1985 Topps Football : I promise you we'll be back in TIME

 

The only goal that I had in my mind was to get Andy Francis

What I was going to do with him if I caught him was another matter. Probably nothing. But a group of us kids had been playing a cat and mouse game with him around the swimming pool. It was an indoor pool, surrounded by glass windows. As I remember it, during this “game,” Andy kept running inside and outside of the building. So, we divided our team. Mike Bankowski and my brother were outside waiting to get Andy. Me and Brian Luccio were on the other side of those glass doors in case he came back inside. Then it was open season on good ol’ Dorkus Goofus from the Land of Dorkus Goofuses…as we so affectionately called that big eared little jerk. I couldn’t remember what we were mad at Andy for this time.

            Us kids hated Andy Francis. His mom, Cindy Francis, ran a daycare out of her home, one that our parents were forced to send us to because our households needed double incomes just to scrape by in Ronny Reagan’s new morning in America. We had no one else to watch us. Because of the money our parents had to pay to be in the care of Cindy and her cohorts, meant that we didn’t go on summer vacations. We didn’t get to see our friends during those long summer days, where we should’ve been playing wiffle ball in the street. Real life happened again as the sun began to fade in the hazy sky. I hadn't even seen THESE guys in action yet! 

Because Cindy got the bright idea to give us kids some summer recreation, other than running around her yard attempting to kill her son, more of our parent’s hard-earned money was forced into paying for this indoor pool. If you didn’t pay in, you stayed at the Francis home with the kids under five, and all of the screaming, crying babies. As much as many of us didn’t want to be in this daycare, no one wanted that fate. Swimming it was.

            Deep down we probably hated Andy because we hated our situation. Andy wasn’t one of us, yet we were forced to endure him as if he were one of our own. Andy wasn’t dropped off at seven in the morning, dead tired, when we should’ve been sleeping in like all of our friends. He wasn’t made to sit in front of a TV watching cartoons, as more and more tired kids shuffled in. He didn’t spend his days in some stranger’s house, as just another part of the queue in this town.

Andy woke up when he wanted. Andy ate the lunches he wanted, instead of the bottom shelf PB&J sandwiches served with the bruised fruit that we ate. He didn’t have to drink the powdered milk, yes, powdered milk, that we drank. In one gulp, holding our noses, like we were being poisoned. Andy wasn’t one of us. But he tried to be. He sat with us at lunch. Wanted to play wiffle ball and football with us in his backyard. HIS backyard. HIS wiffle ball and bat. We were forced to let him play because he owned our world. And with that came our ire.

But it never struck anyone of us kids that Andy was losing out too…just in a different way. Yeah, he got up when he wanted. But Andy always woke up in a house full of other kids. Kids who’d already dictated what was on his TV. Kids who were already vying for the affections of his mother, before Andy had even wiped the sleep out of his eyes. Our parents had to work, yes. But when my mom and dad were home, we had their undivided attention. Andy had kids inside his house until six or seven in the evening. He had kids, like me, who hated him for his very existence, yet played with all of his stuff. Andy threw a lot of tantrums as a result. That just made us hate him more.

            And just like that, he appeared. Andy. Outside on that hot, concrete patio that surrounded the indoor pool. I was inside looking out and he was outside looking in. No one else was around. Not my brother. Not Mike. Brian Luccio was probably in trouble for trying to drown one of the other kids. We made eye contact. Andy gave me a smirk and had a glint in his eyes, like he was going to spring the minute I gave chase.

Christ, he thought this was all a joke! He thought we were playing around. Just having fun. That were weren’t determined to catch him and beat him to a pulp. For? For? Ah, what a fool! What a stupid, momma’s boy fool.  If I did anything to Andy, at the very least I was going to make him cry. Cry like he did in front of us when he couldn’t get his mom’s attention. Cry like he did when we wouldn’t let him play ball. Just make him cry. Full of rage, I charged at Andy. I went right for one of the sliding, glass doors that the pool kept open for people to go inside and out. I was going to catch that bastard for sure.

            But the door wasn’t open. Or I ran toward the wrong one. My first memories of coming too, after smashing through the glass door, was Andy standing there. His smirk gone, replaced with a look of terror. He was in shock. I was in shock. My brother came around the corner with Mike, saw me, and went into a blood curdling scream. Our chaperone (not Cindy but one of her lackeys. Cindy never came to the pool) had to restrain him. Muscled men from complex’s adjoining gym were racing toward me. The owner of the indoor pool was on her cordless calling 911. It happened that fast.

            (Yes, this is an actual image of the pool that i found online, facing the windows I ran through)

I hadn’t even assessed the damage that I done to myself. Was my face cut up? My hands? My arms? No, they looked fine. My face felt fine. Subconsciously I must’ve protected myself upon impact. And what an impact! There was glass everywhere around me. Regular glass and glass mixing with blood. But from where?  My left knee was bleeding and so was my right ankle. But not in a way that would create such a mess.

