1986 : Ally Sheedy, The "Bobcat", Mallory Keaton, F'n Sportflics....and Charles "Chick" Hafey?

I quit a lot things.

            I’ve quit sports teams. I’ve quit friendships. Quit music lessons. I’ve quit on TV shows and movies. Quit puzzles. Quit video games. Quit countless jobs. Quit on apartments. Quit on cities. I’ve quit on cars, politicians and patriotism. I quit collecting cards once…but I came back. One of my favorite “quits” was the time I quit my grade school varsity football team the day after the coach had three eighth-graders chase me around the track because he felt like I was dogging it. And I was. Because I wanted to quit the team. The coach was also my gym teacher, so he was there when I dropped off my equipment. He took the opportunity to tell me just what a lazy, quitter and loser I was. He was right. I couldn’t argue with him. I was born to quit.

I don’t know why I quit so many things. It’s either a them or me situation, but I haven’t been able to figure it out. What’s more perplexing to me is why I ever wanted to join something in the first place? I don’t remember any peer pressure ever coming my way. I wasn’t the kind of kid the other kids were desperate to have around them. I was an unwilling tagalong or an also-ran. Maybe my parents pushed activities on me; not to excel but to just be a part of something. I was the kid content to sit inside all day, playing with my baseball cards or watching cartoons on TV until an unreasonably older age. To this day, an idyllic summer’s day to me is to be inside with the doors shut, A/C blasting and the windows drawn.

Would if I could I’d quit on the world.

            But in the Spring of 1986, I wanted to try my hand at Little League. Why? I had no idea. I was probably a secret sadist. I wasn’t satisfied enough with the bullying that I received in school, or the way the girls went above and beyond to ignore me. Maybe I was going through one of my own phases, where I felt that I needed to get out there and open myself up to the world around me. That I simply wasn’t doing much of anything but eating food, listening to the Monkees, or watching too much TV. I may have been having an existential crisis. Were existential crisis’s known to happen to twelve-year-olds?

            I mean I was the kid who faked sick and skipped school the day the Challenger blew up...that was quite a thing to watch at home alone.

               I begged my old man to sign me up for Little League. Admittedly, he was wary. I had a trail of unused musical instruments, crafts, etc in my path. I’d quit tee ball only two years before. The previous fall I’d made it through a JV seasons of grade school football, but I’d threatened to quit the team nearly every single week. I only stayed on because we had Gatorade on the sidelines. We didn’t have much money at home back then. Signing me up for Little League wouldn’t break the bank…but it wasn’t cheap either. The old man made me promise that if he signed me up, I’d play out the season. Sure, sure, dad. I couldn’t wait to get out on the field. Hear the crack of the bat. Smell the leather on the glove.

            Full disclosure? I love baseball. But I’m fucking horrible at playing baseball. At least I was back then. I was afraid of getting hit by the ball. I’d been hit by the ball. That would’ve been in the summer of 1981. In West Virginia. The old man and me playing catch in the back yard. I moved my glove away too soon and the ball got me right in the mouth. It left me with a split and fat lip. That ball left me a traumatized seven-year-old. If I couldn’t feel safe catching a ball from the old man, I certainly wasn’t going to stand in some batter’s box, trusting the accuracy of some dipshit 11- or 12-years old throwing at me from 60 feet away.  And that’s exactly what happened to me when the Little League season started. Instead of stepping into a pitch, I’d move my lead leg away. I struck out almost every at bat. This made me popular with the other kids on my team.

                Guess what I wanted to do by the third game?

               And why not quit?  I didn’t need the abuse of vulgar kids who, while they were right about my hitting prowess, didn’t need to make such a big deal about it. If I quit I could stay home like I wanted to. My parents had bought me a 13-inch color TV for my birthday. It had a cable hook-up and everything. HBO was running The Breakfast Club ad nauseam in the spring of 1986. I could cultivate my Ally Sheedy crush to its full potential. 

            Or I could skip evening games, skip the ridicule, and stay home to watch Who’s the Boss? Family Ties and the Cosby Show, yearn after my hat-trick of starlets.

            Then I thought about my promise to my old man…so I stuck it out. Do my best to try and make some contact so I oculd stay under the radar. Sit on the bench and chew gum. But my manager, he noticed something in me. I might not have been able to hit. I might’ve confounded him and the coaches each and every single time we went to the batting cages (I could hit at the batting cages. The batting cages weren’t 11 or 12-year-old dipshits throwing balls at me). But I could field. Boy, could I field.

Whatever fears and anxieties I had at the plate disappeared on the field. Again, I had no clue why. Maybe I felt more in control with a glove rather than standing there vulnerable at the plate. But I caught everything hit to me in the outfield. So much so that my manager put me at first base. I excelled at first base to the point where I became a starter. Much to the chagrin of my teammates, who’d rather I came in and played the requisite one or two innings they let the scrubs play just to prove to parents they were getting their money’s worth. They proved their displeasure in between innings when we warmed up in the infield, by throwing the baseballs past me so that I had to consistently give chase. Thankfully they didn’t do that during regular play.

            Occasionally I got on base as a hitter. Mostly via walks. Being on base was its own kind of social stress. A lot of the time I knew the other kid playing first base. They were about as cordial to me as my teammates. Some of them where my classmates at Catholic school, so we had whatever embarrassments I’d accumulated from September to June between us. I was a fat kid in grade school who did a mean Bob "Bobcat" Goldthwait impression...so there were a lot of embartassments. 

            One such classmate I dreaded to see was first baseman was Tony Rizzuto.

