A Few Notes to Start the Day

I’d Like to Teach the World to Grow Some Facial Hair

You know, I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I’ve decided that you can’t have a sports hair hall of fame without a special Garry Maddox Beard Annex (I should probably track Garry Maddox down and ask him if that’s okay with him, but considering he was once a Phillie, all I’ll have to do is slip the Phillie Fanatic $5 and tell him to go on top of the tallest building in Philadelphia and trumpet out Garry Maddox’s special call and Maddox will come sprinting from wherever he is; it won’t matter if he’s in the middle of his kid’s graduation, if he’s almost at the front of the line at the DMV or if he’s in the middle of studying for the LSATs—whenever the Fanatic calls, Maddox will come. Oh yes, Maddox will come). Maddox has a very special beard, one that only a handful of other baseball players have been able to pull off convincingly: the Endless Hair Beard, which I have renamed the Maddox. It has the same shape as the Amish Beard (like Jim Kern’s 1981 Donruss card), but it’s more. Where the Amish Beard is uneven, the Maddox is even: it is the same length on the top of his head as on the tip of his chin. It is, in a word, perfect.

When Maury Wills Steals Out of Retirement, Look Out

Even the casual sports fan knows about Oscar Gamble, and if not by name, then definitely by hair. And while, like the Maddox, you could name the act of a player balancing his hat upon his afro ‘the Gamble’, nobody can deny Maury Wills’ place in the sports hair hall of fame. I mean, c’mon. It’s like a Davy Crockett cap up there, cut just so, so as not to get in his line of vision. And check out the overcoat and love bead necklace (and I'm not entirely sure he's wearing a shirt underneath). It looks like Maury Wills definitely got a lot creepier in the Seventies. He looks like the kind of guy you’d find at a house party, or at the party at the end of Rushmore, you know? The kind that wanders in from the street, enjoys the food, mostly mumbles to himself but every once in a while tells an unbelievable story about hanging out with some cat named Sandy Baby and Tommy Davis and just when it gets real good, he mentions stealing home and some jittery Kevin Bacon from Animal House calls the cops, ruining the story, the party, the night and the buzz, man, the buzz. In the late Seventies and early Eighties, this man would’ve been Bobby Bonds, but the stories would definitely have sucked in comparison (which would form the basis for parents saying amongst themselves when the kids weren’t around that kids today don’t know how to party, that in their day, fuckin’ Maury Wills came to their parties, got high with them and once, even flew them to fuckin’ Toronto to heckle his son Bump in a game, but man, Bump didn’t even know it was us, ’cause we were wearin’ fuckin’ Groucho Marx glasses, man!).

The Most Important Things in My Life, At Least For Right Now

• Consider this: Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones are married. This is a fact. Also a fact: both are very busy, Zeta-Jones because she’s in all of those terrible T-Mobile ads (where she almost outdoes even the prolific Carrot Top), and Michael Douglas because he’s Michael Douglas, man! He’s got things to do! People to see, man! He doesn’t just sit on his ass and wait for Catherine to get home…oh wait, actually…Anyway, let’s say they get a divorce, right? Douglas gets all the cars (so that he can put them all together to form one gigantic Transformer-like robot that he alone can control, and sometimes, when it’s a clear night, he lumbers up to the ridge overlooking downtown and howls at the moon, or softly blubbers to himself), Zeta-Jones most of the houses and maybe the dogs (if she’s not allergic to dogs, because maybe she is, right?) and they split the cash and servants (if they have cash and servants). So where does that leave Tom Paciorek? Doesn’t he deserve something? Anything? Actually, what would really be great would be if Zeta-Jones left Michael Douglas for Paciorek on the grounds that Paciorek looks more like Michael Douglas than Michael Douglas does.

• Consider this (but don’t think about it for too long, because it’ll really get to you): Look at Manny Trillo in this photo on his 1979 Topps card. Now look at the Cub on his left shoulder. Now look back at his face. Scary, right? It’s almost like he had a uniform made with his likeness on the shoulders, to remind him which uniform was his.

• To thank Bill Simmons and ESPN for linking to The Baseball Card Blog, I give you Jim Kaat, circa 1982, beached on the bench for his great 1983 Fleer card, giving an interview to the worldwide leader in interviewing beached, over-the-hill baseball players who really weren’t good since 1978, but were smart enough to hang around and collect some of that free agent cash, postponing the inevitable and stealing valuable airtime from Lonnie Smith and his tremendous drug habit.

Woody Allen Didn't Name His Kid Satchel For Nothing

There is something wildly fantastic about finding a card where the player is referred to by his nickname, like Peanuts Lowery or Chili Davis (and can you imagine if Yogi Berra played today? He would definitely have had a lousier nickname, or may have just gone by ‘Larry’, and the guys at ESPN would’ve had to come up with something, which would have been a disaster, as most nicknames that originate out of the mouth of Stuart Scott are generally bad news. And think of the implications: Yogi Bear would’ve probably existed, but under the name Harmon Killebear the Talking and Bear-Killing Bear. Boo-Boo may have just been called Error (or Dick Stuart (whose own, real-life nickname was ‘Dr. Strangeglove,’ one of the better nicknames in the last fifty years)), and without Yogi Berra in the major leagues in the Forties, Fifties, Sixties—hell, forever--I would bet you that means no Larsen perfect game, no Yankee Dynasty, and most importantly, no Dale Berra drug scandal in the Eighties, because, let’s face it, Dale wouldn’t have been in the majors, nor been born for that matter.

