Odds'n'Ends

 

I haven’t been buying much in the way of cards lately.

            That’s an odd thing to write the week of the National.

            And it’s not a retreat from The Hobby.

            Man, life just keeps getting in the way.

            On Monday, July 3^rd, my mother-in-law died. She was in the hospital with pneumonia. In all honesty, she hasn’t been good snice my father-in-law died in March of 2021. Just a lot of trips to the hospital. The hope was that she’d finally consent to move to Florida with her eldest daughter. My wife was flying up on the 4^th to help take care of her mother, and try and convince her to move.

But then the 3^rd happened.

As an adult, you deal with a lot of shitty things. Waking up my wife and handing her a phone at six in the morning, so her sister could tell her that her mom was dead…that ranks up there with shitty things.

Then on the 7^th, I had a rat run into my office. Yes, a rat. At my job, we’ve been dealing with this fucker for weeks. Exterminators the whole nine yards. But then there he was at 3:15 PM racing toward me (most likely to his hole in the wall behind my desk). I’ve never jumped out of a chair so quickly in my life. My co-worker thought I was having a heart attack. To be honest, my office is a glorified closet. In the commotion, I ended up severely spraining my right foot. Could hardly walk on it for two days. And here on July 28^th (the time of this writing), it still kind of hurts.

But the rat is dead.

I have photographic proof.

I’ve also been trying to finish a novel.

It’s done.

It’s about baseball cards and Wiffle ball and dealing with middle-age.

It’s 374 pages long.

So…not much time to buy cards.

Enough about me…how are all of you?

But not buying cards doesn’t mean not doing anything with cards. I’ve been essentially doing two things with cards this month. One, I’ll mention in a post about a month of now.

The other is…well…this.

Yeah…it’s not just this year’s Heritage.

I’ve gone full throttle again.

I’ve been buying Heritage since 2019, building and then, out of frustration, dismantling each year’s set. It’s those damned short prints. This month I’ve been spending my time rebuilding the sets, reprinting the checklists, and spinning on the Heritage mouse wheel again. I’m playing the long game this time. While I’m actively buying 2023 Heritage, I’m slowly putting together 2021 and 2022 or, as I like to call them, the Heritage sets that don’t put marquee rookies and star cards in the short prints. 2019 and 2020…you’re going to have to wait.

And the cards that I did buy this month, reflect that dedication.

Okay…and I got this.

…but just because I LOVE it so.

With everything going on this month, the card Gods did decide to have some fun with me. The reason? Well, the Pittsburgh Pirates Baseball Club are a back in last place. Not where they should be, but, thanks to inept coaching and a highly OVERRATED GM, that’s where they are. Anyone who squanders a 20-8 start belongs in last place. But along this hapless journey, I started going into my card boxes and pulling out the cards of this guy.

And this guy.

Full disclosure, I’ve been a Ji-Man Choi fan for years, and this year’s Heritage card might be my favorite card of the year, if only, because he’s in a Pirates uniform.

But I’ve come to greatly respect Carlos Santana if, for nothing else, his leadership (especially with the Latin players) on a team that had seen 11 players make their Major League debut this year.

I had some Santana cards in a Pirates uniform for my 2023 team sets, but I wanted them for an individual PC.  So, with the same order that I bought the Heritage and the Henry Aaron, I got myself a couple of Santana Pirates cards.

They arrived on the 27^th.

The day Carlos Santana was traded by the Pirates to their goddamned division rival Milwaukee Brewers. For an 18-year-old who we’ll maybe see six or seven years down the line.

Look, I’m not fooling myself. The Pirates have been trad deadline sellers for the bulk of the 43 years that I’ve been a fan. But I was hoping with Carlos Santana, and Ji-Man Choi as well, that they keep these guys around, If, for nothing else, that they’d be a continued leadership presence for these kids us Pirates fans are betting the whole farm on.

But Santana is gone.

Choi is here…for now.

Or he won’t be by the time you read this.

And this guy will be the sole first baseman.

Or he’ll be gone too.

Regardless, the Pirates have kicked the can on another baseball season.

But, hey, at least these guys are back in action.

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

NEXT SATURDAY: Adding a new addition to the PC....a long overdue one.

