"If this isn't the biggest bag-over-the-head, punch-in-the-face I ever got, GOD DAMN IT!"...or...some thoughts on the whole Topps/Fanatics "thing."

 

I went looking for solace.

            I went looking for connection.

             I don’t know if August 19, 2021 can be listed up there with red letter days in history. It’s certainly no 9/11. A president didn’t die on that day. A war was not won. Or lost. No sports team captured a title. There was no coronation. No one was canceled.

            Yet.

            August 19, 2021.

            I was in my office that afternoon. I was avoiding work as all good citizens should do. I was on my phone. Screwing around on Twitter. I was reading baseball feeds. The Pirates had just been swept by the Dodgers. They were headed to St. Louis and I felt impending dread at their prospects there. Speaking of prospects; I was beginning to roll the name Elijah Green on my tongue.

            It was an ordinary day by all accounts.

            Even my lunch was mediocre.

            The biggest news in The Hobby was still that PWCC scandal, which I still don’t fully understand, except that it has something to do with the Oregon-based sports card company engaging in “shill bidding.” Shill bidding, as I understand it, is when your friends, associates etc., bid on an item with the intent of artificially inflating its value. The scandal got a lot of people in The Hobby riled up. I don’t gamble on baseball cards or participate in auctions. I buy cards outright.  I was a touch less concerned with the nefarious goings on at PWCC. So August 19, 2021 was an otherwise quiet day in The Hobby for me too.

            Until it happened.

            Around 4pm on August 19, 2021 my Twitter feed started becoming inundated with a small, content-starved article that simply stated that sports merchandising mega-house Fanatics had secured the exclusive license to manufacture Major League Baseball cards. Fanatics would have the exclusive license of the MLBPA (Major League Baseball Players Association) in 2023, and Major League Baseball itself (logos and stuff) in 2025. MLB and the MLBPA would be ending it’s 70-year relationship with the Topps corporation come 2026.

            That was it.

            That was the whole article.

            Say what?

            My first thought was that the article had to be a joke. April Fool’s Day in August. Someone who knew we were all bored/terrified of reading about the Delta Variant of the Covid-19 virus, and wanted to shake things up. Or somebody was mis-informed. Mis-information is a bedrock in America. Somebody was being an asshole because they like to sow chaos and rile people up.

Of course, Major League Baseball/Players Association wasn’t ending its relationship with Topps. That bond was sacred right? There’s a tradition there. The entire foundation of the sport is built on tradition! Cheating, booze, loose women, cheating, and cheating too. But tradition. Baseball loves tradition.

            Turns out Major League Baseball loves money more.

            Fanatics was willing to pony-up more than Topps.

            Money talks.

            Tradition walks a marathon.

            Regardless, the story was true.

            When the news really hit me, I felt sad. Gutted. Felt like I’d lost a good friend. Albeit a “friend” whose revenue stream totaled 567-million dollars in 2020. But a friend all the same. In an instant all I could think was: Topps base. Gone. Topps Heritage. Gone. Topps Chrome. Gone. Gypsy Queen. Gone. Allen & Ginter. Gone. Stadium Club. Gone. Bowman…maybe gone…but gone soon. All of those people who got up that morning feeling secure in their jobs. Gone.

            All of it.

            Gone.

            And, yeah, Topps is a company. I get that. And I’m not one to get mushy over corporations. And loving a brand? I’ve always been suspect toward people who are Disney fanatics. I don’t like Disney. Disney produces (mostly) mediocre garbage for mass consumption. Or they purchase other people’s garbage for mass consumption.

I don’t like that Disney owns The Muppets. Or Star Wars. Or Fox Pictures. Or Marvel. Or whatever else they own that makes them one homogenous corporation whose mascot is a purposeless rat with no soul. A rodent who stands for nothing.

            But that afternoon I began to understand Disney fans.

            Topps is my Disney. I guess. I’ve written it here before but it bears repeating now. Topps was the first pack of cards that I ever opened. 1980, as a six-year-old. The pack was bought for me by my grandma in a 5 and Dime store on Butler Street in the Lawrenceville section of Pittsburgh. I was hooked from that moment on. 

            That singular event, that single pack of cards yielded twelve straight years of obsessive card collecting.

            And subsequently a return to The Hobby years later when I needed it the most.

Though I came of age in The Hobby when Fleer and Donruss didn’t seem like interlopers, but just another card option, I always gravitated toward Topps. Theirs were the designs that I was most excited for each year. Topps was always the first packs that I bought. When I could afford my first wax box, it was Topps that I went running too.

