Ladies and Gentlemen, Can I Please Have Your Attention?

I've just been handed an urgent and horrifying news story. And I need all of you to stop what you're doing and listen...
Cannonball!!!

Anyone who has searched Listia the last few weeks has seen this gem at the top as the key card of one of those tiered daily escalating mega-listings.  Every day for three weeks it was there just staring at me, taunting me with all its beauty.  Now I did not have nearly the credits necessary to win this, but I took a chance and sent a message to the winner right after the auction ended and asked what his intentions for the card were.  I was very polite yet direct, a method I have championed before.  After a little give and take, and a slight bit of drama, the winner of that big ass listing decided to sell it to me.  As you can see it arrived today and I am overjoyed.  Proving that being polite and direct works, the dude told me he let me have the card (and even better, at my price) because I was enthusiastic and honest with him; I wasn't going to flip it on eBay, I really wanted the card for my collection because these are two of my favorite players of all time.  And I am quite grateful for that.  Plus look at that thing, it is glorious.  After I take it out for dinner this evening, we will spend the night watching TV and snuggling, then I will tuck it in before bed.  I love it that much.

Mail Call: Oddest of the Odd.

       I have not chronicled my new found love of Listia as much as I think I should here on this blog.  I certainly have shown my love for oddball cards and dime boxes at card shows.  Listia allows me to indulge these two loves at the same time without even having to leave my house.  I mean, sure, I try and secure quality cards from Listia, but my real favorite thing is to find weird lots of cards and buy them.  Last week, I bid on what I thought was three pretty crazy cards.  Instead, the seller put some unexpected bonuses into the envelope and may very well have created the freakiest lot I have ever seen:

The original lot was the Strawberry, the Whitney Houston(!) and the Superman hologram.  I am not entirely certain how I even ran across this lot; I must have searched "strawberry" I suppose.  As I have shown in the past I love those 1990 Starline cards (and I don't have the individual Stawberry), I adore shiny (and Superman), and say what you will about Ms Houston, but that rendition of the Star Spangled Banner is top drawer.  So I figured, what the hell, the expense was minimal.  In and of itself, though, that odd threesome probably would not have warranted its own post.  It seems the Listia gods were looking down upon me and struck hard.  The seller threw in the other six cards you see there with no warning or provocation.  And what a wonderful six cards they are.  First of all, how did they have the prescience to know I collected Frank Thomas, much less include a card I did not own.  Then there is the marvelous Brooks Robinson K-Mart oddball card, also a card I did not own.  I covered goofy fun NFL names yesterday and Dana Stubblefield definitely fits that mold.  And while basketball cards are not my favorite, an über 90's looking Phil Jackson, a so-lame-it-is-wonderful Amar'e Stoudemire rookie, and a Tim Hardaway NBA Hoops rookie is a triumvirate I can get behind. 

Thank you rosemaryforsythe, I will never forget you.  This group is so ugly, so disparate, so random it's wonderful.  I almost want to leave them as a single page but alas, this is the one time they will all be together for posterity.  Drink it in. 

Loyalty.

       I am going to judge you...not as a person, mind you, but as a fan.  I am not big on those insipid "rules for fans" articles you will get from hack sportswriters from time to time.  I find there are no "rules" per se for being a sports fan.  You can do what you want; sports is supposed to be a pastime, after all.  But, and we are talking a J-Lo sized but here, the fact that there are no rules does not mean I won't draw opinions from your choices as a fan and then apply them further upon you as a human being. 

       If you have been paying attention at all, you will know that I am a New York Mets fan.  Being a Mets fan is, um, difficult at times.  But they are my team, through (the rarely) thick and (very very) thin.  Liking the Mets is not always easy, but it shows a tremendous amount of patience and fortitude if you are a true Mets fan.  On the other hand, being a Yankees fan requires very little, other than the lack of a soul and a self important attitude based upon entitlement.  The two do not mesh.  If you say you are a Mets fan, I know you aren't a Yankees fan.  If you say you are a Yankees fan, I know that you are both a jerk and that you pity the Mets, and really, that's fine.  But if you say you are a Yankees fan who roots for the Mets, I know you are a milquetoast (at best) and if you say you are a Mets fan who roots for the Yankees, I question your entire understanding of how life works.

