Good Riddance 2024 and the art of hoping for hope in 2025

 

Ah, the way the years bleed into one another.

            Not that I should expect to feel differently waking up on January 1^st, after going to sleep on December 31 (the years of staying up until midnight have long since passed for me). Honestly, I feel the same sort of malaise in the early part of 2025 that pretty much haunted from the summer of 2024 that progressed into such a pit of anxiety from October to the end of last year, that I pretty much gave up on everything aside from just trying to get through my day without having a nervous breakdown.

            I stopped creative writing before Thanksgiving. I’ve been writing poems and fiction since the age of 17. That’s 33 years. For the past two decades I’ve (mostly) gotten up four to five days a week at 4:45 A.M. to get a couple of hours of writing in before I had to go to work.

            That’s all ended.

            I’m sad it’s ended.

            But I even sadder at the fact that I don’t miss doing the work.

            I sure as hell don’t miss 4:45 AM.

            But this is a baseball card/sports card blog, right?

            What do you want to hear my problems for?

            But collecting is a part of that general anxiety that’s really hit me. I probably had the worst (i.e. least fun/least productive) collecting year since I started back into The Hobby in 2019. Other than Update in October I haven’t bought a single card since I dumbly bought a box of Chrome in July. I didn’t even finish the 2024 base/update set. Haven’t bought singles for the PC/Pirates collections since the summer.

            Just nothing.

            Until I started trying to claw myself all out of this before I went home to Pittsburgh in December. There are good days and there are bad days.

            This past week has been a setback for me.

            But I wanted to at least start writing about cards again…or whatever it is I do on here. And while home for Christmas, I made a pilgrimage to Cranberry Township, in the northern Pittsburgh suburbs, to the Baseball Card Castle, which, hands down, is one of my favorite sports card hobby shops.

            The store is as old school as you can get. Glass cases throughout the front of the place. Battered and old showcases full of old baseball cards. Hobby boxes and old wax behind the counters. Pennants hanging al over. Posters of Pittsburgh sports heroes on the walls. The back of the Baseball Card Castle has shelving full of boxes of completed sets for the four major sports, going as far back as the early 1980s.

            It felt good being in the Baseball Card Castle.

            It felt right.

            I grabbed these two guys.

            The Mazeroski rookie I’ve been wanting since…well…since I was a child. The Baseball Card Castle had three under glass in a showcase, the first two quite a bit above my price range. But the third…the third fit the ol’ wallet just right. The same could be said for the 1979 TCMA Pro Japanese Baseball card for Sadaharu Oh. I’ve been wanting a card of the all-time Home Run champ for a number of years. I’ve always been intrigued by this set as well.

            You can find out why HERE.

            Both were welcome additions to the PC. A

            I got lucky this Christmas as Santa (okay my way) brought me a couple of blaster boxes. One each of 2024 Update and Stadium Club. Both were a fun rip. And my wife kind of has the Midas Touch when buying my cards.

            I started 2025 by buying myself I product that I enjoy but seems to garner a lot of (at times warranted) criticism from other collectors.

Topps seems to drop the ball a lot of the time in the archival continuity of the product. It doesn’t really rub me the wrong way, but if you’re a collector who’s really big on the company maintaining accurate fealty to the product, I don’t begrudge your complaints. For me, it’s a chance to rip and collecting an archival product that has both older and current players and doesn’t bog me down with seeking out short prints.

            I’m not wild about this year’s design choices.

            And there were a lot of inserts.

            24 of them.

That’s 3 packs worth of cards to an avid base collector such as myself.

I also managed to help a fellow collector finish his 1989 Donruss set this year and received these wonderful custom cards in the mail.

I don’t know what 2025 is going to bring for me. I hope it’s better than last year. I hope to keep a lot the anxiety and other demons at bay. As for my creative writing endeavors, we’re almost ½ through January and I have little to no desire for it. Let someone else get up at 4:45 and write poems and novels no one wants to read. 