Then I looked down at my left leg. There was a one-inch-thick shard of glass sticking out of my shin. It sickens me to this day to think about it or remember it. Still in shock, though, I pulled the glass out and blood gushed everywhere. That’s when everything went momentarily black for me.

            Next thing I knew, the muscle men had put me on a picnic bench. I remember looking back at that window, the glass all over the concrete, the pooling blood, the me-sized shatter in the middle of the door. The men took off my shirt and used it as a tourniquet around the wound in my leg. All the kids were staring. Adults too. My brother’s cries. Music was playing. Huey Lewis and the News, The Power of Love. An ambulance sounding in the distance.

            What in the hell had happened? All I knew was that earlier in the day I was just a kid stuck at some daycare, at a home that wasn’t mine. The same place that I was stuck at every single day. We’d played some wiffle ball that August morning. Of course, Andy cried when we wouldn’t let him pitch. He made such a stink that Cindy was going to make me, my brother, Mike and Brian stay home from the pool that day. Teach us a lesson. Maybe that was why we were gunning for Andy that afternoon at the pool.

I remember Mike and I traded cards after wiffle ball. I got my first Clemente off of him. My first Clemente ever! A 1960 Clemente with a huge chunk of the front ripped off. Leaving nothing left but brown cardboard. But it was still a Clemente card. Like this one. 

Only picture half the image gone.

It was August. Football season was upon us. I was then and I’m not now, the type of football fan that I am a baseball fan. But I liked it enough. And I liked cards! August meant that the new football cards were out. 1985 Topps! Thrift Drug had them. Miller had told me about the fresh stock of cards the evening before, in the usual, reverent, mythical way that we talked about brand new cards. He was going to Thrift to pick up some football cards that very, fateful day that I went ramming through that window. In the sane, rational world in which blood wasn’t oozing from my leg, I had planned on trying to get my mom to make a quick stop at the Thrift so I could pick up some packs too. Maybe I’d get that Louis Lipps rookie card!

Funny how plans change.

Instead, I was in an ambulance that was tearing down Allegheny River Boulevard toward St. Margaret’s hospital. 

I’d never been in an ambulance before. As an eleven-year-old I suppose that was a good thing not to have experienced as of yet. I was scared. One minute I was going to pulverize Andy Francis, and the next I’m in an ambulance. But the EMTs were great. They made me laugh. They made me try to forget where we were heading, and the fact that my bloody, damaged left leg was wrapped up. They made me forget the trauma that had just happened.

            I remember my mom waiting for us at the emergency entrance. She worked in the medical billing department at St. Margaret’s, so it was no bother her being there to meet me. She looked a wreck. Ashen. The fear of God in here. Mom didn’t know what to expect when she saw me. But she brightened when she saw how much the EMTs had amused me. What eleven-year-old gets out of an ambulance laughing? That ambulance trip would be the last laugh I’d have for quite a few weeks. Why couldn’t I have gotten through my day and just bought those damned football cards? Fucking Andy Francis.

            Things are a blur from there. Doctors in and out of the ER, examining the major wound. The glass had cut through several layers of my skin and tissue. I was going to have to have an operation. My dad arrived looking just as haggard as mom. Some nurse gave me a sharp shot right in my ass. I screamed out in pain.

Then it would be the anesthesia. Before I knew it, the doctors were wheeling me into operating room. I remember being fine one minute then drifting, drifting, until one doctor said softy to me…good night, John. When I woke up hours later, I had stitches on my right ankle. Stiches on my left knee. There was a cast on my left leg. Because of the depth of the cut, I had damaged a number of tendons in my leg.

            My summer was effectively over and my fall wasn’t looking so grand. Mom had to change her work schedule, and work nights again so she could be home with me. It was bye-bye daycare but I felt bad. Guilty, really. My mom had just gotten the 9-5 job a year or so before. Now she was stuck right back where she was at before. Man, I told myself. If I ever get my hands on Andy Francis! But wasn’t that way of thinking the reason why I was in the position that I was in? I was a slow learner back then. I’m not much better now.

I also felt sorry for myself. Here I was at home, where I wanted to be, but I was relegated to being stuck on the couch. I couldn’t go outside and play ball with Miller and my brother. I was supposed to be starting my second season on the JV football team that year. One of the older kids, starting on the offensive and defensive line. Practice hadn’t even started yet, but it was already gone. All of it. Just me and my cast. And physical therapy starting in a month.

            On one lugubrious day where I was having a particularly tough time playing patient and prisoner, Miller and my brother went up to the Thrift Drug and come back with a ½ box full of 1985 Topps football cards for me to open. Christ, I’d forgotten the cards were out! It was like someone handed me a life preserver, because I was going down, man. Way down. Cards were the best way to cheer me up.

            Enough trauma, right? Let’s talk football cards.

