1981 Topps Ross Baumgarten

 

The front: A sea of pink seats. Maybe Milwaukee or California?

The back: The two cartoons cherry-picked Baumgarten's two best games of his rookie season. In his five other games he went 0-2 with a 14.63 ERA.

The player: Ross Baumgarten pitched for the White Sox from 1978 to 1981, putting up good numbers despite poor run support. In 1980 he had a 3.44 ERA but only a 2-12 record due to the White Sox scoring 47 runs in his 23 starts. He pitched one season for the Pirates in 1982 but injuries ended up shortening his career. Overall in 90 games he went 22-36 with a 4.00 ERA.

The man: After his career Baumgarten was a high school baseball coach and a financial advisor. He is now retired.

My collection: I have 11 of his cards, from 1979 to 1983. I would be interested in trading for 1978 TCMA Appleton Foxes #4.
 

1976 SSPC Don Sutton

 

The card, in brief: He's not Suttoning here. He actually looks quite annoyed at the photographer.

Playing career, in brief: Don Sutton was an amazing model of consistency in his long major league career, winning at least 11 games in 21 of his 23 major league seasons. A four-time All-Star, he was the Dodgers' ace in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. He signed with the Astros after the 1980 season and remained effective for several teams well into his 40s. He pitched in four World Series, on the losing side each time, pitching well in '74 and '77 and poorly in '78 and '82. Overall in 774 games he went 324-256 with a 3.26 ERA. His 3,574 strikeouts are seventh all-time. 

Post-playing career, in brief: Sutton was a longtime broadcaster, mostly for the Braves. He died of cancer in 2021.

My collection: I have 68 of his cards, from 1966 to 1989. I would be interested in trading for 1975 Hostess #7. 

Wallet Card at Engine 29

160 Chambers Street was built in 1833 as a private residence. As this area of lower Manhattan became more commercial, it was purchased by the City of New York in 1863 and converted to a police station, and later a house of relief, before becoming the firehouse for Engine 29 in 1894. It served as a firehouse until 1947, when it was converted into offices for the Uniformed Fire Officers Association. Since 1967, it has returned to its roots as a private residence, with a commercial business on the ground floor, currently the Venu Stella spa. However, the Engine 29 sign can still be seen many decades after the building's conversion from a firehouse.

 

 

1989 Topps Big Cartoon Deep Dive: Andy McGaffigan

 Must be a spring game, Topps never took photos at Montreal. 

Andy McGaffigan, known for his wacky humor, and his Harry Caray impression . . . 

. . . I guess? 

Searching the web, I couldn't find any evidence of McGaffigan doing anything funny other than teasing flight-fearing teammates on a turbulent trip. Nothing about a Caray impression anywhere. That didn't stop all of the AI's that the internet is infected with these days from trying to make sense of it though. 

The only mention I found in Google search results was from an eBay AI description of McGaffigan's 1990 Topps card (not 1989), which also mentions the Caray impression. The eBay AI's ridiculously grand prose is in full effect in describing this most common of common cards: 

That was the only instance in the Google search results, but that didn't stop the Google AI from trying to weigh in.

No "specific Holy Cow moment", I guess.

These were so ridiculously I decided to try a couple more AI "leaders". Bing Copilot gives us a Harry Caray impression that seems pretty ridiculous to me. “Holy cow! That McGaffigan fella’s got a slider that could make a grown man cry!” Maybe a Cubs fan can say for sure but I kind of doubt that's something Caray would have actually said. 

Finally, ChatGPT gives us this really detailed impression of McGaffigan, the baseball announcer.

After his playing career McGaffigan has advised nonprofits and has been a financial advisor for the past 25 years. He was never an announcer. That didn't stop ChatGPT for making up his style!

I also tried Perplexity; it had no answers, but to it's credit it didn't try to make up anything either.
 

 

Trayvon Robinson on baseball cards

Outfielder Trayvon Robinson played 12 seasons of professional baseball, reaching the major leagues with the Mariners in 2011 and 2012. In 90 major league games he hit .215 with 5 HR and 26 RBI. Now the hitting coach for the Lancaster Stormers of the Atlantic League, he kindly answered my questions about baseball cards.

