong with that, but I'm not inspired to buy more of them. I was lucky enough to get a Bob Gibson.

He's a member of my "Favorite NL Pitchers Trio". The other two members of that little club of mine are Juan Marichal and Sandy Koufax. I checked and found that they also had GQ cards in this year's set.

I had some PayPal money burning a hole in my pocket so I went to eBay with the idea of completing the trio and that's what I did.

Of the three I like the Koufax the best.

So that'll do it for my '13 Gypsy Queen experiences. Unlike the last couple of years I'm going pass on buying any more packs to save my money for something else.

Chris Davis Is Crazy Good

These are my only Chris Davis cards, and I showed one here last year so it's kind of stale. But Davis himself is rather awesome.

With his homer Sunday night against the Yankees Davis became the first player in baseball history to have 30 home runs and 25 doubles by the end of June. I found this little gem in the Baltimore Sun:

He also joined some elite company when he became the eighth player in baseball history to have 30 [homers] before the end of June. The other players on the list: Babe Ruth (1928, 1930), Ken Griffey Jr. (1994, 1998), Mark McGwire (1998), Sammy Sosa (1998, 1999), Luis Gonzalez (2001), Barry Bonds (2001) and Albert Pujols (2009).

And unlike three or four of those names he's playing in the post-PEDS era and he's not hitting a Hi-Bounce Super Ball disguised as a baseball. He won't stay this hot all season but it's fun to watch as long as it lasts.

When Buck is happy, I'm happy.