1986 Topps Baseball..I'm Sorry.

 

I don’t like to admit to mistakes.

            I’m of the opinion that the word mistake is just a nicer way of saying failure.

            I don’t recommend that line of thought.

            It can make life harder all the way around.

            But I made a mistake with cards. With one brand of cards in one particular year. Or I failed to really look at something. I passed judgement too quickly. Brushed over. Pushed aside. Overlooked. Became too familiar and discarded.

            All those excuses.

            I’m talking about 1986 Topps here.

            Like what I wrote HERE.

            And HERE.

            God…I’m such an asshole.

            My great Uncle recently passed away. His passing was kind of an end of an era for people my mom’s age. Uncle Nick was the last of the parents/aunts/uncles to have died in the generation above the Boomers in our family. A death like that shows reveals the significance in the human timeline. Experiences lived that are now experiences passed on. I know I’ll always remember Uncle Nick during the summer, forever clad in a white t-shirt and jeans, throwing horseshoes at the picnics he and my Aunt Millie always threw, a long-necked bottle of Stroh’s at his feet.

            R.I.P. Good Sir.

But when I was a kid, I have to admit I used to hate those picnics. My brother and I were always the youngest ones there. Or at least it seemed like it. We survived them by bringing our toys, our baseball cards. The picnics were usually on a Saturday, because Capitalism dictated that the adults put in 40-hours a week of their time from Monday to Friday. My brother and I had to spend our summer weekdays at a daycare because both of my parents had to work within this ridiculous system. So, even in the summer, at least for a few years until I could latchkey it, Saturdays and Sundays, even in the school-free summer, were still a precious commodity to me.

By the time I was an adult who could throw horseshoes and drink a long-neck Strohs …the picnics were no more.

Or I was a punk who just didn’t want go.

But someone’s passing makes you think about the past.

            I came upon a memory when I heard about my Uncle Nick’s death. And it wasn’t even a memory of him. But there’s a trajectory here. The memory was more of his kids. My second cousins were around a decade younger than my mother, and a good decade older than me…at the very least. When my parents were busy raising kids in their 30’s in Reagan’s America, my second cousins were in their 20’s, doing what people in their 20s do.

            They party.

            Often my parents were invited to these youthful soirees, sans my brother and I, who were either shipped off to my grandparents, or more likely, being watched by teenagers with musty marijuana odors emanating from their clothing, who really didn’t seem to give a shit what we did and at what hour we did it. But on one particular instance, we ended up going to one of those parties. I don’t know why. A lack of a babysitter? Something important enough that my parents couldn’t get out of it. Or just a general bad decision made by frustrated people who wanted a night out, to bring kids along to a party full of alcohol-swilling adults.

            I don’t know.

            Point is…my brother and I tagged along.

            And, as always, we brought our cards.

            Our brand new 1986 Topps cards.

            What I remember is the two of us making use of a small room at one of my cousin’s apartment. It was just off of the entryway. A small, not-even-enclosed room, where my brother and I could be kept an eye on, yet out of the way of the adult’s good time. To entertain ourselves we brought our cards. Two stacks of brand-new cards. The first 1986 cards I’d been able to get my hands on, other than being massively ripped off by Dimitri Danielopoulus because he happened up on the cards first.

            Remember when just looking at cards could take up whole hours?

            Or what I call last Sunday.

            I distinctly remember these two cards being of particular interest to me.

            These were Sid Bream and R.J. Reynolds first cards in a Pirates uniform. The 1986 brand of cards were also the first time the new gray road jerseys for the Pirates were featured. So new players and new uniforms. A real whoa moment for a soon-to-be-twelve-year-old kid. Bream and R.J. Reynolds were as new as new could be on the Buccos. They had been traded to the Pirates by the Dodgers for third baseman Bill Madlock, late in the 1985 season; so late that they didn’t even get cards in that year’s traded set.

            Sadly, this guy did.

