Where have you gone 1986? A ode to Topps, Fleer and Donruss...but not Sportflics.

 

Dimitri Danielopoulos stood there on my front porch, like a shroud, clad in his gray hoodie, his mess of curly hair matted down by the hood, the droplets of an early winter rain making darker spots on his clothing, holding a small stack of 1986 Topps cards, carefully wrapped in tight sandwich plastic, in his hands.

            How had he gotten them? 1986 baseball cards were brand new. They were spoken about but not seen. The Topps ones had yet to hit the shelves at the Thrift Drug; the Thrift Drug that continued to keep Football cards on their shelves like museum relics of the previous fall. What did we want with Football cards at that point? The Steelers had gone 7-9 that season, a lowly third place in the old AFC Central Division. It was time to move on. It was time for all of us to move on…to baseball. Not that the coming 1986 season for the Pittsburgh Pirates gave us anything to be hopeful about, even with the promise of a new manager in Jim Leyland, and the lurking specter of a young and almost ready for prime-time Barry Bonds. The Pirates were still going to suck in 1986. But the cards wouldn’t. They never failed us.

            Dimitri (D) was somewhat of an interloper with us kids. Someone we were still feeling out. In the years before he’d been an enemy of sorts. The one rich kid on Pennoak Drive and Pennoak Manor (my little dead end cul de sac offshoot street), who lived in a big home at the end of the block, instead of inside the duplex homes that the rest of us called home. D was the bad boy who’d chosen to hang out with the ruffians on Dauntless Street, rather than us, his street-mates. The kid with the TP and silly string on Devil’s night. A short speedster who helped Dauntless beat us at wiffle ball and Nerf football; the kid always forever in my memory making a high jump rounding our makeshift third base, the wiffle ball just missing him and sailing into the Fanello’s yard, to score the winning run.

Then D suddenly dropped his so-called hoodlum friends, and started hanging more with us. Who knew why? Some said it was his mom who made him straighten out. Some said D did it on his own. Regardless, he started showing up to play ball with our crew, or showing up at our home unannounced with cards or just to hang out. He became our fast weapon rounding the bases. The little guy no one defended on third and long, ripe for a Hail Mary, if the ball didn’t get caught in the trees. But parents were still skeptical of him. D was bad news. That had been their initial impression. Stay away from him. And we did and we didn’t for as long as we could. But kids in my neighborhood were slaves to two things: sports and sports cards.

D was awash in baseball cards. He had a collection of cards dating from the mid-60s to late 70s that rendered us other kids speechless. Clemente, Mays, Aaron. He had them all from that golden era. D had Mickey Mantle cards for Christ’s sake. What thirteen-year-old kid had Mickey Mantle cards in 1986? D did. And he always seemed to get the new cards first. He’d done so in 1985, so it was no surprise that he was standing at my door accomplishing that same feat in 1986. Not only did D’s family have money, he had an older brother who’d given D all of his baseball cards, the Mays, the Mickeys, et al, thus making him the Richie Rich of our card world.

And D had a hot seventeen-year-old sister, Annas. Long, black hair; olive-colored Mediterranean skin; infectious smile When Annas wasn’t spending her summer’s sunbathing in the yard, awakening the beast in us boys, she seemed to always be willing to drive her pampered little brother out to the card shops that littered the further suburbs. In an effort to prove his salt in the neighborhood, D invited some of us along. But there was no way in hell that my parents were letting eleven (almost twelve) year old me get in a car with a thirteen-year-old, a still untrustworthy one at that, and his sixteen-year-old sister, to go galivanting out to a card shop in a strip mall. Where I saw a bounty of new cards, my parents saw car accidents and my untimely death.

So I waited. On the chain drug stores to drag their lazy asses in putting the new cards on the shelves, or for D to show up at my door like he’d done that particular rainy, winter day. As I remember it, we went straight up to my room; me, D and my brother trailing. I remember D unwrapping the cards from the plastic, handing them to me, the edge in his voice warning to be careful, even though whatever he was bringing my way were probably triples, doubles at best, of what he already had stashed at home.

