Vintage Fun

 

We all know we aren't really supposed to "play" with our Baseball Cards by literally mixing them into a mess like the one in this picture. And instead we play with our Baseball Cards every other way imaginable, but definitely never have we ever randomly mixed cards every which way possible, from sets up to 11 years apart, all at once, spread all over everywhere.

Although I do often look at my Baseball Cards the way Yaz is looking at his Baseball Bat there, I didn't go all scrambled eggs with them today. And, some of these cards I don't even own. 

A bit of a pity because just a few days ago I came across a certain picture in my photo library - 

That's a small town in Michigan, not just in the Upper Peninsula, but on the way totally wonderful Keewenaw Peninsula, one of my favorite places to go. I am fortunate that I do get to visit it several times per year, while working. I love how the continuing existence of that sign illustrates the residual cultural power of Major League Baseball in our Society, some 55 years after George Brunet's last Major League Game. Truly a lifer/gamer, his career continued on after 1971 in Mexican Leagues.

Unfortunately, the most routine Baseball sight up in that area today is an old Little League diamond, sporting grass that hasn't been cut in a decade or two, at this point. 

His sudden appearance on a Baseball Card image, right in front of me just recently, is a clear sign I need to get in a higher gear on collecting his Baseball Cards. Even his Burlap card, a set I am never going to assemble even a 9 card homage for.

But that's all a bit tangential to that bit of from-way-outta-left-field happenstance. Pretty prescient of say, maybe 16 year old me to obtain his appearance on a Baseball Picture Card product, some 42 years before I came across that homage in his old home town. I know I have posted that picture before. If you knew that, I am truly impressed.

So I kinda sorta have a George Brunet card, courtesy of my long-hoped-for reunification with my 20th century Baseball possessions. Which, as it turns out, weren't just Baseball Cards. That big ole box of wonderfulness also included this:

What a nice thing Topps did here, back in the day. What are the odds Fanatics would allow a product like this to be created? Hardly seems likely any more. And such a product today would have to feature mega-successful (?) players like the 2 current players on the "cover" of Series Two, if you can even remember what packages of Series Two even look like, which would be impossible for me if I hadn't written a blog entry about a pack of it, and scanned the wrapper. Because there are still no Baseball Cards for sale in my local grocery store, right in the prime of Baseball season. Excellent work there, Fanatics. Not.

But back in the early 1980s, Baseball Cards were well on their way to a big, big "upswing" - you know, the kind that launch Home Runs. And so Baseball Cards weren't just wrapped in wax and waiting for you in the candy aisle. The first books about Baseball Cards were appearing, and, in other products.

I was quite pleased to discover this in with the collection of my youth. I immediately started thinking about where and when I could assemble it.

And when I opened the box, it does look good for completion — a lot of pieces in there. The key problem with already-opened jigsaw puzzles is of course — what if some previous human being controlling the box, let a piece escape? Let's just banish that thought, and vibe this puzzle together, 100% complete.

One of the very first pieces I picked up should be recognizable to anyone so old they are still reading about Baseball Cards on a screen, rather than blowing twice as much time to have someone else read to them about Baseball Cards as part of a "video." Surely, y'all remember this guy -

'Ol Blue Eyes played Baseball?

are we sure about this?

I would imagine many of you sharpies could even already identify exactly which set this card appeared in originally. I'm not quite that quick on the '60s draw, but my suspicion is it might be a Burlap card. There is only one way to find out...though I know a modern day Baseball Card Influencer would of course present you with a video replay of the process involved, here on this blog, you'll just have to wait a 'lil bit while the 20th Century is lovingly re-lived here at Base Set HQ.

Just the first sorting of the edge pieces instantly supplied Baseball flashbacks -

And even in 1983 or so, the creators of this bit of wonderfulness knew to tip a hat to Rookie Cards:

These peeps knew their Baseball Cards, and they weren't messing around - the Mantle card is an autographed copy.

And their knowledge was not just via the SuperStars (necessarily) teased on the cover of the box. That was certain to me, not just some of the time, but, instantly, when I found this piece -

Surely, you must know that card.

No?

How about now?

