The 1974 Topps Pete Rose baseball card was a cardboard embodiment for a man who stood as an almost mythical figure when I started collecting baseball cards in the early 1980s.

For example, my dad used to tell me stories about Rose’s exploits with the Cincinnati Reds even though Dad was never a baseball fan and Pete had been in Philadelphia for about five years by that point.

It was relatively easy to find information about Rose in those pre-Internet days, too, which helped build him up as larger-than-life in my impressionable mind.

He was interviewed and written about in The Sporting News and Sport.

He was all over the pages of hobby publications like Sports Collectors Digest and Baseball Cards.

And he was featured prominently in every baseball card set and subset I came across — Topps, Fleer, Donruss, Topps Foldouts, Topps Stickers, Fleer Stickers, Topps All-Stars, and on and on and on.

4192

Pete was a bona fide legend, but that wasn’t the only reason he was getting so much play. No, it was becoming clear that Rose would do whatever it t ook to hold on long enough to break Ty Cobb‘s all-time record for career hits, commonly accepted at the time to be 4191.

Hence, “4192” became synonymous with Rose and his chase.

Given all that, I expected to see Rose around each cardboard and paper corner as I devoured every bit of information I could find about baseball and baseball cards.

But I was a new collector, and my world was modern. I wasn’t at all prepared for the display case full of old cards that ran me over one day when my parents took me to a junk/antique shop in the next town over when I was about 11.

There were cards from the 1950s and 1960s, with names like Mantle, Mays, Aaron, Clemente, Koufax, and all the other mythical figures I was learning about.

It was a mesmerizing sight for young eyes accustomed to thumbing through wax packs filled with the round headshots of 1983 Topps and the bat-and-glove design of 1983 Donruss.

The Best of the Best

As mindblowing as all those golden swaths of cardboard were, though, one card knocked all the others to the side like a raging bowling ball and grabbed me by the throat — the 1974 Topps Pete Rose base card.

Of course, I didn’t know what issue it was from at first sight, and the card probably looks pretty mundane to modern collectors. After all, 1974 Topps features some of the grainiest photos and one of the more blah designs of the entire decade.

But, man, Pete looked absolutely perfect in this shot.

His laser stare was locked on an unseen pitch rocketing his way. He gripped the bat in both hands, throwing it forward to bunt the ball. His legs were already motoring toward first base, so confident was he that he’d succeed in his mission.

And just in case things didn’t work out, Pete’s mouth hung open as if he’d take a bite out of the ball if it came to that.

This man was throwing his whole being into getting on base for his beloved Cincinnati Reds, and the simple red banners accentuated Rose’s Cincy uniform.

The whole concoction was a red-alert, blood-pumping bundle of baseball grit that was irresistible to a young fan with a burning passion for the game.

It was a masterpiece in cardboard for which I gladly plunked down my hard-earned $3.50.

A pittance to pay for a card that still burns as one of my favorite from the 1970s more than 30 years later.

(This is Day 11 of our response to Tony L.’s 30-Day Baseball Card Challenge. See all our posts in this series here.)

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With due apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Edgar Martinez, I know who the real ancient mariner is — it’s legendary Boston Red Sox outfielder Carl Yastrzemski.

By the time I started collecting baseball cards in earnest in 1983, Yaz was in his final season with the Sawx, which was totally amazing considering that he was 71 years old at the time. So it wasn’t surprising that he was all over the place that summer, from This Week in Baseball to Baseball Cards Magazine to an intriguing 1983 Topps Super Veteran card.

As I devoured every word I could find about the hobby, it became clear that Yaz wasn’t just an elder statesman of the game — he was a future Hall of Famer and a collector favorite.

In fact,  1960 Topps Carl Yastrzemski rookie card was the first rookie card that I can remember being hyped as such. It introduced me to the concept that older cards of a player were more scarce and valuable than his later cards, and they didn’t come much older than Yaz or his horizontal first issue.

I don’t remember exactly how much the card was pulling in that summer, but I do know it was several orders of magnitude greater than any pasteboard I was even considering adding to my own collection. I think it was going for around 50 bucks at local card shows, but it could have been 20 or 100.