1985 Topps football cards were unlike any other cards that I’d ever seen before…or after, really. The whole 400-card set was horizontal instead of vertical. THE WHOLE SET. Topps relied on close-up images of the players, saving most of the action shots for the team cards they issued that year. The borders were black. Not a thick black, but no thin line either. And the last names of the players? HUGE. With the first name in a tiny box imposed over the last name. The team name was in a bar next to the player’s last name. If you measure it, one could say the player name and team name take up almost ¼ of the cards, maybe more. The backs of the cards were a sharp red, white and blue motif that Topps kept vertical. It was like a complete opposite of what you expected a card to be.

Here are some examples:

I didn’t like 1985 Topps football cards as a kid. I didn’t want my designs horizontal and sans a good action shot or two. My favorite football designs of the decade are probably 1984

and 1987 Topps.

And as kids we already knew a black border was anathema to what we wanted in our cards. There was no WAY I was keeping any of these in good condition. As a Steelers fan it was strange too. The 1985 set was the first one in years not to feature Franco Harris or Terry Bradshaw on cardboard. Instead, we got cards of these guys…

That said, I’ve actually grown to really like 1985 Topps Football as an adult collector. And I’m warming up to the football cards of my youth overall. I’m actually thinking of getting a few cards of players I liked back then. But opening wax? Not with wax boxes running $2,500 online. But the set is pretty darn sharp with rookie cards of the aforementioned Louis Lipps, as well as Warren Moon

Richard Dent,

Mike Munchak, Mark Clayton and others. 

The set also features second-year cards for legends like Dan Marino,

John Elway,

and Eric Dickerson

for those of you who feel their rookie cards are too steep.

            As for my leg. That fall of 1985, I did start physical therapy. The doctors wanted to operate on my leg, remove tendons from one of part of my body where they weren’t being utilized, to where the damaged ones were. But I didn’t want to be operated on again. So, we didn’t do it. The therapy was kind of a success, but my left leg would never be the same. Because of the tendon damage I can’t arch my left foot like I can my right. My right foot grew to be almost a size bigger than my left. And if you pay attention to me when I walk, I lift my left leg more than my right when I step. I also trip on my left leg a lot more than I ever do my right.

But by October 1985, I was able to play Nerf football in the street again with Miller and my brother. After a failed attempt to return to the daycare, my parents decided that I was old enough and mature enough to watch myself. Then it was only my poor brother being carted off to daycare in the mornings and after school. Although by the summer of 1986 I’d be watching him as well. Two latchkey kids under the age of thirteen with endless hours of summer at their disposal. Ah, the 80s. What could go wrong? I have a story about a tree we almost set on fire…maybe next time.

            That said, I still can’t remember why it was that we were chasing Andy Francis that day.

Thanks for Reading. Happy Collecting.

So apparently that swimming pool has expanded...and is WAY more infamous than what happened to me there. You can read all about it right HERE

If you'd like to learn more about the career of Louis Lipps you can do so HERE and HERE

NEXT FRIDAY:  I think I'm going to expand on my thoughts and feeling about insert cards and parallel cards and autos. Since I've been back into this for almost two years now, I do have a somewhat evolved opinion from where I began. I quit collecting just as insert cards were really gaining steam and momentum in the The Hobby.

 

1988 Baseball Cards : You Got It (The Right Stuff)... Andy Van Slyke

 

Once upon a time I had a motto:

I only run when chased

It’s an old motto. It certainly originated back during a time when I physically didn’t need to run, or there was little chance of me being chased. Though I was once chased by a pack of long-haired high school burnouts for giving them the finger, because I was sick of them giving us catholic school kids the finger and shouting invective at us every time their school bus passed us on walks home. Ah, memories. Bu now time has caught up with me. I do this horrid activity called jogging, at least three times a week. I’m turning forty-seven this year. If things go right, I’m likely to see fifty (and maybe Dodger Stadium). Fifty. The very idea of turning fifty, well, it feels like I’m being chased.

            But back when I was in seventh (1986-87) and eighth (1987-88) grade, when I wasn’t running from bullies who looked like Warriors movie rejects, the kids in my catholic school ran for charity. We ran laps around the track at Penn-Hebron school to raise money for Pittsburgh’s Children’s Hospital. We got friends and family to sponsor us based on the number of laps we were able to complete. Then us scrappy, industrious, yet pious, school children took said money and donated it to Children’s Hospital. And Jesus smiled on us from his throne in heaven, or his local McDonald’s franchise.

The payoff for such a benevolent act? Me and my classmates got to take a class field trip to downtown Pittsburgh during Christmastime. We got to stand in a line outside of KDKA radio (any John Cigna fans out there?) with all of the other charitable kids who ran laps at their school, waiting to talk into a mic, boasting about our charity and booming out a Merry Christmas to all of those friends and family who made this possible. Then we got to have a chaperoned day in the city going from store to store, buying gifts, gazing admirably at Pittsburgh’s Christmas tree, and have lunch in the food court at Warner Center, before we piled on the school bus, full of blessed vibes, back to good old St. Bartholomew grade school.

