Showing posts with label 1984 Topps. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1984 Topps. Show all posts

September 04, 2013

He's Mighty, Mighty


Len Whitehouse, 1984 Topps

Chris Berman, 1983 SportsCenter telecast: (Twins versus Royals highlights air) Twins facing the Royals from the Twin Cities, a.k.a. "el dos twinkos cuidados" (untrue) ... Twins go up by 2-0 on a deep ball by Mickey Hatcher - THE MICK INDEED ... Twins trying to hold on to that lead in the sixth ... (Len Whitehouse appears on screen) He's a White ... (pulls out a horn from underneath desk, play a few notes) ... HOUSE. (A star is born, history is made, sports go mainstream)

That was cool when that happened. But seriously it's a great joke, a great line. First of all, it references that Rick James Commodores song, "Brick House," about the girl who is so sexy that she is shaped liked a square house made of bricks. Ooooh baby that is sexy. Plus Len Whitehouse IS white. And also sexy. With his 36 (innings pitched)-24 (hits allowed)-36 (bubble butt). Anyway, I am getting a little bit off track here. Let's refocus. Serious question: What is Len Whitehouse doing today?

He bats and throws left-handed.

Still. He still does that.

He is currently retired and living in the North End of Burlington

The American dream. Would it be that we could ALL face a handful of lefties in middle relief for a few years and then retire to the north end of Burlington! Sit by the fireplace on a cold, winter's night, snuggled up in an affordable coat from the nearby coat factory, and regale stories to our grandkids about how ...

one of Len's most impressive career moments was when he had Reggie Jackson's 1,000 strikeout.

Who can ever forget:

Chris Berman, 1975 telecast: Whitehouse rears BACKBACKBACKBACKBACKBACK ...  and GONE! From the batter's box that is! Reggie Jackson strikes out for a world record 1,000th time ... the Twins are carrying Len "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" Whitehouse off on their shoulders and we're only in the seventh inning here! It's bedlam!

Guys, Reggie Jackson struck out for the 1,000th time in 1975; Whitehouse entered the league in '81. Is it possible I am misinterpreting the eloquent phrase "he had Reggie Jackson's 1,000 strikeout?" Like he has the ball maybe? He has it on videotape? Ha, ha WHATEVER.

What else?

Pitched 2 scoreless innings for Win, 5-13-83.

I think @MrBrianKenny would enjoy that one. #keepthewin #whitehouse #achievements #northendofburlington

July 28, 2013

What Ben's Thinking About

It's no secret: my interest in collecting sports cards waxes and wanes like the cycles of the moon. But there are certain things about the hobby that pique my interest. Here they are for the week of July 28, 2013.

1. I've had another epiphany about my card collection this week: I need to cut back. I've collected sets in the past, have an extensive Red Sox and Celtics collection — I'm trying to get one card of every player on each team since their inceptions — and have a shoebox of vintage stars. But I also have pre-war nonsports cards. And lots of Topps basketball from the 1970s. And other cards I'm quite sure what to do with. The epiphany came about because we have been doing a little spring cleaning (in the middle of the summer) and have sold a few things on eBay. Some cards have left the house this way, but it isn't satisfying. Not really.

I feel like if I'm going to make big strides in completing the Soxlopedia, as I'm calling it, then I'm going to have to make some trades. So here we are. Is there anyone out there interested in trading these days? I'd be looking for Red Sox and Celtics players, and maybe a few upgrade cards for my 1965 and 1956 Topps sets. I have some vintage stars and Hall of Famers and T218s and T118s and a huge lot of 1984 Topps baseball, which I know isn't that exciting, but let me explain.