My first team sets were Topps. The first set that I ever built, 1988, was Topps. When I was moving away from collecting, the last two years I was in The Hobby I only bought Topps. When I came back in 2019, it was Topps, not Panini, that I sought out. If Topps’ mascot was a peppy rat with no soul, who stood for nothing, I’d probably worship at his altar too.

It’s funny. Prior to that August afternoon I’d been thinking a lot about Topps by way of Upper Deck. I’d finally gotten around to reading Pete Williams’ insightful Card Sharks: How Upper Deck Turned a Child’s Hobby into a High Stakes, Billion Dollar Business. It’s a pretty good read. And while I was never the biggest Upper Deck fan, and do blame them, in part, for hastening my exit from The Hobby back in the day; the book has a few chapters on the history of card collecting prior to Upper Deck. 

You know, the whole Topps vs Bowman business. 

Then the decades of drama between Topps and Fleer.

To be frank, Topps was kind of the Fanatics of its day.

If there’s a heaven or a hell, I’m sure there are Fleer and Bowman executives from the 1950s-1970s who are smiling up or down upon the world right now.

Paybacks are indeed a bitch.

The Williams book touched on that famous story about how the Topps warehouse was left with cases upon cases of the High Series of 1952 Baseball cards because retailers couldn’t sell them as they were printed so late and consumers had moved onto other products. In the story, by 1960, Topps badly needed the warehouse space. So those cases of 1952 cards that had been lingering around for 8 years had to go. Topps president Sy Berger hired a tugboat to take said cases of cards out into the Atlantic Ocean to dump them.

The 1952 Mickey Mantle card was in that sunken series.

It was his first Topps card.

Some debate that its Mantle’s true rookie.

In January a mint-condition 1952 Mickey Mantle card sold for 5.2-million.

To say the card is legendary doesn’t do its history justice.

For me, it was a location thing in the Williams book that again attracted me to the story. Back in the 1950s, the Topps offices/manufacturing plant were located in the Bush Terminal Building in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn. The Pier that Mr. Berger launched his tugboat sits at the end of the warehouse.

Like a thirty-minute walk from my apartment.

Last year when Covid was initially raging, and we were stuck in Brooklyn 24/7, my wife and I used to take walks down the Bush Terminal. It was the only way we could safely just be out of our neighborhood for a few hours. We’d walk around listening to music or podcasts, or just bullshitting. I took pictures from the pier. Manhattan in the distance. The Statue of Liberty. I had no clue about the Topps connection to Bush Terminal. But after finishing the Williams’ book, I thought about going back. Taking pictures. Writing a blog post about it.

But then August 19, 2021 happened.

And instead, I went looking for solace.

And I went looking for connection.

I’m a pretty big fan of the podcast About the Cards. Every week, Ben Wilson, Stephan Loeffler and, until recently, Tim Shepler, promised us folks in The Hobby “a hopefully smart and insightful podcast discussing trading card collecting.” And they always deliver. When I saw that the About the Cards guys (with Shepler back in the fold for one night only) were going to do a special episode of the podcast addressing the Topps/Fanatics drama, I knew I wanted to hear what they and their guests had to say.

And, of course, the guys and their guests didn’t disappoint. There was some shock on the episode, obviously. A lot of figuring out what had happened. How Topps had gotten to this place. Admittedly, there was some schadenfreude from angry collectors who felt that Topps wasn’t holding up its end of the bargain in terms of quality. How maybe they had been taking advantage of collectors for too long. Coasting, if you will. There was some discussion that maybe what happened between Topps, MLB and Fanatics was a little bit…deserved.

Perhaps Topps doth assumed to much that the MLB licenses would always be theirs.

But of all of the hosts/guests on that fantastic special episode, it was returning host, Tim Shepler, who best summed up what I was feeling. When asked for his reaction to the news of Topps losing its license to produce baseball cards, Shepler said, and I paraphrase, “I was shocked and, just like sad all of the sudden, because I have this wall of Topps over here to my right just of all the Football and Baseball sets, I’ve put together over the years. It felt like you’re losing a friend all of the sudden.”

Shocked.

Sad.

All of those years building sets.

Which is exactly how I was feeling. And, again, I know Topps is a company. Topps exists to make money. Topps is the Disney of trading cards. Topps has jaded a number of collectors. Topps has “watered down” The Hobby. Topps got what it “deserved.”

Blah.

Blah.

Blah.

That may or may not be true, or simply a matter of perspective. That hasn’t been my history, past or present, with Topps. As a kid, the brand symbolized, more than Fleer or Donruss, or especially Score or Upper Deck ever could, the coming of the baseball season, the coming of summer freedom. Lazy days. No school. Endless hours of promise and discovery. Simple fun. As a retuning collector…I wanted that nostalgia. That feeling.