My grandma always claimed to have heard me on the radio. But between her lotto numbers and the beer…I found such a bold statement to be suspect at best.

            Picking your group to be in for the trip was a big deal. It was more like a pecking order. Almost worse than being picked for sports in gym. Gym was based on athletic ability and that was bad enough. But you couldn’t help if you sucked at kickball or hoops. Picking a group for a field trip was personal. A selection based on actual relationships.

My mom always took the day off of work, and volunteered (I have no clue why she’d want to spend a day looking after eight to ten teenage boys) to chaperone. So did Mike Calvin’s mom. They chaperoned our group together. Mike and I were friends so that made my choice easy. No pecking order for me. It was the other kids who went through their small Lord of the Flies rituals in order to fill the remaining spots in the group. My mom and Mike’s mom were cool and less strict than the other chaperones…so there was a lot of Lord of the Files bullshit.

            That particular eighth grade Christmas trip to downtown Pittsburgh, I remember our group being restless toward the end of the day. My mom and Mrs. Calvin were haggard from having to keep nine or ten thirteen- and fourteen-year-old boys in some sort of respectable order, as we trapsed the city of Pittsburgh. We’d done the radio bit. We’d seen the tree. 

We’d Christmas shopped for all of our friends and family in the little kiosks that Kaufmann’s had set up for children shoppers. We’d filled our bellies on fast food and large pops in the Warner Centre food court. We’d tortured the girls we were suddenly becoming attracted to, but had no clue why that was happening. In our last hours of freedom, we stumbled upon Eide’s Entertainment.

Eide’s Entertainment has been a Pittsburgh institution since 1972, back when it was known as “Pittsburgh’s first Comix and Sci-Fi Shop.” Old timers will tell you they remembered Eide’s when the store was on the North Side. Eide’s is the biggest and largest comic book shop in Pittsburgh, and be one of the premier comic and music shops in the United States. By 1978 Eide’s became Eide’s Comics and Records, and a general hip hub for anyone looking for rock to alternative to punk to hard core to indie music. In its present incarnation the store is at least three floors full of comics, music, dvds and videos, and all sort of collectibles.

What do I remember it being like in December 1987? Overwhelming. Eide’s was this vast room full of record and cd bins. Metal music blasted overhead. There was poster all over the walls. T-shirts hanging everywhere. Rows of video cassette tapes against the wall. Tons and tons of comic books. Long-haired men flipped through bins of records. Their nerdish counterparts the boxes of new and vintage comic books. There was a faint odor of cigarette smoke, incense and… certainly our chaperone’s, one being my own mother, had unleashed us catholic school boys into a world we may have been too young to understand. All because there was nothing left to do on our field trip, and there was a life-size cardboard cut-out of Batman loitering in the window.

            At a back counter of Eide’s there were cards. Movie cards. Star Wars cards. BASEBALL cards! What were baseball cards doing in this den of heavy metal intrigue and possible sin? As it stands now, baseball cards come out right before Spring Training. But as a kid, I remember the new cards coming out anywhere between the end of the previous year up until Spring Training. We found out about the new cards by word of mouth, in my case whenever Dimitri Danielopoulos found them and came a’callin’ on me. This time I’d found them first.

Yes, Eide’s Comics and Music, in the midst of head-banging and illicit foreign films, was the first place that I found 1988 Topps. I had to have them. And I had money to burn from the old paper route. Okay, and maybe a little pocket money thrown my way via my mom. One didn’t just go on the annual downtown field trip without having a little scratch on them.

I’d done the charitable part. I’d done the requisite Christmas shopping. Cheap aftershave for the old man. Cheap perfume for my mom. Zilch for my brother. What did he need a gift from me for? He had Santa Claus. Now it was time to take care of me. And scared as I was of those long-haired, tattooed clerks (and I would remain so into my later teenage years when Eide’s became a place I often pilgrimaged to, to buy CDs and the previously mentioned illicit, foreign films), I mustered up the baseball card courage, bothered the surly clerk doomed to be stationed at the card collectibles counter that day, and bought myself a wax box of 1988 Topps.

I barely made it into the house, before I plopped in front of TV and began to rip wax, while my mom retreated to the kitchen for a stiff drink, unwind from a day dealing with teenage boys, and question why she ever undertook such an adventure in the first place. The good son in me should’ve checked on her. But she didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Not even my brother’s crying and moaning that no one bought him any cards. All that mattered to me was opening the packs. 

All that mattered was finding the star cards. Mattingly. Canseco. Bo Jackson. All that mattered was finding my new, young, exciting Pirates team in the packs. Drabek. Bonds. Bream. Bonilla. All that mattered was opening the pack that would get me the card of Andy Van Slyke for the first time in his Pirates uniform. 

Update and Traded sets be damned!

