Yearbooks : This Other Collecting Life

 

I’m never sure how far I really want to go into the realm of other sports ephemera.

            I think I’ve established here that I’m not much of an autograph guy. Although a few of you on Twitter showing of autos from old Pirates have got me thinking about changing my ways.

            I have two signed balls.

            They’re rather important to me.

            I don’t keep an unsigned game-used ball around. I don’t keep bats, batting gloves, jerseys, game worn anything etc.

            I’ve been cards and strictly cards since getting back into collecting in 2019.

            But….

            …yearbooks.

             Let me back up a little bit. Two things happened over the last year or so that really got me into collecting yearbooks, specifically Pittsburgh Pirates yearbooks.

            One. I went home to Pittsburgh and my mom dumped these on me.

            I’m missing 1991 (Bobby Bonilla’s last with the Pirates), but that pretty much covered my yearbook collection from 1987-1992, which was the last year that I think I bought a yearbook at a game. From 1985 on, buying a yearbook at the first Pirates game of the year had been a tradition for me. I loved the big glossy photos of the players. The trivia. The stats. Having the season schedule available to me (no internet and finding pocket ones before attending my first game was pretty hard to do unless I hung around beer distributors). As a kid, having the promotional schedule available to me was a big deal.

            I even liked all of the beer ads.

            The 1987 yearbook is a favorite of mine. The franchise turned 100 in 1987, and that was the focus of the season. The yearbook itself has a nice gatefold cover and about thirty pages dedicated to Pittsburgh Pirates history.

            There’re even a few pages on the history of the team’s uniforms.

            For me, the 1987 season was the beginning of things getting better for the Pirates. The 1987 team contained the nucleus for the teams that would go on to win three consecutive NL East Pennants.

            You know, these guys.

            So, having these yearbooks in my possession again was…well, it was pretty damned cool. Even though I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do with them.

            Then the second things happened.

            A buddy of mine, the poet Scott Silsbe, sent me these in the mail.

    

        Scott knows that I collect. He sometimes sends me Facebook messages featuring some of his old card collection. I guess he thought a guy like me would enjoy these bits of 1970s ephemera.

            And boy do I!

            The 1973 Pirates yearbook is obviously a bittersweet keepsake. It’s the first seasonal yearbook released after Roberto Clemente died. There’s a small tribute to him in the beginning of the book.

            I’m either guessing we didn’t make a bigger deal of things back then, or else the yearbook was pretty well put together by the time his plane crashed on December 31, 1972. In fact, Clemente is featured in action at the top of the cover of the yearbook. In tribute? Or, again, because the cover had been designed months before his tragic death. The scorecard is from 1972. I know this is a post about yearbooks, and I’m not ready to go down the rabbit hole of collecting scorecards, but this one is pretty damned special considering it is from the 1972 season. Roberto Clemente’s last.

            The scorecard was even filled in.

            While this was another pastime for my brother, my old man, and I at Pirates games, I haven’t kept a scorecard in decades. And I no longer remember how.  But I know that Willie Stargell had a pretty crappy game that day.

            Taking these two instances into account, I started thinking that it would be an interesting endeavor collecting Pirates yearbooks. Collecting sports ephemera is akin to collecting history. Or it actually is collecting history. It’s how I feel when I put sets together, or when I buy a bunch of Pirates team sets. History. And I like history. My non-fiction reading is infused with books on history. Mostly cultural or biography.  I just thought it would be fun to collect yearbooks.

            Over the Christmas holiday I was able to go to a few antique stores in the suburban Pittsburgh area. At one of them I came across a dealer selling baseball cards and other ephemera. He had two comic book boxes full of Pirates and Steelers yearbooks. I ended up grabbing some Pirates yearbook from the early to mid-1980s. 1981 to 1985 to be exact.

            One of the first things I did was open the 1982 yearbook.

            Because it is the last yearbook to feature Willie Stargell in it as a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

            Now, there’s some history for you.

            I never owned that yearbook. And the yearbooks from 1982-1984 were new to me as well. But when I went flipping through those comic book boxes, I was looking for one yearbook specifically. The one yearbook that started it all for me.