2. I've made large strides in my "Mega Master Set" idea for 1986 and 1987 Topps baseball (and even 1977 and 1978 Topps baseball, to a lesser extent). But where I've found satisfaction in those years, I've be met with a deep sense of ennui with 1984 Topps baseball. Not that I haven't had success with 1984 Topps baseball—I have. I've just found that I don't really care very much if I finish it or not. (I'm a great salesman, I know.) I'm two cards from completing the base set, and have added the 50 cards in the 1984 style from the 2012 Topps Archives set. I've also added a few original 1984 Nestle cards, plus the Larry Bird "Missing Years" card from 2006-07 Topps Basketball, plus even some Topps Tiffany cards. And a handful of the Traded cards. All in all it's about 900 cards, give or take a few. It makes for a nice starter set on the Mega Master Set, I'd say. So, if you're interested in trading for these cards, or would like to know if I can help you with other stuff, and you have Red Sox to trade, I'm all ears. By the way, if you want to see a list of Red Sox players I still need, check out this list.

3. I've been thinking long and hard about this, but 1986 Topps is my favorite set. Ever. It was my first set, and I have cards with their fronts ripped off to varying degrees from this set than any other in my possession. So if there's some sort of Tiger Beat that cares about what I like, 1986 Topps baseball is what I like...

4. Also, here's something to consider: Did you just get $75 worth of baseball cards from that box you just paid $75 for? If not, how much value do you think you got? I bet it wasn't anywhere close to what you paid, unless you count a box's anticipation markup — my name for the traditional profit-ensuring markup that plays to the expectations and excitement of the consumer towards the product. That's probably harder to determine, right? If there are 192 cards in that box (let's say you bought Heritage), then you just paid $0.39 for each card (sure, that's a steal if you get a Sandy Koufax autograph exchange card, but you're more likely to "hit" on a relic card of Raul Ibanez). So if you can get base cards on eBay for closer to $0.07 or $0.10 apiece, then you're paying an anticipation markup of anywhere from a quarter to thirty cents per card. You might scoff at this logic, but for your $75, your box probably contains $18–$25 of value in it. It's a sobering thought, especially as I look towards 2014 Topps Heritage...

5. I just finished David Maraniss' Clemente and recommend it. Actually, if you're interested in reading it, I will make it available for trade. See the linked list above of Red Sox players I'm missing and let me know if you're interested.


July 26, 2007

eTopps Cards That Never Were

The real title of this post is Ben Sells Out, Part 2.

Back in January, Topps got in touch with me about helping them checklist a set for eTopps. Needless to say, I was torn. Working for and/or with Topps has been a lifelong dream, and yet here I was, routinely poking fun at their sets and being critical of their products. Lucky for me, they had no stipulations that I had to follow for participating (like no bad-mouthing the company). I think I've kept up my part of the deal over the past seven months; I've not held back with criticism of the situation surrounding Topps, nor about any of their products I've found fault with.

It's probably no big deal, but just so everything is out in the open, I wasn't paid. Actually, that's not true. They paid me in baseball cards, which may sound dumb to most people (my girlfriend thought it did), but I found kind of fun. But enough about my involvement.

If you read SCD, you've probably seen the ads for the all-encompassing VIP tickets offered at The National in Cleveland. Part of that package are a handful of cards from this eTopps set, dubbed the Cards That Never Were. I think the ones at The Nat are going to specially stamped or something. The ones available through eTopps are like other eTopps cards. I think the biggest difference is that these cards will be in that year's original design and (hopefully) won't be plastered with the gaudy eTopps logo.

Here's the official line on the product (I didn't write this):


Introducing eTopps "Cards That Never Were"!

eTopps has gone back in history and created a classic collection of cards that never were! Each card has a unique story and all together the collection will be an instant classic. The collection will include:

* The ultimate tribute card: a 1952 Topps Joe DiMaggio!
* A stunning 1952 Topps Ted Williams and 1954 Topps Stan Musial card! Both players had exclusives with Bowman in the early 50's and as a result did not have Topps cards. Now you can own them!
* Whitey Ford left baseball to serve his country in the Korean War; as a result Whitey never had a '52 Topps card. Now you can...
* Nolan Ryan broke into the Big Leagues in '66 with the Mets, but it wasn't until '68 that Nolan got his rookie card. Now you can get his '67!

