March 28, 2006

Rick Schu Finally Drops

6 Pack Analysis: 1989 Donruss
Pack 6


I don’t know about you, but I’m sick to death of 1989 Donruss. The gradient fills, the boring-ass headshot to majestic action shot ratio leans way to far in the direction of the former and I really can’t get over that the distribution within this box is just horrendous. Seriously, between assessing Pack 5 and tonight’s Pack 6 I opened something like 14 to 17 packs and I think I got at least 10 Chris Browns and maybe something like 8 doubles of Pat Borders.

So while I’m relieved that this is Pack 6 and I can open the rest of the box tonight and file the cards away in my closet, I’ve been trying to approach getting a double the way I used to: if it’s a good player, that’s awesome because I can probably trade it, or, more probably, I can put one in a box in the closet where no light will hit it (and thus not decrease its precious value) and the other one in a binder in nothing less than an Ultra-Pro page (which I used to buy by the box and kind of—but not really—cherish the lame Stadium Club card that would come in it, either of Barry Bonds or Mike Piazza, both of whom would be snazzed up in a tux—I guess for no other reason than to propel the metaphor that because Bonds and Piazza are on their way to the prom, your cards will feel that way too. I wonder who they took with them to the prom…one guess each: Bonds took Sid Bream (to reminisce about glory Pirate days and because Sid told him once (just before slipping into a prolonged unconscious state after losing a no-holds-barred arm-wrestling match with R.J. Reynolds) that he knew Danny Aiello (when really what Bream meant was he liked that movie The Pickle, starring Aiello, and wasn’t it funny that he, too, was in a bit of a pickle, after unwisely deciding to arm-wrestle R.J. Reynolds). Bonds thought Aiello knew Spike Lee and Bonds really liked She’s Gotta Have It. Bonds thought he really connected with the ‘She’ in the title, only instead of him needing sex with men, he needed attention, which he could get if he arrived at the prom with Sid Bream. As for Mike Piazza, I bet that his first choice was Tommy Lasorda. You know, one of those ‘My teacher is the only one who understands me’ kinds of things. But then, when word got out, Lasorda felt kind of awkward, so he held a press conference and made up some shit about spilling Slim Fast on his tuxedo, and he didn’t want to rent. Then, to make it worse, Piazza overheard Tom Candiotti say that hall-monitor Orel Hershiser was going to ask Mike to go with him. So he quickly snapped out of his funk and asked Ramon Martinez. But Ramon said he could only go if he brought his younger brother Pedro. Piazza was angry but he relented after Pedro baked him a cake.)).

But if I get a double of a lousy player, it’s not just unceremoniously filed away (though that’s the only visible action). The card is mentally recorded and added to the Encyclopedia of Important Baseball Facts That Will One Day Prove Itself Useful in my brain, so that if I ever run into someone like Pat Borders on the street, I will outwardly say “You were awesome on the Jays,” while inwardly think “You totally screwed up my enjoyment of opening packs of 1989 Donruss. Because of you I had one less chance of getting a Ken Griffey, Jr., rookie. Thanks a lot, jerk.” I will feel good because I made Pat Borders feel special (if however briefly) and because I was able to rise above embarrassing him in public (no matter how many Griffey rookies he robbed me of). Similar things filed away while opening Pack 6: Jeff Robinson was actually considered worthy of being (and thus was) a Diamond King. I wonder if he owns the Perez-Steele painting of himself. I bet he hangs it over the fireplace, or better yet, has it in a hideous gold rococo frame and behind it keeps his safe, where all his valuable baseball cards and 7-11 souvenir Slurpee lid discs are safely hidden. Also, Dave Righetti does not have eyes. He only has eyebrows. Lastly, Jack Howell definitely had a thing for eye-black.