This!

Topps might sell nostalgia.

But they’re selling my nostalgia.

They might as well have a peppy, soulless rat as their mascot.

To be fair, my take/feelings on Topps stems from a naivety because I wasn’t a long-term collector into adulthood. I stopped collecting at 18, bought some packs here and there over the years, really tried again in 2007-2008, but ultimately didn’t get back into The Hobby until summer of 2019. I’ve never been cheated an autograph in a Hobby Box. Never been on hold with Topps customer service for a lifetime. Don’t have an opinion on much of anything from 1994-2018. I mean, I do, but what’s sour grapes for products that I wasn’t even there for?

In short, I’m not at all discounting long-term collector’s gripes.

Full disclosure, I don’t know much about Fanatics. And what I’ve learned I don’t really care for. I don’t like behemoths who go around purchasing everything they want. See my Disney diatribe above. And I don’t know what it means for The Hobby going forward with a company like Fanatics having the license to exclusively produce baseball cards (and now basketball cards and  football cards...for 20 goddamned years!), and having the sports “investor” dude from StockX running the show.

It doesn’t feel promising to me.

And, yeah, I guess it’s cool that the leagues and players have equity in the deal. If you’re thinking about small-market teams or players making the league minimum. But otherwise, the deal stinks of greed.

The rich getting richer.

But.

Maybe Fanatics will get to buy Topps like they wanted to back in 2020, and nothing in the chain of collecting will be disturbed. A big fish gets eaten by a bigger fish and we can all go about our business, right? Except for people who will lose their jobs. Maybe Fanatics will buy Panini too, and we can live in some bizarro world where Topps, Score and Donruss brands are all owned and released by the same company.

and we get these again:

Maybe Fanatics and the StockX bro will start from scratch and make the best baseball, basketball and football cards The Hobby has ever seen. And they’ll be affordable too! Imagine a basketball hobby box that doesn’t cost $1000, or a football one that doesn’t cost $300. Maybe they’ll put out a quality product for young collectors. Maybe base sets will be AFFORDABLE to young collectors. Maybe the customer service at Fanatics will be top-notch, and all of the people bitching about Topps will fall to their knees in absolute adulation and worship of our new hobby overlords.

Maybe.

But I don’t think so.

Maybe Fanatics will buy Disney. Or Disney will buy Fanatics. And Google or Amazon can buy them. One big mass media/sports/entertainment/news conglomerate. The media empire to end all media empires!

Then it can be one stop shopping for Marvel, Star Wars, Muppets, Fox Movies, MLB, NBA, and the NFL. And maybe, at some point in the future, we’ll all be opening up a pack of Fanatics cards that we bought from Amazon, while doing a Google Search on our Iphones for some movie that we want to watch on Disney Plus, after we shut off the game from the MLB, NFL, or NBA Network. A game that isn’t blacked-out in our areas.

Maybe.

But I don’t think so.

Truth is, we just don’t know yet. It’s like what About the Cards host, Ben Wilson said: “This is the tip of the iceberg.” We’re just seeing the top layer of this. Us collectors don’t know what’s happening underneath the water, because it sure FEELS like things have been happening for a long time. We simply don’t know. And I guess that’s the confusing part right now.

And confusion and not knowing sucks.

But whatever does happen…I’ll give Fanatics the benefit of the doubt. At least initially, I will. I’ll see what they have to offer. I’ll go online or (hopefully) into a brick or mortar LCS, and I’ll buy a pack of Fanatics cards, or whatever StockX bro calls the brand. I’ll open them with anticipation. I’ll flip through the cards looking for the hot star card, or hot rookie. Whatever inserts they put in the cards. My favorite player. My favorite team.

Pretend I’m in a 5 and dime on Butler Street back in 1980.

I owe it to that six-year-old kid who loved The Hobby so much.

 Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

If you’d like to view that special episode of About the Cards you can do so HERE

I was even ON the podcast one time back in November 2020! 

 Wax Ecstatic is another sports card podcast that I love. Host Matt Sammon wrote a blog post on the Topps/Fanatic ordeal on his new web site, which you can check out right HERE. *Sadly, Matt announced on Thursday that he was ending the Wax Ecstatic podcast due to time issues. While I understand, on a personal note, I'm sad, as it was my favorite podcast. But Matt did an amazing job and he left 189 episodes that you can listen to wherever you get your podcasts or right HERE *

 Just this Monday, Sports Card Nation's John Newman (yet another fantastic and informative podcast) weighed in on the Topps/Fanatics situation on his sister program Hobby Quick Hits. If you follow this LINK you can find it. Or check Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

NEXT FRIDAY: Fourteen and overweight, lovelorn over girls who wouldn't look twice at me, a little New Jack Swing music to get me through it....I can only be talking about one thing here, folks! 1988 Topps Football cards.