Still no? 

Pop Quiz Time: what team does this card purport to represent?

Texas, you say?

Then your 1970s Baseball Card Kid street cred is revoked.

Adults today will blubber on about how much they love the 1971 Munson, or the 75 Brett RC, or be foggy on which decade is which and insist the Ricky RC is The Greatest. 

But if you were ripping packs in the late 1970s - that excerpted bit shown there is from THE most famous Baseball Card of the decade. The folks who made this puzzle were from my tribe.

Which was a wonderful thing, for me, today, because after a long day at the ER (I was not the patient), some drifting back to old-timey Baseball was just the ticket this evening.

It helped tremendously to be intimately familiar with the designs of all these cards. Yup, that right there is a corner of a 1972 Topps, yes, sir. 

As did owning many of them. Good to see you again, Pops.

Particularly since the box was a little deceptive on what was included inside the 7 square inches of flashbacks. Usually those are created by 1/8" squares.

Perhaps, that familiarity was all a little too much help, as just 100 pieces of such perfect wayback machine good times would never be enough. I basically knew that going in. Which makes owning and operating this Baseball Card blog a Very Good Thing, quite often, as it extends my joy with these goodies from the past.

The cut of my puzzle, as compared to what is seen on the box cover, makes me suspect there may have been a larger, 500, or maybe 1000 piece version of this puzzle created also. One can dream.

Or, maybe some other astute jigsaw puzzle creator has used this concept. I sure hope so. Jigsaw puzzles are incredibly relaxing, I find, and of course, so are Baseball Cards. To combine the two was straight Genius.

So until the day I find another one of these, I will just have to occasionally re-assemble this one. Fun.

My Biggest Baseball Card Day, Ever

 

I have been both eagerly anticipating, and completely dreading, this particular day for a long, long time.

Today I finally discovered whether I still own my childhood Baseball Cards.

How could I lose track of such a thing? Well it wasn't a deliberate decision, that is certain.

Some 20 years ago now, my seasonal life working in different states at different times of year went through a difficult period as my Michigan apartment building was going to be re-modeled. I had a sweet deal there, only having to pay half rent the months I was gone, as my landlord didn't want to lose a tenant (I did mention this was 20 years ago). So with that economic fact and the concept of moving everything I owned out of a 2nd floor apartment and then back again, later, I wanted to cut a deal.

What we worked out was that I would put all of my possessions in one corner of the building while the first apartment was rebuilt. When it was done, that one would be mine and all of my possessions would only have to be moved 10 yards.

After many twists & turns to the story, I eventually learned that my former sweet deal of half-rent for an unused apartment couldn't continue, as my landlord had used public financing of some sort for the remodeling, and the State would now be a participant in the financial end of the renting, which also came with new low income eligibility requirements - no special deals for part-timers. Simultaneously, down at my winter job I was starting up a new business partnership with a co-worker after our previous employer retired - & I needed every last cent I could scrounge. I managed to avoid selling off Baseball Cards, that time, but I could not pay the many months of now full rent for an apartment I wouldn't be living in while launching a new business.

So down all those stairs (extra-tall first floor in a downtown business building) went all of my possessions. Or, almost all. I knew already at the time that a few things were missing, as contractors had been in the building for about a year at that point. But I couldn't worry about it, right then. Everything went to a storage unit and out-of-state I went.

Subsequently, I never could quite get that storage unit emptied, as I lived on-the-road (jobsites) ever more & more. Years passed. New Baseball Cards accumulated. Online Baseball Cards appeared in my life, which was-is wonderful. But all new Baseball Cards inevitably reminded me of my childhood Baseball Cards. And that, was only partially pleasant.

A couple-three years ago now, I finally emptied that old storage unit, after another sweetheart deal finally drew to a close. I was both eagerly anticipating, and dreading, that particular day for a long time. The dread hit, very hard — my record collection assembled in college was largely destroyed by what proved to be a leaky storage unit. The music on all those records is fine, but the value of them is generally gone (molded covers). Many thousands of dollars worth of value.

Plenty of my book collection had also succumbed. However this was only a problem amongst certain boxes stored directly on the floor; most possessions were just fine.

