The news came suddenly, and unexpectedly. I was driving along the top of Lake Michigan, a classic "nice area" as Jim would say, one fine late summer day in 2023 when I stopped beside the road briefly to "check messages" and double-check to see what time the Tigers game was on that night.
That included a needed look for a message at a hunting & fishing forum I quite enjoy, where news of Price's passing had just been posted.
I got back on the road but soon remembered some key concerns about ... Baseball Cards.
This next card had been displayed on my bookshelf for many years now:
1969 Topps
Aside from being a worthy visual addition to things such as Miguel Cabrera's 2011 Lineage "Box Topper," a 1974 Steve Garvey, and another box-topper featuring Hammerin' Hank I pulled out of some product I forget, that Jim Price card was there to try and motivate me to do something with it. Something quite specific: send it to Mr. Price for "TTM" autograph.
I kept meaning to check in with William @ Foul Bunt for the needed best tips & techniques. I had planned to even send in along with the card a donation to Price's charity, known as "Jack's Place for Autism" even though I don't think Price ever explicitly solicited such donations for autographs. His charity work was just something I admired about him.
However as Price hadn't retired from broadcasting I always figured I had plenty of time yet. I didn't really put 2 & 2 together on his occasional absences from Tigers home broadcasts the last few years prior, nor his half-retirement to Home Games only, common enough with older Baseball broadcasters, and just presumed he would eventually step away from the mic, "under his own power" as it were, and, publicly.
But that's not how things turned out. In retrospect, I quite sadly deliberately skipped what turned out to be his final broadcast, in early July 2023. His long-time radio play-by-play announcer, Dan Dickerson, had a rare weekend off, most likely for some significant event in one of his children's lives, as he usually would have a "162" listed in his "G" column, if he were to be given a Baseball Card. (Something I truly wish would happen, at least once.) This meant Jim was working with Tigers AA announcer Greg Gagne, who is ever more adept at this back-up role these days, but at the time he and Jim just had very little experience working with each other and the necessary I-speak-now-you-speak timing necessary for a joint call sports broadcast. The stop-start, halting results were not enjoyable to hear, really. And even then I didn't assign any connection to what I was hearing, on-air, and concepts of Jimmie's health.
The 2nd game of that weekend series against the A's on July 8, 2023 became a fairly historic Tigers game as it was a rare "Combined No Hitter." It became a part of my personal history in that it was my last time hearing Jim Price call a game, live. But even despite the on-going No Hitter, I just listened in fits and starts while working, and then the next day just ... skipped my usual near-daily ritual during Baseball season, awaiting Dan & Jim's return after the All-Star break, which just never happened. Thus July 9, 2023 was Jim Price's final day in the Major Leagues, after debuting on April 11, 1967; he passed away just a month later, on August 7, 2023.
That fateful day I soon pulled over again, knowing well what happens to the prices of Baseball Cards when a player dies. A whole lot of people in my exact same predicament of always-having-planned-to-buy.... suddenly buy. And thus prices rise, quickly.
Fortunately, COMC still had one copy left of the 2021 Heritage High Numbers autographed card you saw at the top of this post. And the price hadn't increased yet, with ebay recent "'comps." I gladly clicked away the necessary $50-ish and was relieved things worked out on this one small desire. Having only the limited "red ink" version of the "Real One Autographs" drove up the price considerably, compared to a "blue ink," but for such a beloved figure in my life, I was more than happy to splurge a little on the just-ego-trippin' more exclusive version that only 70 other human beings would be privileged to ever own, once all of 2021 Heritage High Numbers is finally opened, which might never happen, anyway.
That is probably definitely one of the very, very few Baseball autographs I would gladly pay real money for. If things hadn't worked out on buying that one and none were to be found for sale ever again, but I had then summoned a Genie from a beat-up old can of RC Cola with a Baseball player printed on the side of it who then gave me three wishes to get autographed Baseball Cards, I would have picked a Jim Price autographed card right away. Definitely before one from any of the 24,000-ish other people who have ever played Major League Baseball. But maybe just after selecting a 2011 Topps 60th Anniversary Sy Berger autographed Baseball Card. Tough call. Autograph #3, I dunno, right now. Probably Uecker. Yeah.
Why would I want this man's autograph so much? I figure I have heard Jim Price's voice more than any other man ever born, aside from my own father. Think about that for a minute, and who that might be in your own life, outside of close family.
He had worked on Detroit Tigers broadcasts for decades. Even before his excellent and long-time radio broadcast partner Dan Dickerson had begun his own stellar career, Price was working for the Tigers in TV & Radio. That included time calling games with the All-Time legend Ernie Harwell.
