How does one become a fan of a
particular player?
A
collector?
Thinking
back on when I was a little kid, interested in sports yes, but not yet able to
understand the nuances of a game, or even sit through one until I reached a
certain age, and obviously unaware of those statistics that rendered a player a
star or a so-called common player; how did I determine which players I loved or
didn’t. Which cardboard hero struck me while opening packs? What did I have to
spark my fandom before I was a true fan? Was it legend? Reputation? Word of
mouth from people older than me? Case in point, I offer this: as a kid growing
up in Pittsburgh I loved, LOVED, Terry Bradshaw and Willie Stargell. Still do.
I
mean…check this out:
Bradshaw and
Stargell were/are legends in Pittsburgh. Bradshaw was a four-time Super Bowl
champ, a three-time all-pro, an MVP and a Hall of Famer. He was part of a
Steeler’s dynasty in the 1970s whose legend, in my opinion, the team still
coasts on from time to time. He even recorded country albums and got into a bar
fight with Burt Reynolds…on the movie screen anyway. Terry Bradshaw’s very name
made me excited. I wanted to be Terry outside throwing touchdowns. I wanted his
cards. I was excited to get his cards in packs (primarily 1982-1984). I still
want his cards. I haven’t really gotten back into football collecting since my
return to The Hobby in 2019. But if I do, I’m buying me some Terry Bradshaw
cards.
The same goes for
me and Willie Stargell. Or, Pops, as we call him in the ‘Burgh. Stargell was an
MVP, a seven-time all-star, he made it to the World Series (and won) twice,
garnering himself a World Series MVP award in the process. He finished his
career with 475 home runs. I mimicked his batting stance, before I knew about
any of that. There’s a statue dedicated in Willie’s honor, that I visit every
single time I’m home and catch a game, outside of PNC Park. One of the first
players that I started PCing when I returned to The Hobby was Willie Stargell, because
I knew any collection of mine would be incomplete without him. My current, most
cherished card is a beat-up, off-center 1964 Willie Stargell Topps card.
With all of those
stats/awards I mentioned, it’s talent that obviously makes one a fan, right?
Makes one a collector of a player’s cards?
Willie Stargell
and Terry Bradshaw made Pittsburgh the City of Champions by the end of the
1970s. But, if I must be truly honest, when I really started paying attention
to sports, say age 8 or 9, Willie Stargell was an aging, slightly overweight
40-year-old ballplayer, who was being used more as a pinch hitter than a first
baseman. He was hitting the last of those 475 home runs. My lasting images of
Pops are of him hobbling around the bases on those bad knees when he hit a home
run, or having someone pinch run for him when he hit a single. Regardless,
Willie Stargell’s 1983 Fleer and Donruss cards were the ones I wanted when that
year’s sets came out. And he was officially retired by then.
With Terry Bradshaw it was the very same situation. When I started watching the Steelers, they were a few years removed from Super Bowls, and at the beginning of a spell that would see them struggle to win nine games a season. By 1983, Terry Bradshaw was a 34-year-old quarterback with constant elbow issues, who missed almost the entire football season, only coming back for two quarters of one game against the Jets (in Shea Stadium), before he felt his elbow pop, was removed from the game, and was done for good. Yet My favorite card in the classic 1984 Topps Football set is Terry Bradshaw’s card. Not Eric Dickerson’s rookie card or John Elway’s. Not even Dan Marino, the local Pittsburgh boy (and fellow high school alumni), who the Steelers could’ve drafted as their heir apparent had they been aware of how bad Bradshaw’s elbow injury had really been.
That’s the Willie
Stargell and Terry Bradshaw that I remember. The fallen heroes. The aging
champs. The old men trying to win one more game.
How
does one become a fan? A collector? For those guys does it rest on legend
alone?
I think back on a
cold early spring afternoon, in 1987, hanging out in Dimitri Danielopoulos’ bedroom. D, as I’ve stated in earlier posts,
was always the first one in our neighborhood to get that season’s new baseball cards.
And that afternoon he had 1987 Topps. Like the hungry animal for wax and gum
stained cardboard that I was, I went through his stack ravenously, looking for
the big rookies I knew awaited us that year, always looking for the Pirates
cards as I went along.