But - my childhood Baseball Cards weren't in that storage unit. The horror, the horror.

I did find a few card items, that might make for an interesting post one of these days, as it included an unopened Hobby Box of a mid-10s product. And my college days Baseball Cards had been with me all along, as those had been acquired after leaving the "nest."

The problem created by emptying the storage unit was simple. If my childhood Baseball Cards weren't in there, that meant either I had wisely trundled them back over to my parents' house on the concept of general Security - OR they had been in my old apartment, accessible to a random melange of contractors for a year. As I have described them before, they became Schrödinger Baseball Cards.

The only way to prove their existence, was to go spelunking in a cavern like this one:

That's the closing image from the first Indiana Jones movie, showing the audience where the Ark of the Covenant ended up.

My Dad's basement isn't that large of course, but it was stuffed to the gills with antiques and his lifetime of possessions, some of them valuable, some of them not. Except of course, to him, for whom they were ALL valuable and needed to be kept. Forever.

My Dad is still with us and will be for some time, I can report, but now that he can no longer walk the steps into his own basement, he has finally relented on allowing us to begin sorting it all out.

And after many months and weeks of occasionally hauling things to Goodwill, or Recycling, or the trash can once a week, or a Safety Deposit Box, I could finally reach an area of shelving holding a half dozen remnant boxes of my "stuff."

So today, my final 5 yard journey to find the fate of my childhood Baseball Cards commenced. Truly a pity I hadn't spent my many years of Odyssey away from them eating Lotus flowers with Charlize Theron (how pleasant that would have been), sigh.

What I was mainly on the look-out for, was the image seen above already -

The Topps Super Sports Card Locker

Although my childhood collection was a fair bit larger than what could fit in that well beloved Baseball Card product of my childhood, I was particularly far more keen to find it than a few shoe boxes of cards, because I believed my collection of 1975 Topps, the first Baseball Cards packs I had ever opened, would be inside. 

Instead,

The horrors didn't return as I had finally found the Super Sports Card Locker inside a box sitting on top of the crucial shoe boxes. So I knew my 75s were now just one more box lid away.

Reunification with 8 year old me's key collecting accoutrement was interesting. I kinda screwed up using it, by putting the little team labels down at the bottom of the card slots, instead of on the side panels as intended.

I have long been planning to put this device back into use, as each and every year I still faithfully first sort Series One cards by team, to help me know which player plays on which team - isn't that the point of Baseball Cards? Only much later will I ever re-assemble a set by card number.

Alas, these days the Super Sports Card Locker wouldn't quite work to lovingly pull out an under construction "Team Set" when my favorite team has a new opponent to study, as there are only 26 card slots. Because this product was created before the Mariners and Blue Jays joined Major League Baseball. 

The Locker is a cheerful celebration of sports however, let's admire a little:

Art by Ray Hammond

I think if I peel the protective plastic layer off the front/doors of this storage product, it too will look acceptable once again. So it seems likely come next February I will be putting some cards back in this, although the M's & Jays, and Rays & Marlins, will just have to squeeze in with some extra bunk mates, somehow.

Finally after that very short initial dopamine hit from Memory Lane, there they were:

Reunited

and it feels so Good!

1975 Topps!

I must have sure been proud of my collection of whichever set of Topps "Big" is sitting there next to my truly beloved. I'm sure I'll look through that stack of cards, someday. But not, Today. Today, is 1975 all over again. Hooray!

That picture doesn't reveal a simple thing - my modest collection of The Minis. That stack there with the Mike Marshal '74 Highlight is all Minis. Those came into my collection a few years after 1975, once my family had moved to Michigan, where all my new neighbors could only purchase Minis in 1975. I'm glad to have them, and they almost certainly explain the complete absence of doubles/dups in my regular size 1975 collection. Those are the other 2 stacks in the little shoe box, one standing vertically, one horizontal there next to Big Orel Hershiser. 

And thus I ended up with a new-all-over-again First Card, for 1975 Topps:

Unfortunately, I have zero idea why this card appeared on top of the stack of cards.

But, that's OK.