A baseball season is quite a long experience, for everyone. When you listen to most every game a team plays, you become very familiar with your regular broadcasters. For some, that becomes overly familiar; Price was one who possibly had a few more detratctors than fans by the 2010s. It is a challenge for any broadcaster to not slip into repetitive patterns of description and that is the most challenging by far for daily Baseball announcers.
I could see the point of such critics, but for me the familiarity of the phrases was a feature, not a bug, as the modern expression goes. Price probably had an old-time expression that could say the same thing, though one is not coming to mind right now, amidst memories of his "buggy whips" and "yellow hammers."
Although I have had that treasured autographed Baseball Card for some time now, I haven't had many cards to go with it. I am being similarly way too lazy on acquiring any Ernie Harwell cards, for example; I hope that never becomes difficult. Maybe this project here will get that fire lit finally. It took some time, and multiple COMC shipments, but I now have been able to accumulate an appropriate set of mates for that 71 Topps, starting with Jim's Rookie Card -
1967 Topps
His 'Topps run' was simple enough to collect:
1968 Topps
1969 Topps
1970 Topps
1971 Topps & 2021 Heritage High Numbers
(complete w/authentic centering)
Here, however, the trail goes partially cold. 5 Cards, something that would probably be less likely to happen, today, for a career back-up Catcher, as there is less room in sets these days so we can have more Rookie Card cards of players who appear in 5 games, career. Just, 5, the grand total for Jim "Jimmie" Price, of Baseball Cards as we traditionally conceive of them, as arriving in packages sold in retail stores, still with a stick of bubblegum included.
But for me, I kind of don't ever want just 5 cards of some similarity. What am I going to do with just, 5 of them? How do I put those out on the coffee table to enjoy in my future Tiny Home? For me, Baseball Cards are to be enjoyed visually, physically from time-to-time, not just conceptually, knowing they are safe and secure down at the Bank's Safe Deposit box.
Fortunately of course, we have ... "Oddballs." And there, the Cards of Many Creators biz-ness, which supplied that wonderful Heritage Red Ink HOA I will still include here one more time — came through:
1969 "Milton Bradley"
That has to be from some sort of playable game, as it has a set of results on the back to be used after rolling two dice. Somewhat like this more familiar such piece -
1970 APBA Baseball (1969 season)
Far from ideal of course, to have a picture-less piece of Baseball memorabilia, but at least I got his at-the-time nickname out of it, one which might partially explain his bouts with Cancer later in Life, which were never revealed to the fans in much detail, something fully understandable. Thankfully, that is the only such item needed here, as we'll see shortly, although there are a few more APBA 'cards' for Mr. Price.
1971 Dell MLB Stamps
And, much later on, just one post-career card, ever, excepting the 21 HHN Auto
1988 Domino's Pizza
That one is best explained by pointing out that at the time, the owner of Domino's Pizza, Tom Monaghan, was in the midst of his 9 year ownership of the Detroit Tigers, something less familiar now than the subsequent ownership by Michigan's other mega-Pizza chain clan. Those cards were issued as a 20th-anniversary-of-68-World Series deal. I quite like how it uses each corporation's "team colors," simultaneously. I also felt it worthy of including a scan of the back, cuz, yeah, I read the backs:
which astutely points out that the Tigers went down 3-1 in that WORLD SERIES, and emerged triumphant, Boston Red Sox style. Mickey Lolich, by the way, hasn't appeared on a Topps Baseball Card since 2012, nor any other card since 2013, despite being a Game 5 AND a GAME SEVEN winner, in the same World Series. Such is life, in the flyover Baseball states. Here, have another Ty Cobb card. '84 who?
So in the end I reached my needed card count of - Nine, thanks in great deal to that APBA game card.
There is just one more Baseball Picture product in Jim Price's oeuvre, one released by the Detroit Free Press newspaper as part of a "bubblegumless" series of Tigers cards, probably not long after the '68 Series I would imagine. Maybe the set name was a way to get around the tight connection between "Topps" and "bubble gum," while still using otherwise licensed MLB iconography, I don't know. All I know is I would much rather have a 9th picture on this page of cards.
As it stands right now there is a strong Mr. Jimmie Goes To New York vibe to this collection, one which I will never be able to dilute very well via just adding more cards.
But until that glorious but perhaps improbable day when I track down one of those newspaper issues, the following will suffice quite nicely at the very beginning of my Tigers binder —
The Result
Rest, In Peace