But baseball card nicknames also feel kind of arbitrary, like the chief card editor gathered others in the office one cold and gray Friday afternoon and said “Ladies and gentlemen, after much deliberation, I’ve decided to give role player Bill Barnes a new nickname. We feel it would drum up national interest in the Tigers if someone on the team had a nickname—in a fun-loving, nostalgic way, ’cause that’s what we’re here for, right? To spread some goddamn fun-loving nostalgia [and yes, I did picture the chief card editor in suspenders, a toupee and chomping a unlit cigar]. So we drew names out of a hat and Barnes came up. Now, I’m going to read a list of potential nicknames and we’ll vote by a show of hands. Okay, here we go…’Red.’ Uh huh, okay, no votes. ‘Doc.’ O-kay, no votes. ‘Stretch.’ Maybe a little too Willie McCovey, but c’mon people, we gotta give the poor bastard something. No votes, huh? Fine, ‘Stretch’ is out.”

And it would go on like that until the chief card editor would leave for the weekend, and the next morning he would wake up early, walk the dog and after a quick once around the block, collapse in front of the TV and flip channels, eventually landing on Muppet Babies, and as he falls asleep, the name ‘Skeeter’ repeats in his mind, plays prominently in his dreams and is on the tip of his tongue when he enters the office on Monday morning. “Okay, people, I’ve got it: ‘Skeeter.’ What you think?” Everyone would raise their hand, just to get their crazy boss off their backs about coming up with some dumb nickname for a role player who’ll never play his way off the bench anyway.

But the editor will be right about one thing: the poor sap who gets Skeeter Barnes in his or her pack will—for a moment, however brief—feel a little closer to the ideal image of baseball they carry somewhere inside of them, one where players are named Preacher Roe, Three-Finger Brown and Skeeter Barnes.

But just one final note about nicknames (for now anyway, because, really, a discussion about nicknames should never have to end, especially without pointing out that Cookie Lavagetto sounds like a venereal disease). Who ever referred to Tim Raines as ‘Rock’? Was I completely out of the loop? Doc Gooden I get; Fleer referred to Dwight as ‘Doc’ on a card in its 1987 set. Doc Medich I get; his name calls for it, it’s obvious. But ‘Rock’? Was that a drug-related nickname that someone at Topps misinterpreted, thinking it had to do with his body type? So many unanswered questions…Also, I think it's terrific that Mookie Wilson became the 1980s poster child for fun-loving, nostalgic nicknames that are neither nostalgic (who else was ever named Mookie? (besides Mookie Blaylock)) nor may be rooted in fun-loving origins.

Pax Baseball Cardannia

I remember the first time I kissed a girl. I was in high school and I liked the girl a lot. I ended up going out with her for over a year and I remember I got really emotional and threw up all over the back of her car (in the street outside my house) the night she broke up with me. I remember the day I graduated college and how all my friends came from around the country to the ceremony and my grandparents and whole family were there. It’s one of the days I will always cherish. I remember the way I felt after the Red Sox won the World Series, how the series with the Yankees had nearly given me an ulcer—I was wrapped up in it so much. But these memories pale in comparison with the utter joy and bliss that came with finding this Pete Incaviglia card in a pack of 1987 Topps when I was 8 years old.

I’m not making this up. And while to many that revelation may be both a) hard to imagine, and b) kind of fucked up that it would out-rank much more important, once-in-a-lifetime events, I don’t think I’m alone. I think that for collectors, there are the cards you get in packs during the day and then there are cards you get in the packs in your dreams at night. And you know what the craziest thing about coming to terms with this is? I’m still kind of excited by it, my heartbeat’s getting a little faster, the sides of my lips are curling into a smile. And more than just part of me thinks that the next time I’m at Foxwoods (or more likely, Ho-Chunk in Wisconsin or Turning Stone in Utica, New York), I might just have to place a bet on Inky coming out of retirement and having another tremendous season like he did for the Rangers in ’86.

This idea brings up something that I’ve been thinking about for a while: why did a certain card, like Todd Zeile’s 1990 Donruss rookie, and not others, like Steve Searcy’s 1989 Donruss rookie, get me pumped? I mean, what was it that I really thought I was going to get out of having Zeile’s card that I would never get out of owning Searcy’s (besides the fact that Searcy was never ever going to be good, if simply because he was on the Detroit Tigers in the late 1980s, and that Zeile had a cool name, was pretty good at the time but was never going to be great, and that Donruss had finally made a great looking card after phoning it in since 1987 (if only for one year, since their 1991 offering was basically a rehash of 1986 and 1992 provided an alternative to newspaper for bird cage lining). And what was up with the 1990 design, anyway? I remember the first time I opened a pack of those. My friend and I were stunned, absolutely floored by the red, the über-cool cursive writing and the fact that it was by far and away the best-designed card front of the year (not including Upper Deck, because coming off 1989’s set, I didn’t know anybody who could afford packs of Upper Deck, except for the creepy guys who would hang out at the baseball card store in my neighborhood, always there, just standing around with sweaty armpit stains and pot bellies, motorcycle-bridged glasses and sloppy facial hair, always leaning on the glass of the cases (wait a minute…what have I become!?!) and hogging the controls of the motorized case originally intended for high-end jewelry, not Von Hayes and Darryl Strawberry rookies and that old Billy Martin card of him giving the photographer the finger)?

