Nine players on the field, nine pockets to a page. Coincidence? Probably.
While the Reds were the first team to wear the green on St. Patrick's Day in the 1970s, it was that 1990 Classic card with Mike Schmidt in the middle there that showed collectors the uniform possibilities of the 17th of March.
Over the years, it has become a tradition for teams to wear green today (except for the A's who almost always wear it no matter what city they are in). And hey, even I am wearing my green shamrock-clad David Wright shirtsy today, lest I chance getting pinched.
They say the first step is admitting you have a problem. While I have spent a long time the last decade or so making my collection smaller and more indicative of the things I love, some of the player collections continue to spiral out of control. Mike Piazza has always been the largest of my hoards and it seems it might never ever cease (not as long as they keep printing old time players that is).
Spring training and a very nice mailing from Night Owl inspired me to tend to a long ignored pile of around 30 Piazza cards that had accumulated but not integrated into the vastness. N.O. had included a few nice Mets inserts and it put me over the edge of having to organize. In that unsorted pile was the die-cut shiny Diamond Immortals card you see in the middle there, which made it nine original Piazza Marlins cards in my collection - that is 4 more than games he played in Florida teal - right in the wheelhouse of this blog. This also gives me an opportunity to fact dump one of my favorite things about Piazza's career: he hit only 8 triples over 16 years but that does include at least one for each team he played for, yup he hit one in the 18 at bats he took in Miami. So dumb, so delicious.
So now I have almost two full super top loader boxes of worthy Piazza cards. Not the regular two row shoe boxes mind you, the giant long three row ones. You can see the size of the two row boxes on the right of this photo, and compare it to the two behemoths next to it.
The first box is chock full of the Mets (and Marlins!) insert cards plus all the ones post-2008 and his playing career. There is about 600 cards in here:
The second box has all the relic and encapsulated cards in the left row and all his Dodgers inserts in the middle and right rows. There is a bit of room left in here, illustrated by the double plastic box spacer in the back, but all it will take is one eBay or Comc binge and that bit will be gone. There is at least 300 cards in this box and maybe closer to four (I did not count as I organized). That means there's about 1000 inserts SPs and parallels in top loaders here. And you wonder why I've never shown ALL the individual Piazza cards I have.
Oh yeah, and these are just the fancy insert cards. I have a 3" binder full of his base cards and lesser inserts and parallels. There's probably 90-100 pages in there as well.
So while Gary Carter will probably always maintain most favorite player status, he only has a single regular shoebox of fancy cards and one 2" binder. Mike Piazza arrived on the scene as cards started to get silly and my abundance reflects that. I will never have all of them but someday my heirs will have to figure out what to do with ~2000 Mike Piazza cards. And by then it could be closer to 3000. I really do have a problem.
Deck the halls with boughs of holly
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
'tis the season to be jolly
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Don we now our gay apparel
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Troll the ancient Yuletide carol
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
See the blazing Yule before us
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Strike the harp and join the chorus.
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Follow me in merry measure
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
While I tell of Yuletide treasure
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Fast away the old year passes
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Hail the new, ye lads and lasses
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Sing we joyous, all together
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Heedless of the wind and weather
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Word came in baseball this week of two things I am very happy about, to the point that I am posting about it.
Firstly, that Dave Parker and Dick Allen were elected to the hall of fame. These two men are long overdue to be in Cooperstown. Parker was a great player with a sublime peak. His great downfall to those pesky writers was he may or may not have enjoyed cocaine a little too much. But hey, in the 1980s, it was the law to do cocaine once you made a certain amount of money and after all, he was the first player to make a million dollars in a year.
I hate to play the if/then game when it comes to the hall of fame, but if Jim Rice and Harold Baines are in Cooperstown, then there was zero reason to keep Parker out.
His pages in my book are also a fun way to see how my brain works in terms of organization. That first page has him all in a Pirates uni - where he began his career and made his biggest contributions as a player (Stargell was the leader but Parker was the most dangerous hitter). That makes sense. He then was traded to Cincy after the Pittsburgh drug trials, so maybe that next page would be all Reds cards, well not quite. You see mostly Reds but also cards that match cards on the other pages.
Parker did bounce around a lot at the end of his career, didn't he? Have bat, will travel. I am glad the veterans committee, or whatever they are calling it this week, came to their senses and immortalized a great player while he was still alive. The same cannot be said for poor Dick Allen.
He died in 2020 and he belonged in the hall way before that. His numbers are the perfect illustration of why you need to "normalize" for era. He did all his damage in the 60s and early 70s, when pitching dominated the league. He also committed the cardinal sin of being an outspoken black man in the 60s when all the writers were stuffy old white dudes and Philadelphia was not exactly into loving the brothers. So his family will get to enjoy his enshrinement but he will not. They did this more recently to Ron Santo as well, so I can't decide if this move is pulling a Santo or pulling an Allen. The opposite is waiting until a player dies because they don't deserve to reap the benefits of being a hall of fame member; this is now pulling a Rose but someday will probably be pulling a Bonds.
The second thing that happened is that the Mets backed up the dump truck full of money and unloaded it in the yard of Juan Soto.
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| Fun fact: the two world series MVPs in Mets history also wore #22 |
This signing is obviously a very expensive undertaking for my hometown team to partake in and it is also unique for them. The Mets usually make big trades for big players (Carter, Alomar, Piazza, Lindor) and then sign them to big deals but have never really signed the prime free agent for the right reasons. The only other time this happened was with the now infamous Bobby Bonilla and they did that as a knee jerk reaction to not signing Darryl Strawberry - when they should have either just given Straw the money or waited a year and paid Barry Bonds. And we all know how Bobby Bonilla turned out in Mets history. But here they have signed the "generational talent" (they passed on A-Rod) to the biggest contract (and outspending the Yankees to do it) and it actually has a chance to work out for a change, both as a player and his fit on the team. I am hopeful, but with the Mets, it is always tainted with caution.
I am so saddened by the passing of the Original Original Met that I felt compelled to post here for the first time in far too long. I never got to see Ed play so I really only know him through stories and of course baseball cards.
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| He got a career capper in 1980 which has all his career stats. |
One of the great things about Ed is that his run of flagship Topps cards fits perfectly into two 9-pocket pages.
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| The '63 was the last card I got of his, thanks to Tony Oliva. |
Ed came up as a 17(!) year old bonus baby in the Mets first year of 1962 and stayed through 1979. He still holds the record for most games played in an Amazins uniform.
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| That middle card is a custom and the auto is real. |
He has this third page of odds and ends in my Mets pages and in fact has the honor of being the only person to lead off two books because he is also the subject of a favorite autograph of mine:
A 100 years ago my Uncle Ron, the very big Yankees fan, waited in a very long line at a corporate show to get me an autograph of a Mets player. I have cherished this one a very long time and now, sadly, even more so.
Original Met, Miracle Met, Lifetime Met. Godspeed Ed.