I didn’t like Tony Rizzuto. He was a smug kid with short guy syndrome who already looked like he was going bald at twelve. But the girls liked him. Tony was good for those backhanded compliments. Like, Jay, that shirt looks good on you. Knowing damned well my fat-ass wasn’t looking good in anything. By twelve-years-old I’d had numerous daydreams of knocking out Tony Rizzuto. And I didn’t like playing ball against him. Or getting on base when he was at first. Tony thought that because I was fat, I was a moron. He used to pretend to throw the baseball back to the pitcher, thinking that he was going to trick me when I took a lead.  But I was a fat kid. I was used to people trying to take advantage of me in any way that they could.

            What does this have to do with baseball cards?

            What does anything on this blog have to do with baseball cards?

            A while back I wrote about 1986 as a time when it seemed like every kid I knew was collecting cards. Before then, the only card collectors that I knew were neighborhood kids like Miller or Demetrious Danielopoulos. Or stingy ol’ Phineas when our families got together. Before 1986, collecting cards felt niche. More insular. Another thing to be scoffed at for during recess when some of us geeks would trade cards or baseball stickers for our sticker books. But by summer of 1986, it felt like collectors were coming out of nowhere. Kids with binders full of cards who looked more like investors than collectors. Kids who talked about the worth of the card over the cool photos, the design, the trivia on the back.

            These bad boys were going to make all of us rich.

                Tony Rizzuto was one of those kids. He got to talking to me about cards during one of my rare sojourns as a baserunner. A brief conversation in between me trying to steal a base, and Tony trying to trick me with the hidden baseball. Before I knew it, the kid was ringing my doorbell. Tony fucking Rizzuto with his balding twelve-year-old head on my porch? With a binder of baseball cards? And of course, he had the good cards. The legacy cards because his dad and older brother had collected cards, and no one had thrown their cards away like my old man threw his away, like my old man threw MY cards away.  Mays. Clemente. Aaron. Mickey fucking Mantle. He had them all.

                Great…something else to be envious about.

    But the card that Tony Rizzuto had that I wanted most of all was his 1934 Goudey Gum card of Charles “Chick” Hafey. 

I didn’t even know who in the hell Chick Hafey was at the time. Turns out he’s a Hall of Famer. I don’t think I would’ve even cared, had I known. That 1934 Goudey Gum card was the oldest card that I’d ever seen up until that point in my collecting life. And that Lilliputian wanker owned it? Owned it not by a trade. Not by buying the card with his own money, or digging under couch cushions for enough scratch the buy a pack of Fleer. He owned that card for the simple fact that he was lucky ass Tony Rizzuto who was good at baseball. Good at basketball. Good at football. Good enough to have all the girls like him.

Kinda like this guy but not nearly a cool.

I don’t know why Tony brought his cards around to me. He didn’t want to trade. Didn’t even want to see my cards, which were pretty much your standard Topps, Fleer and Donruss runs from 1984-1986, thanks to my old man and stupid trades I’d made with the cards I’d ripped-off Mike Statfield. I had Sportflics for Christ’s sake. 

(A brief aside…I HATE Sportflics. I hated them back in 1986 and I hate them now. Sportflics with their stupid moving image and dumb, puffy backs. I will never say a kind word about Sportflics on this blog)

What was a moron who wasted any of his hard-to-come-by cash on Sportflics going to trade with a kid who owned a card from 1934? Tony didn’t want to see my cards because he just wanted to gloat. Tony wanted to let a guy, perpetually down on his luck, know how much further he could sink. It didn’t matter how many years I’d been collecting before him. It didn’t matter the time and money I’d put into the hobby. There were always going to be assholes like Tony Rizzuto out there. In the hobby. Or trying to trick me at first base.

            The next time Tony came around I didn’t answer the door. I quit his ass too.

            I did manage to play that whole baseball season in 1986. Even got a few hits on this one random game where the opposing pitcher was throwing so slowly that I put caution to the wind and stepped into the plate. Emboldened by my commitment, the next spring, I decided to sign up for Pony league. I was one of the younger kids on the team. The coach stuck me in right field and only let me play the last inning or so of every game. He wasn’t as impressed with my fielding. And I still couldn’t hit. All those kids who’d been taunting 11 and 12-year-olds the previous year, had turned into 13 and 14-year-olds with a newfound cruelty inside of them. 

            Especially Tony Rizzuto. 

            When my team played his, I could hear him saying stuff about me to his teammates. He even had my teammates laughing at me. I didn't need that shit from a little twerp. I didn't need that shit from anyone. It was 1987 now. I was a teeanger. The Topps, Fleer and Donruss cards that year were the best I'd ever seen. I could stay home with them. HBO was playing Stand by Me ad nauseum, and I loved that movie. Plus I still had my hat trick of TV crushes. Lisa Bonet even had her own show. Plus, there was a new crush on MTV all of the time.

            So, I decided to do what I did best.

I quit.

Thanks for reading. Happy collecting.

 If you’d like to learn more about the career of Charles “Chick” Hafey you can do so HERE and HERE

 If you’re bored or a sadist, or are questioning your sanity, you can learn more about the inaugural 1986 brand of Sportflics HERE…or you can just watch paint dry instead.

NEXT FRIDAY:  June is Pride Month! So I’m going to do the obvious thing by bringing out my Glenn Burke cards, write a little bit about his life and career and, if I finish it, post a little bit of a review of Andrew Maraniss’ new book on Glenn Burke called: Singled Out: The True Story of GlennBurke

***Shameless self-promotion No. 1***

I too have a few new books out there. The first is my new collection of poetry entitled Eating a Cheeseburger During the End Times. It’s out on Kung Fu Treachery Press and I’m pretty proud of this one. If you’re interested you can find it HERE and HERE.