Pack 6

Rick Schu I don’t know if getting Schu as the first player is a good or bad omen for the rest of the pack. As I said before, I opened quite a few between Packs 5 and 6, so I know that Mike Greenwell’s Diamond King is a bad omen, Darnell Coles is not so bad and actually, for all the shit I beat down on Pat Borders, he’s not that bad a card to get first because you’ll invariably get a Fred McGriff Diamond King.
Gregg Olson Getting Schu means you’ll get Gregg Olson the Pitcher. 2 Gs was pretty great, much better than Greg Olson the Catcher, although you know it would’ve been great if somehow they ended up on the same team. Then one of the ace editors at Donruss would’ve done something great like ‘The Olson Twins’ or ‘Greg & Olson’ or something equally inane. I bet that not even the high school interns at Fleer would touch that combo with a ten-foot pole, they would’ve let Donruss have that one, just to watch with ironic glee as the Donruss editors congratulate themselves on a job well done. Who would’ve thought? Both Greg(g) Olsons on one team! A toast to you, fellow editor, another feather in the Donruss cap! Sad, just sad. On another note, I think it would’ve been better for Donruss to scatter the Rated Rookies across the set. It’s like they were scared that a rookie would get lost or something.
Paul Kilgus Snore.
Tony Gwynn Diamond King Am I the only one who thought that Tony Perez was the guy who painted these portraits? Also, what’s up with the James Bond opening credits thing going on behind Tony Gwynn on this card?
Danny Darwin You know, if he hadn’t been traded mid-way through 1986 in anticipation for the Astros’ play-off run, Darwin would’ve had 5 straight losing seasons. That’s saying something, because Darwin lasted a long time in the majors. And really, he was one of those guys where you gave him the benefit of the doubt when he was on the mound, even if his record sucked. I always thought that in the off-season Darwin was a cowboy. He always reminded me of a tall, background kind of cowboy, like the one who would’ve been another town drunk with Andy ‘Friar Tuck’ Devine in Stagecoach, tall and quiet and always twirling his gun (and if he lived in a city and was not a cowboy, then replace the twirling of the gun with checking his pocketwatch, adjusting his monocle and twirling his mustache in anticipation of his next safari).
Terry Leach Other players who’ve worn #26 on the Mets: Frank Viola, Alejandro Pena, and of course the immortal Dave Kingman.
Francisco Melendez Remember how if a player had a longer name than others, then the kerning would be tighter for his name, and/or the lettering would be thinner? I always thought that was kind of funny, because one of the great things about the 1986 Topps set was the larger, teach-yourself-to-read lettering used on the front. Except for Fernando Valenzuela’s card. I bet that if Melendez had had a card in that set, Perry White, the curmudgeonly old Topps editor (on leave from the Daily Planet), would’ve shortened his name to Franny Melendez (kind of like when they shortened Roberto to Bob Clemente. I kind of hated those Clemente cards where they called him ‘Bob’. It’s like calling Robert DeNiro ‘Bob’. You just don’t do it, unless you know the guy).
Dave Righetti Like I mentioned before, Righetti was born without eyes. Seriously, when you glance at Righetti, all you see are eyebrows, right? Am I the only one who sees this? And you know it’s only going to get funnier when he’s an old man. It’s like the guy’s a Muppet. It’s impossible for me to take this guy seriously.
Don Slaught I bet that the other Yankees called him ‘Sergeant Slaughter,’ and if they didn’t then shame on them.
Chris Brown No comment.
Will Clark MVP You know, no one ever really talks about when insert cards started, but I think that without going all the way back to the Sixties when Topps inserted everything imaginable into their packs (Topps Bucks, the Topps Game playing cards in the 68 set, a swatch from Perry White’s day-worn suspenders) a case can be made that Donruss and Fleer really energized inserts at the end of the 80s. Fleer had the über-cool All-Stars and Donruss had the sort-of-cool MVPs. I opened a lot of packs of the 1988 set and never really got any of the Donruss MVPs (I think I may have got the Mattingly MVP), but in 1989 there was just so many of them and they were printed as regularly as the rest of the set. Not really the best design, huh.
Jack Howell I would like an Angels fan to tell me if Jack Howell was any good, because I’m not entirely sure.
Jeff Robinson Diamond King It’s almost like a normal, non-baseball playing person won a contest and got to have their portrait painted by creepy old Tony Perez and Donruss was gullible enough to include it in the set.
Tom Gordon Nowhere does it say ‘Flash.’ But he does sport a prominent gold chain, he’s got good teeth and could probably, if he suddenly found himself on the Reds, shave off his mustache, then secretly shave off his eyebrows and paste them where his mustache once flourished. You know, for when he goes out on the town. This was one of the best Rated Rookies to get in 1989. It’s still a great card, if only because he looks just genuinely excited to be in the majors, even if it is with the Royals.
Andy Van Slyke MVP Man, that’s two MVPs in one pack. See what I mean about the distribution numbers being the same as the regular set? Also, it looks like his hat doesn’t fit him, like it’s a couple sizes to big. Why couldn’t they just take shots head-on; Van Slyke’s all bent out of shape in this photo, and 1988 was his career year. They really could’ve made these MVP cards more appealing.

Overall Analysis

So Rick Schu wasn’t that bad a card to get at the top of the pack. With 7 of the 15 cards being pretty good, that’s a 47% success rate. Also, it’s interesting that I got Chris Brown because this shows that his card was not one you’d get in a sequence. It may have been double- or even triple-printed, but its distribution was random, which I take to be a good thing. No Red Sox, again, which is giving more and more credence to the conspiracy theory I’ve come up with that a Donruss executive went through every pack and took out all the Sox cards, then ironed the packs closed again, like those shifty card dealers at the back tables of a baseball card show who charged really low prices for older packs. Oh, and I almost forgot, the puzzle piece wasn’t that bad either. I’ll give a more formal analysis of this box in my next post.

March 24, 2006

The Perfect Pack Transforms Itself into More of a Legend and Less of a Myth

Gather ’round, for I have seen it. Sometime in the fall of 1988, in Bannockburn, Illinois, a pack left the Donruss packaging plant in a box that was destined not to see the light of day for almost twenty years. And while thousands of children and teens and some older guys (longing to relive the joy of finding a Lowell Palmer card in their pack of 1970 Topps when they were a kid) soldiered forward opening pack after pack of the worthless and generally disappointing fare from Donruss that year, receiving nothing for their devotion except fifteen Mike Bieleckis and enough Candy Maldonados to seriously consider opening a savings account and not buying any more cards, this pack—the closest I’ve come to a Perfect Pack—sat harmlessly in a warehouse or perhaps the basement of Mr. Mint’s lesser-known adversary Mr. Excellent (and I really wish there had been a Mr. Excellent; I would’ve paid to get a Polaroid of him and me at a card show autographed in sharpie).

I really didn’t think I’d get this good a pack. Hell, even the puzzle piece is worthwhile (though not the whites of Spahn’s eyes, which I think is the piece de resistance of this puzzle). Now I’ll shut up about how great The Pack is and tell you (lovingly) about each card.