            The 1985 Pittsburgh Pirates yearbook.

            Sure, the 25^th anniversary celebration of the 1960 World Series was a nice addition.

            But, for me, the yearbook brough back another memory.

            These.

            Yes, the first yearbook I ever bought had a team set for the 1985 Pittsburgh Pirates. I was eleven back then and as nuts for cards as a kid could get. I might’ve bought the yearbook because of the cards. I can’t honestly remember. And I was so happy to see that the team set was still intact. It was obviously owned by an adult, because I know 11-year-old me went right home after that came and separated all of those cards from their perforation.

            Not too shabby for inserts circa 1985.

            The backs are a little bit plain.

            I always found the set interesting because it features a card for Tim Foli, one of the stars of the 1979 World Series team. 

            Tim was traded from the Pirates in winter 1981 for Brian Harper, a guy you Twins fans out there might remember. Foli was traded back to the Pirates before the 1985 season, but his second tenure with the team would be short lived. Foli only played in 19 games that year, batting .189, before he was released in June.

            This set is interesting too because it features my old buddy “Joggin’” George Hendrick. 

 

  George wasn’t very happy in Pittsburgh after his trade from St. Louis for, you guessed it, Brian Harper. I don’t blame Joggin’ George for being unhappy in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh was a miserable place to play ball in 1985. The team stunk. The baseball drug trails were going on. The last vestiges of the Fam-I-Lee wanted out. St. Louis ended up in the World Series in 1985. Not a good scene. But I liked this card because it was his first in Pirates uniform that I’d seen, and Hendrick always seemed like a solid player to me.

            As the season wore on, and it wore on, as the Pirates limped to a 57-104 record, Joggin’ George got his wish and was traded to the California  Angels along with disgruntled (rightfully so) former 20-game winner John Candelaria.

            But not before Topps immortalized Joggin’ George’s time in The Burgh with a card in their 1985 Topps Traded set.      

That said, the desire to perforate and binder that 1985 set still looms large in me almost forty years later.

 Thank for reading! Happy collecting!

NEXT FRIDAY:  Rickey

EDWIN JACKSON HANGS UP THE CLEATS by Russell Streur

 

EDWIN JACKSON HANGS UP THE CLEATS

 

It won’t be the same this year when pitchers and catchers report to spring training.  For the first time this century, Edwin Jackson won’t be warming up.

 

Edwin Jackson made baseball history on May 15, 2019, when he took the mound for the Toronto Blue Jays against the San Francisco Giants.  The Jays were the 14^th team Jackson played for, and the appearance broke the previous record held by Octavio Dotel.  Jackson worked five innings, gave up three runs, and left without a decision.

 

The durable right-hander told a reporter what the travels meant.  "It says I have a lot of perseverance.  I'm not one to give in.  I feel like out of those 14 teams, some of those teams have had situations that would probably make people want to go home and quit and cry.  For me, the tougher it gets, the harder I work and the harder I come to prove myself that I can come get outs in the major leagues."

 

Jackson’s tenure with the Jays didn’t last long.  After posting a single win against five losses, the Jays released him.  A second stint with the Tigers didn’t go much better, and the book seemed to close on Jackson at the end of the 2019 season with a lifetime line of 107 wins, 133 losses and one save over 17 years in the majors.

 

Jackson was a high-school outfield prospect when the Los Angeles Dodgers selected him in the sixth round of the 2001 draft.  The Dodgers liked his arm better than his bat and converted him into a pitcher.  After a couple sparkling years in the minors, Jackson made his major league debut on his 20^th birthday in 2003 against the Diamondbacks, outdueling an injury-hampered version of Randy Johnson, 4 to 1.  

