sabrlatino

More from Uncle Dan’s Mystery Box of Baseball: A Real Jambalaya

Inside the big box was a smaller box. A crooked smile crossed my face in curious wonder as I reached for some unknown treasure. I had just sorted through several things in Uncle Dan’s mystery box of baseball when I came across the familiar white cardboard baseball card box. Slowly I unpacked the contents as my curious wonder intensified. The cards I pulled out were just a random hodge-podge. I was flipping through cards from Score, Fleer, Upper Deck, Donruss, several Bowmans and only a few of my favorite, Topps. The majority of the cards were 1989s and 1990s. A few 1988s, and 1991s, as well. Interesting enough, I found a stack of 1990 Upper Deck hologram logo stickers, too.

Being somewhat compulsive with a need for order, I sorted this jambalaya of cards into stacks that made sense to me: by manufacturer and by year. I’ll sort them by number later. With a little bit of hope, I sorted through the 1989 Upper Decks, looking for “The Kid.” Hoping, maybe, maybeee … Nope, no Junior. Oh well. I knew it was too much to hope for. Regardless, there are some good names in the stack. I turned to the Donruss pile. A couple of good things, including a Bart Giamatti card. I don’t recall if I had ever seen a card for the commissioner of baseball before, but it was good to see. I like Giamatti, and for a moment I reflected on the scenes from the Ken Burn “Baseball” documentary, wondering what his tenure would have been like had he lived to serve a full term in office.

In the 1990 Donruss stack, I also found something cool: the Juan Gonzalez (#33) reverse-image card. The card manufacturer erred when they reversed the image of this Ranger “Rated Rookie” so that we see him batting in what appears to be on the left side of the plate, and of course, his uniform number 19 appears reversed. Fortunately, the correct image card is among the stack, as well.

The short stack of 1990 Fleers included #635 “Super Star Specials” called ‘Human Dynamos” picturing Kirby Puckett and Bo Jackson. I’m guessing since both players are sporting their home jerseys, the photo was probably taken at the 1989 All-Star Game, which was played at Anaheim Stadium (where Jackson was the game’s MVP). It’s an educated guess, but I would love to hear confirmation from someone.

I was a little more intrigued with the small pile of 1990 Bowman cards, which warranted a little research. As it so happened, by 1990 Bowman scaled down the size of their card, to a more standard dimension. A couple of things piqued my interest. First, this stack of cards featured a cool Art Card insert by Craig Pursely. My stack featured Kevin Mitchell. The reverse side gave a little blurb on the player, while the card also doubled as a sweepstakes entry. This Art Card insert set included 11 cards.

The other thing that piqued my interest is how the player’s information is presented on the reverse side. In this instance, only one year of data given, but the analytics are compiled by competitor. That is, the rows include the player stats, while the columns feature the specific teams. For example, the Red Sox first baseman/outfield Danny Heep played in 113 games in 1989: 8 vs Orioles; 9 vs Angels; 7 vs White Sox; 8 vs Indians; and so on. It’s a squirrelly way to present the data, if you ask me. I feel bad for the person that had to put all that together for all 500+ cards.

A couple of interesting things that stood out was a 1990 Score Tombstone Pizza Kirby Puckett card (number 25 of 30), a 1992 mini-set of three “Special Edition Combo Series” cards from French’s Mustard. The three in my set include: Julio Franco/Terry Pendleton (#3), Don Mattingly/Will Clark (#11) and Cal Ripken Jr/Ozzie Smith (#13). Brief information on each player (bio, stats, two-sentence blurb) is found on the card’s reverse side. The 1992 Combo Series featured 18 cards with 32 players. That is a lot of mustard to buy!

I’m still struck by this unusual collection of cards, and wonder about the original collector’s motivation and frame of mind. Such a wide assortment. It also makes me want to read up again on this era of cards, when it seems like the wild west of cardboard and baseball players, with everyone and his brother looking to cash in on the collecting craze of the late 1980s/early 1990s.

