Ken Boyer was the NL MVP in 1964, a 7-time All-Star and 5-time Gold Glove winner, but those days were behind him when he was traded to the Mets after the 1965 season. He was the starting 3rd baseman for the 1966 Mets, leading the team with 61 RBI, hitting 14 homers and batting .266.

The following July, he was traded to the White Sox in a deal that also saw Sandy Alomar Sr. going to the Chisox and J.C. Martin heading for Shea.

Boyer passed away in 1982.

I’ll be honest, I’d mentioned Johnson City in the header mainly to keep the alliteration going… In 1971 Whitfield was a first-round draft pick (19th overall) of the Yankees, and started his professional career in Johnson City, where he was teammates with Louisiana Lightning himself, Ron Guidry.

Whitfield moved up through the Yankees farm system, but never established himself with the parent club after a couple of “cups of coffee” with the Yanks. He shares his 1975 rookie card with Fred Lynn, Ed Armbrister and Tom Poquette.

During spring training of 1977, Whitfield was traded to the Giants for Marty Perez (known on this blog as the Latin Davy Jones)…

…and much to the dismay of the airbrush artist who did this card for the 1977 O-Pee-Chee set, Perez played in one game for the Yankees before being shipped off to Oakland as part of a package for pitcher Mike Torrez.

Terry Whitfield established himself as a regular outfielder with the Giants with good offensive stats, although maybe not what may have been expected of him.

Whitfield is notable in that he may have been the first American player to spend his peak years playing in Japan; his contract was sold by the Giants to the Seibu Lions for the 1981 season, when Whitfield was 28 years old.

He’d play three years in Japan, helping the Lions win Japan Series titles in 1982 and 1983 while hitting 88 homers over the 3 years.

After Japan, Whitfield was signed to a three-year contract by the Dodgers, who must’ve figured that they signed a guy who’d sorted out his hitting issues while overseas, but it didn’t work out that way. Whitfield ended up as more of a pinch hitter than a regular and would hit just 7 homers in three years with the Dodgers.

OK, I’ve covered Japan and Johnson City… what about the Jersey?

The jersey Whitfield is wearing is fine in and of itself, but I view it as a mistake along the lines of the New York Rangers’ uniform change of the 1970′s…

You’ve already got a classic uniform, why would you change it?

…And the answer to that is, of course, it was the 1970′s.

…but while the Astros are a bad team, the Mets have a worse outfield, and before I knew it Ankiel was wearing a Mets uniform with Dwight Gooden’s number on it.

At that point I realized I needed to make a custom while I could, because if Ankiel continues to hit around .200, he’ll probably be gone as soon as another outfielder passes through waivers.

…but it’s been several days and he’s still a Met.  We’ll keep our fingers crossed.

Before I get into The Office, I should say something about Dwight Bernard and this card. Dwight Bernard pitched out of the Mets bullpen in 1978 and 1979. After the 1979 season he was traded to Milwaukee, he pitched for the Brew Crew in 1981 and 1982, and got to pitch an inning in the 1982 World Series. He’s currently the pitching coach for the Mariners’ AAA team in Tacoma.

The card itself, which is about as oddball as oddball gets, is from the 1983 Gardner’s set, a regional issue from Topps. I believe that Gardner’s is a bakery in the Midwest; I’m sure someone can correct me if I’m wrong.

The front of the card is… um… colorful. The back is pretty much identical to 1983 Topps.

Getting back to The Office, I’ll definitely be watching tonight… possibly even something approximating real time so I don’t get spoiled. Will Steve Carell make an appearance? I don’t really care, but then again I never liked Michael Scott all that much… he doesn’t hold a candle to Ricky Gervais’ David Brent.  Brent was an idiot and completely misguided, but he was likeable at some level and you couldn’t help but hope that he’d see the error of his ways and be a decent person.  Michael Scott is more of an ass.  Dammit, he made Pam cry in the first episode!  Pam! America’s sweetheart! That bastard.

At any rate, I’ve always seen the show as being about Pam and Jim and Dwight…

…and Creed and Meredith and Angela and Stanley and Erin and Phyllis and so on. It took the show a while to find its footing after Carrell left, but I think that this season’s been pretty good and I’m looking forward to seeing if there are any twists left for them to twist.

So congrats to The Office… it was sometimes great, sometimes crap, but always kept me watching.

We’ll start off with a beat-up team card.