 

           

Mike Schmidt and the Saga of 500

 

I was there.

            To say I was there seems a fun and profound thing to say.

            At least in some instances.

            I supposed I could site situations where being there wasn’t necessarily a good thing. The Battle of Gettysburg. The bombing of Pearl Harbor. Vietnam. 9/11. The Challenger explosion. The Oklahoma City bombing. The board meeting for New Coke. Any Foo Fighters concert. Trump’s inauguration.

            Wait?

            Was anyone there for that?

            Again, not great things to say that I was there for.

            Yet there are people in photos on those days.

            Someone was there.

            Someone paid to see Dave Grohl perform.

            It seems a better phrase to use when accentuating the positive. Triumphs from mankind are pretty cool. Triumphs for individuals too. Witnessing when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball. Being there when Apollo 11 launched. When Hank Aaron blasted himself above Babe Ruth in the record books. Watching Serena Williams do anything.

I was there.

But I don’t know so much that I appreciated it.

At least not at the time.

It was a warmish spring afternoon in April of 1987, as I remember it. It was our first Pirates game of the year. Back when I was a kid, I tolerated football season. I suffered hockey and basketball. I waited with bated breath for the coming of February. And despite the Pirates being a bad team for the last few years (I’d just turned 13 so it seemed like we’d been bad my whole life), there was a twinge of promise going into the 1987 season.

A small twinge.

Like microscopic in scope.

But still a twinge.

Jim Leyland was only in his second season of a pretty damned fine managerial career. We expected Barry Bonds to blossom. New (or newish) names like Bobby Bonilla and Doug Drabek were kicking around the old cement doughnut on the North Side. Though we were still skeptical of the Tony Pena trade, us fans wanted to see what Mike LaValliere, Mike Dunne, and this Andy Van Slyke could do.

            Plus going to the ballpark for the first time in a season is always exciting.

            Even in a place as maligned as Three Rivers Stadium was.

            Even in the cheap seats where you knew it was a home run or a big catch by fan reaction and not actually seeing it yourself.

            You couldn’t see the Jumbotron from the cheap seats either.

            Maybe that’s why I didn’t appreciate being there.

            The Pirates had battled that April day. Down 5-0 to the Phillies by the fifth inning, We’d come back to lead the game 6-5 in the ninth. My man, Johnny Ray, had delivered on a 3-run homer in the eighth inning, although I probably didn’t see it from where I was. But I remember him coming out of the dugout as the fans roared. He was my favorite player at the time. Johnny Ray was a rare bright spot to cheer for in 1980s Pittsburgh baseball.

            Johnny Ray would be a Pirate forever, I thought.

            Johnny Ray was playing for the Angels by August.

            But in that moment, he was the big guy. The hero. For me. For everyone. Everyone in Three Rivers Stadium on April 18, 1987 was a Johnny Ray fan. Even though the Phillies had gotten off to a slow start, were playing underwhelming baseball early in the season, that game was going to be a big win for the Pirates. We were going to win, right? Carrying a 6-5 lead into the top of the ninth?

            Of course, we were going to win.

            But then he had to come up to bat.

            Full disclosure, I’m not a Mike Schmidt fan. At least I wasn’t back then. Mike Schmidt was great. Probably one of the best third basemen to play the game. He was a soon-to-be Hall of Famer for as long as I knew of him. But Mike Schmidt was a Pirates killer. Schmidt was a rival. A superstar jerk from the wrong side of the state. He was a Phillie. I hated the Phillies back when I was a kid. Any team in the old NL East. The Phillies. The Cardinals. The Expos. The Cubs. The Mets. I hated them all.

            Especially the Mets.

            Muck the Fets we used to say.

            God how I miss the old NL East.

            As a result, of my animosity I didn’t collect Mike Schmidt cards. Passed by them in packs like I would commons. Then gave him the requisite star card cursory glance when I was done going through the pack. I did with Schmidt’s cards what I did with all of the star cards for guys who played on teams that I didn’t like. I sorted them and put them in box separate from my favorites. Yeah, I had Mike Schmidt cards. 

            But so what? Stick him with the Dwight Gooden and Daryl Strawberry cards, and look at them never.

            I was a Pirates fan.

            My “good” box was very small in 1987.

