Collecting By The Book: The Uncommon Life of Danny O’Connell: A Tale of Baseball Cards, “Average Players” and the True Value of America’s Game.

 

When Steve Wiegand was a kid, back in the 60’s, he did with his allowance money what a lot of us kids did…

…he went to the store and bought baseball cards.

I know that I sure did. With every red cent that I could get my hands on. Birthdays, Holidays, the odd chore I was coerced into doing; I’ve mentioned on here my penchant for digging around under couch cushions in order to round up enough scratch for a single wax pack. For me, it was going up to the Ritzlanad Shopping Center, to the candy aisle in the Thrift Drug, where the baseball cards rested on the top shelf, reaching up my hand and digging as deep as I could into the wax box, pulling out a pack somewhere in the middle or at the bottom of the box.

Because all of the star cards were in the bottom packs, right?

And then there’d be the excited walk back home, either alone or with a friend or two, that stale gum in our mouths, breaking our teeth, as we searched through packs hoping for maybe this guy:

Or that guy:

Or that guy:

Or one of the members of my blessed Pittsburgh Pirates:

It was the 1980s and cards were plentiful, the packs were, well, packed, and the wax was still cheap.

What a time to be alive.

For Steve Wiegand, in 1960, the experience was the Par Liquor store., spending a nickel on a pack of cards or two, and the rest on BIG TIME soda.

Steve was a Giants fan.

He always hoped to get this guy in his packs.

He usually got this guy.

And that collecting streak of “bad luck” was the impetus, years later, for Wiegand to write his book: The Uncommon Life of Danny O’Connell: A Tale of Baseball Cards, “Average Players” and the True Value of America’s Game.

Here’s the cover photo again:

I found out about this fantastic book via John Newman’s always excellent and informative Sports Card Nation podcast. John had Steve Wigand on his show back in May for a two-part episode, and it’s beyond worth listening to, if you have an interest in so-called “common” cards and so-called “common” players, like I do. The book is an excellent read. Not only does Wigand do an excellent job telling Danny O’Connell’s story from growing up on the streets of Patterson, New Jersey, to his time in that golden era of 1950s/60s Big League Baseball, to his untimely death at age 40, but he finds a way to weave into his narrative the history of card collecting from cigarette packs to $1,000 1/1 auto refractors blah blah blah.

A collector like me eats books like this for lunch.

And because I tend to pick up some of the cards of players that I read about; I did the same with Danny O’Connell’s cards.

The 1951 Bowman is definitely the oldest card that I now own. It might be the oldest baseball card that I’ve ever owned. The 1953, 1956 and 1961 Topps are the first I have of those years since I got back into collecting 5 years ago.

Special emphasis on the 1955 Bowman, because that too is also my first 1955 Bowman and I’ve always loved this design. 

Have to get some Pirates in this design.

For me, collecting by the book is a fun way to collect because I get to buy older cards, and not break the bank.

Although my fall/winter baseball reading might be making this habit a bit prohibitive.

I’m not sure I know what it means to be a “common” player or be a “common” card in a sport that has only had 20,459 or so players to ever play on a Big League roster in the entire history of the sport. And Mr. Danny O’Connell was so slouch either. He played ten seasons in the Bigs (missing two years for military service) with my Pirates, the Milwaukee Braves, those San Francisco Giants, and then finally ending his career with the second iteration of the Washington Senators in 1962. O’Connell played in 1143 games and managed to get over the 1000 hit mark with 1,049. He was a lifetime .260 hitter. Placed 3^rd in voting for Rookie of the Year in 1950, and 16^th for MVP in 1953.

Not too shabby, huh?

But to a young Steve Wiegand, Danny O’Connell was no Willie Mays.

He was just the guy who seemingly showed up in every single pack that he bought.

In reading Wiegand’s book, I began to think of my own collecting/pack ripping history, and who was always that player who showed up in every single pack, irking me when I was hoping for a Don Mattingly or Barry Bonds card. It wouldn’t have been a Pirate. I was always excited to get Pittsburgh Pirates cards. So, I had to go outside of my hometown team to think of the player who seemingly showed up in every single pack of cards that I bought.

I came up with this guy.

Son of Pirates great and CY Young winner Vern Law, like Danny O’Connell, Vance Law began his career with my Pittsburgh Pirates, before moving on to the Chiago White Sox, Montreal Expos, Chicago Cubs and Oakland A’s, in a career that spanned 11 seasons, 1212 games, 972 hits, and an appearance in the 1988 All-Star game.

Vance was one of those players who got to appear on multiple Future Star cards, along with two Pirates I spent a good many years rooting for.

The fine folks at Fleer and Donruss thought to give him a rookie card of his own.

Yep, Vance Law seemed to show up in every single pack that I ever bought.

Not true…but it felt like

For fun I thought I’d dig around in my “commons” boxes to see just how many of Vance Law’s cards I could come up with.