Uncle Dan’s mystery box of baseball cards continues to provide an ongoing sense of wonder, if not source of amusement. But wait, there’s more …

Unpacking the Mystery Box from Uncle Dan: 1990 Kmart Topps set

At least once or twice a year, my wife visits her uncle and comes back with a box of mystery for me. Usually, the boxes of mystery hold a wide assortment of baseball cards or bobbleheads, or something to that effect. My wife’s uncle is in the antique business and operates a number of estate sales, which means he visits homes where the occupants are looking to unload various merchandise for said estate sales. The uncle, every so kind to me, keeps an eye out for baseball stuff. He finds cards, and bobbleheads, and assorted things as I mentioned. Kinda wished he’d come across gloves and bats, too! That’d be fun!

Recently he gave me a huge box of 1980s/1990s basketball cards and football cards. Those things are a complete mystery to me, which means the box is sitting on a shelf waiting for me to trade them somewhere. It’s funny to have such a distain for those, but an absolute worship for baseball cards.

Anyway, the uncle’s current box of mystery held quite a few intriguing surprises. One of the more interesting things included a 1990 Kmart Topps box of 33 baseball cards. The box reads: “Collectors’ Edition Baseball Superstars Photo Cards” [that include] 33 super gloss photo cards with bubble gum.” The set includes:

NATIONAL LEAGUE SUPERSTARS

1. Will Clark

2. Ryne Sandberg

3. Howard Johnson

4. Ozzie Smith

5. Tony Gwynn

6. Kevin Mitchell

7. Jerome Walton

8. Craig Biggio

9. Mike Scott

10. Dwight Gooden

11. Sid Fernandez

12. Joe Magrane

13. Jay Howell

14. Mark Davis

15. Pedro Guerrero

16. Glenn Davis

AMERICAN LEAGUE SUPERSTARS

17. Don Mattingly

18. Julio Franco

19. Wade Boggs

20. Cal Ripken, Jr.

21. Jose Canseco

22. Kirby Puckett

23. Rickey Henderson

24. Mickey Tettleton

25. Nolan Ryan

26. Bret Saberhagen

27. Jeff Ballard

28. Chuck Finley

29. Dennis Eckersley

30. Dan Plesac

31. Fred McGriff

32. Mark Mc Gwire

SUPERSTAR TEAM MANAGERS

33. Tony LaRussa / Roger Craig

For a bit of background, sets likes these are produced by the Topps Trading Company, and distributed through the Kmart department stores. Each card features a masthead with the Kmart logo on the upper left side, with the designation of the year and the player’s league on the top right side. The SUPERSTARS logo is imposed in the middle of the masthead with the player’s name and position imprinted on the third line. The player photo and Topps logo comprise the majority of the card with a blue thin border. A simple presentation of player stats with a fast fact are included on the reverse side with a red background.

The cards themselves are still glossy with sharp corners, and overall in very good shape. Near mint, I would say. I wasn’t paying much attention to baseball in 1989, save for the World Series, as I struggled through graduate school, so flipping through the cards was a bit educational. Great to see Will “The Thrill” Clark (card #1). A favorite from my hometown Giants. It’s always weird to see Pedro Guerrero (card #15) in a Cardinal uniform, still thinking of him as a Dodger. I had to flip the card over to see when he changed team. Oh, about 60 games into that season. That’s right, recollecting to myself. And Fred McGriff, “Crime Dog” (card #31)! He was with the Blue Jays before his days with the Braves. That’s right, nodding my head. The funny about these recollections is that you want to stop what you’re doing and open a browser to run a quick search on that player of interest. Thank goodness for high-speed Internet and Baseball-Reference.com!

I think the fun thing about these box sets is the discovery, itself. Cracking open the box, flipping through the cards, and wondering about the players. It’s a treasure chest! I’m looking forward to rummaging through that box from Uncle Dan and finding my next discovery.

Succumbing to the Siren’s Song of the Topps Heritage Collection: a 1970 journey

Let’s just say that I was Topps Heritage collection-curious. Oh, I’ve seen the sets depicting contemporary players in designs from 1969, 1968, and others, looking all sleek and alluring, like a siren’s song calling to me and my debit card. Shaking my head quickly, I tell myself, no, no — that’s is all a marketing trick, don’t fall for it. Don’t give in. I knew that once I bought a pack, I wouldn’t be able to stop!