Anyway, the images of the hobbling old man in the Red Sox cap at the All-Star Game that summer became intertwined in my collector’s psyche with the shy-looking young man encircled in a whole lot of orange ink on the front of his 1960 rookie card. How could any one player have held on that long?

Thanks to the tens of thousands of words written about Yaz that year, I was eventually able to piece together a big hunk of his story. Born and raised in the Bridgehampton, NY, area surrounded by the sea, Yastrzemski somehow found his way to the ball field instead of a fishing vessel and then found his sweet left-handed swing.

When he was 19, the New England boy was signed by New England’s team — the Red Sox — to a minor league contract

Two years later, he made his Major League debut — and stuck. That would have been 1961 if you’re keeping score at home, which means Topps added Yaz to their set a good year before he ever stepped foot on a Big League diamond.

As it turned out, that was pretty typical of Yastrzemski: doing things that others couldn’t.

There was his ability to step into the left field shoes vacated by Red Sox legend Ted Williams.

There was the Triple Crown in 1967.

There was the 23-year career that seemed like it might never end.

And there was the funny looking rookie card that helped jump start the hobby just as our cardboard dreams were starting to heat up.

Yaz was never my favorite player, but he is forever engrained in my collecting memory, and catching a glimpse of his 1960 Topps rookie card still gives me chills.

(This is Day 10 of our response to Tony L.’s 30-Day Baseball Card Challenge. See all our posts in this series here.)

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The first time I ever heard of Herb Washington was at the exact moment I “discovered” the 1975 Topps Mini set.

It was at a dank but sprawling junk shop (the owners called it an “antique shop”) in one of the towns near where I grew up.  The owner’s son had commandeered a dark corner and set up a couple of display cases full of baseball cards he was selling from his personal collection.

This was about 1983, and the guy was a good 10 years older than me. He had been hitting the hobby hard for most of his life, and his wares stretched all the way back into the 1950s.

As you might imagine, there was plenty of eye candy to make a young kid drool, including vintage cards of Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Boog Powell (that name!), Sandy Koufax, and dozens more.

It was dizzying, and so were the prices.

The Colors!

Among all the golden era cardboard, though, I kept coming back to the two rookie cards with multi-colored borders … the 1975 Topps Robin Young and George Brett issues.

Yount had just won the 1982 AL MVP award, and Brett was a legend for his fiery attitude, status as the likely next .400 hitter, pine tar, and … well … hemorrhoids.

It was the cards themselves that kept pulling me in, though. The design was gaudy but pure 70s in its flamboyance, and I loved that 1975 set from the moment I laid eyes on it.

Those borders always made me crave Chiclets, too

After several minutes ogling the cards in the display cases, I turned my focus to the cards in plastic sleeves and slotted into boxes on the counter top. These carried much lower price tags and were thus more realistic targets for me at the time.

As I flipped carefully through the cards, I was thrilled to see that there were several 1975s among the more reasonable offerings. On of them was Hall of Fame slugger Harmon Killebrew, who never quite got the baseball card respect he deserved. I eventually bought that card, but not on this particular day.

That’s because, a few cards later, another 1975 Topps caught my eye.

What Position Do You Play?

It featured a lanky young man leading off first base in a runner’s crouch, ready to make a break for second at any moment. He was Herb Washington of the Oakland A’s.

Even among the wild 1975 Topps cards, this one’s color scheme stood out. The yellow type face added extra pop to purple and pink borders, and the yellow and green Oakland uniform ramped up the craziness.

Something else blared at me from the front of his card, too: Washington’s position, which was listed as “Pinch Run.”

I knew that players could pinch run for other players, but could players actually be pinch runners as their only position? The card back told me that maybe they could:

Signed by Oakland Owner Chalres Finley strictly for pinch-running duties last season, Herb was personally responsible for sinning 9 games for A’s in 1974 with his speed.

Hmmm.

Maybe Mike Trout should just focus on his running game and forget about all that pesky hitting and fielding that he does?

Anyway, I knew the Washington card was going to be my purchase for the day. I think it cost a dollar, which seemed like a bargain just for curiosity’s sake.