I think it was probably because magazines and talk radio talked about how great Zeile was supposed to be, and I was lucky enough to find in it a pack. And therefore, logically, I was going to become a millionaire thanks to owning it (I think that Beckett had it somewhere around $5.00 when I pulled it).

And upon attaining my guaranteed riches, as a token of appreciation I’d throw a housewarming soiree at my new mansion for myself and invite all the players whose cards I’d sold that had made me a millionaire. The VIP guestlist would definitely include Bo Jackson, Cecil Fielder, Vince Coleman, Bret Saberhagen and Oddibe McDowell (who’d for some reason be sporting a monocle)…not to mention Todd Zeile, the man of the hour. We’d all wear jackets and ties to dinner and afterwards retire to the drawing room and smoke pipes and talk about the state of the railroads and how finding a good indentured servant is so hard these days. Then Cecil would butt in and make Bo Jackson tell everyone the story of how he got his hip replaced with a piece of corrugated iron and how he can’t go through a metal detector at the airport, and when he finally gives in, he reveals that his metal hip is, in fact, how he learned to love the salty air of the open sea and that he now owns a ship building business in Mystic, Connecticut, and is secretly, on the side, building a private fleet of tall ships that will someday, if his plans come to fruition, creep down the river Thames in London and take England while she’s sleeping, claiming it in the name of Auburn University so that he and Charles Barkley can rule…forever more. I think I would probably also invite Mike Greenwell, but I wouldn’t give him a VIP pass.


Fantastic Card of the Day

I’ve finally figured out who Kiko Garcia looks like in his immortal 1979 Topps card. Actually, I’ve narrowed it down to two possibilities. He is either Terry Jones from Monty Python, or he’s from the 17th century and accidentally stumbled upon a time machine that dumped him at Orioles spring training in 1978. Earl Weaver found him in the outfield–wearing a smock and leggings–and told him he’d make a good shortstop, when really all he was good at was playing a woman in a Shakespearean play.

The Most Boring Card Ever Made

When I thought about writing about the most boring card ever made by human hands, I immediately thought about a SSPC card of Larry Milbourne of the Astros. But then I realized that the card isn’t necessarily boring; it’s Milbourne who’s bored with us. And who can blame him? Have you ever taken anyone seriously in an orange helmet? And by the way, what’s he eating?

So then I came across this next card of Jesus Figueroa, and I don’t know what’s more unfortunate: the fact that Figueroa was only in the big leagues for one season, or that he was honored with the most boring baseball card ever. Nowadays, what with card companies totally beyond obsessed with every rookie since the kid’s in grade school, a guy like Figueroa would end up with thirty cards or something before he ever even saw the men’s room in Fenway Park. So let’s say he’s supposed to be the next great Cub outfielder and his face even bears a weird resemblance to Billy Williams, but it turns out he lumbers around the outfield like Don Baylor in a motorized wheelchair at the beach—well, at least his kids would be able to save more than one card of him. And let’s say he’s a philandering baseball player on the road (though he looks like a nice guy, if a little shell-shocked, like he’s not entirely sure what he’s supposed to do when he gets his picture taken) and has many children in different cities, like a baseball version of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins; then those baby mamas could raise their children to despise Jesus without having to explain why, and one of his enterprising, although illegitimate children, could buy an authentically autographed Jesus Figueroa 1 of 1 from the local card shop or hobby show at the La Quinta Inn down by the highway, learn the signature by heart and, because the child would certainly look like his or her father, try to pass themselves off as him, max out his credit cards and make him come down from the hills, where for the last fifteen years had been writing best-selling novels thought in some circles to be on par with American Literature’s greatest recluse, JD Salinger. You know, just to get back at him for only loving their mother for less than one night.

Local news would have a field day, and if it happened in New York City, the Post could run a headline like ‘It Was In The Cards’ or something equally inane, and that headline writer’s boss would stop by his desk the next morning and say, “You know, Ed, that the best you can do? Not so great, Ed. Not so great.” And then that headline writer would spin back around in his chair, silently curse his boss and blow off doing work for another forty minutes, instead reading a new blog about baseball cards. The headline writer would then curse himself for not finding the blog before having to write that goddamn stupid headline about another poor sap with a famous, if reclusive, parent who just can’t get a break. So I guess Figueroa’s situation isn’t quite as bleak as I thought. He’s only got one card, and it’s the most boring card ever created: no autograph, no facial hair, no action, no arms. No nothing.