1986 Topps! Finally! And in my grubby hands! Going through the cards I was stuck by the black and white borders. A black border! Like 1971 Topps…only not really. But 1971 Topps was mythical, and when trading we always seemed to want someone’s cards from that year. Ah, but 1986 Topps. The bold, sharp, colorful team names across the top of the cards. The little circle in the left corner that told the player’s position. Names written in bold black ink on the bottom. That red, black and gray cardstock back to the card. A sharp card. No gimmicks. 1986 Topps were the best-looking cards I’d ever seen, I thought to myself. But didn’t I say that every year? In the recent past, hadn’t there been a rosy-faced, cherubic ten soon-to-be eleven-year-old gushing over 1985 Topps in that same way?

I especially wanted this card:

Say what you will about Vince Coleman now. The attitude. The downfall in New York. The infamous firecracker. But at the start of the 1986 season he was the coolest ballplayer to me, the heir apparent to the base stealing of Rickey Henderson. Sure, he’d had a card in the 1985 Traded Set. But I was always a base set man.

D knew what he was doing in bringing those 1986 Topps cards to my home. He knew how deficient and needy I was. An easy mark when met with something new and shiny. I was like that crow in the Secret of NIMH, hunting for the sparkly

D knew he could walk out of my room having bilked me out of a few cards that he wanted (It surprised me that I even HAD cards that he wanted), for a small stack of commons and minor stars that I’d have ten times over by June, simply because they were hot off the press. And he was right. I’d trade away value for the new, and D would leave my home contented and grinning. I’d have bragging rights at school for a week or so. Then the new cards would be on the shelves everywhere, and I’d be doing nothing but cursing him under my breath while counting my losses.

1986 seemed to be the year where cards exploded at home and at school. Everyone seemed to be collecting. It wasn’t just us geeks who traded cards and baseball stickers at recess. Now kids who didn’t look like they collected at all had cards. The jocks had cards. Not content with monopolizing sports and gym, and the budding affections of twelve-year-old girls, these guys has to muscle in on our territory with their stacks of cards and binders. We all carried card binders. Budding capitalists with small portfolios of our best cards to show off our worth. Even Rick Glavin, who was a burn-out bully before we really knew who burn-outs were (he had longish hair, listened to metal), brought in a stack of cards to trade via fist on face coercion. We traded wherever and whenever. It seemed like almost daily one of us kids were getting our cards taken away by an annoyed and exasperated teacher, during a secret trade in English or Math class.

While I preferred Topps, I didn’t even think it was the best set of that year, once I got an eyeful (via D of course) of what Donruss and Fleer were doing. Topps had no Jose Canseco rookie card in their base 792 card set. Ah, the blessed ever-loving Donruss Jose Canseco card! The cardboard gold that turned us all into rank capitalists that year…if you could pull one or afford one raw at a flea market or card show. And if you could you were the man.

1986 Donruss was…okay. It had that slanted, blue border design with those millions of lines. I’d give it a very close third place. But for my money it would’ve been Fleer that had the best-looking card that year. Fleer with its thick, navy blue borders, fat team logos and big swath of color encasing the player’s name in position. Even the yellow, black and white backs were sharp. They were Pittsburgh Pirate colored! They had a Jose Canseco rookie card in their set too, if you didn’t mind him sharing it with Eric Plunk.

That was if you could even get Fleer or Donruss cards in my neighborhood. In 1986 the usual card buying route of Thrift Drug (Topps), Revco (Fleer) and Statlander Pharmacy (Donruss) had done us dirty in what they’d ordered for the 1986 season. Thrift still carried Topps, but Revco and Statlander had betrayed and abandoned us with the other two brands. They carried Topps as well now. Was this a conspiracy? What had once been a free-flowing capitalist market for cards had suddenly turned into a monopoly by one brand. Okay, one normal brand.

They all also carried Sportflics. Goddamned Sportflics. 

I hated Sportflics with a passion unparalleled. I hated Sportflics as I hated all Montagues. Sportflics with its head shots of the players morphing into wannabe in-motion shots, when you tilted the card. The trick hardly worked. Plus, you couldn’t really see a Sportflics image so well outside in the light of day, where so many of us kids were forced to do our business by parents who claimed being outdoors was somehow beneficial to us. Sportflics with its weird, cushiony backs to the cards. Sportflics that sat there on the shelves at Revco and Stalander where my Fleer and Donruss wax boxes should’ve been.  You know who liked Sportflics? Those news kids who’d just gotten into the hobby that year. They liked Sportflics.

