Cooperstown, Whatever, Etc.

 

I recently had the displeasure of turning 50.

            50.

            Okay, maybe it’s not a displeasure considering the alternative to turning an age, any age; but it feels kind of blah. I feel kind of blah. No longer a young man and not quite ready to be put out to pasture either. Fifty seems like the most middle-aged of being middle-aged. It feels like being a walking, talking ghost at times. And, yes, I can still wear all of my cool t-shirts. Wear my hat backwards and try and find cool, new music to listen to.

            But at the end of the day buddy…

            …you know what’s on the other side of that mirror.

            But I didn’t want be mired in 50. I wanted a brief respite from the malaise that I’d been feeling. I wanted to go somewhere to, not exactly celebrate 50, but to not exactly dwell on it either. I’ll revise that: my wife wanted to go somewhere to celebrate. I wanted to stay in bed in a dark room, doing nothing but stare at the ceiling. I like being mired in things, I guess. I love me a good malaise. And traveling? That’s another thing about tuning 50; I want to spend less and less time away from home. Thrill seeking to me used to be wandering the streets of Paris. Now it is checking out the grocery store after a renovation.

            Not the stuff of Kerouac, I know.

            After some hemming and hawing (and procrastinating long enough that a trip to San Francisco to revisit some old Beat haunts and see a Giants game, seemed unreasonable financially), I did decide on somewhere to spend my 50^th birthday. Somewhere where I always felt good vibes. Somewhere out of my childhood.

            I went back here for the first time in 32 years.

            Through good and bad, happiness and depression, for most of my life, I can say that baseball has been my one constant. I had on brief spell where it wasn’t, but the less said about that here the better. But baseball. It’s been around me, casting its aura and magic, for as long as I can remember anything else tangible being around me. I’m as excited as a child when baseball season begins, and I’m as inconsolable as one when baseball season ends. There’s no salve for the first few weeks after the last inning of the last game is played. Not football. Not basketball or, god forbid, Hockey, for Christ’s sake. Baseball allows me to tolerate summer.

            Cooperstown was a good way to celebrate being the most middle-aged of the middle-aged.

            Of course, there were memories that I wanted to revisit.

            I’d been to Cooperstown twice before

            1989 when I was fifteen.

            1992 when I was eighteen.

            Memories aside, I couldn’t tell you if the town had changed much, or if it had stayed the same. There were a good number of closed storefronts. A continued epidemic of the pandemic, perhaps? Cooperstown was subdued, if I can say that. My teenage memories are of the place in the summer. A town in motion. The packs of people in the Hall. Loud families on Main Street. Me, my brother and Phineas running in and out of the Hall all day, running in and out of the various baseball card and sports memorabilia shops.

            That was the Cooperstown of memory.

It was April when we went this year. Things were just opening for the season. At 50 and 46, my wife and I might’ve been the YOUNGEST people visiting the Hall.

            *a brief aside, there was one kind in Cooperstown, a townie who ended up following me around a baseball card shop and talking to me about cards. The kid was maybe 11 years old. He was carrying his binder of cards around with him, and because I remembered doing that, carrying those cards everywhere, my initial W.C. Fields-ness toward children…well…it just had to melt a little bit. So, I let the kid follow me around and we talked Pirates and Mets. He was kind enough to gift me this…*

            

            Good kid…bad judge of character.

            And what has Mr. Hoy Park been up to?

            We were even there for the eclipse.

            ...for all that was worth.

            I suppose if I brought anything to Cooperstown as the most middle-aged of the middle-aged, is that the adult me is a student of the history of the game. The teen me appreciated the players that came before, and I wanted their cards for prestige purposes, but the here and now was foremost on my mind as a kid. Maybe because vintage cards of older players were hard to come by, and you could still buy a pack of cards with money you found under a couch cushion. But now I read books about the sport of baseball. Vast tomes dedicated to single seasons or a single World Series. I spend my time looking up articles on older players. I can afford the cards that I couldn’t as a kid. I have a more well-rounded experience with the game of baseball as the most middle aged of the middle-aged.

            But the kid (and beyond in me) couldn’t help but get excited by seeing the plaques of these guys.

            It being 32-years since my last visit, there was something very cool about seeing the plaques for the players that I watched growing up, the players whose cards I collected.

            It’s easier to insert the history of your own fandom into the sport when you see stuff like that.

            Of course, I bought some of the requisite postcards.

            Forgetting to buy one for Tony Gwynn and Ken Griffey Jr....sigh.

            Had a discrepancy, an alteration if you will, shown to me and my wife by a kindly docent who took a shine to this Pittsburgh clad guy.

            Can you spot the difference?

            Jackie’s plaque has also been changed from his initial.

            This is the one that hangs in the Hall.

            This is the one that is currently only loan to the Jackie Robinson Museum in NYC.

            And the folks at SABR have a whole article on this stuff right HERE.

            Sadly, Henry Aaron’s plaque was not there. It had been loaned to an exhibit in Atlanta.