6 Pack Analysis: 1989 Donruss
Pack 5


Bryan Harvey There was a time when Bryan Harvey was the shit. I think that time lasted roughly 25 minutes. No really, there was a time when being a rookie and getting nearly 20 saves in a season was, if not outright sensational, then at least front-page news (even if the front page was the only page, the newspaper was a crudely mimeographed sheet you printed in your basement, and the name of the paper was The Official Bryan Harvey Fan Club Newsletter).
Jeff Russell While Bryan Harvey was a big deal for a little while, Jeff Russell was a big deal for a longer while. He was a great closer, no doubt about it. Also, if you pictured him without facial hair, he looked a lot like Howie Mandel (and, as a sidebar digression, why hasn’t NBC had Mandel blow up a rubber glove with his nose yet on Deal or No Deal? I’m serious. It would make the show about twenty thousand times more enjoyable). But really, the big news here is the photo. Minus a little fat around the cheeks and swap out the Rangers jersey for a white unitard and you’ve got Freddie Mercury. I can even picture Jeff Russell pitching this way, gesticulating wildly after each pitch, strutting around the mound after striking out a batter, and pointing to Brian May at first, (who the Rangers would get in a three-way trade in 1988 that would send Pete O’Brien to the Pirates and a young John Smiley and a curly black wig to England to join Queen half-way through recording a farewell album).
Ryne Sandberg What can you say about him that hasn’t already been said: he was the 2B of the Eighties, and another ‘loser’ the Phillies got rid of in favor of the future Hall of Famer Ivan DeJesus. Man, who was running the Phils in the Eighties, anyway? Presumably it was someone who knew nothing about baseball. Or it could just as easily have been the work of a fictional character, like Mayor McCheese. Yes, that’s who I’m going to refer to whenever I talk about a bonehead move by the Philadelphia front office.
Barry Lyons Okay, now if this was truly a Perfect Pack, Barry Lyons would be Roberto Alomar or even Sandy Alomar, Jr. But, instead, it’s Barry Lyons: Mets back-up catcher extraordinaire.
Mike Moore What makes a baseball player successful in the eyes of those who follow the game? Is it consistent greatness or do you just need to have a flash-in-the-pan brilliance about you that convinces others to see something that may or may not really be there? Take Mike Moore for example. The guy had one good year, where he won 17 games. Every other year (up until this card was printed) he was a lousy pitcher on a perennially lousy second-division team. So why do I think of him as a good player? Is it because I think he looks like a Punch and Judy puppet? Or is it the Chris Bosio Theory, that he’s considered a success but wasn’t ever really one? I’m full of questions today.
Mike Flanagan By this time Flanagan wasn’t very good. But that’s all right. He had already proved he would always be viewed as a successful major league pitcher. A definite plus to an already halfway-decent pack.
Steve Lombardozzi His inclusion doesn’t hurt the overall rating of the pack because of his name (and because he was a World Series hero, but mostly because of his name). I understand how shallow that sounds, but it isn’t every day that you get a card of Lombardozzi. Especially growing up in Massachusetts, where the Boston Globe sportswriters like to beat it over your head when a player makes the majors who happens to be from a town in the state. Lombardozzi’s from Malden, and if you’ve never been to Malden then you haven’t lived. Actually, the last part of that’s not really true.
Carlton Fisk Diamond King Yes, I actually got a Diamond King. Remember the year that Donruss pulled them from the regular set and made them a special insert? Jeez, they were hard enough to get, let alone as an insert…Gotta love the DK of Fisk. I think he may be one of the only players to be a DK in more than one year while he was on the same team. Nolan Ryan was a King in 1982 with the Astros, then King of Kings in 1990 when he was on the Rangers. And I think Tony Gwynn was a King twice with the Padres.
Fred McGriff He was, inexplicably, one of my favorite players. I think it originally had to do with the fact that he was one of the most underrated players of his generation, he usually got the accolades but never the national press that followed others, and he played in relative obscurity for most of his career (except for the parts with the Braves). Because of all these things, he was always included in the great subsets and insert sets that took over in the mid to late 1990s, and his cards were always cheap. He may be the first Hall of Famer with a rookie card valued at less than $8.
Kirby Puckett I think I may have started to cry when I found out he died. When I was a kid I thought he probably wore eye black all the time (even when he wasn’t playing baseball), because it made him look tougher. Really, everyone should wear eye black all the time, because, hell, it does make you look tougher.
Ozzie Guillen It’s amazing, but at one time in the late Eighties, there were at least four Ozzies playing in the major leagues: Ozzie Smith, Ozzie Guillen, Ozzie Virgil and Ozzie Canseco. That is incredible. I don’t think there’s anyone with that name playing today.
Wally Joyner Did you know that Wally Joyner has acted in not one but two Mormon-themed movies? It’s true. In fact, his role in the first film was a recurring role in the second one. What did he play, you ask? Wally was an angel. I know, I know, those kooky Mormons. Next thing you know they’ll have Shawn Bradley play a talking tree (like that creepy tree from the old Fun Fruits commercials, only really pale and 7’6” tall).
Ray Hayward I can’t tell you who this guy is or what he accomplished on the field, but I can tell you that he was traded from the Cubs with another nobody for a nobody apparently worth two nobodies. And all of it happened on St. Patrick’s Day, 1988, a day when many nobodies got drunk for no other reason than they were alive and they liked to drink. At least Ray Hayward had a reason to get wasted.
Rick Sutcliffe I like Rick Sutcliffe. Did you know that the Cubs gave up Joe Carter and Mel Hall for him and Ron Hassey? It’s like they were convinced that Sutcliffe had a couple more seasons in him and Hassey had another perfect game in that gigantic brain of his. Of course, they were right on both accounts, though Hassey’s second perfect game would come when he was with the Expos.
Kevin McReynolds Oh my God, I got Kevin McReynolds. I think his cards completed the holy triptych of Over-Hyped Met Rookies (Gregg Jeffries and Kevin Elster were the other two), though, now that I think about it, wasn’t he an Over-Hyped Padre Rookie? Along with the worthless-upon-impact #1 Draft Pick card of Shawn Abner from the 1985 set. Either way, I got excited when I got a card of him and I don’t think he was really that good to begin with. Isn’t it funny how card value and actual, statistical performance never seem to quite match?