Surprisingly, I found very little in the one box.

Maybe Vance didn’t show up as much as I thought he did. Still, I’m going to go ahead and think of Vance Law as my Danny O’Connell…maybe if I snoop around enough they’ll be enough info on him to write a book.

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

Thank You 2024 Topps Chrome

 

I was going to go to the 2024 National.

            I had selected the days off at work nearly a year before it.

            I had plans.

            I was either going to book a hotel room and fly into Cleveland, or else I was going to kill two birds with one stone, fly into Pittsburgh and visit family, and then take a day trip to Cleveland to go to my first National Sports Card Collectors Show.

            I repeat…I was going to go to the 2024 National.

            It was some time around February of this year, when I found myself in bed, unable to get out of it because of anxiety and fear, turned to my side, and just watching the only true snowfall we had from my bedroom window, that I knew I wasn’t going to spend the money on a hotel room, a flight, to Cleveland or Pittsburgh, that there’d be no strolling from vendor to vendor, spending the money I’d set aside for cards that I’ve been wanting since I got back into collecting five years ago.

            There’d be none of that.

            I wasn’t going to the National.

            Instead, I’ve spent the better part of 2024 falling down, climbing out of and falling back down again, into the pit of some of the worst anxiety I’ve had in my life.

            I had such high hopes for 2024 too.

            I was turning 50.

            The poetry gods had blessed me in December 2023 and January 2024 with some of the best poems I’d written in a long time.

            I finished a novella and it was going to come out on a press.

            I dusted off the Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukoski and was going to have a good old nostalgia trip.

            I was going to go to The National.

            But then February happened.

            Around the middle of July, when I certainly KNEW, I wasn’t going to the National, a bit of that good ol’ FOMO began to creep in. My wife was going that same weekend on her annual “girls weekend,” and I was going to be stuck at home, by my own devices, of course. I made New York City plans. I was going to walk bridges. I was going to finally find where the notorious Five Points area of New York was located. I was going to see some writer’s homes and eat a shit ton of pizza, doing some classic NYC pizza tourism.

            I was going to buy myself some cards to try and quell that FOMO feeling.

            But what?

            I don’t buy much new product outside of Topps base. We have some sports cards shops in Gotham, but they weren’t going to have those cards that I was certain to find at the National. But I had to get something to make up for missing out. And I had that money saved. I was in one of those “climbing back up” periods to this year’s anxiety world tour. What was I going to get to scratch this sports card itch, one, to be quite frank, I wasn’t scratching at very often this year.

            Then I saw this and said why not?

            I’d never bought Chrome in pack form before. I’d bought singles. I wasn’t a massive chrome fan. But I liked the 2024 base design. I knew that Topps had put rookie cards of some of the players they’d screwed us out of in Series 2. I had that saved money. I wasn’t going to the National. I figured why in the hell not.

            And ripping Chrome was…underwhelming?

            I mean it was fun…sort of.

            Ripping packs is fun...if you don’t pay too much attention to the cost.

            If you aren’t in it for the inserts.

            I got the assorted bells and whistles.

            I got some of the big rookies.

            I even pulled this.

            The Langford alone should've been worth the price of admission, right?

            And yet…

            And yet.

            I wasn’t at the National. I wasn’t strolling around from vendor to vendor, maybe meeting other people in The Hobby. I wasn’t looking at Clemente and Aaron cards that I want to add to my collection. I wasn’t looking at vintage cards of common players I’d read about. I wasn’t hemming and hawing over spending too much on one, JUST ONE, Mantle card from his playing days. Instead, I was sitting alone in a Brooklyn apartment absolutely underwhelmed by what I’d bought, made that I’d spent the money on it, and angry that I hadn’t spent the money on going to the National.

            And I didn’t buy anything sports card related for almost two months.

            So, why is this blog post entitled Thank You 2024 Topps Chrome? It’s not Topps Chrome’s fault that I had the reaction I did. It’s a good product. Do I think it’s over-priced? Sure. But that’s not only for me to decide. I entitled this blog post Thank You 2024 Topps Chrome because buying that product, opening it, and feeling like I never wanted to collect another baseball card again…it actually helped me start to remember why I got back into this wonderful Hobby, what I actually valued as a collector, and how I want to go about collecting going forward.

            And how I missed this blog and writing about cards.

            So, I went online and bought some stuff I’d been interested in getting.

            Not the Clemente and Aaron cards, or a blessed Mantle from his playing days.

            Not even anything really expensive and it’s stuff that might be a head scratcher to some of you.

            But I’m excited.

            And I hope to share the stuff here and some upcoming blog posts.

            September 2024 is actually the 5^th anniversary of me coming back to The Hobby.

            I plan on celebrating.

            So, thank you 2024 Topps Chrome for helping me realize this.

            And hopefully I’ll see some of you in Chicago next July.

 

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

 

 

1981 Donruss

Sometimes I like to think about card sets that I love.