Well, there I was, at the Greenwood Fred Meyers waiting in line to make my purchases, and there they were, off to the right in the racks calling out their familiar song. Sigh. Okay, maybe just one. I can do it. Just one, and that’s it. It’ll be fun. I know other guys are doing it, right? And hey – look – there are 20 cards. More value, the package read! Okay … just one. Here I go…

The high number plastic pack I opened included 19 cards and a candy lid. Curiously I flipped through the pack, looking at the design, both front and back, checking out the team names, and making notes of the words and drawings on reverse side in blue, white and yellow. Going through the names and faces now, I was pleased to discover Vladimir Guerrero, Jr (#504); Yasiel Puig (#541); Michael Pineda (#662); and David Freese (#691), among others. The candy lid (available only at Target, but purchased at Fred Meyer) was Rhys Hoskins (#29 of 30).

Being reasonably satisfied with the purchase and the design of the cards, I turned to my binder of 1970 cards, my handy-dandy copy of “Topps Baseball Cards: The Complete Picture Collection, a 35 Year History: 1951-1985,” and the “Official Baseball Card Price Guide: 1990, Collector’s Edition” to compare designs.

From this point, I stepped a toe onto memory lane and wandered through the 1970 collection. The Topps book’s 1970 introduction made much to do about the saga of the Seattle Pilots and their heart-breaking move to Milwaukee before the season began. The complete set itself totaled 720 cards, the first time that the card set exceeded 700, measuring 2 ½ x 3 ½ inches.

The cards themselves are unremarkable. They feature a blue and yellow printing on white card board with yearly stats, brief bio, and a cartoon on the backside with the front side showing crisp color photos with team name in upper corner, and the player name in script in the lower gray border.

1970 Sparky Anderson I mean unremarkable in that the photos include players in pitching or batting poses, close-ups with caps, without caps, and some with very, very bad airbrushed caps. I’m looking at you Sparky Anderson (#181); Curt Blefory (#297); Tom Shopay (#363); and Bob Heise (#478), among others. Poor Fred Norman (#427). He looks like his LA Dodgers insignia was ironed on his ballcap, with a somewhat noticeable Spokane Indians pictured. 1970 Fred Norman

Some of the more interesting cards included the NL and AL Championships (#195 – 202), another first for Topps. One fun-filled card, was Lowell Palmer (#252) of the Philadelphia Phillies, who was the only one to sporting sunglasses. In keeping with the true essence of the Topps Heritage collection, Philadelphia Phillies Pat Neshek paid homage to Palmer’s card by wearing sunglasses and sporting the card number 252, as well.

1970 sunglasses Topps has done an outstanding job with these Heritage sets. I don’t know if I will make another purchase. Maybe next year, I guess. Perhaps those 2020 cards will incorporate the 1971 card design. Those would be interesting to see! But, then again, I’m hoping to keep my impulse control in check. These things can be addictive!

Editors’ Note: Jeff Katz has previously written about reaching the exact opposite opinion of 2019 Heritage and Nick Vossbrink has more a more detailed description of how Topps changed the printing between 1970 and 2019.

Anna and the 1961 Yaz Card

1961 Yaz

I didn’t make Anna out for a baseball fan. Not in a million years. But, the more we talked about life and our lives, the more interesting she became. Then she said she loved baseball. Uh, what, as I did a double-take.

Turns out, she grew up near up not too far from Shea Stadium, and of course was a Mets fan. She had been to tons of games early in her life and fondly recalled getting home from school one afternoon in October and her mother running out to tell her that the Mets had just beat the Baltimore Orioles to claim the 1969 World Series title. It was the best moment of her baseball life, she said with a gleam in her eye.

She was never so beautiful as she was at that moment, telling me this story. From then on, all we talked was baseball. She was several years older than me, and married. As a young and single guy, I was amused. Still, we could talk about the Mets, and her favorite players, and growing up in the Queens neighborhood of Jamaica.

Despite all the interesting players filling the Mets rosters over the years, that included Seaver Koosman, Kranepool and Grote, Anna threw me a curveball when she said with emphasis that her all-time favorite player was Carl Yastrzemski. Yeah, Yaz. The Hall of Fame MVP, Triple Crown winner, 18-time All-Star, 7-time Gold Glove left fielder for the Boston Red Sox! When I asked why him, she said that he was Polish (her ethnic background), and with a gush, she continued, “he was so handsome!” Alright then, Yaz was her guy. Cool!