Honorable Mentions

Mike Proly, 1982 Fleer Okay, so we know that the photo’s out of focus, but that’s not what make’s this card so fantastic. It’s the fact that it looks like Proly decided to go as a Phillie for Halloween, like he bought one of those horrible corduroy hats and put some electrical tape down the side of his Jordache jeans and then topped it off with a belt. I also like that he’s holding his crotch in this picture. Classy.

Derrel Thomas, 1978 Topps Gotta feel bad for Thomas. Can’t even really explain why; might be the glasses, might be the fact that it’s obvious he desperately wants to look bad-ass but just doesn’t because of the aforementioned glasses. Also, it’s hard to tell if there’s even glass in the left lens, which might explain why the glasses tilt on the right temple. He looks angry. The I-would-kill-your-dog-and-eat-him-in-front-of-you-if-it-weren’t-for-these-glasses-I-found-in-a-box-of-children’s-dressup-clothes-at-a-yard-sale-which-I-got-at-a-good-price-by-the-way kind of angry that you just can’t take seriously.

Harry Spilman, 1986 Topps Who is it that Spilman is talking to, anyway? Either the guy messed up and wore the Astros’ away jersey or is a member of the other team. Wait a minute, I just figured it out. It’s Craig Reynolds. Can an Astros fan explain to me why Craig Reynolds is wearing a blue uniform? Also, I would like an Astros fan to explain the mystery of Harry Spilman to me. I always thought he was some kind of drifter with those corn nibblet teeth, like he was incapable of running, like he had the rheumatism and always had to sit on the bench, like when he rode the boxcars across Oklahoma. But then again, this is the only card of him I remembered ever having. And can someone explain why he deserves a baseball card? Is the theory that Topps, Fleer and Donruss just needed filler for their sets? If I were still actively collecting cards, I would pissed at getting a player like Spilman in my pack. I remember getting pissed every time I would get a Carlos Quintana in a pack of 1989 Donruss, and I’m a lifelong Red Sox fan, and I was paying something like 50 cents for a pack of those. I can’t imagine paying two or three dollars a pack and getting a benchwarmer in my pack. Or worse, an unproven rookie shown in his Starbucks barista uniform because he’s still in high school. That would suck.

So here’s to you, Jesus Figueroa.

Every Belle Will Have Its Bay

There are a few simple truths about today’s cultural landscape that one must accept—no matter how hard it is to do so—not to fit in with the rest of us, but to simply make it through the day. One is that baseball players are under tremendous amounts of pressure from all sides to succeed and they go to great lengths to make sure they stay in the bigs and at the top of their game. Another is that players generally do not know when to give up, and there are very few players whose career performance can justify playing until they’re 97 years old. Julio Franco is one. Rickey Henderson is another. Similar players are sprinkled across the historical timeline of the game. Minnie Minoso, was, of course, on the original 1869 Cincinnati team, and Rogers Hornsby was a well-documented bastard for at least 25 years. The Niekro brothers were actually born on a baseball diamond to a family of barnstorming gypsies, so that explains their longstanding, unwavering commitment to the game. But others don’t know when to give up, and end up ruining potentially flawless, high-flying careers with a few unmemorable years of creaky knees, well-publicized tempers or bloated egos (see Jose Canseco, Bo Jackson, Kevin Brown and Joe Rudi).

The final truth that’s hard to swallow may seem unrelated, but is in fact quite relevant: the previous two truths apply to everybody. Take movie directors, for example. There are a few that can go on forever and won’t be mercilessly shredded in the press if they pull a Tampa Bay-era Wade Boggs and hog the at bats a young Aubrey Huff should be getting, just for the sake of 3,000 hits. Martin Scorsese is one, Ang Lee is another, and maybe Cameron Crowe. But someone like Michael Bay, director extraordinaire, is just making it hard for himself. Guys who stay around for a long time are flexible, they can do a lot of genres, cover multiple positions, get on base; they know where they fit on the team. Michael Bay only knows one thing: he likes to blow shit up. It doesn’t matter what it is—it doesn’t even have to be flammable—he can create a fifty-foot high explosion, and somehow has repeatedly convinced studios to believe that his movies will make someone feel like they’re getting their money’s worth (when really two-thirds feel cheated, even those with very, very low standards, who can’t help but leave the theater thinking Wait a minute, I wasted my money on that?). Sound familiar? His career trajectory, no matter how glamorous, is so much like Albert Belle’s that it’s crazy.

“Don’t Call Me Joey” Belle burst on the scene in the early Nineties for an Indians team that pretty much set the offensive benchmark for the decade (and you could make the case that Belle was one of, if not the best (and most) offensive prospect for the decade). He battered pitchers for his entire career, hitting 50 homers in 1995, in effect setting the bar for the outrageous home run totals of the late Nineties. He hit for power, he hit for average, he played consistently and he was unapproachable, self-involved and mean. Belle’s destructive character traits may have been hidden to owners by his prowess at the plate, but the fans ended up thinking Wait a minute, how can I root for this guy?