Overall Analysis

It’s not every day that you get two bona fide superstars, a Diamond King worth something in a trade, your favorite player, four good to very good pitchers, and Wally Joyner and Ozzie Guillen all in the same pack. The success rate here is a mighty 73% (11 good to great cards out of a possible 15), so I’m not so far off-base to call this a Perfect Pack. In fact, it’s a very apt title. What would have made this an Über Pack would be the inclusion of at least one Red Sox player, preferably Ellis Burks. If I didn’t already know that Mayor McCheese was running the show down in Philly, I would’ve sworn he was behind the scenes in Boston when the Sox inexplicably dumped Burks to make room for the immortal Bob Zupcic (sidebar note: you know how Baseball Reference lists ten players the player in question is most like? Well, #9 on Zupcic’s list is the great Olympian Jim Thorpe (who was generally a horrible baseball player)).

Fight! Fight! Fight!

After watching the ’Stros roundly beat the tar out of the Cubs that afternoon, Hal Lanier and Jose Cruz decide to celebrate down under Michigan Avenue at the Billy Goat Tavern. Little did they suspect to find Carlton Fisk and Robin Ventura parked at the bar, well into their fifth round, after mistakenly dressing up in their early Twentieth century unis on the wrong day for the White Sox Old Timers Game. Lanier and Cruz take stools towards the end of the counter, but when Fisk notices Lanier across the crowded room, he lumbers over to him and after slinging an arm over Lanier’s and Cruz’s shoulders, loudly calls him ‘Bob,’ and goes on to boom out a story about he and Dewey Evans got to meet him in the dressing room after a well-fought game against the Celtics in the old Boston Garden. When Lanier can finally get a word in, he tells Fisk he’s got the wrong man. Fisk, now belligerent, demands an autograph from Lanier. Lanier refuses. Fisk calls him a name. Cruz stands up. Ventura rouses himself and jumps to back up Fisk. Fisk quickly strips to the waist and, raising his fists, calls Lanier out. Out of nowhere a ring is drawn on the floor in chalk. What follows is tag-team, stripped-to-the-waist, bare-knuckle fisticuffs, 1890s-style.

So who wins? Will Hal Lanier have to sign a basketball for Carlton Fisk? Will Jose Cruz get to try out those roundhouse leg sweeps he’s been practicing out in his garage late at night? Does Robin Ventura even know where he is?

You tell me.

March 21, 2006

The Fantastic Card of the Day


I learned something really great just now: U.L. Washington’s real first name is U.L. For that reason alone, U.L. Washington’s rookie card is the Fantastic Card of the Day. Really, for all the stuff that’s been written about classic sports names, it really doesn’t get any better than having initials as your real name (sidebar: my own grandfather’s real name was B.F.; his father’s first and middle names were Benjamin and Franklin, so they shortened it). It gets you thinking…did U.L. have a relative with a name like…Uncle Levi? See? I can’t even think of a man’s first name that starts with the letter ‘U’. Also great about this card, it’s Mickey Klutts’ rookie as well. That’s two great names on one card. I think the only way that this could’ve been topped was if Bake McBride and Sixto Lezcano somehow ended up on the same card.

And personally, I would like to know what happened to Sixto Lezcano. I’m not so concerned about Bake. With a name like Bake McBride you will pretty much have the best life imaginable: get up around 2pm every day, sit around, maybe make some microwave macaroni and cheese, watch Jeopardy!, prank call Larry Bowa, Google yourself, call your country-singing wife Martina McBride who’s out on the road touring, and maybe watch a little Nick at Nite. Then later head down to the basement, smoke part of one of the Championship joints from 1980 you keep in that old cigar box next to the furnace, burn a little incense, get out that Wailers record that opens like a lighter, put on your engineer’s cap, flip on the transformer and generally chill out while your massive, basement-engulfing O-scale model train setup does its thing.

But Lezcano—I wonder if he tried to hold a job down after retiring, like driving a snowplow. Or did he tour the globe, one vegetarian restaurant open-mic night at a time, playing acoustic guitar? Or maybe he’s one of those genius hermits who sell their World of Warcraft characters on eBay? Or, best of all, did he become a pirate? Does he live on a ghost ship or on a deserted island? And drink rum around gigantic bonfires with Keira Knightley? I can see it now, them staying up for hours, just talking, (because Sixto can listen, baby), she telling him about how Orlando Bloom can’t act his way out of a cardboard box and he regaling her with stories about Charlie Moore, Dick Davis and the rest of Bambi’s Bombers and how Keith Richards—his real father—coaxed him to retire and focus on the open road and eventually the open sea, armed with just a pair of spikes and a six-string, El Mariachi-style. Him being Richards’ son would explain Sixto’s vast improvisational skill on the guitar, as well as his passion for hard liquor and telling rambling, hard-to-believe tall tales about Gorman Thomas, Pete Vukovich and the night he invented the drum solo at Ben Ogilvie’s jazz joint.

One final note about U.L. Washington. I think it would be really awesome if major league baseball was dissolved today and a new league of warring legions, based on where you lived and where you grew up (but also based on bloodlines and having the same last name) took its place. That way Rocco Baldelli would be on the New England team and U.L., Claudell and Ron Washington would’ve been on the same team, and the backs of their uniforms would’ve been fun because it would just say ‘Claudell’ or ‘U.L.’ or ‘Ron.’ Also, I would make Paul Newman the honorary manager, and I would hold a special ceremony before the team boarded the bus for the first time and give the three Washingtons a suitcase containing a slot car racing set and three pairs of black hornrim glasses.

March 18, 2006

Think You’re Special?

When I would choose to collect a new set, a deciding factor to go for it would be whether or not the set featured special cards. Topps pioneered the special card, starting with the O’Brien Brothers card in the 1954 set and the Mantle/Berra card that closed the 1957 set. The special became a staple in the Sixties, didn’t really hang around in the Seventies and then was brought back into the fold by Fleer in the Eighties. And for the most part, a special featured all-star caliber players. I can’t put into words the momentary excitement and longer-lasting disappointment of finding a special card in your pack and have it feature Howard goddamn Johnson.

