Mystery Box Of 1970 Topps: Wicked Hahdcoah

Back in January I bought a box of 100+ 1970 Topps cards, and I’m going through them in “pack-sized” lots of 10-15 cards.

Among my friends at work are a woman from Boston and a guy from the Midwest who amuses the Boston woman by affecting the worst “Boston” accent known to man.  This is apropos of nothing, other than as a lead-in to the most recent “pack” of 1970 Topps, which was almost entirely Red Sox.  Let’s take a look…

Here’s the Spaceman’s rookie card.  I like the background on this card…  There’s nothing “Red Sockier” than having the Green Monster and Citgo sign in the background.   There’s also someone with a red hat and sleeves… Someone from the Indians? Maybe the Senators?

Joe Lahoud is one of those guys I know from having his baseball cards, but I don’t remember seeing a card of his where he was on a team other than the Angels.  I’ve never been sure of how to say his name…  La-howd?  La-hewd?  La-ho-ood?  He’s apparently of Lebanese descent, if that helps anyone figure the pronunciation out.

Gerry Moses was a journeyman catcher who got sold a lot in 1975. In January the Tigers sold him to the Mets, who later sold him to the Padres, who sold him to the White Sox, who released him… and that was the end of his Major League career.

Best Card:

Sparky Lyle always looks odd to me in a Red Sox uni.  Sparky was one of the Yankees better players back when I was a dumb kid who naively liked BOTH New York teams.  Even after Reggie Jackson’s arrival in the Bronx had sounded the death knell of my Yankee fandom, I still kept a place in my collection for guys like Sparky.

Best Cartoon: Bobby Floyd (I didn’t picture the front because I already had this card, but I couldn’t not share the cartoon):

Another 4 cards added to my set, so I’ve got 438 with 282 to go (60.8%).

World Baseball Classic: Does It Matter To You?

The initial games of the World Baseball Classic take place in Japan this weekend and I’m a bit curious as to how people view this event.

Do people watch it because they’re rooting for their country?  Because they like to see the non-MLB players from other countries?  Because they like to see familiar players in unfamiliar uniforms ?

Do people watch it at all?

I will probably watch a bit on Saturday morning, and tune in to games here and there throughout the tournament… but I wouldn’t watch an entire game and I don’t much care who wins.  I have to admit, I don’t find any particular inspiration in the whole “nation vs. nation” concept.  I don’t see it as much more interesting or meaningful than if they divided players by astrological signs (Here we go, Libra, here we go!)

For me, it’s all about getting a baseball fix when it’s the only competitive (or relatively so) baseball available.

If the WBC fell during the baseball season or after the World Series, I’d pretty much ignore it.

If I didn’t get MLB Network and couldn’t watch the WBC, I’d pretty much ignore it.

So I’m going to get all “Fuji” on you and ask…

How much will you watch the World Baseball Classic?   What do you like best about it?

Do you care about the outcome, or is it just relatively competitive baseball in March?

Mets Monday: 1976 Topps George Stone; A Spring Training Observation

Yesterday, while poking around baseball-reference.com looking for some birthday or transaction anniversary I could use as a reason to pick the Hostess Card Of The Week, I stumbled across this transaction line:

February 24, 1976:  The New York Mets traded George Stone to the Texas Rangers for Bill Hands.

That momentarily floored me with “What??? George Stone was on the Rangers?!?”

…and then…

…wait for it…

“Bill Hands was on the Mets?!?”

I felt better about the state of my memory after doing a bit more research:  Neither Stone or Hands would pitch for their new team… or any other team, for that matter.  Both of them pitched their final games in 1975.

George Stone went 12-3 in 1973,  his first season with the Mets.  In game 2 of the 1973 World Series, Stone would get a save in the Mets’ 12-inning 10-7 win.

Bill Hands’ nickname is “Froggy”. I would love to know the story behind that.

————————————————-

As long as we’re talking Mets, I noticed something while watching the Mets & Nats spring opener on Saturday… Late in the game you started seeing the guys whose 2012 stats came up on the screen with qualifiers like “With Sacramento (AAA)”, which is completely normal for the late innings of a Spring Training game.