Something’s Not Right Here …

So I set the card on the counter beside me and looked through the rest of one of the boxes. When I turned my attention back to the speedster, I caught a glimpse of the Brett rookie lurking in the glass case underneath, and something clicked in my mind.

The two cards weren’t the same size — the Washington issue was noticeably smaller, in fact.

It was then that I remembered reading in my Beckett price guide something about a “mini” set issued in 1975. It was rare, I recalled correctly.

Jackpot!

I scooped up my Washington and we paid for our baubles and then headed home where I could research my find.

What I could find was that the minis were an exact parallel of the regular 1975 Topps set, except each mini card measured 2-1/4″ by 3-1/8″ rather than the standard 2-1/2″ by 3-1/2″.

The cards were a test issue sold only in (reportedly) California and Michigan.

And, as I thought, they were considered scarce. I saw various price multipliers over the years, ranging from 1.5-2 times the value of a corresponding base card.

The value mattered to me, of course, but not nearly as much as the novelty. While 1975 Topps cards were already cool beyond belief, the minis were mind-blowing to me. I mean, they were like baby baseball cards, for goodness sake!

They were the MG Midget next to the MGB.

They were Gold Mine gum next to Chiclets.

They were an Apple computer next to a mainframe.

They were — and still are — my favorite parallel issue of all time, and the Herb Washington card is a perfect exemplar of the set’s quirkiness.

Even though the values of the minis and most cards from my youth have softened over time, my Herb Washington rookie card is still priceless to me.

If you were to wake up tomorrow to find the year was 1986, you might be shocked by the state of the baseball card hobby.

Depending on how deep you were into the cardboard world, your mailbox could be jammed packed each month with Beckett Baseball Card Monthly, Baseball Cards magazine, Baseball Hobby News, Baseball Card News, and multiple issues of Sports Collectors Digest.

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You could find at least one card show every weekend in a nearby city. Sometimes, there would be multiples to choose from.

At retail stops all across the country, you had more options than ever before …

Donruss, Fleer, and Topps base sets were joined by the ballyhooed but unusual Sportflics cards, with their revolutionary full-color photos on the backs.

At the end of the season, Topps gave us their normal Traded set, Fleer was back with a third update set, and Donruss debuted The Rookies.

And there were all kinds of cool(ish) stuff issued in between: Fleer Minis, Topps Mini Leaders, Donruss Action All-Stars, Topps 3-Ds, boxed sets for retailers from Bangkok to Calgary.

At last count, PSA listed 148 different sets issued in 1986. That may not sound like much compared to the largesse of the 1990s and 2000s, but was a veritable avalanche of cardboard if you’d been collecting for a few years.

Sparkling Stars

On the field, some amazing individual and team performances were driving the new-card and nearly new-card market to places we couldn’t have imagined just a few years before.

The New York Mets were finally putting it all together after Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden became phenoms in 1983 and 1984, and after Gooden became the best pitcher on the planet in 1985.

In 1986, New York had Ron Darling, Sid Fernandez, Gary Carter, Keith Hernandez, Lenny Dykstra, Wally Backman, and a roster full of other big-time contributors who helped the team win, night after night.

In Cincinnati, Pete Rose was the unquestioned all-time Hit King and, as manager, had the Reds contending for a division title.

Mike Schmidt was hitting the ball with authority for the Philadelphia Phillies once again and was on his way to a third National League MVP award.

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And in the American League, the Boston Red Sox and California Angels were heading toward postseason play, unaware that both teams would land near the top of the list of all-time collapses.

Heck, old Bill Buckner set a career high for home runs (18) and surely had no idea the fate that awaited him in October.

It was Buckner’s teammate, right-hander Roger Clemens, who really set the baseball world on its ear in 1986, though.

In his third year in the Boston rotation, Clemens reeled off 14 straight wins to start the season en route to a 24-4 record and 2.48 ERA that would eventually net him both the AL Cy Young and MVP awards.

Part of Clemens’ support system in Boston was third baseman Wade Boggs, who was at the forefront of a new breed of young players who hit for a high average.

Like, a really high average.