***Shameless self-promotion No. 2***

I also have a new novel out. The book is entitled P-Town: Forever and is about five members of a failed singing group getting back together in their 40s after a single they recorded 20 years ago becomes a sudden semi-hit. If you’re interested you can find it HERE and you can find it HERE, where you can also read the first chapter.

Thank you! 

 

1989 Bowman vs 2021 Bowman : a study in blandness

I like 1989 Bowman baseball cards.

            I don’t know if that’s such a controversial or taboo thing to say in the realm of sports card/baseball card collecting in 2021. I’ve gotten to know a lot of collectors since I’ve been back in the hobby and, other than the decades-long complaints about storage (for those who don’t know, 1989 Bowman cards are bigger than the standard 2 ½” X 3 ¾” card), a lot of the other collectors that I’ve met seem to have a soft spot in their hearts for the set. Maybe that’s the effect of time and age. Or maybe it’s that collectors have finally seen the aesthetic value in a plain, solid set of baseball cards in an era where frills, bells and whistles are all the rage.

            Or maybe it’s the chance of opening a pack of 1989 Bowman cards today, and getting this bad boy in perfect, gradable condition.

            If grading is your thing.

            To be honest, I don’t even remember any kids hating 1989 Bowman baseball cards back in 1989. From what I remember we were vacuums for whatever cards were coming out back then. Topps, Fleer, Donruss, Score, Upper Deck (to a small financial extent) and Bowman; it was all gravy to us. But opening a pack of Bowman cards in 1989 was like opening history. Bowman hadn’t been around since Topps bought them in the 1950s. Older Bowman cards were unattainable cards at card shows and at our local LCS. The ones we ripped open in 1989 had that instant vintage feel. Plain and straight to business. They looked like something we would be unattainable at a card show or a local LCS. But they were just as cheap and plentiful as the rest.

            Even if the card backs were a little confounding upon first look.

            Personally, I’ve always been more of a comprehensive statistics reader, so team-by-team performance breakdown on the backs of the early Bowman cards never really did it for me. Though I can see the appeal now, and actually quite enjoy reading a player’s statistics that way.

            But the stat layout didn’t stop me from buying a boatload of 1989 Bowman cards, or seeking out ways to store them; protect the ones that I thought were valuable. I’m a staunch leftist/modernist in some aspects, but in others, like trading cards, I’m a pretty big traditionalist. And 1989 Bowman was right in my wheelhouse. Each pack even included a replica of a vintage Bowman card from their heyday.

            Pretty cool, huh?

            I remained a Bowman fan even after 1989. 

            I bought a ton of 1990 Bowman 

            and a ton of 1991 Bowman as well. 

            I appreciated Bowman's simple, throwback designs, in an era of card collecting that was beginning to emphasize flash and premium value. But, by 1992, as with most of the other card brands (save Topps), I was out of the Bowman game. It was for the best too, as Bowman took steps and leaps in their brand that I would’ve found unappealing then, and am not a particular fan of now. That means, they modernized by 1992. Spruced up the designs. Got as modern as everyone else.

            Bowman found their niche by putting the focus on rookie cards.

            And that’s the thing with Bowman to this day. The emphasis on rookie cards. Or pre-rookie cards if you want to be exact. Yes, you can now have a card of a player before they have a so-called real card. I know…it confused me too at first. But basically, to look at modern Bowman cards is to look at cards as a way of doing player prospecting, hoping for a return on value some 3-5 years later. Although some of the cards of these kids catch a premium value right out of the pack, with collectors paying $10-$40 or more for base 1^st Bowman cards of some of the game’s top, yet unproven, prospects. And because of the speculation aspect of Bowman, hobby boxes and all others related to Bowman, can get quite expensive on the secondary market.

            That is to say, I don’t buy much Bowman.

            But I have, for the past two years, bought some Bowman cards of players that I like and/or collect. Here's a sampling:

            And modern Bowman cards are…okay? That is to say the releases are pretty standard. A white bordered front with a player photo, and a white bordered back with the player information. Just the facts. 

            Case in point. Here is a Pete Alonso card from 2020 Bowman.

            And here’s Pete Alonso from 2021 Bowman.

    

            

            Not much in the way of variation, right? 

            But where I found the older Bowman cards plainness to be endearing and nostalgic, I find modern Bowman design to by bland by way of simply being practical. You want an Austin Martin 1st Bowman card?

Here.

But no frills…unless you can find a chrome card or one of the parallel or autograph cards.

            Yes…modern Bowman card are caught up in the false scarcity game as well. The brand is a Topps product after all.

            Usually I intersplice some kind of personal reflection or story in these post…and I’ve been batting 1989 around in my head this whole week trying to come up with something. But truth be told, I was a pretty depressed kid by the summer of 1989. I was fifteen and had just finished my freshman year in high school. I was obesely overweight. That summer, I spent a week at some leadership camp (not sleep over) and remember really being into this girl named Jenny. I spent that week not ingesting any of the lessons that they tried to impart on us kids, but spent the week watching Jenny fall for this other guy.  All I wanted to do was leave that program, go home, and mess with my baseball cards. Or listen to my New Edition and Bobby Brown cassette tapes.