            I didn’t know it in that moment in 1986, but Sid Bream and R.J. Reynolds would both become integral to the Pirates success (ugh…and failures) over the next five to six seasons. To that kid in that white room at that adult party, they were still relative unknowns, if they were known at all. The Pirates were horrible in 1985. I’d be surprised as shit if I were still watching Pirates baseball come September of 1985.

            I just knew that Bill Madlock was gone.

            You take notice when you lose a guy like Bill Madlock.

            It didn’t matter who we got.

            But it would.

            Thinking about my Uncle Nick leading me to think about that party, lead me to go and give those Bream and Reynolds cards a look. They flooded me with nostalgia in the way that Topps thinks its doing with its Heritage brand. (More on that next week). I mean obviously I’ve looked at my old cards before. And I’ve attached memories to them. I’ve even done it with the 1986 Topps brand on this blog before.

            But there was something different this time.

            I felt a real passage of time.

            My time.

            In a way that the cards of my era had never made me feel before.

            …I also felt kind of dumb.

            1986 Topps Baseball cards are…pretty awesome.

            They’re not 1986 Fleer awesome.

            But they deserve way more credit than I’ve been giving them.

            And that’s probably one of my favorite Pete Rose cards, along with his 1974 and 1976 Topps, and his 1985 Fleer.

            And, of course, we get these to go along with it.

            Maybe it was the nostalgia that got to me this time. Or maybe it was the black and white borders bracing up against each other. The way Topps chose to put the team names in those big, bold colors as a contrast.

            Those bold red backs.

            Now…I’m not saying 1986 Topps Baseball cards were dictated by an over-abundance of ink left over from 1985 Topps Football cards.

            But…

            Topps still had real Record Breaker cards in 1986 that still looked like real Record Breaker cards.

            Gratuitous American Bad-Ass Eddie Murray shot.

            Was never a fan of these.

            Yeah…the rookies are lacking a little bit.

            Had to wait for the Traded Set for the big boys to show up.

            Although I prefer them in 1987 in their proper rookie card setting.

            I was hyped-up on this rookie card though.

            I was a Pirates fan…we took what we could get.

            Overall, I think 1986 Topps is a solid set. At least you could read the backs on the cards…looking at you 1985.

            I still don’t know why I was quick to dismiss it. Memory and time have made 1987 my key year of card collecting, and no other year can touch it. Although I’ve admitted to buying a boatload of 1986 cards. And guys like Vince Coleman were huge for that set. I wanted all of the Vince Coleman cards that I could get. But maybe while looking back on memories brings us a sense of fondness, it can also show us the disappointments. That which did not pan out.

            Going forward, however, I’m no longer talking shit on 1986 Topps Baseball cards.

            Oh…and about that party?

One sometimes focuses on the where and when, without nailing down the right date in their own history. But I think I can pinpoint this party at my second cousin’s to almost an exact date. That being February 22, 1986. I know this because of Bill Cosby. Say what you will about this multiple rapist’s legacy, but in 1986 The Cosby Show really was Must-See TV. People gathered to watch. If you were lucky enough to have a VCR (my family didn’t at the time but we would get one during 1986), you could tape The Cosby Show to watch again and again at your leisure.

That’s what my cousin did.

Look, cards are great. At my ripe old age, I can still spend hours with them. But kid, in adult situations, can and will get bored, even if they bring their entire room of toys. That’s what happened to my and my brother. So when it was time to put down the cards, my cousin queued up that week’s episode of The Cosby Show on her VCR. It was the episode, if you are old enough to remember, where the Huxtable family get to visit the studio where Stevie Wonder is recording a song.

Famous for Theo’s echoed “jaaaaaammmmmin’ on the 1.”

That episode of The Cosby Show was entitled: A Touch of Wonder. It was episode 18 of the 2^nd season of The Cosby Show. It aired on Thursday, February 20, 1986. If I’m right about Capitalism, and I think I am, most likely my family attended that party two days later on the 22^nd of February.

Pretty neat, huh?

Er…for me I guess it is.

            Anyway….

Thanks for reading! Happy collecting!

NEXT FRIDAY: Me and Topps Heritage are breaking up…again. Or we’ll be back together by then. Who knows?