All cards will be sequentially numbered and delivered on beautiful eTopps technology. We will offer autographs on many of these cards, which will make them even more special!

The Cards That Never Were will be offered starting Monday August 6th at 1pm EST. The collection will be offered weekly and over time so please be sure to visit eTopps often!



And while Topps didn't end up going with all the guys and issues I had proposed (I still think a 1951 Bowman DiMaggio would be cool, and a 1966 card of Masanori Murakami would go over huge right about now, what with the renewed interest in all things Japanese baseball), the checklist they did decide on is pretty strong, plus there will be autographed versions available. There are 12 subjects in the set, including the ones pictured in this post.

The set doesn't officially debut until August 6th, offered through the eTopps site.

May 02, 2006

Best Set Countdown: 30 - 27

30. 1986 Donruss
This set was an entirely foreign concept to me when I started collecting. Even after ten years of collecting I had maybe two or three cards from the set. I think this has to do with the Canseco Rated Rookie (where he’s sporting a ridiculous mustache…of course he was doing steroids! Thinking his dead-rat facial hair was a good idea is a dead giveaway…), which I couldn’t afford at the time as a single card and therefore couldn’t afford the packs. Also, just starting out in ’86, it blew my tiny mind that there was more than one card company. I mean, I was really only interested in Topps (I couldn’t afford the other two), but still--three different kinds; that’s pretty fucking sweet when you think about it. Anyway, I never had any cards from this set.

Being a gigantic Fred McGriff fan, I remember at a show I finally forked over the $12 for his rookie (another Donruss rookie score…a full year ahead of the other companies), only to watch its value sink and sink like a leaf falling in the autumn breeze. Seriously, what does a man have to do to get some value in his rookie card? He’s nearly in the 500 home run club, he played forever and was consistently good (if not great), he’s got a mind-bogglingly inane, yet Triumph of the Will-esque long format infomercial for a Little League professional hitting school video, he had a fantastic if somewhat nonsensical nickname “The Crime Dog”, (a riff on McGruff, but what the hell does it have to do with him? I don’t think he was a notorious bastard, had a penchant for late night gambling or frequenting clubs where gunfire broke out more than occasionally) and he was a winner. Seriously, if he had his career in the Sixties or Seventies, his rookie would be at least $40. McGriff should make the Hall of Fame before his fourth ballot year, and he certainly got help when Rafael Palmeiro slinked away into oblivion. The two had similar careers (McGriff had about 70 less homers than Palmeiro, but without the steroid help), played during the same era, and both are what Beckett would call ‘Semistars’.

Back to the set, it certainly can’t be called a goldmine set, but it does have the Canseco, just about the Mona Lisa of baseball cards during the late 1980s. The downside is that packs were just too expensive for the average kid collector (because of the Canseco possibility). I remember thinking that the blue stripe design looked expensive, and therefore ended up psyching myself out before even attempting to buy a pack. In terms of design, the set featured some pretty decent action shots. Too bad all the photos seemed to get crowded out of the frame by the blue stripe border. Man, that blue stripe border is intense. It makes me wanna watch Max Headroom—or have a seizure (and I’m not entirely sure which one would be more fulfilling).

29. 1984 Topps Traded
There are certain things that sometimes-great-mostly-mediocre players can do to make themselves remembered after they retire. For Dave Roberts, that meant stealing second in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS. For Billy Hatcher, it meant tearing the A’s a new one in the 1990 World Series. And then there are the lucky players to be traded or called up in 1984, enshrined in the 1984 installments of Topps Traded and Fleer Update.

Seriously, the 3 guys pictured (Oliver, Sutcliffe and Nettles) all had pretty good, if not great careers, but nothing helped them more (in terms of their legacy) than being dumped by their former teams during the 1984 season. Think about it, if any one of them was traded in 1983 or 1985, they would earn a resounding ‘Who Gives A Shit, It’s Fuckin’ (insert name here)’, but because it’s the ’84 set, each gets a ’Holy Shit, It’s Fuckin’ (insert name here)! Man, This Set’s Got Everybody!