            I feel like 1989 was the last year that I was so heavily into baseball cards, even though I collected until 1992. The last year they were so all encompassing to my life. My family took a trip to Cooperstown that summer as well, and I think, more than the Baseball Hall of Fame, I was enamored with the number of baseball card dealers that were scattered throughout the town. Some of them had stuff that I never seen. Like Minor League team sets. I remember buying a Buffalo Bisons team set on that trip, as they were the Pirates AAA affiliate back then. And a signed photo of Bobby Bonilla for $5.

            Christ, imagine buying a signed anything for a, at the time, star player, for $5.

            Anyway….

           Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting.

If you’d like to know more about the 1989 Bowman set you can do so HERE.

Next Friday: Um…let’s go back to 1986. We’ll talk a little bit about some of my favorite 1986 cards, even though I’m no longer a big fan of the 1986 Topps set. Also, little league. I’m going to discuss little league and my history as a quitter.

 

A.J. 84 Revisited : A NSFW look at childhood cruelty...and 1984 Topps Football

My friendship with A.J. was beginning to become a messy situation.

            I had to begin learning how to compartmentalize my friendships. Why was no one else? Miller and A.J. simply could not coexist. I had tried for over a year with the both of them. I tried including Miller whenever A.J. and I played with our Star War action figures. But he didn’t understand the nuances of the way we played. The plot archs we created. And he became bored. Grabbed a wiffle ball or Nerf football and went out into the cul de sac to throw/play by himself, or Miller recruited my brother to join him.

The budding sports fan in me (beyond paying a passing glance on TV) iand avid card collector took this as a provocation. I found myself growing bored with action figures. Bored with intricate plots. Bored with A.J.’s seemingly one-note set of interests: Sci Fi or Rock and Roll. It didn’t help that Carolyn Smith made her way up the street more and more. I had a crush on Carolyn Smith. Even if her asshole sister Alyssa tagged along.

            And A.J. could not play sports. Would not play sports. He put the wrong hand on top of the bat. Threw a Nerf football sideways like he’d learned the sport from Kent Tekulve. Would not fix his errors no matter how many times we told him. Was belligerent if Miller tried to help. Suffered the ridicule as a point of pride. Would slam down a wiffle bat, throw a Nerf ball far into the neighbor’s yard (surprisingly overhand), and then stormed off.

            For the record, A.J. was not uncoordinated. The kid could play guitar like nobody’s business.

As I grew older, I understood what A.J. was doing. The purposefulness of his rebellious acts. The spectacle of the ostracized. His throwing down the friendship gauntlet. His “him or me” bravado. Over the years, A.J. performed this act of contrition so many times that it grew tiresome and old. I better learned how to manage it. I kept our friendship for as long as I could. But at age ten? At ten I just wanted to have the best of both worlds. Of all worlds. I wanted Carolyn Smith to think that I was cool.

On a particular late August Saturday, in 1984, A.J. went too far with his dramatics. It being late August we were playing Nerf Football in the old dead-end. Had to be. In Pittsburgh, the torch passed from baseball to football with relative ease. There was no Major League baseball postseason to look forward to in Pittsburgh in 1984. Dave Parker was in a Reds uniform for Christ’s sake. 

As I remember it, we were playing two-on-two. A.J. and me. Miller and my brother. Always. Miller and A.J. couldn’t play together. Me and Miller? There was no competition there. My brother and me? Back then, at times, we rivaled the Davies and Gallagher brothers in terms of our personal ire and competitive nature. It was best that we were on opposite sides of any team sport that we played. And even then, there could be familial fireworks.

I don’t know what started it. One of A.J.’s side-armed passes. His inability to make a catch, despite having the long, gangly frame of an all-pro wide receiver. Me coming up on the losing end again. All I remember is that I had it that day. I spiked the damned Nerf football and then went and pouted on my porch, followed soon by Miller and my brother. We left A.J. to stand alone on that cul de sac, like some poor, judged fool in the Roman Coliseum waiting for a hungry lion to decide his fate. What else was there to do but for him to storm inside? Again.

Fine, I thought. Let it take another week for him to come knocking on my door. I was getting too old for Star Wars men anyway. But Miller, my brother and I still wanted to play Nerf Football. We couldn’t play one on one with Miller as QB; that would’ve been Cain and Able territory. My parents didn’t deserve the burden of burying a son over a Nerf football game. Miller, in his infinite wisdom, went inside my house and called Carolyn Smith. 

Ah, Carolyn. Despite her charms (and she had many: thick, chestnut hair, dark luminous eyes) she was quite the athlete. Soft ball. JV hoops. She’d even once played tackle football with us in her backyard, until her mom showed up from work and put an end to all of that by chasing Miller and I half way up the street.

With Carolyn we were set to play again, Miller, wicked cupid that he was, put her and I together on a team. I don’t know if there was chemistry or not. But I know there was accuracy. There was competence. There was a will to actually compete and try to win the game. The politics of balancing friendships vanished. In its place, four kids playing Nerf Football in the cool breeze of the coming autumn. 

Yes, we had cool August days back then. School started the following week for our quartet of Catholic kids. Quintet if you counted Alyssa, who’d tagged along just to say nasty things about the way we played. But who wanted to? It was an idyllic scene of childhood merriment and fun. The moment almost too good to be true.

It was too good to be true.

Midway into our game we heard the rattle of a garage door. Then Frank Fanello, A.J.’s reclusive, lunatic dad, was out in the driveway, clad in those green khaki military fatigues that he wore. We watched as Frank brought an amp to the end of the driveway. He plugged an extension cord into the amp then walked back into the garage to plug it into the wall. He came back a minute later holding a ruby red electric guitar, which he proceeded to plug into the amp. The loud fuzz of feedback made Alyssa cover her ears. Then Frank Fanello began playing guitar right there are the end of his driveway.