Let’s digress for a moment, shall we? If you’re a Pirates fan there are many red-letter dates in your history. Mazeroski’s home run to win the 1960 World Series. The 1971 series. Clemente’s 3,000^th hit. His fatal plane crash on New Year’s Eve 1972. The Fam-I-Lee of 1979. Clinching the NL East Pennant in 1990. Doing it again in 1991 and 1992. If you’re dark like me, you remember October 14, 1992, as one of your saddest days as a Pirates fan. But a big date for me will always be April 1, 1987. April Fool’s Day.

And boy did that day feel like a joke when it happened. That was the day that the Pirates traded away star catcher, and one of the sole bright spots in the franchise, Tony Pena. 

To explain what Tony Pena meant to the fans of a sinking Pirates franchise, would take a blog post of its own. Let’s just imagine what Red Sox fans felt like when Mookie Betts went to the Dodgers….eh, actually they might’ve felt worse. But Tony was beloved. He and second baseman Johnny Ray were all we had.

And we go and trade our precious Tony? To the goddamned Cardinals? For someone named Andy Van Slyke? A catcher named Mike LaValliere? We already HAD a catcher…and you TRADED him. And who in the hell was Mike Dunne? Who in the hell were any of those guys?  I immediately went to my 1987 commons boxes and sorted through them. Pulling out these:

Of course, I didn’t know it then. I had no clue that the Tony Pena trade (and others) were building a core for an exciting, competitive Pirates team, a team that would give fans a ride from 1987 to 1992. A comeback season in 1987 like no other. A second-place finish in the coming 1988 season. Three straight NL East Pennant winning seasons from 1990-1992.

That trade, in my humble opinion, was the catalyst for a Pirates organization heading for success, and team that would restore pride in Pirates fan from all over. And a big part of that excitement was Andy Van Slyke. And Mr. Van Slyke would win five Gold Gloves and two Silver Slugger awards along the way (the first of each coming in that 2^nd place 1988 season), during his time in Pittsburgh. He’d make three all-star teams (again, for the first time in 1988). And the way he played Centerfield was pure poetry in motion. To talk about Andy Van Slyke is to talk about one of your favorite Pirates ever. I can never leave him off a list. And as a card collector you can bet I PC Andy Van Slyke.

As for Mike Lavalliere….to me he’s forever known simply as Spanky.

I did get the Van Slyke card in my wax box that day. But, going into 1988 proper, there were a few more Van Slyke cards in his new Pirates gear for me to go searching for. 1988 being nearly in the heart of the so-called Junk Wax Era, you could find cards everywhere. Topps and Fleer were plentiful, and the previously hard-to-find Donruss (at least for me) were showing up everywhere. They were so ubiquitous that an actually pretty sharp set is considered the red-headed step-child of the Junk Wax Era; the bane of all of that over-production. Christ, I could find Donruss cards at gas stations that year.

In 1988 there was also a new kid on the block making its arrival. And no, it wasn’t Donnie Wahlberg.

After seven years of Topps, Fleer and Donruss all competing for our card-loving affections (I never did and will never count Sportflics), Score threw its hat into the hobby ring. And boy were they some good-looking cards. 

Cards even came in BIG sizes that year.

Overall, I like but don’t love what the card brands offered in 1988. As an adult, aside from Score, which I still think is a beautiful debut set, I find a lot of 1988 cards to be bland and a touch uninspired. Like all of the creativity went into 1987 cards. I’m sure people are bound to disagree. And I welcome that. But the hazy borders and red and blue stripe motif of Fleer never really did it for me. Neither did that icy blue/flannel I-don’t-know-what design of Donruss. And having a bit of 3-D action in Topps paled in comparison to the masterful, legendary wood-bordered 1987 set.

The 1988 card releases feel like they are the middle-child between amazing sets in 1987 and some pretty good to great ones in 1989. As a kid, I probably thought 1988 had the best card designs in the world. It was the only year I ever completed collecting an entire set with 1988 Topps. 1988 is the only year I ever remember even trying to complete a set. Guess I wasn’t a total, lazy slacker after all.

            Speaking of lazy or slacker, but maybe not really, this brings me back to my original motto. I only run when chased. To be completely honest, I didn’t run those laps for charity. In the fall of 1987, I was a fat and embarrassed kid. There was no way I was going to hustle around a track, letting the parts of me that I desperately and futilely tried to conceal, jiggle all over the place. Not even for a trip to downtown Pittsburgh, and for my grandma (rest her soul) to hear me wish her a Merry Christmas on the radio.

I also HATED that track at Penn-Hebron for personal reasons. My grade school played their JV and varsity football games at Penn-Hebron, as the track surrounded a football field. In 7^th grade I quit the varsity team about a 1/3 of the way into the season. I’d suffered a bad leg injury a year or so before, and I hadn’t completely healed. I couldn’t really keep up at practice or on the field. I felt less-than as an athlete as well.