"One of my MLB cards have me robbing a home run on my major league debut. I thought it was pretty cool.  

I have a lot of cards out of myself, but my favorite player is Juan Gonzalez and I currently have one of his cards in my locker, pretty cool. I typically don’t go out the way to collect baseball cards, but when there is a card of some players for my childhood, I try to collect them."

Thanks!

 

Cake or gum? 1977 Dave Lopes

Last time gum held on for a 6-4 win. Who will come out on top here?

Hostess has Lopes at Candlestick Park, looking out at the field pregame. I'm not sure where Topps's photo was taken, but it's got Lopes balancing his bats in an interesting way, probably on deck. Both cards call him Dave, but his signature on the Topps card is Davey.

Part of the legendary Garvey-Cey-Russell-Lopes infield of the Dodgers of the 1970s and early 1980s, Lopes was one of the games’ preeminent speedsters who also had a powerful bat for a second baseman of the era. A four-time all-star who led the NL in stolen bases in 1975 and 1976, Lopes finished his 16-year career with 155 home runs and 557 stolen bases. After his playing career he spent 30 years as a coach for several major league teams, and served as the manager of the Milwaukee Brewers from 2000 to 2002. He retired from coaching after the 2017 season.
 

Bought a box of cards

I haven't been buying cards since I got laid off from my job. I still am getting severance and am hopefully close on a couple of opportunities (don't want to jinx it). However, I couldn't resist when I saw a post on Facebook Marketplace. A thrift store that I've been to a few times but never saw cards at, posted this photo, saying $30 a box or $0.10 a card. It looked so tempting I decided to take a look to see if I could find enough to be worth filling up a box.

I saw the post on Saturday night, and it had already been up for a day. I arrived at 10am Sunday morning as the place opened, not knowing if everything had been picked through, or there would be lots of people crowding around, or it would all be junk not worth going through. I was lucky on all counts, and ended up staying until 1:30, and would have stayed longer if I didn't have to go get my kid. I went through every box, probably 20-30 5,000 count boxes plus a lot of other random boxes, though the randoms were almost all junk wax. In the end I was able to fill up a 5,000 count box for $30. 

In those 3.5 hours I did a lot of digging, including crawling under the table and climbing on top to get at all of the boxes. In no particular order, here are some highlights of what I picked out.

Anyone spy some '88 Fleer Star Stickers? Some of these duplicate what I got yesterday. And there was a full 6-card '88 Fleer Headliners set. I only needed McGwire. Night Owl are you still working on this set? 

There were a few Empire Strikes Back cards in one of the boxes, plus a few other random modern Star Wars cards. There were a few other nonsport cards mixed in with those (sometimes I was just grabbing handfuls of cards that looked interesting. The firefighting cards were an odd nonsport set I'd never seen before. An interesting oddity but doesn't fit my collection so those are available.

How often do you see Topps Tiffany in collections like this? The back of the '89 really pops, the purple is more vibrant than on the traded sets.

There was a whole lot of '83 OPC. I didn't have a lot from this set so needed most of them.

Towards the end when I was running out of time I just grabbed handfuls of modern cards. The '97 and '99 Fleer Showcase are really shiny so they caught my eye and I grabbed a few hundred of them. All commons and minor stars. The '99s are split between row 2 and 3, the '97s are all row 1. Lots of dupes especially the '97s, so let me know if you need cards from these sets. I also grabbed a lot of Pacific from various years, and some other late 90s and early 00s random stuff.

About 40% of the cards I took were football cards, mostly Topps cards from the 70s and 80s, especially 80s. Lots of '87 and '88 as I casually try to fill those sets from my youth. I haven't sorted the football cards yet (almost done with sorting baseball) so I don't know how far along I got, and how much might have duplicated what I got from TCDB this week.

There was not much vintage but I found a little! Probably most fun were these 1971 Dell Today Stamps. In each case they were mixed in randomly with junk wax, in different boxes. There were probably more of these that I missed, couldn't flip through every card.

There was a box of 1970s cards, including '71s. I knew I only needed high numbers. Turns out I already had Wynne, and had Cain too. He isn't even a high number but the number wasn't visible on the back.

My first 1975 Shakey's Pizza card! Nice looking design. I already had the '74 Fleer Anson, it turns out. And cool Bart Starr football stamp!