Topps always made the special card relevant and topical. For the most part they featured at least one player anyone cared about, (and when Upper Deck came around in the Nineties they realized this and kept the tradition alive), but for a while there in the Eighties and early Nineties, it seemed like the hapless Fleer photographer went to a bunch of games and got random players to stand next to each other, then went back to his station wagon in the parking lot and wrote a couple sentences of how the two players might connect. Juan Samuel and Tim Raines? How about Doubles and Triples? It almost sounds like they’re on one of the teams in the Laff-a-Lympics. How about Dave Winfield and Kent Hrbek? They look like they’ve never met, but presumably Mr. Veteran and Mr. Rookie are best buds and only rivals in the press. Here’s how one of their conversations might have gone:

Hrbek: I enjoy hunting and fishing in the off-season.
Winfield: I once killed a bird on the field then crouched over its carcass and ate it raw.
Hrbek: Okay. I was actually going to ask you about playing in San Diego but now I don’t know if I want to.
Winfield: I liked the sea birds there ’cause it’s warmer. The meat isn’t as tough.
Hrbek: Uh-huh.
Winfield: I used to keep a hutch in my backyard and sometimes if the moon was full I’d go out there and just sit.
Hrbek: Oh yeah? You know, I’m pretty good at mimicking birdcalls.
Winfield: And then I’d bite the head off one of them if it made eyes at me. I can see pretty well in the dark, so it’d really have no chance of flying away and make me think it wasn’t them. But one got away once…
Hrbek (throwing his voice to make it sound like Twins Manager Billy Gardner): Hey Rook! Get in the cage!...Well, nice talking to you. See ya around.
Winfield (staring into space): I tracked it down, though. I killed it on the field and then crouched over its carcass and ate it raw.

And how about Robin Yount and Buddy Bell? First of all, implying that Bell is worthy of taking part in a Superstar Special (or really anyone on the 1982-3 Texas Rangers with the exception of Ferguson Jenkins) is an exaggeration, but it does allow us to see what Ric Flair looked like as a younger man. Are you kidding? The two must be brothers, if not the same person. Have you ever seen them in the same room together? And if you have, what kind of function were you at?

Donruss tried to get in on the action with one or two special cards per set, but never really knew how to finesse it. Take this card of Vince Coleman and Wille McGee from the 1986 set. No, Vince is not a ventriloquist’s dummy sitting on McGee’s lap, though it does seem that way. Donruss gets points for the topic and the players chosen, but just as promptly loses those same points for having one of their crack high school graphic designers make Coleman look tiny in comparison to the gargantuan McGee. Seriously, they’re on the same team; just make them stand next to each other. You could probably even convince them to hug or high-five and smile winningly at the camera, like an Olson Twins poster. It was probably for the best that Donruss didn’t waste their time with the special card (they had the incomparable Diamond King, after all); Fleer did make some beauties.

I remember buying the Gooden/Clemens card at a show. I think I paid a dollar for it, but it was totally worth it. I think that if I saw this at a show (if I went to shows today) I’d probably still pay a dollar for it, that’s just how awesome this card is. Think about it: two great pitchers at the top of their game, meeting in the World Series, from one of the best sets of the decade on one of the most desirable cards from the set. You’re goddamned right I’m gonna pay a dollar for that. One of the best cards ever (even if I don’t really care about either player, nor would I give either a dollar if I saw them on the street…unless I had a camera with a timer and we could recreate the photo on the card. Then I might consider giving Dwight Gooden a dollar, though the most I’d give Clemens is maybe twenty-five cents, and then only if he needed a quarter and I had one and he had two dimes and a nickel…but not if he only had nickels. I really don’t like getting so many nickels). And how cool is the Al Oliver/Tim Raines double special card from the 1984 set? Wicked cool. Look at their expressions: Raines wants to hurt someone; Oliver is just happy to have all his limbs intact and still be playing.

The last great Fleer superstar special is from the god-forsaken 1991 set (the one that made you barf when you opened the first pack of the year, and even though you tried to convince yourself that it was going to be okay and you kept buying packs, it wasn’t going to be okay. It was never going to be okay). ‘Second Generation Stars’ Ken Griffey, Jr., and Barry Bonds. What a card, and you know, it’s not very valuable (but only because Fleer sent a PO to the printer with a few extra zeroes in the quantity ordered). They both look normal in the picture, just like regular guys. If you took their picture together now, Griffey would look the same, maybe a little heavier with added weight from age and Bonds would look like he ate a still-inflated moonwalk.

In various ways in the early Nineties, Upper Deck tried to capture the same magic that Topps and Fleer were able to showcase. Some weren’t that great in the first couple of years, though by 1993 they hit a goldmine (if you ask me). With the Teammates subset, each team got a special card, and while some teams had questionable entries (who would you flank the immortal Brett with from the Kansas City Royals? Wally ‘The Mormon Ferris Bueller’ Joyner? Or maybe Gregg ‘Mickey Dolenz’ Jeffries? You tell me, because I’ve run out of ideas), most were good and a few were even fantastic. The Cleveland Indians card was fantastic, with Belle, Sandy Alomar, Jr., Thome, Baerga and Kenny Lofton. When this set came out, I thought four out of those five guys were going to the Hall of Fame. Okay, that’s a stretch, but Belle and Lofton for sure. The Yankees card and the Reds card were funny, if only because Roberto Kelly was on both of them. Gotta question the integrity of Kelly, don’t you? Or at least figure out who at Upper Deck was totally in love with him.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

Who would you pick in a fight?