My Coach didn’t see it that way. He thought that I was being lazy and coddling my injury. As a punishment he had me run laps around that track during practice. To make it more humiliating for me, the coach had three big eighth graders jogging behind me, taunting me the whole time (the burn-outs weren’t the only time I’d been chased). I started to hate going to practice, and I hated going to games. So, I did what I did best back then…I quit. Believe it or not it was actually easier dealing with the shoulder shoves in the hallway from my ex-teammates then to embarrass myself every afternoon and Saturday morning.

The Penn-Hebron track was, what people would call now, PTSD for me, only I couldn’t articulate it back then. I couldn’t physically or emotionally run those laps. Thankfully, I didn’t have to. My grade school had a deal that any kid who didn’t want to run laps (and there were quite a few of us), but still wanted to go on the field trip to downtown Pittsburgh, could donate a certain amount of money. I don’t remember the amount. But my parents did so for me…both years.

Thanks mom and dad....I owe my 1988 Topps to your kindness and generosity.

 

***I know I’ve prattled on for too long here…but I actually got to meet Andy Van Slyke once. I was working at the Pirates Clubhouse Store in the Monroeville Mall. Andy was coming to the store, as players often did, to sign autographs for people who purchased a charity Christmas carol cassette that he was promoting. I want to say this was Christmas of 1992. Phineas stood in the long line, and had Van Slyke sign a ceramic cookie jar sculpted into the form of a monkey, which amused the centerfielder. Andy was Phineas’ favorite player, so I guess he wanted the attention.

            The one thing that I will always remember from that autograph signing was when my co-worker, Paul asked Andy Van Slyke, in all sincerity, if he and Bobby Bonilla were still friends. I’m now guessing that Paul didn’t read much in the sport press about the, rightfully so, grumblings that Barry Bonds and Bobby Bonilla made in regards to Van Slyke’s “favorite son” status with the Pirates Organization. Right or wrong, the animosity went both ways. After Paul asked his question, Van Slyke stopped signing, like dead stopped, looked at Paul as if he were an alien and just said….Friends???? Like it was the most outrageous statement ever made. Then Andy went back to signing autographs…and I think the boss made Paul go and steam t-shirts***

Thanks for reading. Happy collecting.

If you want to learn more about Andy Van Slyke you can do so HERE and HERE

If you want to learn more about the 1988 Pirates, give THIS account a Twitter follow

Next Friday:  I’m going back to 1985...again. Must be the Back to the Future fan in me. I'm going to take a look at 1985 Topps football cards (an unusual design for the brand), and explain why I ended up having said leg injury I mentioned above. Trigger warning for anyone who doesn't like a little bit of blood.

 --JG

 

It's bloody Topps. It's bloody flagship. Get over it!

 

I had been a lazy kid.

I was becoming a lazy teenager. The perennial quitter in organized sports. By Spring of 1987, I’d quit t-ball, little league, and varsity football at my grade school, swimming lessons, as well as Cub Scouts. In a few months I was going to quit Pony League as well. I played ball with the kids in the neighborhood, i.e. Nerf football, basketball up at Duff Park; I know I fancied myself a Wiffle Ball God. I’d even played deck hockey, once, and found it about as “exciting” to play as I found real hockey to watch. And while I did those activities, and still kind of liked sports at thirteen, I preferred spending my time indoors, on the couch, watching TV, daydreaming, or reading a book. I also loved to eat. Junk food, third helpings of dinner, you name it.  The only real exercise that I was getting was on my paper route, delivering the Pittsburgh Press, and collecting so I had a little bit of cash.

I was a fat kid. I was becoming a fat teenager.

My friend Miller was the exact opposite. He liked organized sports (mostly…he just didn’t like being coached) and he had a tireless hunger for playing football, basketball, and baseball in the neighborhood to the point of exhaustion. He read stats like I was reading novels. Sunday football was sacred. ESPN was church. Miller was a year older than me. Muscled where I was a pillow cushion. He had facial hair coming in. I was growing a third chin. Girls liked Miller. If a girl found out that I liked her, my amorous intent was usually met with eye-rolling and laughter. I couldn’t blame the girl. To say that Miller and I were moving in opposite directions would be an understatement. But we still had one thing between us.

Baseball cards.

Why did I mention the above dichotomy between Miller and I? Well, it was in the late winter of 1987, that Miller came to my door and told me that Thrift Drug had the new 1987 baseball cards in stock. As always, Topps. At least three full wax boxes. It was one of those dreary Feb or March days. Rain. We were off for some Catholic school holiday that the public-school kids didn’t get. There was boredom on a day like that. New baseball cards? Why they were just the thing to brighten the day!

And I was flush. It was one of those weeks were the people on my paper route decided to pay me for the whole month, instead of me knocking on their door week by week, like a common nuisance. I had more money than I usually had in my wallet (and not an ounce of intelligence or foresight to the fact that if people paid up front and I spent all of the money; I’d spend the rest of the month a virtual pauper). I had enough on me for an entire box of 1987 Topps, and enough to help Miller get himself a box as well. I sent him off to the Thrift Drug with money to buy us both the biggest and fattest goose that he could buy.