I pondered our conversation that evening, and the day after, thinking about Yaz and the 1969 Mets, and the 1973 Mets, and the 1986 Mets. I wanted to give Anna something special, something unique, something that I know she didn’t have. Maybe a baseball card from my collection. But, nothing would be as special as a 1961 Yaz card, the one with the rookie star, which I did not have. As it so happened, there was a trading card shop several blocks from my house. Armed with a binder of good stuff and the best of intentions, I ventured out into the night after work to do a little horse trading.

This was summer 1995, and the card guy wanted something like 30 bucks for that 1961 Topps #287 card. It might have been $25. Regardless, I didn’t have cash, and was prepared to haggle. He looked through the pages of my binders with some mild interest, knowing that he had me over a barrel after I foolishly indicated the card was for a girl. He would leaf through a couple of pages and stop, and continue turning pages, stopping again, and turning some more. I had been in his shop on a number of occasions to peer with envy at the cards on the glass shelves, or sift through the commons in the boxes in neatly arranged stacks. The glass shelf cards were always out of my price range, but it was harmless to covet.

I had an idea of what he might find interesting, and tried to steer him towards a few of my cards from the early to mid-1970s, hoping to entice him with my 1971 Steve Garvey rookie card (#341) or my 1973 Rod Carew (#330). Heck, I thought my 1974 Reggie Jackson (#130) looked pretty good, too. Unfortunately, he had those, and wasn’t interested. He flipped through the pages one more time before settling on my 1974 Tom Seaver (#80), 1975 Dave Winfield (#61) AND my 1976 Johnny Bench (#300). Really? All three? He went to his cabinet and pulled out that ’61 Yaz, and seemed to wave it in my face. Taunting me. Or least that’s what it felt like. I looked at Tom and Dave and Johnny, wondering if they knew what I was about to do.

The 1974 Tom Seaver card was one of several Topps cards that year featuring the player in a landscape position. The photo featured a great action shot of Tom Terrific pitching off the mound at Shea. The ’75 Winfield card featured the third-year player at home in San Diego taking a few cuts, perhaps before the start of the game. I always liked the Bench card from the 1976 collection. He’s featured as a “NL ALL STAR” lettered within a star shape that also indicated his position. The photo shows him standing in what appears to be moments after a close play at the plate because there’s still a cloud of dust enveloping him, as he stands with there in his catcher’s gear sans the mask. I always liked those catchers’ cards. Topps always seemed to do a good job at capturing the catcher working his tail off behind the plate. Bench, in this card, seems to be ready to fight, ready to defend his plate.

I looked down again at those three cards and closed my eyes and made the deal. The guy took my cards away and presented me with the ’61 Yaz tucked inside a hard plastic sleeve. It wasn’t the best of deals, but it was the best that I could do. I had hoped that someday I might get them back. Right now, they were gone, and that was that. But, now I had something special for someone special. That thought lightened the short walk back to my apartment.

At lunch the next day, I surprised Anna with the card. She was overjoyed. She laughed and smiled, and held the card to her heart. Suddenly, the trade didn’t seem so bad. It was a great trade, in fact. We talked about Yaz and the 1967 World Series, and the fortunes of the Boston Red Sox, and the fortunes of the Seattle Mariners, who were catching fire that summer. I was pleased that Anna liked the card so much.

The next day, she presented me with a curious thing: a Cleveland Indians button with an attached talisman from the 1940s. It was her grandfather’s, she said. She wanted me to have it. I never knew if she had any other baseball things, but I got the impression this object meant a great deal to her. I took it from her with great care and appreciation, and promised to take good care of it. For nearly 25 years, I’ve kept that Cleveland Indians button with attached talisman in a box in a little plastic bag. Every so often I come across that thing and think of Anna and the 1961 Carl Yastrzemski card.

Augmented Reality and the Baseball Card

T-Mobile AR package

On a recent visit to the newly-christened T-Mobile Park, home of the Seattle Mariners, game-day hosts passed out packs of baseball cards. Only, these cards were unlike anything that we may have seen before. T-Mobile, flexing their technology muscle, has worked to create augmented reality (AR) baseball cards. The packaging text tells you to download the T-Mobile Tech Experience app, then you are to scan the cards (there are three in the pack) with the app and see the card come to life through this augmented reality technology.