What caught my attention, however, were the uniform numbers assigned to these guys.  Nothing against Brian Bixler (#18), Landon Powell (#22) or Brandon Hicks (#12), but when you have several guys who spent most of 2012 with another team’s AAA affiliate, were purchased or signed as free agents, and yet they are not assigned numbers like #74 or #69, well… I’m not sure what to make of that. But it’s interesting.

Hostess Card Of The Week: 1975 Rod Carew

1975 would see Rod Carew lead the league in batting (.359), on-base percentage (.421) and Intentional Walks (18).  He would be named an All-Star for the 9th consecutive year;  in fact, the only season in his 19 year career that he wasn’t named to an All-Star team was his last season, in 1985 with the Angels.

Rod Carew was the 1967 AL Rookie Of The Year, the 1977 AL MVP, a 7-time batting leader, 3-time hits leader, 2-time triples leader, and is,  of course, in the Hall Of Fame.

Fond Memories Of A Team I’ve Never Liked

…Well, not that I ever disliked the New York Rangers, but I’ve never been a fan either because…  well…

OK, OK, hold on, let me explain.

I grew up in a Rangers household;  my father had been a die-hard fan since he was in high school, and every single Ranger game was on the TV in our house.

This had two effects on my childhood.  The positive was that we became relatively early adopters of cable TV (since the Rangers were on the MSG Network when they weren’t on Channel 9).

The negative is that 2-3 nights a week during hockey season, if I wanted to watch TV I had to watch the Rangers.  Notice that earlier on I said that every Rangers game was on “the TV”.  Yes, boys and girls, we had one TV.  DVR’s and “On Demand” were just a glimmer in some “Popular Science” writer’s eye, and nobody had VCR’s… well, maybe rich people, but nobody I knew had one.  So if there was a show I wanted to watch on a Sunday night during hockey season, well it sucked to be me (although my parents never put it in quite those words).  Later on we did get a second TV, but it was a small black & white TV;  the laptop I’m writing this on has a bigger screen than that TV did.  All of this made me resentful of the New York Rangers.

Even without the TV factor, I was far more into baseball than hockey.  By the time I got interested in hockey, it was nothing but Rangers at home, and nothing but Islanders at school (Strange as it sounds now, the Isles were in the beginning stages of their dynasty at the time). Tired of both teams, I wanted my own team and adopted the Washington Capitals… but that’s a story for another day.

I hadn’t realized how much the Rangers exposure had affected me until I recently started going through my 1970’s and 1980’s hockey cards, trying to decide which ones to keep.  Many of the stars of the day left me cold, especially those from the 1980’s.  Gretzky?  Lemieux?  Eh, maybe I can sell them on COMC.

But I realized that I smiled a little whenever I ran across a former Ranger.  Eddie Giacomin.  Steve Vickers.  Brad Park.  John Davidson.  Ron Duguay.  Carol Vadnais.  Nick Fotiu.  Gilles Villemure.

Even Phil Esposito, that overrated bum.

I was never a fan of them, not exactly, but these were the players I constantly heard about in my youth.

I recently spoke to my brother on the phone… Unlike me, he embraced the Rangers and remains a fan.  I told him about the hockey cards I’d run across and we got into a conversation about hockey.  These are some of the guys we talked about…

Ron Greschner:  Bill Chadwick, “The Big Whistle”, was the color analyst on the Rangers TV broadcasts, and he always referred to Ron Greschner as “Young Greschner”, even after he’d been in the league for years.

I see cards like this and I still think of him as “Young Greschner”

Rod Gilbert:  One night on a Ranger game, the announcers were telling the story of a woman they’d run into who told them her favorite player was “Roger Bear”.

Reijo Ruotsalainen: I just love to say his name, and after I dug up this card I was walking around the house saying “RAY-ho ROOT-sah-lay-nen!”

There was a time in the 1970’s that the Rangers decided to ditch their classic uniforms and went with this warmed-over Winnipeg Jets uniform.  Big mistake.  Not as ridiculous as the Islanders “Gorton’s Fisherman” logo, but still a big mistake.  Even now, I look back and say “What were they thinking?

Ron Duguay: Not that I don’t think helmets are a good idea, but if Duguay played now you’d never see his hair blowing as he skated at full speed down the ice. Just sayin’.

…so yeah, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the Ranger Nation.  Even so, I can’t seem myself getting rid of my Rangers cards.