My laziness had become so complete that I didn’t even think to walk myself up to the store to buy my own goddamned box of cards.

At thirteen you sometimes can’t see what you’re doing to yourself, but can only really comprehend how the world reacts. A stern look from my old man to my mom as she served me up another helping of spaghetti. Myself, completely unaware that I was shoving down three helpings of food when I was no longer hungry. Eating that extra and then another extra slice of pizza to fill a void. Attacking a Hostess box, the minute I got home from school. Nights eating huge slices of cake. Can after can of cola. The looks from adults. My mother’s friend trying to reason with her about my weight as I went for a third, albeit small, meatball sandwich on Christmas day. I just saw how people were treating me. At that age I had no clue how I was treating myself.

Couldn’t even walk up the street to buy my own box of baseball cards?

I always say that Topps 1987 were the first cards that I ever bought in wax box form. The first wax box that I opened with my own money. But I didn’t even buy it. I have no memory of going into the Thrift Drug, of selecting which of the three wax boxes available, that I wanted. Of going up to that salty, old cashier, the one who seemed to live forever, and then standing there as she tried to figure out whether or not to ring up the box as one total or scan all thirty-six packs individually. Miller got to have those memories. Not me. I just remember waiting at home for him, beached on the couch, some mid-afternoon soap opera playing on the television, wondering if I’d had enough digestive distance from lunch, before I could start in on the cookies or Cheez-Its.

I’m here to talk about baseball cards, right? It’s crazy what directions a memory can take you in. And I’m not fat shaming. I was who I was, as other people are who they are. My journey is my journey and I have my scars and self-loathing to work through. My weight gain wasn’t glandular, but was probably brought out more from a sense of alienation and aloneness. Why mention weight in an essay about cards? I do so because I feel like everything from 1987-1990, baseball cards, entering high school, etc, is always going to be tainted by my being very overweight and the feelings that went along with it. I did finally lose seventy pounds in 1991. But that’s a tale for another time. Let’s get back to the cards, shall we?

Miller comes back to my house carrying two wax boxes of 1987 Topps. Now, I had seen those magical, 1987 Topps wood bordered cards previously in Dmitri’s bedroom a few weeks before. But it had just been the cards. Part of the appeal of the new card season, is seeing the design on the packs and wax boxes as well. 1987 had a green and gold motif with a big banner across the front that said BASEBALL. And THE REAL ONE! They had three cards splayed front and center like someone was going through a stack. Usually, a prominent player on top.

1987’s cover boy was Yankees relief pitcher, Dave Righetti, coming off a 1986 season in which he led the league with 46 saves. 

This wax box design had been the general design of wax boxes for Topps since 1984, and in keeping with a theme they’d had since 1982.

Me and Miller found a spot on the living room floor, between the living room and dining room, to be more specific. I don’t know why but if I was going though cards in the living room, I always picked that spot. We began tearing the wax. Green packs this year. 

In my memory I pulled all the great star and rookie cards in the initial packs, but most likely I pulled at least three Mike Laga cards with that horrific airbrushing, before I got a Robin Yount card or someone else of statistical esteem.

In 1987 we wanted the rookie cards. And there were so many to choose from: Jose Canseco, Bonds, Bobby Bonilla, Bo Jackson, Barry Larkin, NL ROY Todd Worrell, Will Clark, Danny Tartabull, Wally Joyner, and, yes, Mark McGwire, to name just a few. There were players like Pete Incaviglia, Robby Thompson and Corey Snyder. Players that I didn’t know well, but they had that Topps rookie gold cup on their cards, so they had to be something special. 

Some of my favorites from 1987:

Same with the Future Star cards, something Topps, to my knowledge, had never done before with the cards. A big, bright rainbow of promise across the bottom of the card. Bo had one. Some guy name Palmeiro had one. Dave Magadan, Pat Dobson and B.J. Surhoff all had one. Cardboard prophesies for sure, right, Tim Pyznarski?

I’d never seen so much promise in a wax box of baseball cards before. Promise that could be accused of not lasting. It’s thirty-four years later, and all of those tales have been told. The careers have come in gone. Some had respectable careers. Some faded after a season. Some never really made it at all. Quite a few of them had Hall of Fame careers tainted by steroids and other PEDs. Only one of the players that I mentioned above is actually in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Congrats Mr. Barry Larkin. Your career was a pleasure to watch.

Here in 2021, I find myself waiting on boxes of baseball cards again. Hobby Boxes though they are now called. I’m waiting not because of laziness or issues with my weight, although time instead of overindulgence is beginning to take care of that. I’m waiting because the landscape has changed over the years. Drug stores don’t really sell cards anymore, and a LCS is hard to find, or the product is overpriced. Cards aren’t nearly as ubiquitous a presence in 2021 as they were in 1987.