       There is a radio talk show host who does AM drive in New York on WFAN, so as not to give him too much exposure, let's just call him Graig Garton.  For full disclosure, I have listened to this blowhard for about a dozen years and know him from back in his 101.5 days, and he was unmistakeably awful then.  But after the Don Imus fiasco five years ago, WFAN made the unfathomable choice of giving this jackass a bigger audience.  While his grating voice and sub-moronic IQ are obvious drawbacks to his job, the worst thing he does is around this time of year is he switches his allegiances from the Mets to the Yankees, opening what he calls the Church of Mets Fans for Yankees. This makes as much sense as "Jews for Jesus" - there is a word for that, we call it "Christians."  There is also a word for Mets Fans for Yankees, and that word is "Yankees Fan."  Packers fans don't root for the Bears, Bruins fans don't root for the Canadiens, Dodgers fans don't root for the Giants, Celtics fans do not root for the Lakers, and Mets fans do not root for the Yankees.  Period.  It is not a law or a rule, it is just the way it is.  Period.

       OK, I am on a complete ranting tangent here and I need to focus back to the point at hand.  Yes, I am a Mets fan and a baseball fan.  No, I will never root for the Yankees, ever.  Even in 2001, I was not rooting for the Yankees and was quite thrilled when they lost.  But, once playoff time comes around, when the Mets are out of it (which has been often in the last five years), I do take temporary rooting interest in a team, usually the one playing against the Yankees or, more recently, the Phillies (and when the Yankees and Phillies played each other?  I rooted for mother nature and football season).  This year I am rooting openly - and a little early this year, as well - for the Orioles.

The Orioles and their fans deserve better than they have gotten the last 15 years or so.  Peter Angelos is a carpetbagging bastard of the highest order.  He took what was once one of the gems of the American League and polished it into a turd.

There was once a concept of "The Oriole Way" which shows how seriously they took fine baseball in Baltimore and that they have gotten away from that shows how low they have sunk.

I have never had a beef with the Orioles or their fans.  I am too young to remember 1969 and since we beat them that year, really, what kind of grudge could I hold anyway?  Even when I was at Camden Yards and some drunk lady practically accosted me when the Mets lost to the Orioles, I didn't use that incident against their fans.  This was a few years ago when the O's were losing 90-100 games a year, why kick someone when they are down?  Besides, I understand - being drunk at a Mets game is pretty much required. 
 
I like what Buck Showalter has done with this ragtag bunch. I like that he got screwed over by the Yankees and has a chance to stick it to them. It would make for a good story if he is able to win the AL East with this team and a great story if he can not only win the East, but keep the Yankees out of the playoffs all together.  He'll need help from the Rays and the A's for that.

I wish I had a page of some contemporary Orioles to show you, but most of my modern O's go to Kevin at Orioles Card "O" the Day.  You'll have to go there to see Adam Jones or Nick Markakis cards.

So while my Mets sputter down the stretch to the tune of a 4-21 post All Star Break home record, I will continue to watch the games.  I will continue to wear my Mets hat - even in public.  I will root for David Wright to post great numbers and for R.A. Dickey to win 20.  But I will also be rooting for the Orioles to dethrone the Yankees.  I will be rooting for more Yankees injuries.  I will be rooting for the Rays and A's to keep up their end of the bargain and shut the Yanks out of even a Wild Card.  And any Mets fan who roots for the Yankees?  Shame on you.

Manic Monday.

        I have been trying for a few days to sit down and write an answer to the pretty awful story CBS ran last weekend about the "decline" of the hobby.  Here it is, in case you haven't seen it.  There are so many things wrong with this story, I cannot begin to describe them.  Finding that start was part of my problem; I had just a non-stop busy weekend and I have an equally busy week ahead of me (including some actual paid work!).  So, while this might reek of the laziness shown in the CBS story, I am going to pass you off to Night Owl who wrote a better breakdown of this story than I ever could have hoped to do.  I should leave journalism to the actual journalists.  Oh, and here are some awesome 1974 All Star cards, since this is a card blog after all.

I promise some better posts later in the week, but I think that page should hold you over for now.

Hometown.

       I grew up living in a few different places in northern New Jersey before my family finally settled in the town of Ramsey.  Now, Ramsey's big claim to fame is...well...come to think of it, it has no claim to fame.  It is the epitome of the upper middle class, white, bedroom community, suburban ghetto.  It isn't rich or special enough to have famous people live here nor is it poor enough for anything nasty to transpire here leading to infamy.  Anyway, I could not get out of this place fast enough when I turned 18, going away to Boston first for college and then to live.  But, of course, in the usual It's A Wonderful Life cliche turn of events, I came back here to live seven years ago - and have been plotting, in vain, to leave ever since.  So, if you were to ask me what my hometown was, I would reluctantly yet firmly say "Ramsey, NJ."