Admittedly, this set pales in comparison to the Fleer rendition in terms of value (thanks to Topps not having the foresight to includes Clemens or Puckett), but think about this for a minute: when this set came out, who were you more interested in—Clemens or Dwight Gooden? My money’s on Gooden. So while 1984 was the end of the Big Brother reign of Topps over Donruss and Fleer, they still knew what was up with the hobby.

You know, actually, as I read these last few sentences back to myself, Topps’ guessing wrong on Clemens and Puckett was a major blunder. If you look at the 1984 Topps set, which I will do in a minute, Mattingly was a big deal. But he was a big deal in every regular issue set that year. You could look at the 1984 Fleer Update set as the seminal set of the 1980s: at its essence it reaffirmed the shift in the balance of power that the regular issue Donruss and Fleer sets of 1984 started. After the Update set, Topps had to kick it into high gear to even stay relevant. They accomplished this with the Olympic team subset in the 1985 set, but by then the embarrassment that was 1984 Traded was reality, not some wild, doomsday scenario thought up at the bar after a long day at Topps HQ.

28. 1983 Fleer
1983 Fleer deserves more credit than it has received. While it takes a lot for a man to pull himself together after hitting rock bottom (just ask J.R. Richard), I would argue it takes even more for a card company to regain its respectability (or just plain gain respectability) after it turns out a heaping pile of shit like 1982 Fleer. Seriously, how did they rebound with such a strong set?

I guess the rookie trio of Boggs, Gwynn and Sandberg helped, but they helped all three sets that year (really, there are few sets in the decade that had a leg up from an ‘impact’ rookie: 1985 Topps had McGwire, 1984 Donruss had Joe Carter, 1987 Donruss had Maddux, 1989 Topps had Jim Abbott and Steve Avery). The card design is decidedly bland, but bland in a good way: light, airy, it doesn’t get in the way of the photo or crowd the design. If anything, the non-design is more effective than if they tried to go over the top. It set the tone for the rest of the Fleer decade (and I know I’ve touched on this point before): 1980s Donruss design was beset with a fascination of the line: 1981, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988 (and even 1989, just a little bit)—every year the card front was a line-obsessed extravaganza, not so much a baseball card as a two-dimensional, baseball-themed homage to technology; very mannish, very technical, very tough. So if Donruss thought variations on a straight line would teach little boys that baseball was very left-brain, Topps was decidedly right-brain. Topps relied on a new design every year, and every year was distinctly different from the year before. None of that 1982-83 Donruss we’ve-run-out-of-ideas-let’s-just-make-them-look-the-same bullshit. Topps was original every year, which was both positive (1980) and negative (1982).

Fleer was in the middle, with left-brain tendencies. Not completely left-brain, mind you, but their designs were all vaguely similar and somewhat predictable. They stayed away from the dark colors (Donruss territory), preferring to go with white (1981, 82, 84 & 88), blue-white (1987), grey-white (1983, 89) and grey (1985). The lone standout year, in terms of its predecessors, was 1986, but even then (while blue) the front was very circular. That’s really the Fleer design hallmark: the curve. Even in the later years (1987-89), when line became a more important element in the design, with the light colors Fleer cards breathed in curves. You could argue that this was apparent from card #1 of the 1981 set, but I would argue that it’s not really important until 1983. It wasn’t really important until after the company suffered through the 1982 fiasco. This set does deserve more credit, but for now it’s #28.

27. 1984 Topps
1984 Topps is one of my all-time favorite card designs. I think it has to do with the headshot. I was never really a fan of the 1983 design, which to a lot of collectors is the Holy Grail design of the 1980s. In my opinion, 1983 was too technical: the card front was partitioned into five sections (action shot, head shot, name/position text, team name in colored bar and outer white border). There was no chemistry between the elements; the action and headshots were cordoned off from each other (they didn’t really even touch). Sure, it was a marked improvement from 1982, hands down the most boring Topps card front design of the decade, but it seemed overtly technical and not nearly emotional enough.