            I didn’t want Mike Schmidt to come up to bat that afternoon at Three Rivers Stadium. Not in the situation he was coming up in. Two outs and two men on for the Phillies, Don Robinson was on the mound being…well…Don Robinson. At least that’s what I thought of him in those days. He wasn’t the “caveman” in Pittsburgh in 1987. Donny was on his way out. My images of Don Robinson were of him always looking back, back, back, as another home run ball left the stadium and he’d blown another game again.

            I wanted Jim Leyland to pull Don Robinson.

            We deserved to win that game.

            When Leyland came to the mound, I thought bye bye Donny.

            Leyland didn’t pull Don Robinson.

            And there was goddamned Mike Schmidt at the plate.

            And Leyland probably didn’t pull Robinson for good reasons. Despite my mistrust of the guy, Don Robinson actually had some success against Mike Schmidt. According to the folks at SABR, in their batter to pitcher meetings going all the way back to 1978, Donny Robinson had actually got the better of Michael Jack Schmidt. Schmidt was 7-57 against Don Robinson. That’s a .122 batting average for you folks playing at home. Pretty good odds. There was a method to Leyland’s madness, leaving Don Robinson in the game.

            Unless you consider the fact that 4 of those 7 hits were home runs.

            Don Robinson got to quick work being Don Robinson. He pitched three straight balls to Mike Schmidt. Maybe he was trying to walk him. Get Schmidt on base and take his chances with the next guy. Who knew what Don Robinson was thinking? Maybe that he didn’t want to play in Pittsburgh anymore. Couldn’t blame him for that.

            Instead, Don Robinson tired to battle back against his 3-0 deficit. He threw Mike Schmidt a fastball. Right at the knees. Right over the plate. Big mistake. Schmidy went yard. The ball sailed over the left field fence. Mike Schmidt rounded the bases clapping his hands and pumping his arms, just like he’s won the World Series. He had…kind of. And history had been made that afternoon in Pittsburgh.

            That home run was the 500^th of Mike Schmidt’s career.

            A milestone.

            A Hall of Famer punch-card moment.

            I was there.

            But I didn’t care.

            All I cared about was that we were losing in the top of the ninth inning. We were down 8-6. I sat in my seat stewing as the Benedict Arnold’s around me stood up to applaud Mike Schmidt and his stupid 500^th home run. Screw that, I thought. I’m not standing for some guy who creamed the Pirates. Who always seemed to cream us. Sitting out in the cheap seats, I didn’t even see the damned home run anyway. Wouldn’t see it until the evening news sports segment.

            To add insult to injury former Pirate great, Kent Tekulve came out to shut Buccos down in the bottom of the ninth.

            Kent Tekulve who NEVER looked right in a Phillies uniform.

            I didn’t even keep the ticket from that game.

            That’s how hard I took Pirates loses back then.

            There’s a door somewhere in the suburb of Pittsburgh that became permanently dented after Game 7 of the 1992 NLCS.

            All I knew that day was that we lost.

            I’ve been intentionally using a word throughout this little walk down memory lane. That word is “we.” As in the collective. I and the group that would include me. Me and You. You and I. You, me, and that asshole right there. All 19.000 of us at Three Rivers Stadium that day.

            We.

            When I was a kid, I used we (and its derivatives) when talking about my sports teams, especially the Pirates. We lost. We won. We traded that guy. We got that guy. We’re in last place. We’re in first. We’re going to the playoffs. We lost the playoffs. We lost the playoffs again. We lost the playoffs yet again. We suck.

            You get the idea.

            It seems funny to me now. We. I never use that term when talking about sports teams that I watch as an adult. I know a lot of fans still do. But it started to seem odd to me to speak that way. Like how was I part of a we? I didn’t play for the Pirates. Jim Leyland didn’t call me in from the bullpen or put me in to pinch hit. No one called me on team photo day. It wasn’t a matter of circumstance that I was sitting in the stands instead of the dugout. I was a fan. I’d paid money for the privilege.

            There was no we.

I don’t remember when that change from the assumed collective happened. Maybe I stopped saying we when sports became less important in my life. Post-1992, when the Pirates had broken my heart that final time in the 1992 NCLS. I was done with them. Done collecting cards. There were girls and books, movies and music. Other we’s to explore.

I was happy to see the Pirates become a they.

We became them. Estranged. I couldn’t watch 1993 Pirates baseball after three consecutive playoff loses. In fact, I didn’t really watch the Pirates again until 1997 and that fluke almost-playoff year with a losing record. When my NL East had become an NL Central, and I was supposed to suddenly start hating the Astros and the Reds.

(quick aside…why are the goddamned Brewers in the National League and the goddamned Astros in the American League…MLB make things right by God and put them back where they belong)

It was easy for the Pirates to become a they in 1997.