Moose

The first card is the Mariner Moose, the hometown nine’s venerable mascot. The card depicts the Moose with one hoof (!) in the air, and the other facing the camera. Under the AR scan, the Moose is dancing around in what appears to be a several second video, akin to something out of the Harry Potter world. The reverse side features a rather nice biography of the Moose, describing his origins.

TMP

The second card depicts a night time scene of T-Mobile Park overlooking Edgar Martinez Drive facing north, with the roof open. Under the AR scan, we are treated to a several second fireworks display, with the phrase, “WELCOME TO T-MOBILE PARK” superimposed on the fireworks display. The reverse side of the card gives you a bit of information on the ballpark, but mainly indicates some to the T-Mobile features fans will experience.

The third and final card shows what must be a T-Mobile fan truck, where according to the back of the card, you are supposed to visit and use a barcode and scan yourself a chance to win a prize. The Mariners beat the Boston Red Sox that day, so that was prize enough for me!

Anyway, I got a chance to see AR technology at an art museum last year, which was featured as part of the art exhibition and found it an interesting use of technology. In doing some initial research on AR, I found a simply-put definition from HowStuffWorks.com: “Augmented reality is the blending of interactive digital elements – like dazzling visual overlays, buzzy haptic feedback, or other sensory projections – into our real-world environments.”

So, that is, when using this app (or AR glasses) you can scan something that is coded with AR to see an interactivity come to life. It’s pretty cool stuff, especially when you start thinking about its applicability to real baseball cards. Imagine using AR on your next set of Topps cards and see the images of the ballplayers come to life taking a swing, or throwing a pitch or catching a ball! The possibilities for such use may be boundless.

The Great Wax Pack Derby: A New Participation Project

wax pack derby

Based on the success of the Conlon Collection Project, we are embarking on a new – and hopefully interesting – project. We’re calling this The Great Wax Pack Derby! It’s a group writing collective, like Conlon project.

The idea is to get donations of somewhere between 50 to 100 wax packs of baseball cards that might include Topps, Bowman, Fleer, Upper Deck, etc., ensuring that they are in fact, wax packs

Once we have gathered up a critical mass of wax packs, we will send out a solicitation to SABR Baseball Card Committee members who may be interested in receiving a wax pack. The idea, again, like the Conlon Project, is that those members who receive a wax pack are then obligated to select one card from that pack to write about.

Once we have gathered large groups of stories, we will post them – at least five stories a week – to the SABR Baseball Card committee blog. It would be ideal to have this project completed by the end of Spring (in time for the SABR Convention in San Diego)!

So, if you are interested in donating a few wax packs from your collection to this project, we would be very grateful for your contribution.

Again, this is a group writing collective that benefits our SABR Baseball Card Committee. Send me an email, and let me know if you are willing to donate a few wax packs from your collection. I’m at salazar8017@yahoo.com

Thank you!

Anthony Salazar

The Tallest Mexican: Remembering Hank Aguirre

aguirre collection

A more than a decade ago, I found an intriguing book at the Seattle Library Book Sale that caught my eye for several reasons. It was called, “The Tall Mexican: The Life of Hank Aguirre, All-Star Pitcher, Businessman and Humanitarian.” The cover art featured a beautiful painting of a brown pitcher in a Detroit Tigers uniform. As a Chicano baseball historian, the appeal is pretty obvious. What’s cool is that I had never heard of Hank Aguirre and was not aware of his work on the diamond, or life after baseball.

The book breaks down into two parts, the first covering his life in baseball, and the second part addresses his life in the business world. Both sections paint an incredible image of a great guy, to which I found great pride. It’s not that often that Mexican-American ballplayers craft such successful careers for themselves that galvanize many communities over one lifetime.

With that pride buoying my heart, I went in search of more info on Hank Aguirre, and surprisingly found very little. Aside from the book, and an obituary, there was not much on Hank. The basics were this: over the course of a 16-year pitching career with the Cleveland Indians, Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs, Aguirre went 75-72 with an ERA of 3.25 in over 1,375 innings pitched over 447 games and two All-Star Game appearances. The bulk of his career, of course, was with the Tigers.

At some point, I’ll write a SABR BioProject article on Hank, but in the meantime, I satisfied myself with obtaining every one of his Topps baseball cards, beginning with his 1957 Cleveland Indians card (#96). I have 14 cards, indicating that his first two season with the Tribe, where he played a total of 10 games did not warrant a baseball card.