Now, I don’t want you to think that I have vendettas against either Bay or Belle. But both were and have been senseless with their careers. Back when I didn't pay attention to what players did off the field, Belle was one of my favorite players. He could’ve been in the Hall of Fame, maybe not first ballot, but there still could’ve been a spot reserved. And Bay could’ve at least tried to make Pearl Harbor and The Island less shitty. I mean, c’mon. It’s okay to blow stuff up, but at least have a purpose. You won’t last too long without one.

There are few opportunities out there to cradle a bat in your hands and carve out a respectable, mythic career, or create fantastic art that deserves to be held in a rare light, and it’s sad when the one afforded such an opportunity wastes it or doesn’t know when to quit.


Fantastic Card of the Day

Okay, the Fantastic Card of the Day is really two cards. I got these from an uncle who, as a devout comic book fan, found them at Comic Con in 1992 or 1993. I’m not entirely sure who at Fleer came up with this idea, but it is one of the best ever. Eckersley remains one of my favorite players and the fact that I’m not really a comic book superhero fan and therefore don’t really know who Thunderstrike is doesn’t matter in the slightest. The fact that Marvel had a character that mimicked Eck’s wild movement and hair is great, and judging by the serious weapon that Thunderstrike’s twirling around, if I were Eck and were sitting at a bar, sipping on an O’Doul’s and suffering through another one of Tony LaRussa’s crazy Howard Hughes’ like conspiracies about anonymous men in center field stealing signs, and I saw someone like Thunderstrike walk towards the men’s room out of the corner of my eye, I would probably get up, saunter over and casually ask him while washing my hands if he would want to pick up a little cash going over to the Rolaids headquarters to hammer out a new spokesperson contract for me—not hurting anyone, mind you—but just getting the point across that I wanted more Rolaids, because, in truth, my heartburn was getting real bad and I had bragged to other guys on the team that my whole garage was full of them when it really wasn’t, and I was having a party in a few weeks and I needed to have it freshly stocked, just to see the looks on their faces and so they know that I don’t make shit up just to impress them. That’s why I keep my long, unwashed mane.

But, if for some reason the Rolaids people didn’t respond to simple negotiations, I wouldn’t be opposed to Thunderstrike using his nun-chuck hammer thing to make them see eye-to-eye. Hell, it’s not even for me that he’d be doing this, it would just be for the look on Walt Weiss’s face. After the party I would donate most of the Rolaids to those who really need help, like at a children’s hospital…well, maybe not a children’s hospital, but I could probably round up Dave Duncan and Terry Steinbach to stand with me in a parking lot outside a diner or a Chinese food place and hand them out. That would be nice, you know, the right thing to do.

Normal People in the Big Leagues

I’m fairly certain that some guys got into the big leagues because management thought they would remind the others of their fathers and therefore those other, much more talented players would think twice before reenacting Ball Four for fear that Dad wouldn’t approve. I think that Mike Fischlin falls into this category. He isn't especially good-looking, nor does he look like he was an alternate for a Newport Lights billboard (unlike this Topps glossy send-away card of the immortal Larry Sheets, who if I remember correctly, had a couple of powerhouse years in old Memorial Stadium in Baltimore then quietly retired to pursue his modeling career. I think he may have even been a mild success, appearing in a random Boscov’s Sunday circular (which he used as the photo for his annual Christmas card)). Fischlin looks more like your dad or your friend’s dad, always there with a piece of advice that somehow always relates back to walloping a bully or, if you’re a girl, waiting until you’re married. He’s the guy who waits for you in the mall parking lot, listening to the game on AM, the guy who quietly defers when your mom is pissed and is out there trimming the hedge when you wake up late on a summery Saturday morning, or, if not your father, then he’s the one you can’t get around when you just want to get to the often hard-to-find sports biography section of a used bookstore, the guy who’s usually clutching the last copy of Nice Guys Finish Last with the tattered dust jacket that you’ve been searching for for months.

On the other side of this spectrum are guys like Joe Nolan, Jerry Garvin and John Montefusco. Nolan may really look like your freshman year roommate. You know, the guy who wore that tie-dyed shirt and really opened your eyes to Zeppelin and was always talking about Marxism, but he could also have definitely been the one who didn’t like swimming in the lake at camp. Garvin looks like he wandered too far away from the bus at a rest stop on his way from LA to New York, accidentally bumping into an enterprising scout for the Blue Jays who thought to himself, “You know, we’re not going to really get anything out of Dave Stieb for another seven years or so…hmmm…I’m going to go ahead and say that no one will notice that that washed-up blond guy from Grease will be our number three starter this year. And if they do notice…hell, more ticket sales at Exhibition Stadium.” Montefusco looks like the kid a few grades ahead that not even your crazy older brother would hang out with, the kind of guy who seemed really psychotic thanks to growing his hair long, smoking out behind the strip mall and standing outside the high school by the teacher’s parking lot in his ripped jeans and leather jacket, just kicking up dust, smoking butts and talking with friends who still thought he was the coolest for dropping out. (John Montefusco, in all actuality, was a pretty decent starter for the Giants in the late Seventies and early Eighties (he was an All Star in 1976). Baseball Reference even says his statistics are similar to Gene Conley’s—though I don’t know if that includes Conley’s career in the NBA.)