Repacks, Small Boys In Target, Weird Airbrushing And Other Things

Back in January I was in Target to get a couple of things, and while I was there I grabbed the last Fairfield 100 card repack they had… I put it in my basket and then started looking at the other stuff there.

Also in the card aisle was a boy, I’m guessing about 8 years old (although I’m terrible at guessing ages), and he looked at me and asked “What did you get?”

I showed him the repack and said “Oh, I’m just getting this… I’ve had pretty good luck with them”.  I saw a couple of packs of Topps football cards in his hand, so I said “I like the Football cards this year”.  He went on to tell me that he liked the Redskins and RG3, I said I didn’t care one way or the other about the Redskins but I liked RG3.  I made a comment about baseball cards coming in another week or two, and then said something along the lines of “see you later” and left.

Afterwards it occurred to me that I couldn’t remember the last time I had a verbal hobby conversation with someone who wasn’t trying to sell me cards. Now I kind of wish I’d spoken to the boy longer.

At any rate, it was nice to meet a boy who was interested in cards, and it was very nice see a kid in the card aisle instead of some guy camped out on the floor feeling up packs.

Before we got to talking, this card on the back of my repack caught my attention:

When I saw the card, a voice inside my head – very much like Mel Brooks doing an old man – said “What the hell is this?”  The airbrush artist wasn’t satisfied with removing the Brewers logo, he decided he’d go all-out and add red to the collar and red side panels on Simmons cap. It’s odd, but sort of appealing. The end result is a sort of combination of the Brewers and Expos… Ladies and gentlemen, your Montwaukee Brewxpos!

Here are the other highlights of the the repack…

This Oriole came from the 1990 Donruss “Best Of The American League” box set. I wonder if the “regular” 1990 Donruss set would’ve been met with such universal disdain if they’d used this blue instead of traffic cone orange.

I also got the usual assortment of Topps Stickers, including this one which features two Shlabotnik favorites:  Steve Jeltz and a very young B.J. Surhoff.

On the back of some other stickers, I got a Sid Fernandez to add to my Mets collection…

Finally, I got another addition to my 1980’s/1990’s Topps Glossy insert collection:

I have to admit, I was fairly well disappointed by this repack.  It was largely devoid of  “fun junk”… I know that’s very subjective, but there were no obscure regional 1980’s box set cards, no Studio cards, no Topps Total or UD 40 Man, no cards older than 1982, just the one Topps glossy insert, and only a couple of what used to be “high end” cards (i.e. Stadium Club, Leaf).  Part of the disappointment might be because a couple of cards which could’ve been fun were done in by having Sammy Sosa on them.

Mystery Box Of 1970 Topps: O-R-I-O-L-E-S!!!

A couple of weeks ago I bought a box of 100+ 1970 Topps cards, and I’m going through them in roughly “pack-sized” lots of 10-15 cards.

The good news is that the latest “pack” was almost all Orioles. The bad news was that, since I actively collect Orioles, I didn’t need as many. Even so, I still knocked off 3 of my wants.

Chico Salmon was originally a Cleveland Indian, was taken by the Seattle Pilots in the 1969 expansion draft and traded to the Orioles just before the start of the 1969 season.

Chico’s real name is Ruthford. Who would’ve guessed? And you gotta love those stirrups. They brought back the cartoon bird, now they need to bring back some striped stirrups!

Paul Blair was originally signed by the Mets as an amateur free agent, and then was drafted by the O’s from the Mets in the 1962 minor league draft. The O’s converted him from a shortstop to an outfielder, and the rest is history.

Paul Blair would later be traded to the Yankees for Elliott Maddox and Rick Bladt, a trade that keeps resurfacing on this blog for no good reason.

I like this shot of Andy Etchebarren grabbing some lumber before heading out on the field. It’s either batting practice or a pathetically-attended game. Anybody recognize the concrete dugout and blue seats?

Etchebarren is the 2nd best Oriole to wear #8.

Best card in the ‘pack’: Paul Blair
Best Cartoon: Chico Salmon

I also got a Tigers team card in this pack; it’s in rough shape, but that’s the way it goes.

So now with 4 more cards added to my set I’m at 434 with 286 to go.

Why I’m Making The 1966 Team Set My Top Mets Priority

When I was a kid, one of my goals was to get every Mets card that ever existed… Before the junk wax era, this was not an unreasonable goal… not in terms of the number of cards, anyway.