This card proved to be the just exactly perfect Baseball Card to dive into another long-awaited card enjoyment: finally reading Night Owl's 1975 Topps blog, some 14 years after I discovered it. I could never bring myself to start into that, knowing that Schrödinger's cat might have died in that storage unit, or a shifty contractor employee's grimy hands. So today has another wonderful and long hoped for milestone: really learning just who some of these players really were. And my first specific, as in, by-card-number reading of NO's blog revealed the mystery of that batting helmet, at long last, courtesy of another courteous reader of that entry, in the comments.

The mystery of the stack continued. Let's go back 51 years...

In a little better shape than the Brooks, but what was the connection? Was I pulling Stars out of the little slots in the Super Sports Card Locker, 20 years back? 

   Maybe.

What a relief to know I really do own my own copy of this Baseball Card, so easily memorable courtesy of Purple + Pink. And mine is as AUTHentic as it gets with centering like that. Just exactly perfect.

And I was of course, yeah, reading the backs, immediately. This one supplied the first treat:

- as the Topps card back writer gives us a sly reference to Ryan's nickname there in the cartoon / trivia question.

That little trio of cards soon surrendered to proper Baseball Card organization as decided on by 8 year old me: team by team, is The Way.

Thus next appeared a robust amount of 1975 Topps Detroit Tigers, probably reinforced significantly in the later years of the decade by my neighbors, after rounds of backyard Home Run Derby.

That held an answer to something I had been wondering through the 2010s, on the next card, as well as informing a bit of up-to-the-moment Baseball action -

What I had been wondering all through Lamont's run coaching for the Tigers while Jim Leyland was managing all those great teams 20 to 10 years back now - was where did Lamont play in the Bigs (Detroit, surprise), and what position (Catcher, like oh so many Managers, Coaches, and Broadcasters)? 

This card is a perfect one to enjoy for me today, as the Tigers' next series is with Pittsburgh, where a Fan Favorite from those Leyland teams, Don Kelly, is the Manager now. And he has in turn hired Gene Lamont to be his Bench Coach. 1975 Topps, still part of The Game. I would have to think Gene Lamont has to be the very last MLB paycheck receiving 1975 Topps card though. The 3 broadcasts this coming week will be a little sweeter now.

The Tigers collection also held an entry for my newest and long-overdue Player Collection, though that one was not launched until events in 1978:

Following along soon after was another Player Collection need, on another robust team effort as my Mom's family was from Missouri -

The team organization quickly made me move into a let's-cut-to-the-chase mode, no matter how much I was loving each and every Baseball Card flashback to 1975.

The one card the most on my mind though all those years of uncertainty,

was this one:

I'm fairly sure this Baseball Card is not considered one of the better Hank Aaron Baseball Cards ever made. 

But for me, THIS IS MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE BASEBALL CARD.

And it's not really close to the 99 other cards that might be in 2nd place. I pulled this Baseball Card from a wax package at some point during the 1975 Baseball season, with still fresh memories of being summoned to the TV set by my otherwise not-sports-fans-at-all parents, when Hammerin' Hank became the new Home Run King not long before.

And now, I owned Hank Aaron's Baseball Card! How freaking cool is that?

Infinitely cool. 

And even though I could have purchased a copy of this card at any time in about the last 40 years, a new copy wouldn't be MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE BASEBALL CARD, because it wouldn't have been the one I pulled from a pack. Simple as that.

Now of course, one can't peruse a stack of 1975 Topps Baseball Cards without pondering the two most famous cards in the set. I presumed I had pulled both of them as a youth, & -

- yeah, I'm still reading the backs and learning the workings of Major League Baseball.

Do you know how old Robin Yount was during his Rookie season in 1974?

18.

I did not know that until the year 2026, all thanks to Topps Baseball Cards. Truly an impressive stat when you think about it.

Alas, it does not appear that 8 year old me lucked into owning the other key Rookie card in the set, for a player on Kansas City's team. A slight disappointment to be sure, but that's nothing compared to the immense Joy I re-obtained today, with the Baseball Cards my Mom didn't throw out.

For now though, I have some Baseball Cards to read. Cya soon...