Scenario:

Otis Nixon is waiting in line at a Luby’s Cafeteria, and all of a sudden Hall of Famer Robin Roberts cuts in front of him. Nixon’s pissed. I’m not sure if I’d provoke Robin Roberts if I were you, Otis. He may have cut in front of you, but you’re going to get your clock cleaned if you mess with him in his quest for the last piece of blueberry pie. Roberts goes for the piece of pie, Nixon bum-rushes him (still got speed, baby!), flips Roberts’ tray, Roberts reaches into his sock for his shiv and we got ourselves a fight!

Who’s going to win?

You tell me.

March 15, 2006

The Worst Pack Ever?

6 Pack Analysis: 1989 Donruss
Pack 4

You remember Lionel Simmons, one of those can’t-miss rookies on the Sacramento Kings in the early 1990s? And you remember how he went on the injured list because of Nintendo Thumb? Well, I’m left handed, but tonight on the train I noticed that my right thumb is slightly bigger than my left. In celebration of this discovery, I’d like to put forward a wholly unscientific explanation: my right thumb is bigger than it should be because I’ve given it a work out over the years opening packs and sorting through baseball cards. This explanation is much more comforting than the idea that something may be seriously wrong with me. Thinking about this got me thinking appreciatively about the fine art of opening a pack.

There are a few different techniques in opening a pack. I’d like to talk about two of them, and both techniques can be employed by the novice and the expert collector alike. First, there’s the Quickie, which involves ripping open the wrapper and then flashing through the cards in succession quickly. This way is good for when you’re on your way home from the drugstore or en route to a job interview or the emergency room and you just don’t want to deal with all that post-pack guilt (I’ve explained ‘post-pack guilt’ in an earlier post). The Quickie requires that you possess a basic knowledge of the set, current players and what constitutes a good card.

The second way to open a pack is the Set Builder. This involves examining the pack, examining each card and checking against the inventory in your head of cards you really need and others that you might as well throw away now before you get attached to them and they sit in your closet until a dusty afternoon when you visit your parents’ house and, just for the hell of it, you go digging for something really important in your closet and you remember, just as you open the door, “Oh right…baseball cards.”

To collect cards is to open packs. Since November or so I’ve been obsessed with finding a Perfect Pack—the chance occurrence that all of the great and good cards from any given set would make up one pack. But last night, while I opened Pack 4, my mind started racing: is there such a thing as pulling The Worst Pack Ever? There’s a very good chance, when you’re opening packs, that you’re going to get at least one half-way decent card. But what about the chances of not getting even one good card? I’ve gone to great lengths to assign statistical values to cards and assess Perfect Pack criteria, but I’ve not done the homework for what makes a pack The Worst Pack Ever (though I’m pretty sure that if you get doubles of Geno Petralli you’re almost half-way there). Is there a pack out there from a late-Eighties set full of Rangers, Expos, Phillies and Padres? I don’t know the answer, but I think I came pretty close to pulling The Worst Pack Ever last night with Pack 4 of my 6 pack analysis of1989 Donruss.

Pack 4

Tom Foley • Bill Long • Devon White • Alan Ashby • Tim Jones • Steve Jeltz
Ron Robinson • Shane Mack • Candy Maldonado • Andy Van Slyke
Joe Boever • Luis Rivera • Daryl Boston • Joe Hesketh • Ken Williams

I honestly couldn’t bring myself to go through them card by card. Not tonight. It’s like going through a roll call after a massacre. I know what you’re next thought it going to be: c’mon, Ben, it’s not that bad; you got Andy Van Slyke and Devon White in there. And technically you’d be right—those two guys were pretty good, even great at times. But their inclusion feel like a consolation prize somehow, like a Quality Control worker at Donruss looked through a random test pack and was like ‘Holy jeez! We can’t let a pack get out with Steve Jeltz and Shane Mack as the big prizes…quick, toss me one of those soon-to-be-worthless Devon Whites…”

Okay, just a few thoughts on some of the cards.

Steve Jeltz
I would like a Phillies fan to explain the mystery of Steve Jeltz to me. He barely hit his weight (he weighed 180lbs. with an average of .187 in 1988), he was somehow the Phils starter at short for a number of years, and his hair was unbelievably bad. And not just in this photo—every photo of Jeltz showcases his jericurl in full effect. Even his name suggests he’d sport the hairstyle or that he’d be really fast around the bases, though of course Jeltz didn’t hardly steal a base because he never got on base because he couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn if he drove at it in a dump truck. It’s almost like the Phillies spent a little too much time kicking themselves that they got rid of Julio Franco, so in 1985 the general manager dressed up as a woman and hit the dance clubs with a blank contract tucked in his garter. Result? Enter the hitless Jeltz.

Bill Long
This uniform takes me back. I played little league when these cards came out and my team was the White Sox. I still have my sweaty hat with the cursive C on it. We wore t-shirts emblazoned with ‘White Sox’ so we never got to wear the full kit. Which leads me to ask: did Bill Long spill chocolate or put a cigar out on his pants or is that big spot supposed to be there? Also, I’d really like to understand why pitchers often frown or stick out their lower lip in their wind-up. Bill Long’s expression suggests he doesn’t have teeth, or perhaps he chewed tobacco (or perhaps both). This would explain the spot on his pants: he wanted to spit out his chaw, but because he didn’t have teeth, his lips couldn’t hold it all in for an aimed spit, so it fell in his lap. Sick!

Ron Robinson
Unlike Long and countless others, Robinson always looked like was smiling when he pitched, like Bo Diaz flashed him a joke in finger signs and he couldn’t hold it in until after his delivery. Ron Robinson also had a rather weird shaped head, and in combination with his pillbox trucker hat and on again off again Maddox beard his head seemed about the size of a watermelon. It’s a miracle that Ron Oester could see the plate when standing behind him.