I had never amassed the total collection of any one player before. But Hank seemed to resonate with me. He was a southern California Mexican-American like me, and a tall, brown dude, like me. Though Hank has a couple of inches on me, his 6-4 to my 6-2. Regardless, over the years I have sifted through the 14 cards looking at the styles of cards over the years, looking at his poses, and how he had aged over the years. His 1957 card (#96) has a similar pose to his 1961 card (#324). His 1969 card (#94) pretty matches up with the 1968 card (#553), both indicating his affiliation with the Dodgers, while obviously sporting his Tigers uniform. Topps recycled numerous photographs from the 1968 series, and cropped the photos differently for use in the 1969 set. Though, Hank is sporting a blacked out ballcap in his 1969 shot. It’s unfortunate that the Southern Californian never had a card in his Dodgers uniform. That would have been pretty cool! In the book, though, there is a great shot of him in a 1969 Dodgers uniform posing next to Willie Mays.

The majority of his cards depict a smiling Hank. The smile is infectious, and you think, wow, he looks like a nice guy. In other years, he is pictured in a serious, albeit thoughtful demeanor. Flipping though the cards also provided me the opportunity to refresh my knowledge and instant recall of the card style of the vintage era.

Hank’s last card is with the 1970 Chicago Cubs (#699), though he makes a cameo appearance on the 1973 Topps Whitey Lockman card (#88). Lockman was the Cubs manager that year, and Hank was the pitching coach, and was pictured along with other Cubs coaches including Ernie Banks and Pete Reiser.

For now, Hank’s cards will stay tucked in their plastic pocket pouch until I decide what to do with them next. Maybe matte them in a single collage or something along with his photo. To me, he will always be the tallest Mexican!

Cha-Cha and the Circle K

Cepeda_1985 Circle K

You know how it goes. For me it was several years ago — I think it was at the Long Beach SABR event — when I came across a baseball card bearing the image of Orlando Cepeda, one of my favorite players. The card was not your typical Topps product, but I didn’t care. I thought it looked interesting, so I bought it for a few of bucks. I tucked it away in a book that I had just bought as well, and promptly forgot about it. It happens!

Not too long ago, I was sorting through a few baseball books and came across the Cepeda card. “Oh yeah,” I said to myself, renewing my interest, now with a little more clarity and frame of mind. I wondered a bit more about the card. Here’s what I got:

The Cepeda card is #24 of a 33-card Topps set distributed in 1985 exclusively by Circle K, the convenience store chain. The set reminded me of the Woolworth set I wrote about last year. This series featured all-time home run hitters, with Hank Aaron occupying the top spot, of course. Other players include Willie Mays (#3), Billy Williams (#18), Mike Schmidt (#19), and Norm Cash (#25). Interestingly, because Topps could not come to an agreement with Joe DiMaggio, who was 31^st on the all-time home run list in 1985, his card was omitted from the set. Consequently, the series list skips #31, going from #30 to #32.

Aside from his photo, the card indicates Cepeda’s name and nothing else. No position, no cute graphic. Just a serious, albeit young-looking, Cepeda photo, probably in the early stages of his career with the San Francisco Giants. The reverse side of the card in blue and red ink, features a run down of his MLB career with a highlight noting his Rookie of the Year Award in 1958, and 1967 NL MVP Award. The Circle K logo is featured prominently in the upper left side, with the Topps logo and card number to the upper right.

I don’t have a lot of specialty cards such as this, so I’ll just keep this one displayed somewhere on a shelf. It will remind me of when Cha-Cha ruled the City by the Bay. And maybe if something else catches my eye at a SABR conference, I won’t forget about it for years at a time!

It doesn’t make you any less of a man; or One picture is worth at least 500 words

Once every so often I flip through the vintage Topps cards I was gifted last year (greedily wishing for more – is that bad?!?), just looking at the cards and appreciating the artwork and the style, perhaps feel a bit nostalgic. There’s a 1957 Luis Aparacio, 1965 Zoilo Versailles, 1959 Hector Lopez, among others, and then there’s the 1963 Mike Fornieles.