What I hadn’t realized at the time was how budget-busting of a goal that was… Among the obstacles to deal with are high-numbered Duke Sniders…

1963 Topps #550 – Duke Snider – Courtesy of COMC.com

…Tony Perez rookie cards (which happened to have a Mets rookie named Kevin Collins)…

1965 Topps #581 – Rookie Stars/Tony Perez RC (Rookie Card)/Dave Ricketts RC (Rookie Card)/Kevin Collins RC (Rookie Car [Good to VG‑EX] – Courtesy of COMC.com

…and then you get into the early cards for guys like Nolan Ryan and Tom Seaver…

1968 Topps #177 – Rookie Stars/Jerry Koosman RC (Rookie Card)/Nolan Ryan UER (sensational is spelled incorrectly) RC ( [Good to VG‑EX] – Courtesy of COMC.com

For the Mets, 1966 is the brief lull which came after the HOFers who finished their careers with the Mets and before the HOFers who began their careers with the Mets. The biggest names in the team set are Tug McGraw and Cleon Jones, neither of those cards are tremendously expensive and I’ve got both of them already.

All I need to complete the 1966 Mets team set are 5 high-numbered commons. I could use an attainable goal to keep me going right now, and this works as well as anything else.

Here are a couple of my recent 1966 acquisitions…

Ron Hunt was the first Met to start an All-Star game, and he lead the NL in being hit by pitches 7 years straight (1968 – 1974).

Larry Bearnarth was a relief pitcher from New York City who pitched for the Mets from 1963 to 1966, pitched for the Mets AAA team from 1967 to 1970 and then resurfaced briefly with the Brewers for two games in 1971. Interestingly enough, although he pitched a number of seasons in AAA, he never pitched at a lower level. He would go on to be the pitching coach for the Expos and Rockies.

Eddie Kranepool played with the Mets from 1962 to 1979, was an All-Star in 1965, and at one point had many of the career Mets records, even if just from sheer longevity. He still holds the Mets team records for career games and held the record for career hits until this past September when David Wright passed him.

Hostess Card Of The Week: 1975 Jim Barr, Plus An Extra-Special Guest Star 1975 “Faux-stess” Custom

Jim Barr might be best known for the record that he’d held for 35 years; he retired 41 batters in a row in August, 1972.

On 8/23/72, he pitched a two-hit shutout against the Pirates and retired the last 21 batters. On 8/29/72, he retired the first 20 Cardinals he faced en route to a 3-hit shutout. This record was tied by Bobby Jenks in 2007 and broken by Mark Buehrle in 2009.

Some other facts about Jim Barr:

He went to USC and his teammates included Dave “Kong” Kingman and Bill “Spaceman” Lee.

He was drafted 5 times (Angels, Phillies, Yankees, Pirates, Twins) before signing with the Giants.

Jim Barr went to Lynwood High School in Lynwood, CA.

You know who else went to Lynwood High School?

THIS GUY!

Sure, there was a dozen or so years between them, but hey… Weird Freakin’ Al!

Nobody as interesting as Jim Barr or Weird Al went to my high school.

Photo Clichés #4: Arroyo’s Revenge

I recently pulled a 2012 Bronson Arroyo out of a pack, which reminded me that I haven’t done an Arroyo Photo Cliché post in a while. Topps was kind enough to give us a leg kick.

I’ve also got two other cards I ran across while organizing…

2006 Allen & Ginter is a portrait… How boring.

2005 Topps Total is a non-leg-kick action shot. Even more boring.

So here are the stats…

Leg Kick: 2006 Upper Deck, 2006 Topps, 2007 Topps, 2009 Topps, 2010 Topps, 2011 Topps, 2012 Topps

Posed/Portrait: 2005 Topps, 2006 A&G, 2008 Heritage

Action Shot without a leg kick: 2002 Upper Deck, 2005 Topps Total, 2009 Upper Deck

Leg Kick Average: .538 (7 leg kicks out of 13 cards)

I’ve got to track down the 2008 Topps card;  if that’s a leg kick, then Topps has done the leg kick on its base cards for 7 years running.

Let’s close things out with a review of the 6 leg kick cards I’d previously featured…