 

The game capped a meteoric rise through the Dodger system for the young pitcher.   Ranked the fourth highest prospect in the game by Baseball America in the spring of 2004, Jackson couldn’t keep pace with the expectations and he was traded to Tampa Bay in 2006.  Used mainly in relief that season by the Rays, Jackson was promoted to the starting rotation the following year.  He reversed a 5 and 15 campaign in 2007 with a 14 and 11 record in 2008.  The Rays went to the World Series and Jackson caught the eye of the Detroit Tigers.  Traded north in exchange for outfielder Matt Joyce, Jackson earned All Star honors with the Tigers in 2009 on his way to a 13 and 9 record.

 

During the off-season, the Tigers composed a three-team blockbuster deal that sent Jackson to Arizona for Matt Scherzer on one half of the ticket and Curtis Granderson to the Yankees for Austin Jackson on the other half.  The Tigers got the better return on the parlay, but Jackson threw a no-hitter for the Diamondbacks in June against the Rays at Tropicana Field.   It wasn’t pretty.  Jackson put nine runners on base, eight by walks and one by hitting B. J. Upton, and the Arizona bats weren’t much help, either.   He ended up throwing 149 pitches that night, the most ever thrown during a no-hitter.  Somehow, he escaped it all with a 1 to 0 win.

 

Dumping salary later in the season, the Diamondbacks traded Jackson to the White Sox, who followed suit in 2011 and traded the pitcher to Toronto on July 27. 

 

That same day, Toronto traded him to St. Louis in a package that also sent Octavio Dotel to the Cardinals.  Jackson won five games down the stretch and Dotel added three plus a pair of saves as the Cardinals edged the Atlanta Braves by a game to earn the Wild Card slot in the postseason.  The Cardinals made the most of their chances.  Jackson defeated the Phillies in Game 4 of the divisional round and the Cardinals outlasted the Brewers to reach the World Series against the Texas Rangers.  Jackson took a loss in Game Four, and Dotel the loss in Game 5, but the Cardinals came back to win Games 6 and 7 and claim the championship.

 

Jackson signed with the Washington Nationals as a free agent in 2011.  He went 10 and 11 with the club and pitched just under 190 innings.  Short on pitching depth, the Chicago Cubs sensed an opportunity and signed Jackson to a four-year, $52 million deal over the winter.

 

"I think the most assuring part is you have a chance to relax and have a chance to know you're going to be somewhere for a while, and you don't have to feel like you have to prove yourself every year," Jackson said after the signing. "I feel like it's definitely going to help for myself just to go out and have fun and not worry about anything else."

 

Some writers rank the signing as among the Cub’s worst free agent moves of all time.   Jackson lost a league leading 18 games in 2013 and added 15 more defeats the next year.  The Cubs moved Jackson to the bullpen in 2015 and released him in July.  Then the whistle stops began.  The Braves to finish the season.  The Marlins and the Padres in 2016.  The Orioles and Nationals in 2017.  The Nationals and Athletics in 2018.  

 

“I want to leave the game on my own terms,” Jackson told an Oakland reporter.  “That’s why I continue to do what I do, just because I’m not ready to leave. I still have some life in me. I still have fun, and I know I can still get outs.”

 

The Blue Jays came next in 2019, and then a second time around with the Tigers.  Jackson never lost his passion for the game. 

 

"I'm not playing for the money,” Jackson said along the way.  “I'm not playing for anything else but to come have fun.  I've been blessed in my career. I've made enough money to have my family set and now I'm just having fun."

 

The Diamondbacks took a quick look at Jackson in 2020 but released him before the virus-shortened season started.

 

Later that year, Dontrelle Willis, a one-time teammate on the Diamondbacks, reflected on Jackson’s no-hitter.  “Guys were diving all over the place and making plays.  It was a real credit to the ballclub.  They wanted it for him, and that’s the type of guy he was.  He’s played for 392 teams, and you’ve never heard one bad word about him.”

 

The book might have looked done with Jackson after the 2019 season, but Jackson’s arm wasn’t done with the book.

 

In the spring of 2021, the pitcher received an invitation to try out for the US Olympic baseball team.  Jackson hemmed and hawed, but his wife Erika told him to get his glove.  “Are you crazy?” she said.  “This is the Olympics!”