I know, I know. I’ve mentioned all of this before. Us kids vs. the guitar virtuosos of Frank Fanello. But this was the first time that he’d come onto his driveway to serenade us. The first time there'd been any reaction to A.J.'s ostracism. To say we were floored would be an understatement. I remember Miller laughing, like a what-in-the-shit? is this laugh. Neighbors opened screen doors to see what in the hell was going on. Then they shut their doors just as quickly when they realized that it was just the neighborhood lunatic harassing a bunch of kids. So much for it taking a village to raise children. After a few minutes of being flabbergasted beyond conversation, we stopped playing football altogether. Miller mentioned that we go up to the Thrift Drug to buy us some football cards. So, we left Frank Fanello to his goddamned guitar playing.

1984 Topps Football cards had been out for maybe a month at that point. We were buying them sparingly. A pack here or there at a time. Of course, at ten, that was typically how I bought cards, due to an extremely low cash flow. I remember 1984 Topps being the first football cards I ever bought in pack form. The design has always been iconic to me as a result. The top slanted bar with the player’s name. The bottom one with the team. A white band that said all-pro for the players that earned it. Those crooked, clear pictures that looked more akin to what Topps would do with its 1985 baseball brand than anything remotely like its hazy sister baseball set from earlier that year.

1984 Topps Football had Terry Bradshaw’s last card. Franco Harris’ last card as a Steeler. John Elway’s rookie card. Eric Dickerson’s rookie. Roger Craig. Some cat named Curt Warner who had been all the rage. Howie Long’s rookie card, as well as cards for a number of vets. Joe Montana’s fourth card. Lawrence Taylor’s third card. Cards for Steve Largent. Jack Lambert. Dan Fouts, Kellen Winslow, Wes Chandler, Chuck Muncie, and Charlie Joiner; the San Diego Charger team that Miller made sound like legends. 

But the card we all really wanted to pull out of a pack was the rookie card of Dan Marino.

To understand Dan Marino to kid in Pittsburgh in the 1980s is to understand standing on the shoulders of a god. Dan Marino. Danny to the folks who’d been watching his exploits on the football field since his high school days at Pittsburgh’s Central Catholic. The kid from the Oakland section of Pittsburg who went to Pitt. Legions of us followed his career. The lucky ones chose the number 13 when the JV and Varsity football seasons started. And there he was on a genuine football card! An all-pro in his rookie year.  For sure he was going to win at least a dozen Super Bowls…right?

I had an art teacher at Central Catholic (a sadistic bastard…but that’s a story for another time). On the first day of Intro to Art class, he picked one student sitting on his little, brown wooden stool, and said to him. Do you know whose seat that is? The impressionable young freshman would obviously shake his head no. Then sadistic art teacher would get a broad smile (as I remember him, he was an evil version of Mister Rogers, complete with zip-up sweaters) and a say, why that’s Dan Marino’s seat. He would let the freshman revel in that for a moment, a moment of dead smiling silence. Sadistic art teacher would then point around the room to other kids sitting on other stools, saying, and that was Dan Marino’s seat, and that was Dan Marino’s seat, and that was Dan Marino’s seat.

Until he covered the whole room.

But that wasn't enough to break the Marino mystique for us at his/our alma mater. During my Sophomore year, Central decided to retire Dan Marino’s number 13. The powers that be invited him back for a ceremony. Us students were told that under no circumstances were we to bother Mr. Marino. Yeah…okay. Midway through the day as I was going to the library, I saw Dan Marino. Pressed up against a wall. Pen up to his chin. Signing autographs for dozens upon dozens of high school boys while the black-clad Christian brothers kept trying to pull kids away from their football hero. Dan looked like he was enjoying it.

But I digress…

All the while we were opening cards, Alyssa Smith sat on Miller’s steps scrawling something in this tattered notebook that she carried. Carolyn, never one for cards, had left us an hour or so ago. Yet her sister stayed. I didn’t like Alyssa. There was a Jeykl/Hyde thing about her. One day she was sweet and kind. The next she was beyond mean. Alyssa usually went after me for my weight (she wasn't very creative in her cruelty). I steered clear of her as much as I could, as much as one who had a massive crush on her sister could. I don’t know what it was with Alyssa. For one, she was practically my age but two grades behind. For another, both Carolyn and their older brother, Bobby, has been adopted by the Smith family. Alyssa was their natural born daughter. She seemed to resent the attention that her sister and brother got…and she took it out on hapless victims like me.

Or on A.J…this time.

“What do you think?” Allison said, turning to Miller, my brother and I. She had torn a piece of paper from her notebook and was dangling it before us.

Miller took the bait. He took the paper from Allison and read it. His face turned scarlet. “What is this?”

THIS PART IS NOT SAFE FOR WORK OR TO BE READ BY CHILD EYES

KIDS.....FOCUS ON THIS GUY INSTEAD:

“It’s a song.” Alyssa took the paper back from Miller and proceeded to sing the following to us:  “A.J. is a son-of-a-bitch, dick-brained, cock-sucking, motherfucking, fag-faced vegetable...his dad is a bone-faced dog.” The last line she sang low, like the baritone in a barbershop quartet.

I was floored. I hadn’t heard that kind of language come out of half of the boys I knew, let alone a single girl. Fag-faced vegetable? Why that was sickening poetry. Who knew this kind of sinister wordplay could come out of Alyssa Smith? As bi-polar and rude as she could be, Alyssa had never exhibited any skill with the devil’s language. It was gross. It was cruel. Miller burst out laughing. We were all intrigued.