I’ve done it long enough.

I do want to re-engage with The Hobby though. Collect more. Write about collecting more. I know I’ve made promises about The Blog, but consistency just hasn’t been my strong suit lately. I have a few posts coming up, so I’ll at least be consistent here for the next few weeks. I’d like 2025 to be the year I really re-committed to collecting.

I already like the 2025 Topps base design.

But I’m not getting fooled into trying to build that set by hand.

Anyway, thank you for taking the time read this.

I hope you’re all doing okay, or as okay as you can be.

 

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting! Happy New Year!

 

 

 

 

FERNANDO

 

Fernando.

            FernandoMania!

            Hearing and reading about Fernando Valenzuela’s passing last week, it took me all the way back to when I was the youngest of a baseball fan, to when my love of the game was just beginning to grow. Fernando was one of the first baseball players I got to know and root for, as a kid, who wasn’t a Pittsburgh Pirate. I was seven in 1981. I’d just had my first pack of cards bought for me a year earlier. I was buying more cards and receiving more cards in 1981. My tale of West Virginia woe, anyone? So, by 1981 I was starting to really learn players. But none was more vivid than Fernando Valenzuela.

            I swear I saw him pitch at some point that season on NBC’s Game of the Week.

            I can still feel the hype coming out of my television.

            Apparently, FernandoMania even began on my seventh birthday.

            I was a Los Angeles Dodgers fan for a lot of years because of Fernando Valenzuela.

            The current economics of the game have sort of changed that for me.

            But we’re talking baseball cards here.

            When I was a kid, I kept Fernando’s cards with all of my star cards.

            When I got back into collection in 2019, I did the same thing.

            I’m not a massive collector of Fernando, or anything, but his cards have never found their way into any of my common boxes, supposing you believe in such a thing as a common card. There’s still a slot in my stars/Hall of Famers monster box for him. I was glad to see all of the attention and tributes paid to him. On Facebook I’m friends with quite a number of people in the L.A. area, and the love for and memories of Fernando Valenzuela are still there. He’s a part of, and will always be a part of. Dodgers lore.

            Rest in Peace, Good Sir.

            And thank you.

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

 

Joey Bart

 

It’s a raw deal being a Pittsburgh Pirates fan.

            The current owner is cheap.

            He won’t sell the team.

            He hires clueless people to run his team.

            And he does so giving them more room on the leash that he should.

            The Pittsburgh Pirates have had 27 losing seasons in the past 31 years.

            If I’m correct, the Pittsburgh Pirates have the longest losing streak in all of the major sports.

            None of the team’s prospects seem to pan out.

            I’m not going to be a fool and site the Pittsburgh Pirates being a small market team, even though I’m firmly (and yes I’m union) in the camp of Major League Baseball adding a cap/floor system. I can’t even defend the small-market excuse, when teams in Cleveland, Milwaukee, Kansas City, and Detroit are all in this year’s playoffs…or were.

            The Pirates went 76-86 in 2023.

            The Pirates went 76-86 again in 2024.

            Only with this guy on the mound for most of the season.

            On August 3^rd, if you can believe it, the Pirates were actually in the running (close running) for a Wild Card spot. But a total collapse that month sealed the deal.

            Again, it’s a raw deal being a Pittsburgh Pirates fan.

            You have to look for silver linings when you can get them.

            The same goes for being a collector of Pittsburgh Pirates player cards and team sets.

            My silver lining is this guy.

            On April 2^nd, 2024, the Pirates acquired Joey Bart from the San Francisco Giant for current minor league pitcher, Austin Strickland. I’m sure to a lot of you collectors out there, Joey Bart just comes to mind as once promising prospect, who failed to deliver on his 2^nd overall pick promise. And maybe you’re right. I know in 2021 when there was a Bart card/Joey Bart insert card in every Topps release, I just lumped him in with all of the other big-shot rookies that people talk about that season, and then are done with by the following year. As a collector, I get tired of “this year’s” big rookies.

            To be honest, I don’t know what happened with Bart in San Francisco. Did the Giants push him along before he was ready in 2020, because Posey sat out there. Was the pressure too much. I know Bart was hurt a few times in in San Francisco, and in their minor league system, and maybe that had something to do with his performance, and for the Giants finally souring on him.

            But I’m glad they did.

            Even though Joey Bart had two stints on the IL for the Pirates, he put up some pretty good numbers. In just 80 games, Bart his .265 with 13 home runs and 45 RBI. Granted it’s the Pirates, but Bart’s home run total tied him for 4^th place on the team. And he played solid defense as well. People in Pittsburgh started calling him Joey Barrels, and when Bart hit one of those 13 home runs, we said he’d hit, a Bart-Dart.

            He actually made a lot of fans forgot how much this kid was flailing, as our 1/1 pick only a few short years ago.

            I still have hope for Henry Davis.

            But I sure hope Joey Bart is wearing the black and gold for a lot of years.

            In short, I became Joey Bart collector in 2024.

            These were the Bart cards I already had gathering dust in assorted boxes.

            And I love these inserts from 2021.

            I did a recent ComC purchase (the same one in which I got those Danny O’Connell cards) and made sure to get myself some Joey Bart cards.

            Now, THIS is a catcher's card!

            I think 1983 is starting to become one of my all-time favorite sets.

            Jackson Holliday, Colt Keith, Wyatt Langford, Jackson Merrill, Jackson Chourio, and Paul F-ing Skenes all have RC in 2024 Update.

            But do you know which player’s card I’m most excited about?

            You guessed it.

            I tend to latch on to Pirates catchers. Been doing so since I pulled this card out of my very first pack of baseball cards in 1980.

            I’m glad Joey Bart is a Pittsburgh Pirate.

            I hope he has a healthy 2025 season as our number 1 backstop.

            I’m glad to be a Joey Bart collector now.

            And every night I go to bed praying that Bob Nutting sells the team, so that us Pirates fans can have a chance to feel what those Tigers, Guardians, Padres, Brewers and Royals fans are feeling right now.

 

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

 

           

 

           

Pete

 

The king is dead.

            Or rather…

            …long live the king.

            Something like that, right?

            I imagine a lot has been written, and a lot will be written about Pete Rose in the coming weeks. I’m sorry to add to that. And it shouldn’t be shocking or surprising that a 83-year-old man has died. It’s just…well…Pete Rose loomed over baseball like a gloomy shroud for over thirty years since he’d been banned from the sport. More than Bonds. More than any of those “roid” guys from the 90s/early 2000s. So, it is kind of shocking. Say what you will about greenies and pep pills or whatever, but Pete Rose wasn’t pumping steroids into his body to play the game of baseball hard-nosed and fast the way he did in his 20+ year career. He’s the all-time hits leader for a reason.

            And yet…

            There’s the gambling (although what in the hell does that even matter now). And the low-life associations. The philandering. The lifetime ban. That “nifty” character clause in the Hall-of-Fame balloting that voters like to site, that probably would’ve kept him out regardless. But on paper, undeniably, Pete Rose belongs in the Hall of Fame. But he’s not in the Hall of Fame. I think it would be a disingenuous slap in the face to put him in the Hall of Fame now that he’s gone. Maybe that sounds stupid. But it just doesn't feel right.

In my own experiences with Pete Rose, I never saw the man in his prime. When I got into baseball, Pere was over 40 and over the hill. And the walls were closing in. I finished a book over the summer entitled: Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball by Keith O’Brien.

The book was good. It pulled no punches. Pete Rose was a hero on the field, and not so much off of it. I don’t begrudge a person their dark side. I’m one of those people who can easily separate art from the artists, or I guess the baseball from the ballplayer. But…when I finished O’Brien’s book, I have to admit I was pretty certain that I wasn’t going to do a Collecting by the Book blog post on Pete Rose.

            And yet…

            Let’s go back to childhood.

            When I was in the heart of my collecting years, let’s say 1984-1987, Pete Rose was just an absolute giant in the sport of baseball, and probably more so in The Hobby. Pete was heading toward immortality and that made trying to get his cards an exciting prospect for a young collector. Baseball and baseball fans love players whom are heading toward immortality. I remember being 10 and people talking about Pete Rose trying, probably actually breaking Ty Cobb’s hit record, within the next year or so. I learned who Ty Cobb was because of Pete Rose.

            The very idea of seeing Pete break that record was exciting.

            I remember when I got this card.

            My first Pete Rose card after that horrible suitcase debacle.

            It was one of the front cards in a rack pack that they were selling at the Giant Eagle supermarket. My grandma bought it for me because we were staying with her and my grandpap while my parents were out of town, and when there was some money to buy kids who missed their parents something, adults did the right thing back then. I remember opening the rack pack in the backseat of my grandpap’s car and just being excited over the Pete Rose card. Looking at it as we drove to Star’s bar where my grandparent’s had a few afternoon beers. Bringing the cards in the with me to look at it over and over again, as I sipped Ginger Ale and ate those octagon-shaped Lance’s cheese crackers.

            You could take kids to bars in 1984.

            When I was a kid older Pete Rose cards were unaffordable because he was nearing thar hallowed record. I mean, to be honest, if it didn’t come in a pack, most older cards were unaffordable to me back then. But Pete? Forget about it. You couldn’t even get a kid to trade you a Pete Rose card. In 1985, I certainly had a lot of cards for players that I was looking to pull out of a pack. Gooden’s rookie card comes to mind. I wish I could remember the excitement of pulling this one.

            Because it would’ve been exciting.

            Because 1985 was the year, right?

            Pete Rose heading toward breaking Ty Cobb’s hit record was THE baseball news that entire summer of 1985. Us kids, us collector’s; we all had Pete Rose fever in that summer of 1985. I always claimed to have memories of seeing Pete Rose break Cobb’s record. The setting: I remember I was at my Aunt and Uncle’s, just sitting there watching regular old TV, and the news interrupted with one of those bulletins, right; Pete Rose’s record breaking at bat. For years I believe that’s what happened.

            But I was wrong.

            And kind of right.

            The footage I saw was actually from Sunday, September 8^th, 1985, when the news did, in fact, interrupt regular old TV to show a Pete Rose at bat. And I was at my Aunt and Uncle’s, watching regular old TV when it happened. September 8^th, 1985 was a Sunday, and most liked I would’ve been at my Aunt and Uncle’s because it was my cousin’s birthday party. The Pete Rose hit that I saw on TV that day was in a game against the Cubs when Pete Rose TIED Ty Cobb for the all-time hits record.

            But what I, and millions of us witnessed that day…well, I let the folks at SABRexplain.

            How many of you remember being excited when Topps did this in 1986?

            As a fan and collector as age 12, I was already well-versed in baseball cards and how Topps celebrated achievements.

            Pete Rose getting the Henry Aaron treatment.

            And it seemed fitting…at that time.

            But…Pete Rose squandered that immortality…didn’t he? The compulsion to gamble. The compulsion to lie about it, and spending the next thirty some years never owning up to it. Maybe that’s pride. Maybe that’s delusion. Maybe the standards of a sports hall of fame should stick to the sport…or at least not be so selective as to what bad behavior is acceptable and what isn’t. Maybe Pete Rose understood something about the mystique of baseball that us fans didn’t. I know when I got back into collecting in 2019, I certainly made sure to get some Pete Rose cards.

            This one is a personal favorite

            And all I know is that Pete Rose couldn’t carry Heny Aaron’s jock strap…at least when it comes to integrity.

            But I can’t pretend that I wasn’t that excited kid, waiting on history to happen.

            Rest in Peace, Pete. You were an exciting part of a lot of collector’s lives in the mid-80’s.

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!