Happy Holidays.

 

Happy holiday (happy holiday)
Happy holiday (happy holiday)
While the merry bells keep ringing
Happy holiday to you (happy holiday)
(Happy holiday)

 

It's the holiday season
And Santa Claus is coming 'round
The Christmas snow is white on the ground
When old Santa gets into town
He'll be coming down the chimney, down
(He'll be coming down the chimney, down)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 It's the holiday season
And Santa Claus has got a toy
For every good girl and good little boy
Santa's a great big bundle of joy
When he's coming down the chimney, down
(When he's coming down the chimney, down)

 

He'll have a big fat pack upon his back
And lots of goodies for you and for me
So leave a peppermint stick for old St. Nick
Hanging on the Christmas tree

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's the holiday season (the holiday season)
So hoop-de-do and dickory dock
And don't forget to hang up your sock
'Cause just exactly at twelve o'clock

 

Happy holiday
(Happy holiday) Happy holiday
While the merry bells keep ringing
Happy holiday to you.

 

- Irving Berlin, 1942

Retro Fun.

       It is safe to say most of us reached retro card saturation sometime in the early to mid-aughts.  The Topps Archives and Topps Heritage sets in 2001 begat Upper Deck's Vintage and Decades series and opened up a floodgate of reprints, design reuse, and pseudo-retro sets.  Sometimes it is refreshing and neat but most of the time it is gratuitous and poorly executed.  And since Topps keeps pumping out their Heritage and revamped Archives sets over and and over, year after year, we get very little variation in the presentation of our nostalgia.

Enter Topps Super 70s Sports Baseball.  If you recognize the name and follow this dude on twitter, you know the whole tongue-in-cheek schtick this feed has.  It posts multiple retro photos a day with an amusing over-the-top caption to it to inflict an emotional response: sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes ridiculous.  When I saw they had teamed up with Topps to put out a card set, I couldn't resist.  Lemme tell you, they had me at the graphic on the box:

When I saw the design of the cards, I knew immediately that they were going for someone like me who wants the vibe of old school cards but not the horrible repetition the whole parade has become.  If you are as much of a card nerd as I am (and if you are reading this blog, I assume you are) you recognized the elements right away: The script team logo from 1978, the pennant flag from 1977, and the ribbon from 1979 (or 1974 perhaps?) all remixed and reorganized into something organic and new.  It's like hearing a perfect cover version of a popular overplayed song that makes the whole thing come alive again.

The "pack" was actually a plastic box sealed with tamper tape. Very interesting indeed.

 

 

I pre-ordered this stuff, which I NEVER do even for Ginter or Heritage, back in early November.  I got a late Christmas present when they arrived on Boxing Day.  And yup, I love them as much as I thought I would.

 

First and foremost, new photos!  One of the huge complains I and so many other collectors is when they put old guys on new cards, they use the same pictures over and over and over and over again.  I know I have written about it and I know other bloggers have too so when I see new shots from the no doubt bottomless pile Topps should have, it makes me very happy indeed.  The other thing I noticed right away is that they feel right.  The vintage cardboard is always a plus on these sets. I know shiny white glossy paper looks better but when you are doing this sort of thing, it really should be thick and pulpy and dull.  It makes the backs look right too:

 

I probably should have scanned more backs but the cartoons are wonderful and they look new though someone with more knowledge than me could probably figure out if they are reused.  Either way, they let a third of the back be the comic and I am more than okay with that.  The backs themselves are in the color scheme of 1977 or 1979 with the ribbon from '79 featured.  I was kind of expecting the humorous tone of the S70sS Twitter feed in the write-up but they are pretty straight forward.  I doubt Topps would want to alienate anyone with a Kevin Costner joke on the back of a Cal Ripken card (google it).

Lets look at all of these beauties.  I even got a nice little hit:

 

 

That's a Dave Parker autograph in the middle there.  I didn't have a Cobra signature in my collection so that one is going to stay.  The last two cards are themed parallels that add the colorful banners of 1975 to the mix.  I think it might have been too much to ask for the whole set to look like that so that is a nice addition and kinda what parallels should do in the first place.  I might need to look into making an entire page of the Magnificent Mustaches. 

They did modern players in the set too, which is fine I guess but certainly not what I came to see.  Scherzer and Turner certainly fit in with a 70s theme, Cole and Soto, not so much.  Full disclosure: I am easily old enough to be Juan Soto's dad.