I live in Brooklyn now, not the Pittsburgh suburbs, so my access to the big chain stores that carry retail product (if you can find it) is next to nothing. I have to rely on buying most of my card product from the internet. I get excited now by a tracking number and an expected delivery date. The buzz of a doorbell, and the hard knock of the mailman. A box being dropped on the lobby floor. Opening said box to find these packs inside.

I like the design of 2021 Topps flagship. 

I’m glad there are borders again, and I don’t mind the stripes jutting into the picture, or whatever 1987 Donruss thing the Topps Company is doing on the side of the cards. The type of photos being used almost dictate that there be borders. Most of the shots are up-close shots. That has more to do with the circumstances of 2020 rather than anything else. I’d rather a close-up of Tim Anderson than see him framed by an empty stadium or fake cardboard fans in the stands. A lot of the inserts (looking at you 1986 and 70 Years of Topps) are pretty neat. 

The backs are crisp too.

             Some highlights from the hobby boxes that I opened:

....And in Series 2 I get to look forward to THIS:

I know a lot of collectors don’t like the 2021 flagship design. I’ve heard a good amount of “worst Topps design ever” grumbling online. And that’s fine, I guess. The autocrat in me isn’t a big fan of opinions, but I’ve learned to accept them in order to get along with other people during the course of my day. But complaining about where the RC logo or Rookie Cup logo is on the card, at times, reeks of nitpicking to me. And if you’re complaining about the size of the print on the front of the card, there are bigger fish in the sea that that. Codes anyone?

I think about complaints about flagship as such: it’s like Paul McCartney once said when people were gripping about the Beatles’ White Album, what cuts shouldn’t have been on it, which ones were left off, etc. He said, and I paraphrase, it’s the bloody Beatles. It’s the bloody White Album. Get over it.

It’s bloody Topps. It’s bloody flagship. Get over it.

One thing I do think is worth complaining about, or at least acknowledging, is the price disparity with this year’s flagship. Aside from flagship being more expensive than it reasonably should be (yes, I’m still a newbie BACK into collecting but the price jump I’ve witnessed in just two years is worth any collector commenting on), the price you pay for a hobby box seems to be determined upon where you purchase it…which isn’t cool.

Using myself as example, I bought three hobby boxes, which was probably overkill for me, but I’ll pay it forward by sending some folks some stuff. Never one to discuss money I will say this: I bought two hobby boxes in pre-sale from a major card store at $114 per Hobby box. On release day I took a trip to the Major League Baseball Flagship store in Midtown Manhattan (my only retail refuge but a seemingly day’s journey from my part of Brooklyn) and paid, with tax, $108 for a hobby box. Yesterday, I was in my local LCS buying supplies for all of these damned cards, and I noticed that they were selling 2021 Topps flagship hobby boxes for $165 dollars. Not only that, but they didn’t even have the packs of 2021 Topps out with the other cards, but instead behind the counter with the premium packs. I didn’t even bother to ask the owner what they were selling packs for.

I understand online purchasing vs retail overhead for mom and pops vs retail chains. But that doesn’t seem to explain, in total, the price disparity. In some instances, I think folks are over-profiting from hobby box sales. Maybe I’m naïve but it seems to me that deals should be worked out with distributors that a collector, any collector, should be paying the same amount per pack/hobby box no matter where you go and purchase it. And if a touch more, not a difference of $60. I know it was that way when I was a kid. The American coin and Thrift Drug sold wax packs for the same amount.

Overall, it’s exciting that flagship is out. Is it 1987 exciting? No…but it’s not supposed to be. One thing lingers for me. No matter who I was or what I was or what I looked like back then…I was still a kid. And cards, while collected by adults, were still marketed and cherished by KIDS back in 1987.

I wish that were the case now. I wish that kids who want to collect, the kids who do collect, could go and purchase a pack of Topps cards with money they found hanging around the house, or from an allowance. I wish those collectors didn’t have to settle for Opening Day or Big League, even though I like those products. Kids want The Real One, Topps. And love 2021 flagship as I do, how many more years is it going to take before it’s not just the kids who have been priced out of the hobby, but the average collector as well. I overindulged this year because I’m home with nowhere to go. That might not be the case in 2022.

With that, I say, let's at least try and have some fun.

            Anyway…Thanks for reading. Happy collecting.

            If you need a 2021 Topps Flagship checklist you can find one HERE and HERE 

            NEXT FRIDAY:  Hey, let's go back to 1988. I'm going to take a look at buying a wax box of 1988 Topps cards in a druggy, record shop in downtown Pittsburgh while on a Catholic school field trip, hiding said purchase from girls, and when baseball cards came out before the year ended.  Also, going to touch on the sudden ubiquitousness of Fleer and Donruss too. And maybe we'll take a look at a few of the cards that I really love from 1988, cards and a year, that I'm still on the fence with in terms of how I personally feel.