“I want to leave it in their mailbox,” Alyssa said.

“You can’t do that,” I said.

“What?” she laughed. “Are you and A.J. gay for each other.”

It was my turn to turn red. Ten years old and I already knew what that meant. What an accusation like that could do a guy in the neighborhood, even if he played wiffle ball, Nerf football, and spent all of his money on cards. Gay was gay in 1984. Once you were labeled...it was hard going back.

But the better angels of our nature visited us that day. Or Alyssa got bored and went home. I can’t remember which, except that it was made crystal clear that such nefarious a verse would not reach the eyes of A.J. Fanello or his nutbag father. Miller, my brother and I stayed on Miller’s porch for a little bit longer, looking at our cards, before the late afternoon began to creep into the day. Last Saturday of the summer. The next day would be Sunday. And the insufferable bore of church. A gloomy cloud hanging over the hours after. Then the beginning of the routine that would occupy my evenings for the next 9 plus months.

Fucking school.

 Yet…after church the next day, I was sitting on my porch looking through those 1984 Topps Football cards, when I noticed a white piece of paper flapping underneath a large rock that had been removed from the shoddy landscaping of my family’s driveway. Curiosity took over. I went to see what the piece of paper was. When I got to it, it looked old. It was wrinkled until it resembled tissue paper over notebook paper. There were burn marks from a lighter. And writing. Bubbly, familiar script.  

KIDS LOOK AT THIS KIND MAN....READ NO FURTHER'

The paper read:

A.J. is a son-of-a-bitch, dick-brained, cock-sucking, motherfucking, fag-faced vegetable...his dad is a bone-faced dog.

Alyssa. She’d snuck up the street and left that sinister jingle for me to find. Why was I always the target? I thought. The wrinkling and the burn marks were extra evil. But then it hit me. And I looked up, away from the note, over to the Fanello house. A.J. was in his bedroom window on the second-floor. Our eyes met for a moment. Then he shook his head and shut his curtains.

And I knew what Alyssa had gone and done.

Thanks for reading! Happy collecting!

If you'd like to learn more about 1984 Topps Football cards you can do so HERE

If you'd like to learn more about Dan Marino and his football career you can do so HERE and HERE

NEXT FRIDAY: I'm going to take a look (and the only way that I know how) at 2021 Bowman Baseball cards...and we're going back to 1989. Back to when I was a miserable overweight fifteen-year-old who saw no light at the end of the tunnel...but who really loved 1989 Bowman baseball cards...so well be taking a look at them too. 

 

 

 

 

On the Road : Sports Card Shopping in Buffalo and Pittsburgh

 

I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up.

            …is the opening line Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, one of my favorite novels of all-time. Almost thirty years since I first read it, and I still think about that novel a lot. Especially when I’m traveling. In a car. In a boat. On a plane. On a train. Across the country or to the grocery, it doesn’t matter; Kerouac’s Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty are always somewhere with me, listening to jazz and having mad, wild conversations as the landscape of America changes before them. It’s a nice feeling to have characters that you keep so close like that. And I’ve always wanted to write that line. Thank you for indulging me.

Point of fact I like to travel. You wouldn’t know it to travel with me, but I do. The sad thing is that for as much as I enjoy traveling, it can bring out the worst in my anxiety. Money fears. Hotel room fears. Fear of not being an expert on any city or town the minute I step foot on its worn concrete. North becomes South. East becomes West. Tantrums when I’m being perceived as a tourist by locals, even though being a tourist is exactly what I am. I have travel anxiety but I do it all the same.

And from 2004 to 2019 I’d like to think that my wife and I have gone and put some miles in America and around the world. Coast to Coast trip by car. London. Paris. Madrid. Rome. Vienna. Berlin. Dublin. Amsterdam. Belgium. Vague talk of one day standing on the continent of Antarctica. In 2019, we traveled to Japan and then later in the year to San Francisco. It was the first time in my life that I could say I looked out onto the horizon of the Pacific Ocean from both sides of the world. I felt calm. I felt content. I felt like anything was possible.

Then 2020 happened. Covid-19 happened. Travel stopped. Life stopped. I sat on my ass on a couch for over a year, reading, binge watching TV shows, and getting fat on booze and copious amounts of Doritos. I collected baseball cards that I didn’t even want to collect, as a soundtrack of sirens wailed down my busy Brooklyn Street. Yes, I realize that it couldn’t been much worse. I was alive. My loved ones were safe. There was still a void to be filled.

            But by mid-April of 2021, my wife and I joined to ranks of family who had been able to get to the Covid-19 vaccine (a brief aside…GET THE FUCKING VACCINE), and have their sheltered world open up, if only in small ways. That is to say we were able to travel again. Not to Japan. Not to San Francisco. Not to gaze longingly at the Pacific Ocean horizon like some pampered wanker, comparing what hole-in-the-wall had the best ramen (Answer: it's a small place off the main drag in Osaka). But to go home. Still…I can’t WAIT to be a pampered wanker again.

That’s right, my wife and I were at least able to see family. Buffalo and Pittsburgh respectively. Maybe visiting family for the first time during a plague isn’t necessarily traveling. Maybe Buffalo and Pittsburgh aren’t Tokyo or San Francisco. The ubiquitous Trump signs still hanging proud in rural New York and Pennsylvania told us as much. But they sure as fuck felt like it when I was renting a car, and plotting out where I wanted to go.