The Tribe went 76-86 in 1970, finishing in 5th place in the AL East, 32 games out of first but ahead of the lowly Senators.

Chuck Hinton was an All-Star in 1965 and had originally signed with the Orioles, but was selected by the Senators in the 1960 expansion draft. Aside from the Sens and the Indians, he also played one year for the Angels. In 1962 he hit .310, which made him the only player on the “new” Washington Senators (the team that started in 1961 and moved to Texas for the 1972 season) to hit .300. By the time this card came out, he was serving in a utility role, and 1971 would be his last season. Hinton passed away earlier this year.

Dennis Higgins pitched for 7 years in the majors, but 1970 was his sole season with the Indians. He made 58 appearances in 1970 with a 4-6 record and 11 saves. He’s the cousin of recent White Sox & Twins third baseman Joe Crede (Yes, indeedy).

Larry Brown played from 1963 to 1974 with several teams, and had been a starter with the Indians for much of the 1960′s, but was in a utility role in 1970. His brother is former MLB catcher Dick Brown.

Larry Burchart pitched in 29 Major League games, all in 1969. That year he was a Rule V draftee from the Dodgers organization, and he stayed with the Indians all year, but the rest of his career would be two seasons pitching for the Indians’ AAA team in Wichita.

Max Alvis was an All-Star in 1965 and 1967 and lead the A.L. in HBP in 1963 and 1965. He played for the Indians from 1962 to 1969, but was traded to the Brewers on April 4th, 1970… Just a couple of days after they officially became the Brewers (having gone through spring training as the Seattle Pilots).

According to Wikipedia, there was an attempt to move the Indians to Seattle in either 1962, 1964 or 1965, depending on which article you look at. I don’t remember ever hearing anything like that before, I wonder if it’s true. Does anybody know anything about that?

I also found out from a January, 1970 article in the Spokane Daily Chronicle that Dallas had also made a play for the Pilots, but would lose out to Bud Selig and his Milwaukee group.

…and you thought this was going to be all about the Indians!

Here’s the best cartoon of the bunch, from Larry Burchart’s card:

…And that does it for the Mystery Box… It put a good dent in my 1970 needs, and was a lot of fun to go through and write about. Hope you all enjoyed it!

Specifically, what happened to Philip Humber, the Mets 1st round draft pick, 3rd overall, in 2004.

The guy who was part of a package of highly-regarded prospects the Mets sent to the Twins for former Cy Young winner Johan Santana.

The guy who threw a perfect game against the Mariners, as I commemorated on one of my customs.

One would think that a former first-round draft pick who pitched a perfect game within the last year or two would at least have decent stats… but last year with the White Sox he was 5-5 with a 6.44 ERA and 1.539 WHIP.

This year with the Astros – where all they ask of a pitcher is that he have a pulse, keep the team within 5 runs and hey, 4 or 5 innings would be really nice – he has gone 0-8 with a 9.59 ERA and a 2.019 WHIP.

This weekend, Philip Humber was designated for assignment by the Astros after giving up 5 runs in 2/3 of an inning.

DFA’ed by the worst-in-the-Majors Houston Astros.

Just to add insult to injury to Mets fans (not to mention the Mets organization), he’s the second former top Mets prospect to get DFA’ed by the Astros this year…

Fernando Martinez, who was at or near the top of the Mets Top 10 several years running, was DFA’ed by the Astros last week.

Lastings Milledge was another “can’t miss” top prospect. Baseball America rated him the #9 prospect overall before the 2006 season.

After playing with the Mets, Nats, Bucs and Chisox (for two games), he’s now playing in Japan.

Yes, this is an exercise in wallowing in Mets fan self-pity while showing off some recent (and reasonably-priced) acquisitions. But you also have to ask “What the heck is going on here?”

I don’t have any answers, so I’m going to fall back on Standard Mets Fan Protocol 13A: Blame former GM Omar Minaya while hoping that the current front office has a clue.

Here’s the scene:  In Royals Stadium that Friday, Ed Figueroa was pitching well for the Yankees, giving up 2 runs on 6 hits, and going into the 9th inning with a 3-2 lead.  Figueroa g0t Hal McRae and Al Cowens to pop out, but with two outs he walked catcher Darrell Porter and then went 2-0 on Amos Otis.  Billy Martin decided he’d seen enough, and brought in closer Goose Gossage.