            But my wife bought me a 1967 Henry Aaron for my birthday. And I bought myself the 1966 one. A little bit loved but that’s all right. 

            They are the first two base Henry Aaron cards that I own from the 60s. And they instantly matter. Growing up I’d never really been a fan of 1966 or 1967 Topps. I found them plain and less exciting than a design like 1962 or 1965. Now…now, I admire their simplicity. 1967 is the quintessential BASEBALL CARD. No frills.

            I feel that way about this set now too.

            Feeling a touch nostalgic for the teenage me, I wanted to find a box of something from my childhood to rip from one of the sports cards stores. And, if nothing else, there still ARE sports cards stores in Cooperstown. There wasn’t a lot of junk wax, though. At least not in wax box form. But I came across these in a sports card store a block or so away from the Hall.

            Now, I KNOW 15-year-old me ripped a lot of 1989 Topps Big packs. I know a lot of collectors were thwarted/daunted by the return of oversized cards in the late 80s, but 1988 and 1989 Big, as well, as 1989 Bowman, were a big hit with this collector. I just really enjoyed the throwback to 1955 and 1956 Topps cards inherent in the design. Maybe it did have a lot to do with the fact that, as a kid, getting my hands on anything 1955 and 1956 was next to impossible, and cards like Topps Big or 1989 Bowman...they were as close as I was getting to a seat at the table.

            1988 and 1989 Topps Big respectively:

            Picked up just a few more things.

            I never leave Andy Van Slyke rookie cards behind.

            And 30+ years later, Bobby Bonilla still doesn’t look right to me in anything but Black and Gold.

    

            Had to get my Yordan fix.

            And I'm strangley excited that Joey Bart is a Pirate.

            I didn’t go hog wild in Cooperstown with card purchases, which kind of surprised me because the lack of access to card shops in NYC is a big pet peeve of mine. I didn’t want to go hog wild, I guess. I mean I’m 50 now. The most middle aged of the middle-aged. The days of running into and out of card shops all day has passed. The excitement for those players hanging on the Hall walls and the history of what was in a lot of those glass cases.

 

            That was the real draw now. The blah-ness may have settled in, but it was nice to keep it at bay by taking a trip down memory lane and immersing myself in the National pastime.

            If you’re turning 50.

            If you’re feeling middle-aged.

            If the futility of it all is settling in.

            or if you just want to see Tony Gwynn hanging around where he belongs.

            Take a trip to Cooperstown.

            It’s worth it.

            And make sure you stop by the Farmer’s Museum to see this guy….

            I learned about the Cardiff Giant by reasing David McCullough's epic book about the Brooklyn Bridge. It was wonderuflly coincidental that he was in Cooperstown. You can read about him HERE.

 

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

 

 

            

2024 Topps Series 1

 

I love these cards.

            I mean…I REALLY love these cards.

            Like best Topps set since I’ve come back to collecting.

            Like maybe one of my favorite Topps designs in a very long while.

            I even gave them a nickname.

            Topps 1986: After Dark.

            If you haven’t seen them yet…this is what they look like.

            Again, I REALLY REALLY love these cards.

            But…sadly…this  is not a blog post about how much I love 2024 Topps base cards.

            This is a blog post about (at least to me) the death of the Hobby Box.

            Case in point, here’s what a 2024 Topps Series 1 box looks like next to a base box from years past.

            On Twitter, one collector referred to 2024 Series 1 Hobby boxes as glorified Blasters.

            I’m not of liberty to dispute that comment.

            In 2023, starting with Topps Update, Topps/Fanatics made the decision to reduce the amount of pack in its Hobby boxes from 24 to 20 packs. The monopolist behemoth also decided to reduce the amount of cards in it’s packs from 14 cards to 12. I fucking hate doing math but that’s a Hobby box card loss of: 96 cards. Almost 100 cards per Hobby box. That might not mean much to a lot of collectors, especially the ones who buy Hobby boxes for the bells and whistle cards.

            But to a guy like me who previously enjoyed hand collating his base sets…that’s a bit of a hit.

            Without bitching, what it means to me and other collectors who buy Hobby boxes to build sets, is that we have to buy more cards. We have to shell out more money to hand collate a set. I had been in the tradition of buying 2 Hobby boxes for each series. What that usually garnered me was: A) putting together the set. B) getting doubles of players I PC. C) getting most of my Pirates team set together. After that, I’d wait until enough collectors posted cards on SportsLots and then I’d go on there, buy my Pirates, and whatever insert (usually the 35 year anniversary insert cards) that I wanted.

            Those days are gone.

            I bought two Hobby boxes of Topps 2024 Series 1 on pre-sale. Full disclosure, I wanted to buy a Jumbo box. But I’m lazy and have mental issues buying things online, so Jumbo box presales were sold out when I went to make my purchase. Fuller disclosure, having dealt with this lack-of-card issue in 2023, I knew what I was getting myself into buying a 2024 Hobby box. But hope springs eternal…especially when you’re an idiot like me.