More vintage oddballs. I don't collect APBA cards so that one is available. I think it is from 1987. The Hal Newhouser card is a 1977 TCMA. I already have the '69 Globe set but took the one I saw, Joel Horlen. And on the bottom is just the inside page of a 1969 Topps Expos stamp book. Manny Mota is the one stamp and it's one I needed.

The box I decided to fill had several box sets that I planned to check but never had the time so I just left them in there. The only one I needed was the '86 Exciting Stars. The rest I already had the cards from. They had already been picked clean of the stars. And the NFL Collect-A-Books box had some NBA Collect-A-Books inside. 

Cool oddball, a SWB Red Barons set.

I found one "hit" card and such a cool one, a bat card of 1960s Yankee Hector Lopez!

I like Coca-Cola cards so these were a nice find.

Some random fun football goodness.

At one point I found a few oddball Mattinglys, including a Broder! I did need a few of these.

I found a 1982 Topps Traded card I needed, it's a tough set to find in the wild. Interestingly this is not a card in a penny sleeve with a sticker on it. It is a card that has been laminated, and then a price tag put on the laminated card!

There were a lot of Phillies and Eagles cards in some of these boxes, I'm guessing they may have come from Philly at some point. There were some cool team-issued oddballs, including several copies of that Dave Gallagher card.

Finally, a couple more random vintage football cards, don't even remember why I took the photo but here it is.

I'm having a lot of fun with these and at some point will have a lot to trade out of it. A lot of the time I was the only one there, after a while another guy came in to look through the cards but we weren't in each other's way. When I was leaving I saw there were a lot more card boxes in another part of the store, with a few people going through them. I guess I need to decide if I want to spend the time and money to go back and look again this weekend.
 

Cards from Tigerfan22

It's been a while since I've done a big trade, but Tigerfan22 reached out on TCDB and we swung a roughly 330-for-330 trade.

Here's the baseball portion of what I received. Nice mix of 80's oddballs with some newer Yankees and shinies. 

Here's a few that caught my eye to share. The Red Sox player in the shopping cart is kind of funny, though a garbage can would be more appropriate for a Red Sox.

He noted on his bio that he wanted to move a lot of his football cards. I still sometimes want to add to my '70s and '80s Topps football sets so I added a lot of those, especially the 1984 set which I had very little of for some reason.

 I had pulled out some cards of interest to show, but I guess I  never took the photo. Lots of fun stuff in there, though.

 

Wood vs. Wood #285

Last time it was an 8-0 sweep for 1962. Will this be closer?

Curt Simmons in a pitching pose before a game at Connie Mack Stadium, with the left field wall prominently in view, as well as a pile of bats behind him. Simmons was a reliable starter for four teams, mostly the Phillies and Cardinals, and was a 3-time All-Star. He set a career high in wins with the Cardinals in 1964, going 18-9 with a 3.43 ERA, winning his only World Series ring. Overall in 569 games he went 193-183 with a 3.54 ERA. After his career he owned a golf course with former Phillies teammate Robin Roberts. He died in 2022.

Dennis Boyd is wearing a big windbreaker that seems baggy on his notoriously skinny frame. Better known as "Oil Can", Boyd was at the height of fame brought about as much for his personality as his pitching prowess. Boyd had some decent win-loss records with high ERAs for the Red Sox, but had trouble fighting drug and alcohol addiction, which among other issues left him unable to pitch in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. He ended his career with brief stops in Montreal and Texas. Overall in 214 games he went 78-77 with a 4.04 ERA. After his baseball career he returned to his native Mississippi where he has been involved in various business and coaching endeavors.
 

1974 Topps Deckle Dating: Tony Perez

We have a cameo appearance here. It's hard to say for sure, but it looks to me like the name starts with an M, and the number is two digits starting with a 1, which would make it Denis Menke. Also, check out the #24 on Perez's shoe!

March 3, 1973. Spring games wouldn't have started for another week.

In world news, a plane crash in Moscow killed 25 people, IRA bombs in London killed one person and injured 250, and the British liner HMS Royal Ulsterman was sabotaged with mines in Beirut, killing both saboteurs.

The photo for Perez's base card was probably taken at the same time.