Enter 1984, where Topps took all the individual great things from the 1983 set and pushed them together. Gone is that unnecessary border keeping everything from touching. Bigger action shots, bigger, eye-popping headshots on Pop Art color backgrounds (an homage to 1948 Leaf? Probably not, but it’s great anyway), just one white outer border on which player name, position and Topps logo rest, and last but not least, the fantastic team name. Really, it all comes down to the team name; it embodies the emotion lost from the 1983 design. It’s very Elvis Presley, very London Calling; with a simple twist of the hips, a simple smash of guitar the staid, technical design wrapped around the 1983 set dissolves, leaving bigger graphics, bigger action, bigger headshots. Just a kick-ass design.

Design aside, 1984 Topps had one of the weakest rookie classes this side of 1988 Topps. Let’s see: Mattingly, the regular-issue Strawberry and that’s about it. Gooden, Bret Saberhagen and the other rookies didn’t make it until the Traded set, but really 1984 Topps survives sans strong rookie class. Sure the Mattingly helps in the way Canseco helps 1986 Fleer, but again, Mattingly helped all three sets in 1984. 1984 Topps is a great set because of everything else it offers: a strong class of All-Stars, good player assortment on the Season Highlights that begins the set, Active Career Leaders and Team Leaders.

This is also a great set to build on your own if you’re just starting out and don’t have a lot of money. The money cards are all under $10 (with the exception of the Mattingly), the design is first-rate and the player assortment is excellent. It’s the first older set that I put together, and I’m a better man for it. If I let nostalgia cloud my judgment, I would’ve put this set higher (say around 15 or 16), but in reality this set has no rookies and was the first year where Topps came in a resounding third behind Donruss and Fleer in terms of desirability within the hobby. 1984 was really the beginning of the end for Topps.



Well, we’ve made it halfway through the Countdown of the Best Sets of the 1980s. Here’s a wrap-up so far:

53. 1989 Bowman
52. 1988 Donruss
51. 1982 Fleer
50. 1985 Fleer Update
49. 1989 Score
48. 1988 Donruss Rookies
47. 1985 Topps Traded
46. 1989 Donruss Rookies
45. 1981 Donruss
44. 1989 Score Rookie/Traded
43. 1989 Fleer Update
42. 1989 Donruss
41. 1983 Topps Traded
40. 1988 Score
39. 1981 Topps Traded
38. 1988 Fleer Update
37. 1987 Donruss Rookies
36. 1988 Fleer
35. 1987 Topps Traded
34. 1989 Fleer
33. 1986 Fleer
32. 1989 Topps Traded
31. 1981 Topps
30. 1986 Donruss
29. 1984 Topps Traded
28. 1983 Fleer
27. 1984 Topps

Fantastic Card of the Day
This card of Remdog is one of three things: unfailing proof that steroids were rampant in baseball in the early Eighties, an optical illusion, or the photo was taken minutes after Remy was taken off the rack. Seriously, did he enjoy standing next to nuclear waste? In his playing days, Jerry Remy was fit, but not physically intimidating. Neither was he tall. In fact, on the back of the card it lists him at 5'9", but he could in fact be shorter than that. I'm talking Tom Cruise-short, maybe like 4'10". But his head is scraping the roof of the dugout!?! What gives? (If you need more proof that his mind couldn't take the torturous physical regimen he or someone in the Red Sox trainer's room was putting him through, check out his headshot on the back of the card. Gotta love Remdog: smiling in the face of even the most bizarre, if not arduous predicaments. Self-inflicted gigantism is nothing to be ashamed of, Jerry. Even little guys are allowed to dream big.)

Coming Soon: #26 – 24