For me, it was to hell with Sportflics. And a plague upon its house! And to hell with Revco and Statlander for selling out their individuality, and becoming another run-of-the-mill shill for The Real One. And I say this as a Topps man. To hell with them for keeping me from getting that Canseco rookie card. Either of them.

But good ol’ Dimitri Danielopoulos had the Cansecos. He had doubles…of both the Fleer and the Donruss rookie card. That greedy little monster with his hot sister and her license to drive! It took me until Christmas and a gift of the now-classic 1986 Topps Traded set to get my first Canseco rookie card. 

But by then it was to hell with Jose Canseco. There was a new sheriff in town vying for my affection.

 

As well as these guys

I didn’t fail at getting the Fleer or Donruss Canseco without trying. Sometimes the world leaves a desperate and focused child no choice. It was later in the summer, back when there was an actual August cool that could turn one’s attention from the laziness of days free to the eventual workman-like vibe of the coming fall. School would be starting (a week earlier for us Catholic kids), and we’d already replaced the wiffle balls with the Nerf footballs. The shelves at the Thirft drug had evolved from baseball to the 1986 Topps football cards sitting on its shelf. The times they were a’changing.

I was hanging out at D’s house, looking through cards, as usual. Annas was there somewhere, inside, because it was too cool to sunbathe. D brought up going to this card store he went to deeper in the suburbs. TNT Collectibles it was called. Hell, I still remember the store’s front sign that used Roberto Clemente’s profile photo from his 1955 Topps card. He asked me if I wanted to go. He had to know what my answer would be. It would be the same as always. No. Or I wasn’t allowed. But D was slicker than I was. He said we’d be gone maybe an hour or so. And wasn’t I given permission to be at his house all day? What was one hour out of the whole day? After all of that denial that had stunted me, I couldn’t argue with that logic.

It was the coolest ride of my life, heading out to TNT. We weren’t going anywhere I hadn’t been before. But the path seemed different under my newly defiant eyes. Route 22 seemed wider, more open and welcoming. D sat up front with Annas and I sat in the back. She played Top 40 radio, unlike the radio in my car set to WWWS and the oldies from the 1950s and 60s. We sang along to Steve Winwood. Higher Love was a huge hit that summer and seemed to always be playing. Annas stuck her arm out the driver’s side window, and let it wave in the breeze. The breeze that sent her perfume wafting back to me. When we pulled into the lot at TNT, she opened up a pack of cigarettes, lit herself a smoke, and told us boys to have fun.

TNT was the first time that I’d ever been in a collectibles shop that was solely framed around sports cards and sports card memorabilia. It was a small store front; three display cases and shelving behind that held countless boxes of cards. There were game used bats resting on slats, and old Pirates and Steelers pennants tacked to the walls. They had game used jerseys in frames. One that was worn by Terry Bradshaw. One that was worn by Dave Parker. The price tags on the items was beyond any money I’d ever see for a long time.

D went looking through the bins of start cards while I continued to be starstruck. I had to shake myself out of it. This was heaven. This was Mecca. I could die in TNT and be eternally at peaceful rest. In the distance on the shelves sat those long-sought after packs of 1986 Fleer and Donruss. The Canseco would be my destiny. I need only ask the suspicious looking gentleman smoking a cigarette and watching afternoon game shows on a small color TV. Then it all would be mine. Victory! Glory! Triumph! Not having to settle for a pack of goddamned Sportflics! TNT collectibles would be my shining moment. My Xanadu, my…Noooooooooooooooooo…

….in all of my excitement…I forgot to run home and bring any money with me.

            Skunked again as they say.

Lastly...on Wednesday Night I was invited and appeared on the sports card podcast, About the Cards, to discuss the essay about returning to collecting that I'd written for Kristofer Collins' Pittsburgh Book Review. You here see the podcast HERE. It was a wonferful experience and I was thankful for the opportunity. Hosts Tim Shepler, Stephan Loeffler and Ben Wilson do About the Cards every Wednesday at 8PM PST (10 Central). All three hosts are a class act, and they made this guy feel very welcome beforehand and during the show. If I can describe About the Cards it's like sitting back with your well-informed buddies and discussing sports and the hobby of sports card collecting. Thank you gentlemen once again.

 

Thanks for reading. Happy collecting.

 

Next Friday:  I’m going to take a small break from the childhood stories (have to preserve them), to take a look at the few places I go to locally to buy cards, in the wake of there not being many card stores left. And maybe I’ll show you what I bought.

 

--JG