In 1985, Boggs led the AL in hitting with a .368 BA, after recording marks of .361 in 1983 and .325 in 1984. Boggs would hit .357 in ’86 to cop his third title in three years.

In the NL, Tony Gwynn had “slipped” to .317 in 1985 after leading the league with a .351 average in 1984. Willie McGee picked up the NL slack in ’85, though, taking the crown with a .353 mark before Gwynn bounced back to .329 in 1986.

And he still lost out on the batting crown that year to Tim Raines (.334) and Steve Sax (.332).

Youth Uprising

It wasn’t just the veterans who were driving fans’ fervor, though. This was the era of the rookie and rookie card crazes, after all, and 1986 did its part to feed the frenzy.

In California, Wally Joyner got off to a hot start for the Angels, smacking homer after homer as the team built a winning record, and the “Wally World” phenomenon was born.

Before long, though, Jose Canseco of the Oakland A’s showed us all why he had been one of the most hyped rookies in years and eventually surpassed Joyner to win AL Rookie of the Year award.

In the NL, the best debut seasons weren’t quite as spectacular, but plenty of promising young players gave us a glimpse of potential greatness: Barry Bonds, Will Clark, Barry Larkin, John Kruk.

The best part was, among all the sets on the market, there was sure to be at least one card of each of these rookies available at any given time, and collectors ate them up.

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King of Cardboard

But as heady as those times were, with young players threatening to make us forget legends at every position, one superstar stood out as the undisputed king of the hobby.

New York Yankees first baseman Don Mattingly had burst onto the scene out of nowhere — at least as far as most fans and collectors were concerned — to win the 1984 AL batting crown over teammate Dave Winfield, posting a gaudy .343 mark.

Then, as an encore, Donnie Baseball turned in a monster season in 1985 that featured a .324 BA, 35 home runs, 145 RBI, 107 runs, and 48 doubles.

Do that in pinstripes, and folks are bound to take notice. They did.

Mattingly won the 1985 AL MVP award, and his 1984 Donruss rookie card shot to the top of all sorts of hobby lists. As 1986 dawned, there seemed to be no limit for Mattingly or his early cardboard, and prices pressed to $50 and beyond.

Mattingly was even better in 1986, smacking “just” 31 homers, but upping his doubles to 53 and his average to a career-best .352. He lost out on a second MVP award but retained his slot as baseball’s best player in the minds of most fans and collectors.

As it turned out, that age-25 season would be Mattingly’s peak, but of course, we didn’t know it at the time.

All we knew was that we wanted more — more Mattingly rookie cards, more second-year Mattingly cards, more new Mattingly cards.

And the 1986 sets obliged us, with Mattingly peeping his mustache-sans-beard mug into everything we bought.

By that time, Donruss and Fleer had established reputations for putting out higher quality products than what Topps offered, at least when it came to base sets, and both company’s blue-bordered 1986 offerings enjoyed strong collector demand.

The Mattingly cards from each of those sets came out of the pack that summer “worth” well over a buck a pop.

And you could choose from any number of “special” Mattinglys, from boxed issues to subsets to pricey parallels.

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But when you spread out all the 1986 Mattingly cards on your bedroom floor, it’s the simplest one that really stands out.

There on card #180 of that “boring” Topps base set is the best player in the game, hustling out of the batter’s box after slashing another of his countless hits between unsuspecting defensemen somewhere on the diamond.

Not only was he super talented, but he was hustling his butt off.

And the card itself?

It was all black-and-white goodness, from its simple header to the pinstripes on Mattingly’s #23, the entire design of the set seemingly concocted just to make this one piece of cardboard look as good as it possibly could.

Mission accomplished.

Amid a sea of glitz and hype, the 1986 Topps Don Mattingly was the best the year had to offer.

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It was a three-day excursion and would be the first time I was away from home. As a self-avowed momma’s boy and an inveterate comfort-seeker, I was trepidatious about the adventure at best.

Then, on the Friday before we left, I found out that I had to have a tetanus shot before we left on Monday. It was indignity after indignity as my mom took me to the hospital on Saturday morning to get my arm pricked.