            And where I wanted to go was baseball card shopping. In between the reunions with family, and the joy of reconnecting; the sad reflection at the loss of time and the people we’ve lost; the shared meals; the ancient arguments and grudges bubbling up again. I wanted to stretch my sea legs and visit some baseball card shops in the Buffalo and Pittsburgh area. At least the ones that I could get to in such a compact stretch of time. Sure, it wasn’t Kerouac’s Sal and Dean driving through the swampy Mexican night, their car rattling, the jazz blowing, another half of the hemisphere within their reach. But it was something. My something.

            2021 is going to be baby steps.

Buffalo:

            The first place I visited was Dave and Adam’s Card World. 

    I visited there on a Saturday. Left my wife and mother-in-law behind to cruise Maple Street and Sheridan Avenue, my New Edition Fam playlist blasting out of the rental car, people at red lights staring at the aging jackass with his ballcap backwards belting out My Prerogative at the top of his lungs on otherwise quiet, Buffalo streets. 

        I’d been to Dave and Adam’s before, in September 2019 (my last actual visit to Buffalo before the plague). I was impressed with the store then. With Dave and Adam’s wide array of memorabilia and retail clothing for each Buffalo sports team. Their large back section dedicated to sports cards and comic books. Dave and Adam’s is a dork’s dream. On that trip in 2019, I bought a hobby box of both Topps Series 1 and Series 2. It was my first time buying a hobby box of anything since I got back into the hobby a few months beforehand

            Flash forwards a year and half later and my current trip experience was…a little bit different. 2021 is decidedly NOT 2019. For one, I wasn’t the wide-eyed returning collector that I was in 2019. And current prices being what they are on new wax, rushing to the counter to purchase hobby boxes without serious spiritual and financial consulting with myself was not… in the cards, for lack of a better expression. It’s not that Dave and Adam’s was a rip-off. Their hobby box prices are just as outrageously aligned with everyone else out there. That is to say they were high enough to make you sweat. High enough to take the fun out of a purchase.

Dave and Adam’s had individual packs available for the various releases. For some reason (and I can think of a few) the store wasn’t exactly outright in what they were selling individual packs for. Not knowing the price of something without having to ask is prohibitive to me (and a lot of others…so take note retailers). Also, I’d made a pact with myself not to open much wax this year. I’m going Topps Flagship and flagship only in 2021. Singles of players that I want for everything else. Even if I wanted to splurge, there wasn’t much to buy hobby wise during my trip to Dave and Adam’s. I’d had my fill of Topps Series 1, wasn’t touching Heritage, and 2021 Bowman was a good week away from being released at a price that I still can’t choke down when I see it.

If I wasn’t buying cards what in the hell was I in Dave and Adam’s for?

Supplies.

Or rather a lack of supplies, which seems to be endemic in The Hobby currently. Let’s talk about a lack of supplies. When I visited Dave and Adam’s in 2019, the place was a Mecca for me for card supplies. Boxes in any size. Top loaders, binder sheets, penny sleeves, oh my! They had everything. 2021, as expected, was a different story. 2021 Dave and Adam’s had some penny sleeves, mostly under their own Dave and Adam’s brand. They had some magnetic one touches. Bu there were no standard top loaders or even 9-pocket sheets to be had. The supply section was mostly relegated to off-popular supplies, like ticket holders or full-page, single use sheets. I did buy my first individual card stand for a buck, which the kind cashier at D & A didn’t even charge me for when he wrung up my other supplies.

I think the Kiner card looks good displayed as such.

Of course, while in the wild and wooly suburbs of Buffalo, I also had to do the requisite visit to Target to take the standard empty card shelves photo.

I even stood in the aisle for a good minute, hands on hips, looking flummoxed and cursing card flippers.

            Time being short and of the essence in Buffalo, I only managed a visit to one other sports card place: 716 Sports Cards & Collectibles, in the Orchard Park suburb, just south of the city of Buffalo.

    I’d been wanting to/excited about going to 716 for some time. I’d first heard about and seen the shop in a video on Jabs YouTube channel. In the video, Jabs shows himself going through boxes of $1 and .50 cent cards, pulling out things like 1977 George Brett cards and Carl Yastrzemski cards. Older cards are more in my wheelhouse than the newer ones. 716 Cards seemed right up my alley. I couldn’t wait to see what treasures I’d get my grubby hands on.

            716 Sports Cards & Collectibles itself is a small store set in a two-building strip mall that houses the shop and an adjoining pizza joint, that was proving popular enough to almost pique my interest; the place smelled good enough to question my loyalty to NYC pizza. The interior of 716 had a few display cases that held more expensive cards. There were some baseball cards but Football and Hockey seemed to rule the shelves. The store had a display case in the back for current hobby box items.

716 Sports Cards & Collectibles had some actual supplies. Top loaders that I couldn’t find at Dave and Adam’s. And they weren’t trying to gouge a fella for a package of them either. So, I definitely had to snag some. The store had some framed memorabilia on its walls. They even had some jerseys in display cases propped against shelving on the floor. Sabres and Bills stuff, mostly. To be honest, 716 had the look of just recently being opened, even though I heard to owner tell another customer that 716 had been in operation for over two years.

            The real draw for me were those boxes of cards that I saw on Jabs’ video. There had to be two or three dozen, three-row boxes full of cards stacked on top of each other. The prices in the boxes ranged from 10-cents to two-dollars. I gravitated to them, hoping to pull myself a ton of vintage stuff. I was having delusions of 1977 Topps George Brett cards and $1 Willie Stargell cards. My experience was a touch different from Jabs. Most of the cards I sifted through were on the newer end of the collecting spectrum. I’d say mostly from 2018 on up. For some reason there were a ton of Anthony Alford rookies in those boxes still selling for a buck. I ended up grabbing some cards of current players I’m into.