And what’s up with Steve Lake? He doesn’t fit into either of the categories above, but into a third category that might be reserved for just him and Craig Biggio: Grown Men That Not Only Look Like But Might Actually Be Children. Now let’s get something straight right away: you don’t have to read Bill James to know that Craig Biggio is going to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. But that doesn’t negate the fact that he could actually be a child. Steve Lake, on the other hand, is probably not going to the Hall of Fame (unless he visits with his family, or is enshrined in a special wing for Players Who Turned Out To Be Ingenious Criminals Stopped Before Their Crimes Could Be Appreciated By History For Their Ingenious-ness, thanks to his formulating—with a bunch of models and Charles Grodin—a hare-brained scheme to steal the Baseball Diamond from a well-protected Museum in London, only to be thwarted at the last minute by an unlikely bunch of rag-tag frogs, chickens, pigs and bears; and yes, that is the plot to The Great Muppet Caper).

But Lake could very well be a child. He looks he just caught a fish, raising his excited, shaking hand firmly wrapped around the wet, flopping fish, holding it up while his dad, (probably someone who looked like Paul Reuschel, out fishing with his kid instead of re-reading Only The Ball Was White, Robert Peterson’s fantastic oral history collection about the Negro Leagues (which does indeed warrant re-reading every few years, just to remind yourself what could’ve been if only teams like the Red Sox, led by the admirable but narrow-minded Tom Yawkey, could’ve pushed to push the color line sooner)) fumbled with the lens cap on his 35mm camera he bought years ago in an ill-fated romantic effort to be more bohemian. But I know what you’re thinking: it’s easy to attack someone by just looking at one card. That’s why I invite you to look at his 1991 Studio card, the one with his gigantic white plumed cockatoo perched on his shoulder. That pretty much cements, for me anyway, that he could very well be either an ingenious criminal, nemesis to crime fighters everywhere, or a child.

A Few Great Photos

You know that shoebox of old family photos stashed down in the basement that you find by accident (when really you were trying to get a lightbulb or a box of trashbags or whatever you keep down in the basement), and go through and can’t help smiling and reminiscing? We all have a box like that, or a ziplock baggie like that, or an album or a wallet full of photos, and there’s always one or two that are included just because they’re funny or embarrassing. You know that no one outside of your family will ever see them (unless you’re the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players). Judging from my collection of baseball cards, trading card company editors are just like you, except that when they find an embarrassing photo, they rub their hands together with glee and release them out there for the whole world to see. Here are a few I found this evening.

Oquendo, Who Art Thou?

I would bet that not only can Jose Oquendo play every position, but he’s an accomplished musician, can prepare a five course meal for dignitaries and day care attendees alike, and has performed the Mikado in the royal courts across Europe and the Far East. Yeah, well, probably not, but he does look like Trekkie Monster from Avenue Q. And that’s something you can’t learn at a fancy school—that’s something you’re born with.

Reds Aplenty


I’m going to put out a theory that I know nobody has put out in the open yet: Alan Knicely and Paul Householder were, on one afternoon in the spring of 1983, the same person. It’s pretty obvious how the über-Red pulled it off. First he had his photo taken as ‘Paul Householder,’ but then after standing out in the hot sun all afternoon for the three card companies and various other hangers-on, he went in to the clubhouse to get a beer (or probably not a beer, what with Marge and Schottzie running the show, so let me rephrase that: he went in to the clubhouse to get an Ovaltine and to sign an oath of loyalty to give Schottzie his seat on the team’s short-distance traveling bus and on longer-distance flights) and while he was in the clubhouse, he heard the payphone in the tunnel ringing and went out to answer it and when he did it was some guy named ‘Alan Knicely’ who told Householder that he wasn’t gonna sign no goddamn loyalty oath to give his seat to no goddamn dog and that he wasn’t gonna be able to make it to the park. And then Knicely abruptly hung up and, because Householder didn’t know what Knicely looked like, and because he had seen the photographers’ player checklists out on the field, he donned a pair of flashy early-era Chris Sabo glasses, pulled his hat down low, put on a red long-sleever and ran back up the tunnel to pose and smirk his way into history as Alan Knicely.

Only Genghis Calls Me ‘Junior’

I also would bet that Junior Ortiz, Twins catcher circa early 1990s, could’ve held his own on the western plains of medieval China. Take a look at this card. Now close your eyes. Have your friend read these next few lines to you (because your eyes are closed):

You’re standing in a field on the outskirts of your village, the wind whipping the patchwork strands of the yellow, green and brown wild grass this way and that and when you look to the clouds collecting on the lower summits of the range in the distance, you can in your knees feel the moisture in the air. A small child runs up to you just at the same moment that a solitary figure appears on the horizon, galloping towards you at a breakneck speed. You can’t hear the horse yet, but it’s sound is as familiar as your wife’s footstep, her sigh, her yelling at you to move your ass and change the channel, but it’s 1344 and you won’t know what the hell she’s talking about for another six hundred odd years…anyway, back to the horse. Just at its sight you turn and collect the child, your heartbeat collects in your throat and you run for the safety of the village, and if not that, then to collect your wife and make for the hills. You’ve seen the wrath of the man on horseback before, the one in the padding and with the eye-black, the one they call ‘The Catcher.’ Nobody calls him Junior to his face, because those who do end up without one…