In all my readings and various research projects, I must admit I had

Mike Fornieles_1963 correct never heard of Mike Fornieles. Even as I had flipped through these cards at least a few times over the past year, he was such an anonymous player to me that I had failed to notice one bizarre feature of this 1963 “treasure” until the

other day. I was working on my annual SABR Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration posts looking for ideas, and thinking about recent discussion on the SABR Baseball Cards page about whether or not people liked the idea of Topps “recycling” their vintage designs when applying them to modern players. I wrote that I hoped the idea encourages others to appreciate the vintage style as I do, and I’m sure as many of you do, as well.

So, flipping through the cards I come across the Fornieles card (#28) and realize of the first time that som Fornieles incorrect 1 ething is amiss. You might recall that the 1963 Topps series was a 576-card set featuring a large player photo with a smaller photo in the lower right size, about the size of a postage stamp. Well, my card features half the guy’s body missing in that lower right section. Take a look at the photo. There’s some kind of pencil marking, I think, that separates the larger photo and the player identification section. Further, while the card has a gloss or sheen to its face, the section where Fornieles’ smaller photo would be, is more of a matte finish than glossy, like someone took an eraser and rubbed out the poor guy’s face. It’s a mystery as to how the card wound up this way. The card is otherwise in impeccable shape. Nice corners, no creases, excellent condition, I’d say.

As for the player Mike Fornieles, the Cuban-born pitcher broke in with the Washington Senators as a 20 year-old in 1952, throwing in only 4 games going 2-2 towards the end of that season. Over the next 11 years he spent time on the mound for the Chicago White Sox, Baltimore Orioles, Boston Red Sox, and was traded to the Minnesota Twins to close out his career in 1963. Over his 12 year-career, he went 63-64 with a 3.96 ERA in 432 games with over 1156.2 innings pitched.

I don’t know if this 1963 Mike Fornieles #28 Topps card is worth anything in this condition, but it does make for an interesting story. Once again, I was pleasantly surprised to find yet another treasure in the gift that keeps on giving. Fornieles’ story is an interesting one. I would certainly encourage you to read his SABR biography by Thomas Ayers: https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/5889829b

The ’87 cards at 69¢ a pop

1987 Topps box

The summer’s treasure trove of baseball cards continues: Among the shoeboxes I was gifted, there was a baseball card pack box full of over 750 loose cards. When I saw the box, I had a bit of fantasy that inside I would find wax packs. There’s something special about opening a pack of cards, especially an old pack. Would I find 17-card packs with sticks of gum? Alas, the box was full of loose cards. Oh well. A boy could dream.

Pile by pile, I picked up each stack and quickly flipped through the familiar names making note of the card design as well. The 1987 Topps set (792 cards) was touted as a “blast from the past” giving collectors memories of the 1962 Topps set with its use of a border with its simulated wood-grain finish. The card features a large player photo with the team logo at the upper left corner and the players name in bold font inside a colored box next to the Topps logo at the bottom of the card. The player’s position, however, is not indicated, which is the first time since 1972 that Topps did not include this detail.

1987 Topps inside.jpg

As I flipped through the cards, I thought about the 1962 counterpart and about what I didn’t like about this card design. The wood border is fine, yeah, another flashback that Topps has done before. What bothered me was the missing player position, and the team logo. I like the uniformity of other card sets depicting the team name in the same font. To me, the logo sort of throws the uniformity of the card off. I believe this set is the first time since 1965 that a logo has been added to the card, though in that set, the logo was incorporated with the team name in the same font imposed on a pennant.

I knew that noted “rookies” of interest in this set included Ruben Sierra (#261), Mike Greenwell (#259), Wally Joyner (#80), Barry Bonds (#320) and Mark McGwire (#366), who had first appeared on a card in a 1984 U.S. Olympics Topps subset issued in 1985. Among this box, I found a Greenwell, couple of Joyners and a McGwire. These cards, like the rest of box, are in tip-top shape. Sharp corners, no wear, vivid pictures, like the previous owner never played with them at all. It’s amazing to me that of all the thousands of cards that were gifted to me in this summer collection, they are almost all in pristine condition, save for the dozen vintage cards I wrote about earlier.

I realized too, in thinking about the 1987 year, that I didn’t spend time at all collecting baseball cards during most of the 1980s because I was in college spending my extra funds on girls and beer. Some 20 years or so later, I was able to go back and start collecting those years I had missed. This 1987 set isn’t my favorite, but I did enjoy seeing all the familiar names and certainly appreciate opening the box and making yet another great discovery.