            I haven’t collated the cards yet, but I can say this. It isn’t good for us set collectors. It’s Aaron Judge in one box and Mike Trout in another box, instead of getting them both in one. It’s no Juan Soto or Yordan Alvarez cards in EITHER Hobby box. It’s getting three, and I have nothing against him, Brandon Nimmo cards in two Hobby boxes.

            I will admit this happened, so I can’t fully complain.

            And for you folks who love the bells and whistles, here are mine from two Hobby boxes.

    

            CUTCH!!

            The BIG hits

            Still got that Clemente magic though.

            Be that as it may, as a set collector I guess the era of Hobby Box building is over for me.  Thinking about it, I realize I have a few options.

1.      I can buy my Hobby boxes like in then past, knowing I’d then have to buy blasters and hangers to complete the set. Which is a very old school idea. But…living in New York City, not a very feasible one.

2.      I can buy a Jumbo box and build the set that way and then go and buy the PC cards somewhere else.

3.      I can buy a Hobby or a Jumbo and rip for fun and then just buy the set when it comes out in the summer.

But those days of doing what I had been doing have come to an end.

 

Extra:

            So, I meant to do a blog post on Stadium Club 2023 last week. I don’t buy boxes of it anymore (gotta pick and choose what you collect in total and I chose base and Heritage) but I do like to buy Stadium Club cards of the Pirates, players I PC, and any cards that particularly stand out for me. With this year’s Stadium Club I have two things to say.

1.      The Jazz Man WINS 2023 Stadium Club

2.      Eddie Murray continues to have the BEST post-playing-day cards.

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

 

           

Pitchers, Paul Skenes, Football cards and my strange fascination with Eddie Murray post-playing career cards

 

 

I don’t collect pitchers.

            Let me be more specific…I don’t collect pitchers who don’t play for the Pittsburgh Pirates. And I probably shouldn’t even do that, considering how much their current pitching coach seems to be hell bent on ruining these young kids’ careers.

            I present three examples:

            All three of these young pitchers were supposed to be a part of the Pirates future, now they talk about them like after thoughts.

            I used to collect pitchers. Back when I was a kid. The era of complete game, twenty wins, and the potential to have a Hall of Fame career spanning 300 wins. Call me old fashioned but I’m just not that excited by Clayton Kershaw reaching 200 wins at the age of 35, or Max Scherzer reaching 200 wins at the age of 37. And I understand the era we’re in, and probably staying in. It’s all about heat, velocity and spin, and everything else that makes it even more unnatural for the human arm to pitch.

            Hence Tommy John becoming a household name during the baseball season.

            Especially in Pittsburgh where even our catchers are getting Tommy John.

            See you in 2025 Endy.

            And with hitters working on bat speed, launch angles, etc. I get that pitching has to change so that the game remains competitive.

            That said, major league batting averages hovered at .248 last season…a slight improvement over .243 in 2022.

            But you might be able to explain that away with some of the changes made to the game.

            So, no, I don’t collect pitchers.

            I still can’t help myself though…especially when a guy like this comes along.

            College champion. Drafted number one overall, highest ever signing for a prospect. Most likely (if he can keep himself away from Oscar Marin) will be pitching in Pittsburgh come June.

            It’s hard not to get excited over Paul Skenes…even though I did call him “Walking Tommy John” surgery when he was drafted in July.

            I’m sorry.

            It’s hard not to with pitchers these days.

            But maybe Paul Skenes will have a major career in the Big Leagues.

            And us fans can celebrate his 200^th win…at the age of 38.

 

            I also don’t prospect…okay, unless it’s the Pirates.

           Is it just me…or does Eddie Murray have some of the coolest post-playing cards out there?

            I don’t know if I’m attracted to the orange/black combo or what, but every single time I’m on a site buying cards of guys for my PC, I keep ending up buying Eddie Murray cards.  I mean I liked Eddie Murray when I was a kid. I keep cards of his with my Hall of Famer cards. But I wouldn’t say I was a rabid collector. If they keep making cards like his 2023 Archives I will be.

            Or maybe there's just no such thing as a bad Eddie Murray card.

 

Ah, Football cards. What is there for me to say about football cards. I’ll be honest. I dedicate maybe 10%-15% of the Hobby to Football cards. They’re too expensive in my view. You never get enough base cards of regular players. I don’t know what it is about Panini and football cards, but I don’t need cards of retired players in a base card set: 

Looking at you Score and Donruss.

And the card designs are rather…meh.

They seem to look the same year in and year out.

I don’t see the point in buying football cards other than for the players I like and Steelers team sets.

Even that is lackluster.

You have a card for the back-up QB and the dude you picked up from the Vikings.

And you leave out Cam Heyward?

I’m actually looking forward to the Topps/Fanatics behemoth getting the Football license back in the next year or so. Not because I like monopolies. I don’t. If I had it my way Topps would be competing with other licensed companies for ALL sports.

There I go being old again, I guess.

But I honestly believe that Tops/Fanatics will put out a better Football product. At least with base cards they will. They can’t do any worse than what Panini is doing at this point.

Happy Collecting!