Speaking of Guys Hanging Out By Themselves

If you were a relatively regionally famous baseball player in the Seventies and Eighties, how much would it suck to be named Mike Tyson? I mean, in this photo, Tyson looks pretty bad-ass, what with the brick wall and the crazy hat-head hair and the obvious chaw in his cheek and his eyes focused either in deep ‘I’m gonna whup John Denny’s ass’ psycho mode or ‘Maybe Garry Templeton will outshine me’ contemplation mode. His is a timeless bad-ass look: he’s one of the few who wouldn’t look any less psychotic in a bowler and suspenders, white shirt and bare knuckles than he would in a baby blue jumpsuit speckled with birds teetering on a baseball bat. Anyway, all I’m saying is that if for some reason Don King was hard up for cash and needed to resurrect Iron Mike for a reunion tour or something, he probably could coax Brick Mike here into a doubleheader against someone equally weird, like Greg Luzinski or Roy Lee Jackson. Hell, if King really wanted to pack ’em into high school auditoriums across the country, he could make it a three-bout card, with Jerry Mumphrey taking on arch-nemesis Terry Humphrey.

One Final Note Concerning Gaylord Perry

Sometimes, just by looking at the picture, you can tell that either the photographer forgot a player until the last minute or, as is the case here, it was written into the standard baseball card company photographer’s handbook that one should never ever approach Gaylord Perry when he’s relaxing in the bullpen with a baseball bat across his lap. You never know what might happen, especially if someone calls him Herman Munster to his face. It’s sad, really. Here’s one of the best long-term, long-haul pitchers of his generation who was consistently robbed of great baseball cards because photographers had a way of making his head look elongated like Fred Gwynne. It’s the same reason why Kevin McHale never really had any close-ups taken: they’re just not good-looking individuals. Especially in this case: after a career full of bad card photos, it was probably best to get a shot of him waiting to knock the crap out of an unsuspecting passer-by.

A Tale of Two Bruces

You know when you look at something or someone and you see that thing or that person as pretty much non-descript, and then all of a sudden you see them in a totally new and different light? Well, I was going through some cards last night and came across two guys that were always totally non-descript until I figured out that one of them looks like one of those rubbery, toothless Popeye faces you stick your fingertips in and manipulate. The player’s name is Bruce Bochy, and his is a face that sunk a thousand ships.

The other player is Bruce Bochte, who, with his killer aviator eyeglasses, is either Dave Collins’ alter ego that Topps thought would be fun to create or he’s Stephen King’s illegitimate brother. Anyway, he’s pretty much normal looking and there’s really not much of a connection between the two players, though yes, their names are almost identical, which is definitely kind of funny.

The real reason I wanted to write about this was because on the back of Bochte’s card it says he did not play in 1983, and this coming off four decent campaigns with the bottom-feeder Mariners. (By the way, didn’t you love the way the early Topps cards worded player notes on the backs of cards? I really like the use of the word ‘campaign.’ I’m going to start using it at work and in my daily home life. But anyway…) It’s almost as if Bochte got sick of frittering away his youth earning hundreds of thousands of dollars as a not really even half-way decent star of a glorified double A team and tried his hand at something else for a year.

What do you suppose he did? Peter Gammons, in his fantastic Beyond the Sixth Game, uses the descriptive term ‘plumbing executive’ on more than one occasion to describe players’ off-season occupations, but that doesn’t seem glamorous enough for Bochte. Maybe he was a chimney sweep (though his card lists him at 6’3”, so his campaign as a chimney sweep probably ended badly), or fed penguins at the zoo or joined the WCW under the alias ‘Cujo’ after his illegitimate brother’s famous book, or maybe he wrote a syndicated gossip column or drove a school bus. And then every day nervous fathers and mothers would pause just one extra second at the bus stop, their hands firmly clutching the shoulders of their sons and daughters, trying to pass a little parental warmth and love to their unwitting children heading off to school in the bus driven by Cujo, that old WCW wrestler who looks just enough like Stephen King that it’s totally creepy.

Fuzzy Photos of Giants (not to mention Cubs, Brewers and whatever the heck an Expo is)

Have you ever noticed that the photos from the 1982 Fleer set are all out of focus? Not just the action shots (which I could understand if they were, because I’m sure it’s pretty hard to bankroll a fledgling operation trying to compete with the Topps Chewing Gum’s arsenal of photographers—though who are we kidding? Fleer had been around since the Sixties, with their classic 1963 series and that other series of old-time stars…I think they even issued the Ted Williams series in 1959 to coincide with his retirement, though I’m going to have to double-check that), but even the close up portraits are out of focus.