Shane Mack
I always had an indescribable relationship with cards of Shane Mack. I always felt like he was meant to be a star and if I willed him to be one then he would start hitting consistently, make the All-Star team and retire comfortably after leading his many different teams to the pennant. And after retiring, he and I would become pen pals and I would tell him how I had willed him to be a star and that he owed at least half his riches to me. He, of course, would send me a check in the mail, and after depositing the check, I would promptly go down to 47th Street and purchase the small, action figure-sized Al Pacino in Scarface encrusted in diamonds (complete with precious stone-encrusted machine gun). I’ve seen it with my own eyes. It does exist, so don’t even joke about me making this up. I would buy it if Shane Mack gave me half his savings, or even a small unspent portion of his 1991 World Series share, but things we dream do not always come to pass.

Joe Boever
When you start looking more and more at cards, you begin to notice that many players resemble one another, like those who play in the major leagues are part of a large, in-bred family (I don’t think this observation strays too far from the truth). In the case of Joe Boever, he looks a lot like Greg Maddux when Maddux sports a mustache, which leads me to another thought: what if the person of Greg Maddux was really Joe Boever all along? If so, it would make at least some sense: the journeyman reliever had a few seasons with a Maddux-in-his-prime ERA. So maybe it was actually the other way around: when Maddux got sick of piling up Hall of Fame credentials all the time for a consistent winner, he moonlighted as a journeyman reliever for a handful of teams until the mid-1990s, when he split with his ’stache, and therefore, his alter ego Joe Boever.

Devon White
How did this guy miss? He and Wally Joyner, they were supposed to carry the California Angels into the postseason year after year until they keeled over on the basepaths, and they’d be lovingly buried in center field and by first base, respectively, on the Angels home field. So what happened? Neither had bad careers, it’s just…I guess both were surrounded with so much hype and attention when they broke in in 1986 that they could never live up to the hope and dreams that fans and collectors invested in them. White was an All-Star, a winner of multiple Gold Gloves and hit for power, for average, he was fast and a great fielder. But really, if you look at the 1986 Topps Traded and 1987 regular issue Topps sets, only the Barry Bonds card has retained its value since they came out and even that too will eventually, inevitably drop.

Overall Analysis
Okay, so it’s not the Worst Pack Ever, but it’s certainly close. I got 3 Expos, 3 White Sox, and not even one Red Sox player (and that’s through four packs! Not even a goddamn worthless Jody Reed! What the hell?). I got mostly commons, some doubles from previous packs, and really no big stars if you don’t count Andy Van Slyke and Devon White. And even if you do count them, they’re not bona fide stars (I would say that both are regional stars at best, though nationally respected). I’d be pissed to get this pack. Hell, I am pissed to get this pack.

One of My Favorite Cards: 1959 Topps Coot Veal

As with other Topps cards where a nickname is used in lieu of a real name, the story behind the nickname is never explained. And really, with a nickname like ‘Coot’, nobody cares that your name is really Orville. In fact, it would be better if you signed your name ‘Coot’ and left Orville at home with the other Nineteenth century names. What would really take the cake would be if you went to the courthouse and had your name officially changed to ‘Coot’. Because really, if you were born with a name like Orville Veal, you’d be doing yourself a favor in changing it.

This is one of my favorite cards because the guy looks relatively normal but has an unbelievably ridiculous name. Every so often a guy pops up like this: Bake McBride, Shooty Babbitt, Razor Shines, Toe Nash and Stubby Clapp come to mind immediately, though there are others. I would argue that most great players are born, not made, but I think everyone would agree that unless your name is Cal McLish or Randy Ready, great names sometimes need a little help.

March 13, 2006

Bad Cards of Great Players

Everyone has a dream, and it’s good to have at least one that will probably never come true, because it gives you reason to keep going day to day because maybe someday, maybe even later today or tomorrow, the winds will change their course, the stars will align and it will come true. One of my dreams was to play for the Red Sox, and as a child I really thought it could happen. It sounds so naïve, so sweet, but really it was much more complicated than that. If I was on the Red Sox, then I could live at home in my parents’ house and my Mom and Dad could take care of me forever. Think about it: I’d never have to go to school, I could eat ice cream whenever I wanted and I could lounge around all the time…of course I’d also play 26 games a month as the starting left fielder for the Old Towne Teame. Which would mean that I’d be in incredible shape, though maybe I could get away with Ron Fairly’s physique from his 1979 Topps card.

Anyway, because I would be on the Sox, I would get my own baseball card. Really, that was one of the most important parts of this dream, and as I got older, while the part about living at home dropped out of the dream, the baseball card part didn’t. And if you really start thinking about it, if maybe you weren’t that good and were only in the league for one year, what if you got your own baseball card and it sucked? Like if they caught you picking your nose, or you were striking out or your eyes were closed, or there was a spot on your glasses, or maybe you had bad skin or had forgot to shave that day? The list is endless, and as you go through old stacks of cards you begin to notice a trend: a lot of players don’t always photograph well (the great ones included). Don’t get me wrong—I’d still love to have my own baseball card, no matter how the photo turned out. Because truly, some of the greatest cards are the ones with the worst, most embarrassing photos on the photographer’s roll, and some players, instead of being naturally ugly like George Foster, just can’t seem to get a break in the way they look in their photos.

For most of his career, Steve Carlton looked like a young Charles Grodin, but for a brief period in the early Eighties he just couldn’t get a break. Jeez, even the venerable Steve Stone, he of the commanding Seventies mustache looks bad in this Victory Leaders card from 1981 (did the Topps photo editors have to erase potentially embarrassing tattoos from his arms? They look they had been hermitically sealed and kept in a cool, dark place for many, many off-seasons…though maybe he lived in the Albino Village the editors at Weird New Jersey talk about in issue #8).

Or how about Tony Perez? Talk about bad card. His 1982 In Action card is really lame. The only part of him in action is his batting helmet, which for some reason is already flying off his head and he hasn’t even left the batter’s box. It usually took Rickey Henderson at least half-way to second before he lost his helmet. I guess at this point Perez just wanted to show the Sox brass that he could still run.