       I was surfing around some card blogs a night or two ago (stay with me, the point is coming) and I hit upon an especially odd group of players being discussed and in one of the comments, a player was given props merely for being from someone's hometown.  That little defense got me to thinking of my childhood. Going further in the WABAC, I was a pretty terrible athlete as a kid.  At first, I was short and chubby, than after puberty hit me (like a ton of bricks), I became lanky and awkward.  While I am tall and wide, I lost the overall natural lottery with an overall goofy body with no discernible center of gravity.  All in all, though, I was very enthusiastic about playing sports and went out for all the teams, sometimes even making them.  When I was in middle school in the late 80's and then high school in the early 90's, Ramsey was known as a local hotbed of athletics.  Unfortunately, it was the classes behind me and ahead of me that had all the good jocks (it seems the mid-70's were not a particularly fertile time for those kinds of genetics in this town).  The late 70's and early 80's had brought a couple county champions in baseball and one state champion.  That state championship team featured a player that was spoken of in hushed tones in my hometown: Mike Laga.

Mike Laga is by far the most famous baseball player to come out of Ramsey.  There was a brief time when he was thought of as one of the best prospects in all of baseball.  You could just ask Sparky Anderson (except he's dead) and my long time local high school baseball coach and they would tell you all about it.  Unfortunately, Mike flamed out and never amounted to much.  He had power to spare, but never got that contact or defense thing down.  He is known in card circles, sadly, for his awful airbrushed 1987 Topps card (oh the pink! see above) and in baseball circles for hitting the most impressive foul ball in Busch Stadium history.  Not a grand legacy...but in my hometown, he is still held in high regard.  I got that autograph on the 1986 Donruss card in person at a card show in Ramsey High School sometime in 1987 or 1988 and, I can say from experience, Mike is a very nice guy...the very definition of a hometown hero.

The other three cards on that page are of Frank Eufemia, and 64 silver dollars to you if you'd ever heard of him.  He is, though, a bit of a North Jersey legend.  He made the big leagues in 1985 (as you can plainly see by his three 1986 cards) with the Twins.  He got hurt and bounced around the minor leagues for years trying to get back.  Around 1991, he was the star of the local Hackensack Troasts, a semi-pro team.  Having family and once even having lived in Hackensack, I knew the team well.  On more than a few occasions, I got to play catch and warm up Frank Eufemia, my closest brush with the big leagues.  For a 15 year old, this was a pretty big deal (his time with the Troasts led him to being signed by the Mets in 1992, but he never got higher than AAA). I never got up the nerve to ask Frank for his autograph, but he does teach gym a few towns over now, so maybe if I am ever bored, I could go over and make up for that oversight. 

Fast forward a decade or so to when I lived in Boston and, as I have described before, I worked in a baseball card store.  I actually lived in a suburb of Boston named Somerville.  At around the same time, a slugger named Paul Sorrento was bouncing around the American League.  He put together a pretty decent big league career all through the 90's.  He was even an original Devil Ray:

So, one day I had this big, happy Italian customer in the baseball card store and when he handed me his credit card, I saw his last name was "Sorrento" - for whatever reason, I mention Paul Sorrento and asked if he knew of him.  "Know him, he's my cousin!" was the reply and he went on and on about his cousin Pauly.  I then had a customer for life and he came in the store all the time.  One afternoon, he walked in and introduced me to his cousin, Paul.  Both of them were big, goofy, friendly guys.  Turns out, I also lived about three blocks from Paul's parents. I ended up becoming pretty decent friends, for a time, with the entire Sorrento clan.  Very nice people, definitely hometown guys.

So, those are my hometown people and a couple of interesting little brushes with greatness.  As I said, I was not great, or even a very good, baseball player.  Luckily, by the late 80's, that didn't matter.  Most little league teams got their own homemade baseball cards, myself included:

I think I was 12 in that picture.  The other two homemade-type cards are of my cousin (Robbie) and a childhood friend (Jared).  They were nice enough to autograph their cards for me.  And yes, I signed my own card. Sad, sure, but practicing your autograph is what you do at 12 when you just know, with a few breaks, you'll make the majors.  Alas, my cousin and my friend never made the majors, either, but their autographs are priceless in my book.  In an odd twist, another one of my cards had an awesome brush with greatness:

It is very hard to tell, since it is blue sharpie on a blue jersey, but there is an autograph on that card, and it isn't mine.  My mother was traveling through Baltimore on business one time in the late 80's and there was some kind of meet and greet in her hotel with local famous folks.  She saw one of them was a baseball player and, not having anything for him to sign, she pulled out my baseball card from her wallet and had him sign that.  She had no idea who he was (my mother is not much of a baseball fan) but that card has a unique place of honor in my collection.  The player?  Brooks Robinson.