Gossage’s first pitch to Otis was hit to right-center field, and centerfielder Paul Blair seemed to catch it for the final out, but…

…and this is the part I like…

…he collided with rightfielder Reggie Jackson, the ball and Blair’s glove went flying and a shaken Paul Blair wasn’t able to get to the ball before Otis came all the way around with a walk-off  inside-the-park home run!

Royals Win!  Thuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh Royals win!!!!

Coincidentally, the Yankees are in Kansas City this weekend.  Maybe something similar will happen today and the Royals can avoid the sweep.

Incidentally, there are sources on the web which say the collision was between Jackson and Mickey Rivers, but Blair had pinch-run for Rivers in the 7th.  I wonder if there were extenuating circumstances, because I can’t imagine why you’d need to pinch-run for “Mick The Quick”.

I own this set – which is actually 2 uncut sheets of 9 cards each – and had scanned the sheets over a year ago, but never got around to posting them.  I figured that Night Owl’s post is a sign to get off my lazy butt and do something.

This set was produced to promote a Cracker Jack-sponsored “Old-Timers’ Classic” baseball game played in RFK Stadium in Washington D.C.

I got these in 1982 through a mail-in offer involving proofs-of-purchase from boxes of Cracker Jack.  Regardless of what I might sing during the 7th inning stretch, I’m not a fan of Cracker Jack, so buying and eating a number of boxes was something of a sacrifice for me.  Don’t buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack, you can just buy me a brat and a Coke, thanks so much!

…Yes, a hot dog will do just fine.

The design of the set borrowed as much from prior Topps designs as Upper Deck Vintage did!  Check it out… You’ve got the script team name borrowed from the 1978 set, the little pennant-y box that the name and position go in are lifted directly from 1979 Topps.  Hey, they paid good money for those designs, they’re gonna recycle them!

Many of the photos used appeared on other cards, like the 1953 Ralph Kiner and Bob Feller, and the 1958 Larry Doby.

Here is the back of the AL Sheet… The card in the middle plugs the Old-Timers classic.

For a better look at the design of the cards, I cropped the image to highlight just the Brooks Robinson card.  The photo used here is the same one used in the 1969 Deckle Edge set (except that one was in black & white, of course).

Brooks Robinson is wearing the only Orioles home uniform which didn’t feature “Orioles” in script… This style was worn from 1963 to 1965.

Here’s the back of Brooks…

…and since I got my inspiration from Night Owl, the least I can do is feature the Duke Snider card from the sheet.

Now that I look at it closely for the first time in a bunch of years, it’s kind of odd that they airbrushed a Brooklyn Dodgers cap on him.  I didn’t think too much about it at the time, but now I wonder if the photo is from Duke’s time with the Mets.  I’d also considered if it might be from when he was a coach with the Expos, but I think he had some 70′s sideburns when he was in Montreal.

I’m sure that there are a number of you who keep a binder just for the players currently on your favorite team’s roster.  I know I’ve seen a couple of you comment on doing something like that.

Well, I do that too… but I do it for every Major League team.

Jemile Weeks and the Beatles
Yoenis Cespedes, a Simpsons Wacky Pack parody and a Fleer sticker
Seth Smith

…and I’ve been doing it since the mid-1970’s.

Like most kids, I was always arranging and re-arranging my cards in different ways… by team, by card number, by the state where they were born, by the team that drafted them…  At some point I arranged my cards not by the team they were shown with, but the teams they were currently with… and they pretty much stayed that way.

My collection’s first permanent home was a drawer in my dresser, set up so that I could sit on the end of the bed, slide out the drawer and have easy access to my cards.  Each team had its own stack, with American League teams on the left, National League teams on the right.  Each day I’d look at the transactions listed in the paper and dutifully move cards around as players moved up and down from the minors, or from team to team.

Somewhere along the line this arrangement was changed by a new technological advancement:  The 9-pocket sheet.  The drawer morphed into a set of binders, still organized by current rosters.  I decided to take advantage of the 9-pocket format and gave each player a three-card row in a sheet.

Of course, I didn’t have three cards of every player, and that left empty pockets, which in turn resulted in a weird sort of auxiliary collection:  filler cards.

YABBA.
DABBA.
DOO.

I began to acquire non-sport cards, interesting cards from other sports, whatever was available to fill in the empty spaces.

Along with accumulating these filler cards, I also started to keep an eye out for cards of players who weren’t yet in my collection.