That particular
afternoon I came across this:
I knew little about Bobby Bonilla in early 1987. At most, I knew that Bonilla had once been a prospect in the Pirates system but had been traded away. Bobby had come back to the Pirates organization in a late 1986 trade, so late that the card manufacturers still had him in his White Sox uniform when their traded, update and rookie sets were released. In 1986, Bobby Bonilla was a new face in a sea of new faces as the Pirates tried to get out of their rut. We had a new manager. New players. We had a new buddying legend in Barry Bonds. Bobby Bo was lost in the shuffle to me…until that moment in D’s room.
Looking at that
card in D’s bedroom that cold, spring afternoon something struck me. It was
like I could just tell Bobby Bonilla was going to be big time in Pittsburgh. A player
with some tools. A stud ballplayer. Head cocked sideways and his cap tilted
with his bat resting on his shoulder. A forearm of veins and muscle; Bobby
Bonilla looked like a superstar in the making. The kind of player I wanted to
get behind and root for in every game. A legend if he played his cards right.
Like Stargell. Bobby Bonilla’s card looked cool. I decided right then and there
to become a fan and collect every piece of cardboard with him on it that I
could pull out of a pack or find. I’d worry about the stats as I went along.
Bobby
Bonilla didn’t disappoint us in Pittsburgh….at least not on the field. In his
six years in Pittsburgh, Bobby Bo was an all-star four times and he won the
Silver Slugger award three times. in 1990, along with a lot of other bright,
young stars, Bobby Bonilla helped lead the Pirates to their first NL East
Championship since 1979. He would do it again in 1991, before leaving
Pittsburgh and the Pirates to sign with the New York Mets, and forcing me to
endure this card:
One of the few
1993 Topps cards that I actually owned since I was basically done collecting by
then. But I had to have Bobby’s card that year because my gamble had paid off.
I’d picked a star and got to watch his legend grow. Bobby Bonilla was going to
be a career long star and a hall of famer for sure…sigh. And yes I do celebrate Bobby Bonilla Day.
Bobby Bonilla,
despite how his career finished (not Hall of Fame worthy but pretty
respectable), reflected an era that I was in where I could watch the players
play, understand the game as an avid fan, read box scores, and generally have
an emotional attachment to the team/sport of my choice (don’t get me started on
Game 7 of the 1992 NLCS). In a way, I could invite the players into my home on
a regular basis. My card collecting wasn’t predicated on legend by the
mid-80’s, or on wishing I’d seen a player like Terry Bradshaw, Willie Stargell,
or the recently departed Henry Aaron (another player whom I loved for years without
having seen him play a single inning of baseball) play the game, but more on
statistics and the professional performance of the athlete. By the mid to late
1980s my card collecting fluctuated like the Stock Market.
And it wasn’t just
Bobby Bonilla’s 1987 Topps card that drew me to him as a collector that year.
As I’ve stated here before, there is something about the 1987 brands, in
general, that really grabs me. They’re in my wheelhouse, to use a lesser term. I
don’t know if it had something to do with me being thirteen and having my own
cash to spend of 1987 cards, like I’d had in no other year. In short, I had the
kid version of purchasing power and could buy more cards. Plus, I also had
greater access to 1987 Fleer and Donruss cards, as we progressed further into
the so-called Junk Wax Era, and more stores began to stock cards. Or the cards
were just damned good looking that season.
The
1987 Topps Bonilla is my favorite, but that doesn’t mean I don’t absolutely
love his Fleer and Donruss cards as well.
I’d say his 1987
Fleer is my second favorite base rookie card. While I like the design of
Donruss, and consider that brand my second favorite set of that year, there’s
something about Bonilla’s Fleer rookie that beats it out. The blue border,
obviously; I think what really wins Bonilla’s Fleer rookie is that it’s the
only one of the three that has him in an action shot, or waiting for the pitch,
a semi-action shot. Here’s Bobby Bonilla at the plate ready to knock one out of
the ballpark. 1987 was also the last year I got to see Pirates cards with
players still wearing that yellow/gold batting helmet. A dividing line between
the past and present, the old glories and dark years, and all of the light that
was to come (1990-1992). On a more base note, the Fleer Bonilla just plain
beats the close-up shot that Donruss chose to go with that year.