It’s better for US that they stay a they in my life.

As for Mike Schmidt?

I collect his cards now. 

Same with guys like Dwight Gooden and Daryl Strawberry. 

It brings me back a lot good memories to collect those guys, along with players like Andy Van Slyke (who panned out in case you didn’t know), Barry Bonds and Bobby Bonilla. It’s fun to collect those players. Look at their cards from throughout their careers. 

With Schmidt it’s a history lesson because he played a lot of his career before I was watching the game. With the others, it’s reliving history. Thinking about old games that you went to. Those rivalries. Gooden calling the Pirates “little leaguers.” Fans at Three Rivers chanting Daaaaryllll, Daaaarylll, to try and rattle Staw whenever he came to bat. A time when those teams meant everything to me. Those games a catalog of my life.

Back when we were really a we.

 

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

 

            *Mike Schmidt went on to collect 48 more home runs, bringing his career total to 548, before abruptly retiring on May 29, 1989 after a slow start. He was elected by fans to that year’s all-star game And while Schmidt did not play, he did participate in the game’s opening ceremonies. He is number 16 on the all-time home run list, and has 3 MVP awards to his name. Mike Schmidt was also a 12-time all-star and 10-time Gold Glove winner during his career. He was the World Series MVP in 1980. Mike Schmidt was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1995. You can view his statistics HERE. And you can read a fine article written by the fine folks at SABR about that 500^th home run right HERE.

            If I did it right, here's a YouTube link to the actual 500th Home Run

            *Don Robinson pitched 15 years in the Big Leagues. Ten of them with the Pittsburgh Pirates. He was a part of the 1979 Pirates Word Series winning team, and 1989 World Series San Francisco Giants team. Don Robinson is noted for winning 3 silver slugger awards as a pitcher. You can read more about Don “Caveman” Robinson right HERE. Or check out his stats HERE.

 

NEXT FRIDAY: Ugh....Next Friday....I think I'm going to spend my time on here trying to wrap my head around this whole Topps/Fanatics/MLB thing. So....some childhood memories, brand identification influencing those childhood memories, Disney, Star Wars, Marvel, Google, Amazon....and a little bit of mega-conglomerate bashing. 

 

1982 Topps Baseball Cards : But What About the Frogs?

 

In the summer of 1982, I became Jay again.

            Not that I wasn’t always Jay. But for the year my family lived in Wellsburg, West Virginia, I was John. I mean I am John. The name is on my birth certificate, my license and my books. For some reason, my parents always called me Jay. I know. Jay isn’t a traditional nickname of John. Jay is more akin to Jason. I have no clue why my John became Jay. I never asked. It just always was.

Except for that year in West Virginia.

The principal of the grade school that I would be attending in the fall of 1981, one Mr. John Shoto, informed my parents, in our get-to-know-you meeting, that he, the teachers and subsequently my fellow classmates were going to address me a John. My God-given name. I don’t know why my parents didn’t haul me out of there and put me right in public school. But they didn’t.  They believed that Catholic school gave one a stronger intellectual and moral foundation.

Considering the kids I spent twelve years with in various schools.

They were wrong.

But in WVa I'd be John at school. Jay at home.

            Fucking Catholics.

            The kids I’d played tee-ball with the previous summer were confused.

            You people who primarily know me from the internet are probably scratching your heads as well.

            I’ll get to that.

            The John to Jay thing has been a minor inconvenience my whole life. John on official documents. But call me Jay. John on official work papers. But please call me Jay. Over and over again with every person that I meet. One lady I worked with just called me John-Jay…which was super annoying. In fact, just yesterday I had a visiting librarian help out at my job. She got confused when my co-workers called me Jay. Is it John or Jay?

            Here we go again.

            To be honest, I’ve helped contribute to the problem. When I started sending poems and fiction out to small presses, I went under my birth name. John. When I got books published, I went under the name John. When I do readings, I’m billed as John Grochalski. And, yes, I even do my social media under the name John. Mostly because I wanted to attach my social media to the things that I do creatively. John Grochalski just sounds better than Jay Grochalski. It looks better on the cover of books too.

            At least that was my take.

            Maybe Mr. Shoto was on to something.

            Ultimately, my name doesn’t really matter to me.

            You can call me John or Jay just not John-Jay.

            If someone is calling for me by name, it usually isn’t a good thing.

            …and no fucking Jay-bird.

            God, I hated that shit too.

            But back in the summer of 1982, I was looking forward to becoming Jay again. Jay felt right. Jay was me. John could stay in West Virginia forever. I was looking forward to leaving there and coming back home. To Pittsburgh. Albeit to the suburbs this time. Penn Hills. In a span of two years, I went from urban to rural to suburban. And the only thing I can say about this is, people are strange wherever you go.