            I mean, collecting is supposed to be fun in general, but every collector out there has those sets that stand out for a reason. Maybe it’s the design. Maybe it’s where you were in your collecting life. The first card pack you even opened. The first set you ever built. The first team set that you built. It just that specific year or years of cards that just do it for you.

            These three sets do it for me every single time.

            1987 Topps, Fleer and Donruss, and I’m instantly thirteen-years-old and on my bed going through them on summer nights that were still reasonable enough to be indoors without a fan blowing (for the most part). Those cards paid for (mostly) from the money that I made delivering the morning newspaper. 1987 was probably the highwater mark for me. The year I was most interested. Most invested. 1988 and 1989 were still big too. But the money I made was also going toward cassette tapes and movies, and used VHS tapes of films that I loved. I don’t think I ever loved card collecting like I did in 1987.

            Now, this set/design takes me all of the way back to the beginning.

            1980. I’m six-years-old and I’m at a five and dime (we called it that) with my Grandma on Butler Steet in the Lawrenceville section of Pittsburgh. She’s buying lottery ticket and told me that I could get whatever candy I wanted. Reaching for, probably a Milky Way, I spied a pack of 1980 Topps baseball cards. What are these? I probably said to myself. I remember opening them on the street, after we left the store. Going through the cards. Getting my first Pirates card.

            Okay, that’s not the OG from 1980…but when I got back into collecting, I had to have that card again.

            Good card sets can give you good memories.

            But what about those sets that…don’t make you feel so good?

            For me, it’s this one.

            The first time that I saw 1981 Donruss baseball cards, I was seven-years-old in the backseat of my parent’s car, a moving truck idling behind us, getting ready to leave Pittsburgh for Wellsburg, West Virginia; getting ready to leave the only, city, the only streets, the only home, and the only friends that I ever knew. And I was sad. Even though Wellsburg was under an hour away from Pittsburgh, it felt like I might as well be across the world. And why were we moving? Because my old man had taken a job at a bank in Wellsburg…and the one nagging stipulation was that you had to live in the town.

            It was bye-bye Steel City for me…hello farmland.

            The Donruss cards were, of course, given to me by good ol’ Grandma, who could recognize a fellow addict when she saw one. Opening the cards was supposed to be salve on the wound. I was seven and obviously had no clue about the decades of litigation between Topps and Fleer, the busting of Topps’ monopoly on the The Hobby. That Fleer and Donruss had been making non-sports cards for years. But I did know that Donruss were different from what I was used to. I’d already seen and bought 1981 Topps cards. My buddy Chris and I had found them at George’s Pharmacy on Butler Street. Think those old soda fountain pharmacies if you want to picture George’s.

            And I already liked the design.

            I already had a pile of them stored in that blue suitcase that I used to keep my cards in…until a lesson was learned a few years later.

            My Topps sticker book was already over ½ way filled too…and somewhat ruined (at least the back cover) by Chris’ older sister who spilled cherry Kool-Aid on it.

            But I digress.

            And it’s not that 1981 Donruss cards are bad.

The 605-card set is a bit sloppy with duplicates.

The set sequencing is strange.

But there IS a Marquee rookie card in the set.

And Donruss would go on to make some of the best sets of the Junk Wax Era.

The Hobby could USE a Donruss or a Fleer to give Topps a run for its money again.

It’s just that 1981 Donruss cards were just something for a sad and soon-to-be lonely kid to use to take his mind off moving, to pass the time as the familiar landscape of Pittsburgh morphed into the unfamiliar rural landscape of Wellsburg, West Virginia, with its Main Street that still looked like a relic from the 1950s. 1981 Donruss are the set that I think about when I think about an unhappy year. About the principal at my new school refusing to let me be called by my nickname, so I was John instead of Jay in second grade. It was my parents arguing a lot. Neighbors calling the old man a city slicker. A neighbor threatening to shoot our Golden Retriever, Sam, who kept getting loose and getting into his yard. And then the same said neighbor actually shooting Sam in his leg.

1981 Donruss reminds me of a year where my family was so unhappy that, in the end, we had no recourse but to move back to Pittsburgh, not the city, but the suburbs, where I’d, yet again, be the new kid, all at the risk of my old man losing that bank job.

Which he did.

That’s the stuff I think about when I see 1981 Donruss. I guess it could’ve been Topps. Or it could’ve been 1981 Fleer, which I first saw and bought in a general store in Wellsburg, one morning when the old man was driving me to school. It just so happened that 1981 Donruss is what I opened during that car ride, so it bares the weight of that time in my life. This March, I was home visiting my folks and I came upon the 1981 Donruss set on the cheap at a flea market. Those memories actually propelled me to buy the set. To bring it back to Brooklyn and look through it from time to time. To write this. To try and find that seven-year-old kid who was going into the first real unknown of the many unknowns that he was going to face as he got older.

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!