 

 

1980 Topps....let's do it again, baby!

 

Baseball is back!

            Well…for me, it is.

            All-Star week is a pretty arid week for me. I don’t watch the red-carpet stuff. I don’t watch the Home Run Derby. And I don’t watch the game itself. I pretty much spend All-Star week going through a smaller version of the baseball withdrawal that I feel in late October (okay, early November now) when the last pitch in the final game of the World Series is thrown.

            I don’t hate the All-Star game.

            It’s just a nothing game to me.

            It didn’t used to be.

            Back when I was a kid (a little kid), and there was only NBC’s Game of the Week and Road (never, ever home games) Pirates games available to me, the All-Star game was usually the only way that I was going to see American League baseball players, players from the West Coast, until the World Series (provided I could even stay up for that…first World Series I remember watching actual games of was 1985 and I was 11). If I was going to collect Eddie Murray and Cal Ripken Jr. cards, well, at least I was pretty well-assured I’d see them for a single night in July.

            Obviously, Cable changed that. Especially, ESPN playing midweek games, West Coast games and, of course, Sunday Night Baseball.

            For me, the All-Star Game lost its luster once those changes happened.

            Still, I can’t help but feel a little bit nostalgic when the All-Star Game comes around. The way me, my old man, and my brother gathered at one TV to watch the All-Star game. How special that felt. And every year I tell myself, come on, put it on for old time’s sake. But I usually don’t. Those uniform design have made it easier not to want to tune-in the last few years. This year I watched an old Brady Bunch episode, and a pretty funny one in Season 3 of Cheers.

            But…nostalgia.

            And, now, I’m thinking about it in terms of baseball cards and collecting here.

            For me, this is ground zero of baseball card nostalgia.

            I recently purchased a complete 1980 Topps set that I found for a reasonable price. Like the Willie Stargell rookie card, this purchase involves a union, a contract, and money owed. I’d been trying to build the 1980 Topps set since I got back into collecting in 2019. But I’ve been stalled at still needing some 500+ cards. The truth is, I’ve been back into collecting for four years now and there are still some aspects that I’m either inept at or have not one clue about. A big one for me is buying card lots. I don’t know where to go and who to go to. So, projects like building older sets have remained in the pipe-dream, pipeline.

            Buying a set outright isn’t as fun as building one on your own.

            But it has its perks.

            I’ve said it here before, but it bears repeating: 1980 Topps are the first packs of baseball cards that I remember opening. A five & dime store on Butler Street in the Lawrenceville section of Pittsburgh, bought for me by my grandma when she stopped for a pack of smokes and a ubiquitous lottery ticket.

            In my first pack, I got my first Pittsburgh Pirate card.

            …And I was hooked.

*brief aside, I kind of want to do one of those collector things, and get a whole binder full of 1980 Ed Ott cards*

            1980 itself was a pretty foundational year for me and baseball. I opened my first pack of cards. I became a collector. Something I would do with verve from the age of 6 until the age of 18. I saw my first live baseball game in 1980. A fireworks night at Three Rivers Stadium. Nosebleed seats…but I was there all the same. Although I was too young and tired to make the end of the game. But the old man and I parked to watch the fireworks from a distance, on our way back home.

            Nostalgia.

            Memories.

            First packs, first games…and the All-Star game.

            But it’s not just nostalgia for me with 1980 Topps. I genuinely love the set. Along with 1983 and 1987, 1980 Topps is one of my favorites of the decade. It gets that vintage tag attached to it now. And I believe it’s warranted. Those big team banners. Those action shots. Those posed shots.

            Rickey!!!

            But, also, these guys.

            I’d put 1980 up there with a lot of those other classic Topps sets that came before it.

            I don’t buy those arguments that Topps could’ve done a better job, considering these two guys would be showing up the next year, and totally changing the game.

            I honestly think, with 1980, that Topps was showing collectors that this is what a baseball card should look like.

            That THIS

    …is the REAL ONE.

Thanks for reading! Happy collecting!

NEXT SATURDAY: 1981 Donruss...a tale of sadness and woe.

           

 

Junk Wax Jay new post date!

 Due to time constraints (novel writing, poem writing, dumb job), I'm going to move Junk Wax Jay posts to Saturday, effective July 15th, 2023.