            At least the Coca-Cola tastes the same.

            At least there were kids in my new neighborhood.

            My neighborhood in West Virginia was a barren wasteland for kids.

            One day I’ll tell my tale.

            The first time I saw 1982 Topps baseball cards was at a flea market in West Virginia shortly before we moved back to Pittsburgh. It had been Fleer city beforehand. 1982 Fleer were and still are God awful. Figures West Virginia would be ripe with them. And I’ve already told that story.

            Even Ed Ott couldn't save 1982 Fleer.

            And Ed Ott can save ANYTHING.

But at the flea market, there was this guy selling older cards, yes, but he also had packs of 1982 cards in both wax and cello. I think that might’ve been the first time in my life that I’d seen baseball cards in something other than wax packs.

Cello packs were clear! You could see who was on the front and back of the pack! For 49-cents you got twenty-eight cards and one stick of gum. I had some pocket change on me. So, I went digging through the man’s cello box. Until I found the pack that I wanted.

The pack that had this man on the front of it.

The 1982 Willie Stargell card defines 1982 Topps for me. It’s the card that I think of whenever I think of the set, or someone mentions it. And that doesn’t happen a lot. I get the idea that a lot of collectors aren’t fans of 1982 Topps. It certainly pales in comparison to the next four or five sets that came after it. And it doesn’t hold the sentimental place in my heart, like 1980 Topps does, because those were the first packs of cards that I ever bought. But 1982 Topps are pretty good in their own right.

For starters, I’m a fan of the hockey-stick swoosh on the front of the cards. Even though hockey itself can go and get bent. I like that the cards leave a lot of space for the photo image. The team name and player name are both nice and bold on the card front. The In-Action cards (the first time Topps did that since 1972) are pretty cool, even if they used the same picture from 1981 for a certain player that I mentioned up above.

1981:

1982 In Action:

Not fooling anyone Topps.

1982 Topps is stacked with Hall of Famers and star cards for players of that era. Mike Schmidt, Pete Rose, Nolan Ryan, Paul Molitor, Andre Dawson, Tim Raines, George Brett, Robin Yount, Dave Parker, Jim Rice, Al Oliver, Steve Garvey, Rod Carew, Carl Yastrzemski, Johnny Bench, Jim Palmer, Gaylord Perry, and Carlton Fisk to name just some. 

Ozzie Smith is in the set on his last card with the Padres. 

Reggie is on his last card with the Yankees. 

And Dave Winfield is on his first.

...unless you count traded sets.

The Willie Stargell card is his last Topps card. Although Fleer and Donruss would include him in their 1983 sets.

And need I even mention some of the rookies?

Although this one is my sentimental favorite.

    

Some more 1982 for your viewing pleasure:

That flea market got me nuts into 1982 Topps baseball cards. If there were packs and I had change I was buying them. I was hoping my new neighborhood would have kids who collected like I did. It had kids, yes. But no collectors. I met two kids instantly, Billy and Ray. They had cards but didn’t collect like me. There were girls in the neighborhood. They seemed too busy swooning over the Annie movie to care about cards. Baseball cards would continue to be a thing between just me and my brother. Or Phineas when he came over.

There was this kid named Steve Fisher.

Steve had cards but also wasn’t into them.

Steve was into other things.

            As I remember him, Steve was always in his dad’s garage workshop. So, that’s where I was when I hung out with Steve. He built things. Steve sawed wood for no reason. If my mom knew about all of the sharp and dangerous tools, I was handling, I probably never would’ve been allowed back. But in 1982, kids had more freedom to galivant about. We could walk to stores alone too.

We didn’t have phones with tracking devices on them so…

And our parents didn’t call us “pal” or “buddy.”

The smell of Lifeboy soap always brings me back to that garage.

Steve had this bucket full of creek water that he kept in the garage. In it were tadpoles. When we lived in West Virginia we had a creek that led into the Ohio River. Buffalo Creek. It was down a slope at the end of our yard. We could wade in it or almost swim. I’d seen tadpoles in that creek in WV. I knew it was only a matter of time before they turned into frogs. I didn’t think that they could do it in a bucket though. I was curious as to why Steve had them.

I’d soon find out.

            There were woods behind Steve’s house. In it, he’d built himself a fortress. A kingdom of sticks, if you will. Steve had other huts and a jail he’d carefully constructed out of thorn bushes (jagger bushes if you’re from Pittsburgh). Billy and Ray and me would play army with Steve in his woods. Catch and capture type stuff. But with no one really getting hurt or caught. 