 

 

You may count more than 20 cards, that's because I also pre-ordered my favorite players, the Gary Carter, the Frank Thomas, the Mike Piazza (amusingly shown in his Marlins uniform), and of course the Mets players there on the bottom.  A wise decision since I didn't get any of them in my 20-card box.  These cards are easily the collecting highlight of the dumpster fire that has been 2020.  If you were on the fence about getting any of this stuff because you don't like all the faux-vintage that gets churned out, I suggest it highly.  I hope Topps learns from this and does more fun sets like this rather than just reprinting all their old cards.

Buddy the Elf, what's your favorite color?

I planned out our whole day: First, we'll make snow angels for two hours, and then we'll go ice skating, and then we'll eat a whole roll of Toll House cookie dough as fast as we can, and then to finish, we'll snuggle.

I passed through the seven levels of the Candy Cane forest, through the sea of swirly twirly gum drops, and then I walked through the Lincoln Tunnel.

The Best Way to Spread Christmas Cheer, is Singing Loud for All to Hear.

The Fire Is So Delightful.

Just hear those sleigh bells jingling ring ting tingling too
Come on, it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you
Outside the snow is falling and friends are calling "yoohoo!"
Come on, it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you.

Giddy yap, giddy yap, giddy yap let's go, Let's look at the show
We're riding in a wonderland of snow.
Giddy yap, giddy yap, giddy yap it's grand, just holding your hand
We're gliding along with a song of a wintry fairy land

Our cheeks are nice and rosy and comfy cozy are we
We're snuggled up together like two birds of a feather would be
Let's take that road before us and sing a chorus or two
Come on, it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you.

There's a birthday party at the home of Farmer Gray
It'll be the perfect ending a of perfect day
We'll be singing the songs we love to sing without a single stop
At the fireplace while we watch the chestnuts pop. pop! pop! pop!

There's a happy feeling nothing in the world can buy
When they pass around the coffee and the pumpkin pie
It'll nearly be like a picture print by Currier and Ives
These wonderful things are the things we remember all through our lives!

Just hear those sleigh bells jingling ring ting tingling too
Come on, it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you
Outside the snow is falling and friends are calling "yoohoo!"
Come on, it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you.

It's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you.
It's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you.

You Can't Get Rid of Me That Easy.

       It seems for most people 2016 has been a rough year. As usual, I was ahead of the curve and my nightmares started in 2015.  I was in a car accident on Super Bowl Sunday that left me shaken but unscathed but that was to be the least of my issues.  I posted on and off all through 2015 right up until what would seem a very exciting time for me, the Mets going deep into the playoffs.  I posted on the day of that first postseason game in nine years, and then aside from an auto-post on Christmas and a couple of Hall of Fame induction posts that I already pretty much had written out, nothing.  This blog has been silent. Why, you ask?  It is on that aforementioned October night that our story begins...

These are the Mets holiday parallel cards from that big box store I don't shop in.

I will not bore you too much with the details of this story as I have told it a few too many times and I have grown weary of it.  Plus it is kind of horrifying and gross but I will hit the important parts, though. I watched that first playoff game with a great deal of anticipation, obviously.  I sat in my big comfy chair and did not get out of it the whole night.  The Mets won a tight and tidy 3-1 victory and as the final out was made, I got up to do the business we all have to do.  That is when things turn ugly.  The last thing I remember was fainting on the toilet. I hit my head and passed out.  I woke up in a pool of blood, feces, and throw up and I could barely move.  This was not a pretty picture and I was in trouble.  911 was called and an ambulance came and some very well trained EMTs scooped me up and took me to the hospital.  I was cleaned up and put on fluids as they tried to figure out what was going on with me.  I was there one day, then two, and so on.  No food could go in me, nothing but blood and pain was coming out of me.  Two of the finest doctors on the eastern seaboard were looking over me and on day three, I asked them point blank what was wrong with me.  They looked at each other and shrugged - they actually shrugged.  I was in real trouble.  Test after test was done to me, pint after pint of blood was going into me.  I didn't eat anything solid for nine days.  As a last resort, they gave me a little camera pill, like something out of the Jetsons, to go through my gastrointestinal tract and if that didn't find anything, they were going to have to cut me open.  I swear this is the short version of this story and to tighten it up even further, yes, they found out what was wrong with me without having to cut me open.  I had a hidden hole in a hard to reach part of my intestines (the jejunum for those who like hard to pronounce medical words).  Rest and no food eventually healed it up.  I was in the hospital for a couple weeks.  I was an absolute wreck physically and emotionally for months.  The physical part eventually healed and my strength and stamina returned.  My emotional state, usually pretty precarious to begin with, was not so easily dealt with. 