2011 Bowman Duane Below… a recent example of what I’m talkin’ ’bout

It was during the 1990’s that this unwittingly became a long-term problem… Just to pick up cards of guys I didn’t have in some form, or to get a card that showed a guy in a more current uniform, I’d buy cards from sets that I normally wouldn’t bother with… Leaf, Bowman, Ultra, Stadium Club, Pinnacle, Upper Deck and an assortment of fringe-y sets.

Adding to my joy at the time (and my dismay now) was the advent of the nationally-distributed minor league sets from Classic Best and Upper Deck and CMC… The predecessors of Topps Pro Debut.

No real reason for this particular card, other than I’ve always liked the Denver Zephyrs’ uniforms…

I really liked those sets because they filled in a lot of gaps in my binders, and when a guy got called up to the majors for the first time, the chances were decent that I already have a card of him.

The end result of all these accumulating is that my collection grew tremendously in the 1990’s, and since I never really purged anything, things got waaaaaaaaaaay out of hand.

So, if it’s so much work and results in so much clutter, why have I been doing it for 35+ years?

I’ve never been content to just collect cards, put them in a binder and leaving them there… or, heavens forbid, graded and sealed away forever in a case.  I enjoy going through my cards, looking at them, pulling them out of the sheets and doing stuff with them.

Ryan Kalish
Stephen Drew
Jackie Bradley, Jr., Kate from “Lost” & Spider-Man 2099

As a visual thinker, keeping my cards organized this way helps me remember which player is on what team.  It’s easy enough to keep track of guys like Zack Greinke and Jose Reyes, but I can also remember that Stephen Drew is in Boston because I remember seeing his cards in the Red Sox section of my AL East binder.

One other thing it really helps me with is remembering which cards I have.  If I’m constantly in and out of binders, moving cards around, replacing a 2010 Marco Scutaro with a 2013, then I’m interacting with my cards and having fun with my cards and, in the process, remembering my cards.

One final affect it’s had on my life, and one which you will hopefully appreciate, is that maintaining these binders got me started making custom cards.  Back in 2008 I got tired of the handwritten placeholders I was using for cardless players, and I started making 1974 customs to fill out some binder pages.  I realized that I enjoyed the process and the end result so much that even when my color printer died, I kept making customs just for the fun of it. (FWIW, the death of my printer is the reason why you don’t see any of my customs in these binder pages)

Mike Adams & a Fleer team sticker
Michael Stutes & Paul McCartney
Joe Savery, the Phillie Phanatic & a 2004 Phillies Team card.

So that’s a quick view into my team binders…. I think that the particular way I have fun with my cards has made my collection become more unwieldy than most, and since the underlying theme of this blog involves bringing order to an out-of-control accumulation of cards, I always meant to explain what got me here in the first place.

BTW, this is the second post in a series covering oversized Mets card…. You can see the first post here.

In 1983, Donruss introduced “Action All-Stars”, an oversized (3.5″ x 5″) 60 card set that came in cello packs of six cards along with pieces of a Mickey Mantle puzzle.  The complete set of puzzle pieces is worth more than the base set, but neither one is going to put your kid through college… or even buy a latte at the college’s student center.

Here’s the very, very Donruss back of the card.  Nobody bought these cards for the back.

Come to think of it, nobody bought these cards at all… well, other than me.

For those of you wondering just who John Stearns was, he was the Mets starting catcher in the late 1970′s and early 80′s, and a four-time All-Star.

Mookie Wilson was the other Met featured in the 1983 set.

For 1984, Donruss switched to a vertical format and moved the portrait to the back of the card.  These packs came with a Ted Williams puzzle, and certain online sources say that this is the toughest Donruss puzzle ever (Mantle be damned).  I’m not sure why anybody even cares, it’s like arguing whether the Gremlin or the Pacer was the greatest car ever produced by AMC.

1984 packs sold for 35 cents, up from 30 cents the prior year — a 16.67% increase!  Cue the video clip of some 19th century upper-class British guys muttering “Shame!  Shame!”

Here’s the back, where they oddly refer to Mr. Seaver by his given first name.  Sharp-eyed young enthusiasts will notice that the photo background on the back of the 1984 cards is the same as the background from the front of the 1983 cards.

The other Met in this set is Keith Hernandez.

Donruss had another oversized set in 1984, Donruss Champions… But I’ll save that for another day.