            Until one time. 

            Steve was in a mood. A bad mood. A very fucking bad mood. He caught Billy. And Steve was a big kid for his age. Strong too. He threw Billy into one of those thorn bushes for some punishment he wasn’t at liberty to define.

            I remember Billy screaming.

            Billy crying.

            Billy begging Steve to let him out.

I was so scared I’d be next I ran home.

Steve calling after me, “Jay? Jay?”

Ugh…that fucking name!

I stole into my room to look at cards to calm down.

Maybe the Stargell card comforted me.

Maybe hanging around with Steve wasn’t such a good idea.

            Thankfully, Billy was all right.

            I had other problems that summer of 1982. The second grade that I’d been in West Virginia cared more about calling me John then they cared about teaching me how to do my times tables. We’d only learned them up to times six. The school I’d be going to, their second graders had learned them up to times twelve. Because of that I had to spend parts of my summer learning my times tables from 7-12.

            What fucking kid wants to do times tables with their summer?

I remember being on the porch with my mom, her trying to bribe or cajole me into learning those times tables so that, as an incoming third-grader, I wouldn’t be left behind. I got a lot of packs of 1982 Topps for that. We had the radio on to pass the time and make this not feel so studious. Seemed like Toto’s Rosanna or Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger were on all of the time. Mom tried to get friends to help me learn. Older friends. A guy like Steve Fisher.

Steve had no use for times tables.

            Steve had other nefarious plans.

            The tadpoles were getting bigger. Then bigger. Until they became young frogs. Turns out, with a little TLC, you could raise tadpoles into frogs in a bucket. One day, Billy and Ray and I were at Steve’s. The garage of course. Steve started fishing around the garage looking for something. He finally found a piece of plywood. One of the ones he’d been randomly sawing earlier in the summer.

Steve took the plywood out onto the driveway and set it down. Then he brought the bucket with the young frogs and set that onto the driveway too. Billy, Ray and I were pretty curious as to what Steve was up to, as he wasn’t really talking to us while he worked. He was in a bad mood. A very fucking bad mood.

Finally, Steve took one of the frogs out of the water.

He stretched its little frog arms.

And nailed them to the plywood.

He stretched its little frog legs.

And nailed them to the plywood too.

Billy got sick. He puked. Ray ran home. I was frozen. My terrified eyes darting from the dying, crucified frog to Steve. Steve looked pleased with his work. The frog looked like Christ on a cross. Steve had even crossed its legs before nailing them. Thankfully the frog died quickly; his frog buddies in the bucket having no clue what fate awaited them. Steve, not satisfied with just the murder he’d committed, went back into garage. He brought out a canister of silver spray paint. While Billy wretched and cried and I stood there frozen, Steve Fisher spray painted the dead, crucified frog silver.

            Fucking Catholics.

            When he went to get the next frog, me and Billy ran.

            Steve called out.

            But Jay?

            But Jay?

            And that was about it for me and Steve.

            But, hey, let’s get back to cards shall we?

In 2019, when I got back into buying cards, I thought it pretty cool that Topps went ahead and made kind of an homage to 1982 with their base set that year.

It’s not a hockey stick swoosh on the card, but I really like the bold and colorful way that helps the cards to stand out. Modern cards need to stand out more. And I'm not talking guady colored inserts here. Sometimes I feel like it’s the photography and nothing else for modern sets. The art of card making gets left behind. And that’s what made a set like 1982 Topps special. So special that I bought me one whole set. 

Or any of the sets back then. They might not be your favorite. But they were all unique in their own way.

            Thankfully not Steve Fisher unique?

            Hey, did I forget to mention the kid who stood outside my front door with a shot gun?

            1982 was such a fun year.

 

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting.

 

If you’d like to learn more about the 1982 Topps set you can do so HERE.

 

I didn’t get time to mention it last week, but baseball lost a great player in the death of J.R. Richard at age 71. J.R’s (I swear he would’ve been a Hall-of-Famer had he played a full career) brilliant pitching career was cut short in 1980 when he suffered a stroke. Before that, Richard had a string of 18-to-20-win seasons, and stuck out 300+ batter at least twice. But he was never able to recover after the stroke, and ended up retiring by 1982, after missing all of the 1981 season.  As a kid, J.R. Richard seemed like a lost legend to us. I had some of his cards then, and I collect his cards now.

You can read his obituary HERE.

 NEXT FRIDAY: I just can't leave 1987 alone. So we're going back. Back to childhood. Back to the three best sets of my collecting life. Back to the P.C. Back to the career of Michael Jack Schmidt.