 

Jackson’s win in relief on June 5 against Venezuela at the Americas Qualifying Event clinched a spot for the team in Tokyo.  The team played Japan for the gold medal, but came up just short, falling 2 to 0.  Jackson and the other Team USA players took home silver medals.

 

“It’s a lifetime experience,” Jackson said.  “I’m definitely grateful to call myself an Olympic medalist.  It’s something I couldn’t have imagined.

 

Jackson was ready to answer another call to the mound in 2022 but minor league realignment and roster rule changes blocked a path.  He announced his retirement from the professional game on September 9, 2022, his 39^th birthday and the 19th anniversary of his major league debut.

 

“19 years ago today I was blessed with an opportunity to tie up my laces and step on the field to make my debut with Los Angeles Dodgers…today I am happily hanging up my cleats and closing a 22 year Baseball career.” Jackson said that day on an Instagram post.  “I’m super grateful to have had 14 different organizations allow me the opportunity to represent them. I was once told by a mentor that you are only as strong as the team you have around you, and I have an amazing team. I want to start by thanking my wife. She’s been by my side through the ups and downs of this journey. I love you E! I want to thank my parents for always believing in me and always making ANY sacrifices that had to be made in order for me to be able to get out on the field and play. My sisters have always been in my corner no matter what and their love and support has never changed! Love all of yall! Thanks to my kids for being my biggest cheer squad. To my in-laws, friends, and other family members, all of y’all have been nothing short of amazing for all of the motivation throughout all of these years. I want to thank all of my coaches, trainers, and doctors, on the field and off, for all of the hours of hard work put in to help me have an amazing career. This game has taught me many life lessons and allowed me to evolve into the person I am today! I will forever have memories that will live within me from the game that I loved and dedicated my life to. Thank you baseball for an amazing life experience that I will never forget!!”

 

The game won’t be the same without you, Mr. Jackson.

 

Edwin Jackson’s complete career stats can be found here:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=jackso004edw

 

 

With a career as long as Edwin Jackson had, there are plenty of cards to choose from.  Here’s a selection.

 

 Left: Topps Heritage 2008, Card 413; Right: Topps Heritage 2010, Card 205

 

                                                    Top:  Topps Heritage 2004, card 458;

Bottom:  Topps Heritge 2009, card 68.

 

 

Edwin Jackson In the Minors

 

 Clockwise from upper left:  Las Vegas 51s, 2004, card 16; South Georgia Waves, 2002, card 11;

Norfolk Tides, 2017, card 15; Jacksonville Suns, 2003, card 29.

 

                                                                 The Man of Many Hats

 

 

                                                     Topps Now, 2018, Card 366

6.25.18:  1^st Start of his 16^th Season with MLB record-tying 13^th Team

 

                                                                 Through the Years

 

 

Clockwise from upper left: 

Topps 2005, Card 603; Topps 2009, All-Star, Card UH227;

Topps 2011, World Series, Card WS15;

Topps Ball Park Oddities, 2020, Card BPO-1 Travelin’ Man.

 

 

 Thank You, Russell!

Thanks for reading! Happy collecting!

Next Friday: YEARBOOKS...this other collecting life.

 

 

Prospecting as a Pittsburgh Pirates fan : An Excersie in Futility?

 

The Pirates are trading Bryan Reynolds.

            Their best player.

            Maybe before the season.

            Probably before the trade deadline.

            Maybe even by the time you’re readings this.

            But the Pittsburgh Pirates are trading Bryan Reynolds. A guy they still have a few years of team control over. Because he wants out. Because the Pittsburgh Pirates aren’t serious about putting a winning team on the field. They’re not serious about Bryan Reynolds. The Pittsburgh Pirates are serious about anything.

            Except losing.

            The Pirates offered Bryan Reynolds 6 years at $75 million dollars. Guaranteed. Not laughable money…unless you play Major League Baseball. Then it is. There are guys out there who aren’t half the player Reynolds is, getting more of the money. The deal also kicks Reynolds out into free agency when he’d be thirty-three or thirty-four. If you’ve paid attention to the Carlos Correa saga, you know that these players and agents usually want a contract that’ll bind them to a team until they’re almost ready to retire. Not when they’re thirty-three or thirty-four years old.