Anyone else love
this card?
As a seventh-grader in the spring of 1987, life began to throw a lot of distractions my way, as I’m sure it did to a lot of you out there. There were girls, although I liked them way more than they liked me. There were sports. Music purchasing began to creep into my modest paperboy salary. But a good many of us still traded cards at school; actually, by 1987, I’d say more of us than ever were trading cards at school. We did so on lunch and recess, and at our own peril in class. Future millionaires who had no need for English class. No matter what, in that year of 1987, I never traded a Bo Jackson card to anyone. I kept them separate from the other cards. I carried his Topps rookie in a top loader, like a talisman in my pocket.
Not
only is Bo’s Topps rookie my favorite of his, it might actually be one of my
favorite cards ever made. I won’t bore you with, yet again, praising the 1987
Topps design. Let’s focus on Bo himself. Young Bo. Hungry Bo. Bo focused on a
pop fly coming his way. The way the royal blue of his hat and jersey stands out
in the sun. Bo before Bo knew anything. Future Star like a rainbow blast below
the image. Damned near a prophesy of truth had it all not come crashing down on
an L.A. football field in 1991. Everything in Bo Jackson’s 1987 Topps rookie
jumps out for me. It speaks to me as everything I’d want in a sports image, and
it’s so perfectly cast in a baseball card. I’m always excited to get one in a
pack, or find one at a show. That card still thrills me.
But
then there’s this card:
If I’m in love with Bo Jackson’s 1987 Topps base rookie card, then I flirt beyond my own sense of shame with his Donruss rookie. I can’t tell if Bo is working out in the image, or if he’s tossing a ball and we just can’t see his glove. But this card is where Donruss really shines in 1987. It’s the card where the black of the border and the blue of Bo’s uniform crash into this perfect symbiosis of color. The stadium behind him is just darkened enough. The grass on the field the right kind of green. Bo Jackson’s 1987 Donruss is the kind of card that I’d show someone if they told me that sports cards weren’t works of art, to prove their narrow-minded ass wrong. This sucker should be hanging in the MoMA. I think I’m going to sneak one on the walls the next time I visit.
I should say a little bit about the Fleer Bo Jackson rookie card. And a little I will say. I like the card. But I think I like it because it’s a Bo Jackson card, as opposed to it lending me any aesthetic value. The Bo Jackson rookie card is one of those few times where I think 1987 Fleer fails to capture a future star player in all of his glory. The player photo is dull and there’s too much blue. Bo looks like he stopped briefly to flash a smile before heading off to shag baseballs again. I wish Fleer had done something exciting with his rookie card. You put Bo in a white uniform and give him a Bonilla-like action shot and you’d have a winner. But, it’s still a Bo card. His 1987 Fleer just doesn’t capture the majesty of his Topps or Donruss to me. But you know what they say about opinions, right?
This
brings me to a final thought, or personal query. What is fandom and collecting
to me now? I’m talking current players here. As evidenced with Terry Bradshaw,
Willie Stargell and Henry Aaron, while there is an aesthetic value to the
cards, I cherish those players based solely on their reputation and games and
stats that were played and accumulated before I was born or too little to
understand. For players like Bobby Bonilla and Bo Jackson, I got to watch them
play in real time. While their cards were awesome pieces of cardboard, it was
just as exciting to me watching highlight reels and live games, watching them
build their careers in real time. I was a kid too…so I was kind of in awe.
So what of now? Well…building a PC of current players has been a consistent question for me. Say what you will about Mike Trout, but he’ll be someone else’s legend, not mine. And currently some kid is looking at him in awe. I’m too old for that now. When we’re talking about Vladimir Guerrero Jr. or Yordan Alvarez, I’m more surprised they are of age to drink rather than what they do on the field.
Still there's some potential there:
I’m
going to go and buy me some Terry Bradshaw cards now.
RIP Henry Aaron. You hit no. 715 the evening before I came into this world, and when I got old enough to appreciate you and your amazing talent, I always thought it was cool that I grew up in a world where Henry Aaron was always the HR champ.
Thanks for reading. Happy collecting.
If you want to learn more about Willie Stargell you can do so HERE and HERE
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