You’d think that because they were trying to launch a competitive alternative to Topps, who, let’s face it, mailed it in from 1981 until 1985 in terms of design (except 1984 did have a sense of the Elvis Presley/London Calling aesthetic going for it, what with the team name running down the side, and the Ozzie Smith from that set is a great card…he really kind of looks like Fozzie Bear in his close-up), you’d think that Fleer would’ve invested more in its product. Okay, there are 660 cards in the set (an homage to Willie Mays perhaps?), so if we figure at least a 24-picture roll per player, then that’s like—hold on—that’s like 15,840 total photos. I guess that kind of ruled out affording professional-grade cameras. I think the big meeting at Fleer went a little like this:

Executive 1: Wow, 1981 went great. I mean, really great card stock, nice clean white backs. Just really nice. How can we out do it in 1982?
Executive 2: I’ve got it all figured out: color team logos on the card backs.
Executive 1: I like where you’re going with this.
Executive 2: Yeah, and listen to this—baby blue backs.
Executive 1: I love it! But what about the photo?
Executive 2: I’m two steps ahead of you. Did you know that Kodak puts out a child-friendly camera? With little flash cubes that are so cheap we can buy them in bulk?
Executive 1: Child-friendly cameras, huh?
Executive 2: Yeah! So we can bribe children to take our photos…but you’re paying too much attention to the photo, and nobody cares about the photo. Or the player, for that matter. Just the color team logo. On the frickin’ sweet baby blue back.
Executive 1: You’re a genius, you know that? A genius. G-E-N-U-I-S. We’re going to flush Topps down the crapper with this one.

Yeah, it took Fleer a little longer than expected to out do Topps. And when they did (in 1984 with their Update set, and then in 1987 for real), it was for real and Topps didn’t get its mojo back until 1991 with the premium Stadium Club set. But that’s not the point. The point is that 660 photos made the cut in the late summer or fall of 1981 in the Fleer offices and every single one of them is out of focus. And that’s ridiculous.

Things You Think About When Going Through One of Those Giant Boxes of Random Cards in the Back of Your Closet

The Inexplicable Ron Hassey

There are a few players whose pictures suggest that perhaps they should not be baseball players. Ron Hassey is the first player I think of when I think about this. His physique perhaps would seem more apt as a mechanic who also happens to don a white jumpsuit and tears up the disco floor on a Saturday night. And yet he caught two perfect games. There is one thing that many people do not understand, especially the poor saps who dope up on steroids thinking it will automatically guarantee them a long and productive career: you don’t necessarily have to be smart to excel in baseball, but you do have to have a certain amount of luck. Now maybe Ron Hassey was a baseball savant, I don’t know. But I can pretty much assume that he did his homework on opposing batters and was lucky enough to ace the test on two different afternoons ten years apart from each other (one with Len Barker in 1981 and with El Presidente and the Expos versus the Dodgers in Montreal, 1991). There have been less than 20 perfect games thrown since the inception of the game (though I’m not counting only the Major leagues and not winter ball nor barnstorming, the Negro Leagues, Olympic or amateur leagues). Many of the games greatest catchers never caught a perfect game.

Berra caught Larsen’s in the World Series, Bob Boone caught Witt’s, Ivan Rodriguez caught Kenny Rogers’ game in 1994 and Jorge Posada caught David Wells’ game. But Mickey Cochrane never caught one. Neither did Johnny Bench, Carlton Fisk, Elston Howard or Roy Campanella, Smokey Burgess, Lance Parrish or Mike Piazza. Ron Hassey caught two.

Fun Moustache Card #1

You have to hand it to Bill Veeck or whoever was in charge of the White Sox in the late Seventies: the uniform Pablo Torrealba sports on his 1979 card is one of the ugliest of the decade—we’re talking Frank Robinson-era Cleveland Indians ugly. But what really makes this card a classic is Pablo’s stache. Someday I’m going to put together a Moustache Gallery (within the Al Hrabosky Facial Hair Wing of the Oscar Gamble Memorial Sports Hair Hall of Fame and Museum). I can think of two other automatic inductees (Rollie Fingers and Pete Vukovich). Torrealba’s moustache is wild; it almost looks fake, like someone glued two Muppet eyebrows to his upper lip while he was napping.

You too can own a piece of fun moustache history! Pablo Torrealba was never a star, so his cards are ridiculously cheap (if you went looking for them). This particular card is his 1979 Topps card, number 242.

Bob Melvin’s White Batting Glove

I’m guessing it wasn’t done on purpose, but when I see this card, I immediately think of the creepy live human being dressed up as a toy soldier who stands at the entrance of FAO Schwartz in New York City. It’s just that he’s tipping his batting helmet with his white batting glove, or maybe he’s taking it off (but that’s not obvious). In this picture he also kind of looks like that guy in the sequined tuxedo who hung out with Liberace. I wonder why the Topps editors chose this image. He appeared in over forty games for the Tigers in 1985, you’d think that they could’ve got something of him in the field, or at least with catching gear somewhere in the shot. Maybe they thought it was cool the way the light bounced off his helmet; I don’t know. I mean, the photo has nice composition, it’s just that it creeps me out that the next time I go to FAO Schwartz I’m going to run into the Tigers back up catcher. I’d much rather run into Lance Parrish. Then I could ask him why he joined the Phillies after his contract with the Tigers ended and I could tell him I always thought he looked like Bert Lahr as The Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz.