What’s that old joke? How do you make God laugh? Make a plan.
I can’t remember where I heard it.
From a movie, I think. But it’s fitting this week, because while I had planned
to skip on the memories and write a post about two of the local card stores
that I frequent (as much as one can frequent anything this year), my plans fell
through for one simple reason: Covid-19. Let’s just say there were precautionary
issues with both places. Since I’m not in the business of getting a virus and
possibly dying, I abstained from entering either establishment. That said, your
loss is also my loss. You don’t get an essay on two card stores, and I didn’t
get to purchase the much need supplies (and yes, fine, some 1988 score rack
packs for 50 cents apiece) that I much needed.
Instead you get to sit back and read
as I reminisce on 1980 Topps baseball cards. The end of an era for the Topps
Corporation, but the beginning of one for me.
Was it my grandma or my dad who
bought me my very first pack of baseball cards in 1980? The memory is fuzzy.
For lineage purposes I want to say it was my old man. He’d given me the sport
of baseball. He’d taken me to my first live Pirates game in the spring of 1980.
Why not be the one who bestowed baseball cards on me as well?
But
other than coins, my dad wasn’t a card collector. He had no slightly used cards
from the collection of his youth to pass along to little old me, once I caught
the collecting bug. And he was never much interested in baseball cards those
years that I was in the heat of collecting. But the bank he worked in on Butler
Street was across an alley from the five and dime where that inaugural pack of
cards was bought. It could’ve been him. My mom, brother and me picking him up
after work, as we were a one-car family, and a barely running car at that. The
old man needed a pack of smokes. Hey, why not grab a 25-cent pack of baseball
cards for the kid?
More logically it was probably my
grandma. She watched us from time to time as kids. We lived a block away from
each other, at the time, in the Lawrenceville section of Pittsburgh. My grandma
frequented that five and dime for her daily lottery and smokes. It seems
reasonable that I would’ve gone in there with her. More reasonable that I spied
that royal blue pack of cards amidst the candy and gum, the big baseball front
in center with the words BASEBALL written across it in bold black. An Adam West
Batman power BOOM! of yellow in the right-hand corner advertising 15 cards
inside! The smaller writing in white on the left informing this budding reader
that there was also to be one stick of gum tucked somewhere in the package.
Like this here:
Baseball cards? What were baseball cards? It seemed prophetic that I
would pick something called baseball cards over the usual candies my grandma
would get for me on these trips. As I remember it, it was a late sunny
afternoon. My memories of living in the city of Pittsburgh are always bathed in
a warmth. The way a summer afternoon of cloudless blue skies looks as it begins
to bend toward the evening. Kids playing in the field at Arsenal Middle School.
Samantha racing up to the fence when she saw me, excited, even though we shared
the same concrete, communal backyard of yellow-bricked Denny Street row houses.
My grandma calling her my girlfriend to our mutual embarrassment. She’s a
girl and she’s your friend, grandma had to clarify. Me a six-year-old kid
in a microcosm of city that smelled like car exhaust, the greasy spoon of fries
and burgers being cooked up at the Eat’n’Park, and the faint wafts of brewing
beer from the Pittsburgh Brewing Company where my grandpap and uncle both
worked.
But baseball cards. My mind’s eye remembers my small hands shuffling
through the cards as we walked. That bright, alluring package most likely
discarded along the sidewalk, it being a few years before Pittsburgh pride
would be picking up in a big marketing push. I remember little of that initial
pack other than I wanted more. And that I got my second most favorite player in
the whole world.
This guy:
To look at him Ed Ott was your average, stocky, mostly-platoon catcher
with a little but not a lot of pop in his bat. A member of the 1979 world
series Pittsburgh Pirates team, on his last year in Pittsburgh in 1980, with
only one year of pro ball left in him out in Anaheim. A career .259 hitter
remembered by only the most diehard of fans. But I loved him. After Willie
Stargell he was my favorite Pirate. He made this left-hander want to be a
catcher in 1980 the way that Johnny Ray would make this left-hander want to be
a second baseman only a year or so later. I played both positions and was good
at neither, eventually succumbing to the usual lefty spots at first base or out
in right field. For years I cursed my left-handedness in the way that I cursed
Pirate games when Steve Nicosia played instead of Ed Ott.
But there he was in my very first
pack of baseball cards ever. 1980 Topps. The white borders, the small pennant
at the top left listing the player’s position. The big pennant on the bottom
right listing the team name. The big, colorful photos of the players with that
faux signature on the card. 1980 didn’t need no All-Star cards. They slapped
that honor right on the regular players’ card. I actually preferred when Topps
did that. The blue and black backs that really did it for me.
A rookie card of this guy!!
Although I’d be hapy to have one of his:
To me, the 1980 set of Topps baseball cards is a classic. One of my favorite sets of all-time. I tend to gravitate to that set more than any others. There’s a golden aura around that set for me. When I got back into collecting in the summer of 2019, the old-time players that I decided to start collecting again, if they had a 1980 Topps card, they were among my first purchases
Some collectors don’t like 1980 Topps. Some
see it as another set during a drab, lull period for Topps, that went from 1979
to around 1983. With the Rickey Henderson card one can make the small argument
that 1980 was the moment the rookie card become the thing to collect
(although more likely it was in 1983 or 1984 with the arrival of Don Mattingly
cards). That may all be so. And the great thing about collecting is the diverse
and varied opinions of collectors. What attracts you and what doesn’t. As I
said I love 1980 Topps. I plan on building the whole 726-card set very soon, or
whenever I figure out how Ebay works. Maybe it’s for sentimental reasons that I
love the set. 1980 Topps being my first pack and all. My first experience with
baseball cards. You never forget your first time, right? Maybe it’s the time
and place that does it for me too.
1980
would be my last year living in the city of Pittsburgh. A year later my family
would be living in Wellsburg, West Virginia, a place that was less than an hour
away but seemed the world away from everything I knew. I was unhappy. I felt
alone even among other kids. My nickname is Jay, but the principal at the Catholic
school made everyone call me John. The people in Wellsburg seemed nice…but
we were city slickers to them. Some inbred shot my dog, but thankfully only in
the leg.
I
began the kid version of binge-eating to cover the lonesomeness and anxiety. In
Wellsburg, I got fat. I developed what would become a lifelong issue and obsession
with my weight. My family would move back to the Pittsburgh area in 1982. But
it was to the suburbs instead. No more walks along Butler Street in the summer
sun. No more sights. No more smell of brewing beer or burgers. No Samantha
racing toward me from the green fields at Arsenal Middle School. No packs of
cards from the five and dime.
So,
if 1980 Topps feels like a beginning for me, I guess it also feels like an
ending in ways. 1980 was an ending for the Topps corporation though, at
least in terms of being the only kid on the block. Here’s the short of the
situation: The Fleer corporation had been trying to make inroads into the world
of card collecting as far back as the early 1960s, even producing a small set
in 1963 until Topps sued and had it blocked. After various other attempts
throughout the 60s, the Fleer corporation finally sued the Topps corporation
and the Major League Baseball Players Association to try and end this monopoly.
In 1980 a judge ruled in Fleer’s favor, ending Topps’ one company reign and forcing the MLBPA to issue license to other card manufacturers, thus giving the world the shaky starts of both the Fleer and Donruss brands in 1981.
More lawsuits followed over gum and stickers,
the ruling was actually overturned, but that didn’t matter. Topps’ control had officially
ended. By 1989 the collecting world would have five major sports card brands
out there competing. In 2010 Topps once again became the sole manufacturer of
officially licensed baseball cards. And, man, do I miss the competition.
But
back then…all a kid wanted was his cards. I didn’t care who was making them!
Thanks for reading. Happy collecting.
*The Quote that I mentioned at the beginning on this
essay IS from a movie. First though I believe it came from a joke by Woody Allen.
“I believe in the old Yiddish proverb, We Plan, God Laughs. Where I remember it
from is from Noah Baumbach’s excellent 1995 movie, Kicking and Screaming. The
quote is said by a bartender by the name of Chet (played by Eric Stoltz) who uses
the quote as advice to another character.
If you want to learn more about the Fleer/Topps Lawsuit Here are couple of links:
Matt Sammon's EXCELLENT podcast Wax Ecstatic goes into detail on the Topps vs Fleer litigation in
episode 93's discussion on 1980 Topps Baseball Cards. If you don't have iTunes or Spotify, you can find the episode right HERE
Next Friday: I’m going to TRY and hit up those card stores
and have an essay on them. But cases are spiking here, and some people just don’t
want to be a part of the solution…so we’ll see. Otherwise it’ll be another trip
down memory lane.
--JG
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