Since all I have done is vent in this post, let me say a belated Happy Holidays and to everyone reading.

Near death experiences are supposed to energize you, instead with old contrarian me, it has put me in a deep funk.  Every time I think it is getting better, I realize it isn't.  Old things that used to make me happy simply don't.  New things bore me.  I have never been so down or inconsolable and that is saying something.  Every day is a struggle and every moment I am left alone with my thoughts makes me more depressed. I have tried everything I could think of to help myself to very little success.  I wish I could tell you I have figured it all out but I haven't.  Right now emotional survival is the key.  I haven't much wanted to blog because I really haven't been collecting much and what I have hasn't brought me much joy.  I am a red hot mess.

They didn't scan too well, but these are the shiny metallic foil ones.

Not to sound like some kind of inspirational trinket bought at the mall, but happiness is a choice.  It has been about 14 months that I have been Greco-Roman Wrestling these demons on a daily, practically hourly basis, and this New Year's seems like as good a day to just turn my back on them.  Oh, I am going to be very aware of my mental health but I am going to make a concerted effort to streamline this process that has just been exhausting.  I am not sure if it will work or not, but one thing I do desperately miss is the happiness that card collecting brought me and the fun and feedback I got from writing my blog.  So that is what I am going to do.  I am going to drag myself kicking and screaming back to my old self.  I have tried every other damn thing and maybe now is the time for the the direct approach, which I know seems obvious to some but for me it is novel because my head is a wacky place and I tend to outsmart myself when I keep things simple.  At this point it seems I have nothing left to lose.  I have been slowly reacclimating myself to old friends and my family and while it hasn't snapped me out of things quite yet, it wasn't nearly as hard as my brain has been making it out to be.  So this week, I am going to start this blog up again and I trust that the 12 of you who used to read it will do so again.  Wish me luck.  And a very Happy New Year to you all.

'Tis The Season To Be Zippy.

       I have declared this month the one where I settle all draft folder business.  I have finally (and mercifully) come to the end of my first tier of posts to close out, my unwritten trades.  It is a relief to have these out of the draft folder and into the world, if only to thank the kind souls who sent me stuff. 

This past Christmas brought me few glad tidings and fewer reasons for good cheer, but one shining exception was an unexpected package I received from Kenny, aka Zippy Zappy.  Kenny and I have exchanged packages since he started his blog two years ago and I must say, if we were keeping score, I would say he's winning.  This one was sent as a holiday gift in thanks for all our past swaps. 

If you read his blog, you'll know that ZZ is a huge prospector and his love of rookies was my gain here, as I am now flush in minor league Mets.  One name really stands out here, L.J. Mazzilli is the son of Mets favorite Lee.  This was great to get in December but that joy has been slightly tarnished now that he has been suspended 50 games of the 2015 season.  Luckily, that tiny Dominic Smith card more than makes up for that.

ZZ sends off some major league cards too. 

Better than jokes about my shiny Dickey would be mentioning my handsome little Dickey, right? Right?  Hello?  Is this thing on?

Back to the bread and butter of ZZ, the rookie prospects.  Here is a six pack of Extra Edition.  I have heard of two of these guys, so in that arena I am batting a cool .333.

There was a bit of gratuitous junk wax, which is fine, but what makes these stand out is the immortal Kelvin Torve, the first Mets player since Willie Mays to wear #24 (the number is unofficially retired).  Hey, it's nice to have something to be remembered for.

Some more major league cards. I have a soft spot for that Topps Ticket to Stardom set from a few years ago, so it was nice to see more of those, including a Jose Reyes insert I didn't have.

Seeing Luis Castillo going up for a pop-up is kind of a mean photo, Upper Deck.  Mets fans know what I am talking about. Lets move on before I get mad.

There was a few more older Mets cards, including a tremendous 1972 Tug McGraw card that I somehow didn't have. 

He also included some New Jersey Devils cards.  I haven't bought much new hockey in the last decade or so, so these are always appreciated.  It would have been even more appropriate if they were in their green and red uniforms, given the time I got this package. 

Last but not least is the absolute highlight of all these cards:

In our first trade, Kenny included a Japanese David Wright card and even translated it for me.  Here, he makes me a multiple David Wright Asian card collector with another oddball from the far east.  He also wished me Happy Holidays in Japanese.  So let me return the fond wishes here, on St. Patrick's Day mind you, and say thanks for Zapping me for Christmas, Kenny.  I should probably take down my tree, now that I think of it.