            And I did manage to find some “older” stuff mixed in with the picutred new in the .25cent bins

    Also…when you find a Doc Gooden rookie, no matter the condition, you give it a good home.

PITTSBURGH:

            Full disclosure, By the time my wife and I arrived in Pittsburgh, I had no real plans to go card shopping. Steel City Collectibles, the only shop near my parent’s home, was still closed for the pandemic for some reason, and is currently only doing business online. Plus, there’s a Dave and Adam’s vibe (albeit a smaller store) in Steel City. And I wasn’t in the mood for over-priced new stuff. My somewhat futile search at 716 Sports Cards & Collectibles had left me hungering for vintage cards and the junk wax era stuff of my youth. All of the other card shops recommended to me, in the Pittsburgh area, were in suburbs a good thirty to forty miles away. And if you’ve ever visited family (especially mine) getting away to go somewhere thirty to forty miles away is a challenge during normal times. Another time perhaps.

            Plus, I had to make it a point to visit this shrine

…indulge one of my other passions.

And aside from a bunch of sad-bastard Sinatra albums, I found this R&B masterpiece.

See how we've come almost full circle?

But sometimes if you don’t go looking for the cards, the cards come looking for you. That is to say that I accidently did some card shopping while in Pittsburgh. While I went antiquing. Yes…antiquing. Something I never thought I’d do. And antiquing is word I never thought that I’d say or write. Jack Kerouac never went antiquing. Bukowski never went looking for an oak table and matching chairs. Shakespeare never was on the hunt for a lamp that accentuated a room. Why in the fuck would I then? I’m going to leave the word hanging there for a second.

Antiquing.

Going to an antique shop wasn’t actually as bad as I made it sound. I quite enjoyed it. To hell with Bukowski! My wife and I went with my mom to a two-level place they call The Hub, in the North Versailles section of the Pittsburgh suburbs. 

The place was pretty much a mixture of antiques and cast-off flea market items. That is to say you could buy a solid oak table with chairs, and add PITT or Penn State pint glasses to the purchase, along with an Andy Van Slyke pin from 1988. A pin I actually found and purchased.

My horror-writing wife (intentional plug right HERE) got these creepy ass dolls for inspiration.

And they do stuff like this when we're not home...

I suspected there’d be baseball cards/sports cards in general somewhere in The Hub. A few display cases had individual cards for Pirates players in the 1950s and some early 1970s Steelers cards. But nothing that screamed purchases, and certainly not anything in bulk. Until I went down to the second-level of the store. That’s when I found this waiting for me.

And what was this? As you can see it’s a collection of pre-wrapped cards, both of the sports and non-sports variety. The Hub catered to a lot of Pittsburgh teams, especially the Pirates. It doesn’t get more in my wheelhouse than Pittsburgh Pirates team sets. I was able to find myself a number of team sets from the 1980s in the Topps, Fleer and Donruss brands. I also found myself a nice 150-card “starter” set for 1976 Topps, a set that I absolutely adore. So that’s a new project for me to start delving into. I even went outside of my baseball comfort zone and grabbed me a 450-card lot of 1984 Topps football. Sure, it was sans the Marino, Elway and Dickerson rookies (and most of the Steelers), but it’s a pretty complete set that I can’t wait to finish.

My Hub purchases:

No trip home would be complete without a card visit with my brother…in his new apartment of all things. My brother and I like to send each other cards from time to time. Because it’s been so hard finding product on the shelves, I brought him all of the 2021 series doubles etc that I had on hand…and thanks to the MLB Flagship Store being in NYC I had a lot. He was kind enough to hook me up with this.

Yeah, it’s beat to shit…but a 1960 Clemente is a 1960 Clemente.

Oh…and Shelly Pie is better than Vincent’s. Don’t @ me Pittsburghers.

All in all, it was good to get back out “on the road.” It was good to see family and reconnect. Good to visit places where I lived, that held a history for me; places that I’d been missing during all of those months of inertia sitting in Brooklyn. Christ, it was awesome to go somewhere new and buy cards. I can’t wait to do it again. And though I muse Tokyo and San Francisco…one can fined either a nuanced or violent argument in Buffalo over who has the better wings.

I’m no preacher but getting vaccinated was a good, small thing that I’ve done for myself. It saddens me to think that a small (but sizeable) portion of Americans don’t view vaccination this way, and to read the sad news that we are probably not going to reach a herd immunity. Like those Trump signs I saw in rural New York and Pennsylvania; there’s no excuse for ignorance. Rugged individualism will just keep you sick and could get you killed. Inaction could keep this virus with us for years, in strains that could render vaccines worthless. How about we pull up our bootstraps for others this time around? Huh America?

Also…let’s share the wealth around the world.

And hopefully that’s as political as I’ll have to get on this blog.

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

*Shameless Plug*

I have a new book of poetry out on Kung Fu Treachery Press: Eating a Cheeseburger During the End Times. 

If you dig poetry, the book can be purchased HERE and HERE...or you can reach out to me and we can work something out.

NEXT FRIDAY: Going back to 1984 to maybe talk about 1984 Topps Football cards, but mostly for me to ramble on for paragraphs aboout being a kid in the fall of 1984. I'm bringing all the characters back: Me, Miller, my brother and even poor ol' A.J. See you then!