            Did I mention that Reynolds contract is supposed to be the biggest in Pittsburgh Pirates history.

            Pretty cool, huh?

            Until you realize it’s the Pittsburgh Pirates and they don’t spend money on anything.

            They make it a challenge to a fan.

            They even make it a challenge to be a collector.

            I don’t do much in the way of baseball card prospecting. I’m not the kind of collector who gets excited by the mere mention of the word Bowman. I collect because, despite what I just wrote above, I like to root for my hometown team. I like to root for said team’s star players and those hard-nosed guys. When I collect away from the Pirates, it’s usually players who’ve already established themselves in the game, and I happen to like the way they play.

            I site three examples from a recent Stadium Club purchase:

*a brief aside.....thank you Topps for giving Yordan Alvarez some of the most boring looking cards of the year*

Prospecting feels like gambling to me.

It also just doesn’t seem fun.

Okay…it’s a little fun.

But I do prospect pretty deeply where the Pittsburgh Pirates are concerned.

And that, at times, seems doubly unfun.

Or futile.

            Especially when the Pitates aren’t going to sign them long-term anyway.

            And, yes, I know there are exceptions to the rule.

            I also know that Bryan Reynolds wasn’t a prospect brought up in the Pirates system.

            But we traded one of our own to get him.

            And now he wants out.

            And I don't really blame him.

            Being a fan means having hope. The Pittsburgh Pirates haven’t given me much in the way of hope since the early 1990s (2013-2015 aside). They don't sign anyone long term. Your top prospects have a time limit before they're traded at the deadline, the season or so before they are a free agent. They go garbage dump diving for free agents. But yet...the hope, it’s still there. A small, tiny, almost burnt-out ember of hope. I couldn’t begin to explain why I still have that hope.

            Maybe it’s watching this kid knock baseballs out of actual stadiums.

           Or the way this kid pitches.

            How this guy seemed to finally fulfill a lot of promises this year.

            Watching this kid come up from AA and smack 19 homeruns.

            And also have his 1^st Bowman card and his rookie card in the same year.

            It’s these guys coming down the pipeline.

            It’s hope. And a bit of self-delusion. It’s wrong-headed thinking that the current Pittsburgh Pirates ownership and management are going to do anything to sure up the guys currently on the roster, so that fans like me think the above prospects will be with them in black and gold for long time. I collect Pirates prospects because I still have some sliver of stupid hope for the state of Major League Baseball in the fine city of Pittsburgh.

            But…

            Bryan Reynolds asked to be traded.

            Our best player.

            My current favorite player.

            And when he goes, a lot of kids in Pittsburgh are going to feel like I felt when these guys left.

            How in the hell do you maintain or build a fan base running a team like this?

            Something stinks over at PNC Park.

            Look, I’m not completely delusional. I know that, unless a guy plays in New York or L.A. or is Joey Votto, most likely a player won’t finish his career with one team. That’s the economics of the game. I’m a believer in the cap/floor system, not because I want to stop a player from making money, but because I want to stop a cheapskate owner like Bob Nutting, from not paying a player what he’s worth. Six-years at Seventy-Five Million. Get bent, Bob!

            Give us fans some longevity.

            I can’t change the economics of baseball in Pittsburgh.

            Or a skinflint owner.

            Or the fact that Bryan Reynolds could be in a Yankees, Ranger, Mariners, Dodgers etc. uniform by 2023 Series 2 or Update.

            But maybe I should stop prospecting on Pittsburgh Pirates cards.

            Save myself some money.

            That’s easier said than done.

            Deep down I’m a baseball optimist.

            I've been a massive Pirates fan for decades.

            And now I have this card coming for me in the mail.

Thanks for reading! Happy collecting!

 NEXT FRIDAY: Friend of the Blog, Russell Streur is back with a little bit of Edwin Jackson for your baseball journeyman fans.