Dave, Dick, and Dump Trucks of Money.

     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. 

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.

RIP Ed Kranepool 1944-2024

     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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

I Think That I Shall Never See.

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree!
How are thy leaves so verdant!
O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,
How are thy leaves so verdant!

Not only in the summertime,
But even in winter is thy prime.
O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,
How are thy leaves so verdant!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,
Much pleasure doth thou bring me!
O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,
Much pleasure doth thou bring me!

For every year the Christmas tree,
Brings to us all both joy and glee.
O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,
Much pleasure doth thou bring me!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,
Thy candles shine out brightly!
O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,
Thy candles shine out brightly!

Each bough doth hold its tiny light,
That makes each toy to sparkle bright.
O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,
Thy candles shine out brightly!

Happy Birthday To Me.

      So Friday was my 47th birthday, a most nondescript age to turn to say the least.  I took the day off to have myself a nice four-day weekend. Of course, as much as having 96 hours to do nothing would be ideal, one has to use at least some downtime for the errands one must attend to.  Being a grown up is lame. But I decided while I was going to be out and about to at least also attend to some of my childish amusement which means baseball cards, of course. 

Having recently finished my 1975 Topps set, I've taken on the challenge of the 1972 set next.  I know this one will take years (it took me years to build it the first time). I've gathered all the stars I have and bought myself a nice starter set at a decent price. But while I now have a good 80% of the first 653 cards, after that - the dreaded high numbers - I only had 4 of them. So I know it is a long term task ahead of me. 

 

 

Ah, but this is where some serendipity comes in, even more than my '75 set had.  I was around a comic store I know has card supplies and some boxes of random sports card stuff. I have spoken of this place before. It is always a fun visit to a joint that has been good to me before but I doubt it will ever be better than this. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I decided to start my '72 set officially two weeks ago and aside from my initial gathering hadn't done anything more. Heck, I haven't even put together a want list yet. (UPDATE: Yes, I have, in my brands and sets wantlist tab) But as I dove into the dark vintage old school cardboard section of that quarter box, it was like some kind of wild daydream. It was loaded with 1972 Topps. And not just any kind of 1972 Topps, I immediately recognized these cards as high numbers. And there was not just three or four of them, there was dozens of them. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Obviously, it is clear that a comic shop might not be well versed in what they had in this vein of cards and I didn't feel it was my place to tell them. I mean, it's not like there was the Nolan Ryan or Frank Robinson traded card in here. But the Rick Wise traded card was in there. And about 60 other high numbers. I asked and made sure the unsleeved vintage was a quarter and I was told yes so I just went with it. All in all, I nabbed 90 or so total that I needed for my new set. And I got those high numbers for a quarter a piece; I couldn't have done that the first time I built this set in the late 90s. I should feel guilty but I don't. I also got a huge lot of series 5 original Star Wars cards too at the same price, but that is a different post (and they should have known better about those). There was also a bunch of other vintage stuff in there, some 1968 commons that I couldn't resist and some '70s team cards. Along with a shiny new binder and a big monster box, it was quite the trip and turned out to be a glorious, unexpected birthday present for me. I'll have a new list up soon for the '72 set soon and I even have a few high number doubles to trade. Try not to take horrible advantage of me.

Complete Set Sunday: Finish What You Start.

     After the pandemic struck and we all went through several rounds of the Kübler-Ross stages, there was a calm when most of us decided "OK, I have all this time on my hands, I am gonna do something important!" and we made plans to learn a craft or go back to school or remodel the house or invent a better mouse trap or focus on our hobbies or whatever.  It's always best to think big so that the actual plans can find the right size but also, reality eventually says that our plans will be big but our follow through small.  At least that seems to be the way things go for me most of the time. Well, I already went back to school a while back, and my house is just fine the way it is, and my inventing skills are nil, so that left me with my hobby.  I did throw myself into my collection in a lot of different ways the last couple years, pruning some parts and expanding others.  I bought some cards I always wanted and got rid of ones that did not spark joy.  In keeping with the Mary Kondo theme, one thing I really lament from my long term collecting history is that a long time ago, I sold off all my vintage Topps sets.  I had built a 1969 set, a 1972 set, and as you can probably tell from the thumbnail of this post, a 1975 set. Given all this time on my hands, I decided to rebuild one of those sets and since the 1975 set is my favorite (for many reasons we'll get to) that was the one I went for.

The pandemic has made it almost impossible to go out and buy cards in a store but the online offerings exploded.  I had my choice of a few nice starter sets and I picked one that had a few of the key rookie cards (Rice, Yount, Hernandez) and then added my back up Gary Carter to the mix.  I then made it a challenge for myself by making my set build a low budget affair.  Sure, I could have just went to ebay and nabbed a few other common lots or just paid for hall of famers but instead, I built most of this set through my own collection, reddit trades, Listia listings, and a great serendipitous find: I got my Brett rookie for nothing because a friend was updating his 1975 set to PSA quality.  He bought a PSA 9 and gave me his old, just fine, ungraded #228. That was nice.

The Mantle/Campy card was the last from the MVP subset and part of the final four.

 

 

So on and off for the last 18 months or so, I have been accumulating cards. A trade here, a find there, a listia seller had a bunch of commons one week.  Slowly but surely, I hammered it down to a final four: three random commons (all in the 500s, as though the 1975 set had high numbers or something) and one of the Mantle MVP cards that for some reason, everyone was hoarding.  Well, I did finally get that Mantle and then I treated myself to buying the final three from ebay to finish things off.  You are now looking at me triumphantly placing those cards into their spots in the binder.

 

 

Gary Thomasson slides in nicely next to Gaylord Perry, who has one of the nifty All Star logos from this set.  You can also see on the page one of the team cards, a lot of mine have pen marks on the checklist but this does not bother me in the least. I was not very picky when it came to condition. As long as it didn't look like Night Owl's original cards, I was okay with it.

 

 

Von Joshua finds his spot here as the penultimate card.  I always thought Von Joshua should be a classical pianist, not an outfielder, but hey, who am I to judge. He was a major leaguer and I wasn't. You can also see on this page that Billy Williams is sadly off center and I will have to perhaps replace some of those.  Maybe during the next pandemic...

 

 

And here it is, the final card, #557 Larry Gura.  There is a fun irony of him being shown as a Yankee since his reputation was that of Yankee Killer later on in his career.  Of all the iconic cards in this set, this one was the last one; not epic but it will do.  Al Oliver looks a little jealous over his shoulder.

 

 

So there it is, I set a goal and accomplished it.  It took a year and a half and some time and patience, but I rebuilt my 1975 Topps set.  I love this set because I was born that year, I love this set because it is garishly bonkers colorful. I love this set because it has the rookie card of my favorite player of all time, Gary Carter.  But now I love this set even more because it will always remind me of a very trying time in my life (and all our lives) but that we made it through.  It will remind me that I can set reasonable goals and follow through on them.  I will be keeping this one for the rest of my life and passing it on to one of my nibblings, with the story of its acquirement (lucky too that my nieces and nephews have already shown great interest in baseball).  It is not perfect by any means, but it is a perfect trophy of the last two years.  And now I have to decide if I want to redo those 1969 and/or 1972 sets.  If we don't all die in a nuclear war in the next few months, maybe I will choose one and get back to you.