Some shots are too bad not to use. Like the 1975 Topps version of Ron ‘The Original DH’ Blomberg’s endless impersonation of the creepy Burger King mascot (the one with the wax-museum-on-a-hot-day face). Or like Kent Hrbek’s close-up on his 1983 Topps card. Or Curt Schilling’s headshot on his 2000 Fleer Tradition card, the one where it really looks like he’s wearing makeup and like he had some of Bill Buckner’s overzealous chest hair grafted where his own natural eyebrows should have been. Or Gary Carter’s ridiculous smile on his 1987 Topps All-Star card. It really looks like someone at Topps stole an animator’s clay face model for Roger Rabbit, chopped off the ears and dressed it up in a Mets uniform. Look at his All-Star card from 1982. He looks relatively normal. Something definitely happened to Carter besides getting older. It’s like he went to a plastic surgeon to get a facelift and the doctor accidentally gave him more wrinkles.

Then there are the cards that transcend time; the ones that embody a player’s entire career. I always thought it would be great to have George Brett as an uncle. This card only reinforces that. Can you imagine? That would mean that your father is Ken Brett, and that you would be relatively good-looking, and as a kid you would get to go in the clubhouse and meet all the players, and then hang with Uncle George, and he’d take you to dirt bike races and teach you how to eat a corndog and other fun things. I get this all from this one picture. But if your uncle was George Brett, then you couldn’t be related to Earl Weaver (unless they were related by marriage (not to each other)), and that brings up an important question that could be debated probably forever: Who was the biggest character in baseball in the 1980s? Was it Brett? Or Weaver? Or Rick Dempsey or the San Diego Chicken? My money’s on Weaver for one reason and one reason alone: there may have been other brilliant managers and other showmen with the umps, but who else could accomplish all that and sport this hair? Only Weaver. There is no other.

When a great player contributes a truly bad card, that’s how you remember them for years to come, maybe even for their entire career or your entire life. It’s like a great director putting their name on a shitty movie. Because seriously, how could War of the Worlds have sucked as hard as it did with Spielberg at the helm? Ohhhh, like that. I’ll remember that movie for a long time, not only because it sucked, but the way it sucked was astonishing. I saw it at the Ziegfeld and for the first twenty minutes I thought ‘Man, this is gonna rock all the way through!’ And I couldn’t have been further from the truth. You know, I was going to talk about Dwight Gooden’s conventional Topps rookie card from 1985, and how ugly and old he looked in the photo, but now that I think about it, his career and War of the Worlds are so similar that it’s hard to pass up the opportunity of comparing the two. Okay, Gooden comes on the scene in 1984, the Topps and Fleer Traded sets go through the roof, and he’s unbeatable for about three years, and, like the first twenty minutes of the movie, everything’s all normal. Tom Cruise’s life is kind of a steadfast hardship and all of a sudden shit hits the fan, a giant storm comes out of nowhere and aliens are transferred through bolts of lightning in what is the highlight of the film. From there, Tom Cruise’s life gets all messed up and that damn kid won’t stop screeching. And that’s pretty much the whole movie. All the aliens die, Cruise’s other kid walks into a fireball but somehow easily survives, and, in the other highlight of the film, Cruise kills a unintentionally-hilarious psychopathic Tim Robbins with a shovel off-camera, like somehow the production ran out of money and didn’t want to have to choreograph that fight. I personally would’ve liked to see how the 4’ 10” Cruise might kill the 7’ 3” Robbins with a hoe and a shovel. Does he hit him over the head? And how exactly does he pull that off? Similarly, Gooden—for roughly twenty minutes of his career—can walk through fireballs and come out okay. But then all of a sudden he’s a coke addict, and his career begins to suck real hard, and while that might be slightly disappointing for a movie that had a good chance to be enjoyable, it’s heart-wrenching to watch in a person so good at what they do, someone with endless potential. And for some reason you can see all of this in his 1985 Topps card. It’s like he can see that he’ll get to live his baseball dream, but it’s going to be a long hard road, and, unlike his counterparts in War of the Worlds, he’s not entirely sure that he’ll make it out in one piece.

I won’t get to live my baseball dream. And though I’ve learned how to make my own baseball card, it’s not the same. But I’m okay with that.

Fantastic Card of the Day

For some reason, Kirk Gibson’s career didn’t end with that home run in the 1988 World Series (though it probably should have). And if you watch the tape of that at-bat and his mangy, hobbled lope around the bases, it’s like a crystal ball look at the rest of his career (minus the glory). Here was a guy—a borderline superstar for the Tigers—reduced to being a journeyman for the Royals and Pirates before coming home to Detroit to finish what should’ve ended after the Dodgers won it in ’88. But the reason why this card is the Fantastic Card of the Day is because you’d never know he’d lost his power. Look at him: he really looks like the Incredible Hulk or maybe an older, balder Hulk Hogan, training for a comeback. I want someone to film a rock-opera version of The Kirk Gibson Story, starring a clean-shaven Burt Reynolds as the older Gibson looking back on (and singing about) his days with the Tigers and the Dodgers. I’m going to work on the casting, but they could definitely get Warwick Davis to play Alan Trammell (though they’d always have to shoot tight close-ups, which might prove iffy during lengthy dance sequences) and maybe The Edge would play Jack Morris and David Bowie Orel Hershiser (and maybe they could write a whole Hershiser subplot with a song called The 59 Innings of My Heart). And how about Carl ‘Apollo Creed’ Weathers to grow back some kick-ass facial hair and don the spikes as Chet Lemon? I might pay to see that movie.

In fact, you get Jose Canseco and Tony LaRussa to redo the Puttin’ on the Ritz number from Young Frankenstein and I might pay full price.