Within a few hours, I had a reaction to the shot, my arm growing hot and red and eventually swelling up a few inches. My dad was concerned, but he’s always been a “rub dirt on it” type of guy where his own health was concerned, so he prevailed on mom and me to suck it up. It was just a shot, after all.

Cardboard Salve

So I went to bed on Saturday and felt even worse on Sunday, but there was a silver lining: my parents were taking me to a baseball card show in Indianapolis that day.

My arm ached all through the day, and the pain and accompanying fever made me nauseous, but the exhilaration of fresh cardboard kept me going.

This was early April, so all the new sets were out and fully available at that point, and the Detroit Tigers were already running away with the American League pennant. The other baseball news that filtered into my corner of the world was that Pete Rose was making the final turn on his assault of Ty Cobb‘s all-time hit record.

Jettisoned by the Philadelphia Phillies after their World Series loss in 1983, Rose had inexplicably latched on with the Montreal Expos. While it was an ingnominious way for him to round out his career, Rose’s Canadian assignment at least meant he’d probably get regular playing time. The Expos were always scrambling to put fannies in their seats, and having Rose on-board for a record chase would help in that regard.

Now, my dad had never been a baseball fan, but he was a lifelong Hoosier and a former athlete, so he couldn’t help but soak in some of the flavor of The Big Red Machine a decade earlier. So when I started following baseball and baseball cards, he whipped out the few names he knew so we could speak a common language.

Thanks to Dad, I knew that Rose, Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench, Tony Perez, and George Foster had been Big Stars not that long before even though my friends viewed them as nothing more than old men.

Coupled with Dad’s tacit encouragement, Rose’s record run stoked my collecting fires and gave me a target on which to focus: locate and buy any Rose card I could find.

Holy Grail, Batman

It was against this backdrop that my parents and I stepped up to the table run by “Mike” on that spring Sunday afternoon. Mike was a local dealer from whom we’d bought a few minor Rose cards and a stack of old Baseball Digest magazines over the previous year. He was a fellow Rose fan and lit up when he saw me.

“Hey, I have something I think you’ll want to see,” Mike said.

Mom and Dad looked at each other as Mike popped open one of his display cases and fished out a card that pictured a young Pete Rose from the shoulders up. Across the top, “REDS” was printed in large purple block letters.

“This is a 1964 Topps card, the first one that shows Rose alone,” Mike explained.

I was already familiar with the 1963 Topps Rose rookie card by that point — it was legendary within the hobby — and the photo on the card that Mike held toward me looked awfully familiar.

Mike nodded toward the card. “Go ahead,” he said.

I could feel my parents tense up as I delicately plucked the Rose from Mike’s hands, but he nodded toward them, too, assuring them it was OK.

“Wow!” I said. “Isn’t that the same picture that’s on his rookie card?”

“Good eye!” Mike said. “Yeah, Topps used to use the same pictures multiple years, especially for young players. There wasn’t much competition in the baseball card market, so they didn’t have to try that hard.”

“It’s awesome!” I said.

I could feel Dad lean closer, looking at the card over my shoulder. I glanced back at him just in time to see his eyes go wide, and I followed his stern gaze back to the front of the card.

That’s a Lot of Money for a Piece of Cardboard

The price sticker sealed my fate: $65.

“Does that say $65?” Dad asked Mike.

“Yeah, and I’m afraid that’s a firm price. I heard that one of them sold in St. Louis last weekend for $100. He’s going to break Ty Cobb’s record, and his cards are only going to get more expensive the closer he gets.”

My dad just looked at Mike for a few seconds, then at my mom.

“Well, that’s a lot of money for a piece of cardboard.” It was the dad line of all dad lines when it came to baseball cards, and I’m sure it’s one most collectors still hear in their nightmares.

I took one last look at the Rose and handed it to Mike, catching a glimpse of the creamsicle back as he slid it into the display case.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Sure, you bet,” Mike said. “Keep cheering those Reds.”

We walked out of the room and through the sprawling convention center toward the parking lot. At first, I was stunned by having held such a significant piece of hobby history in my hands, but soon enough, I was digging into the packs I was lucky enough to come away with. Our conversation turned to where we were going to eat on the way home, and I mostly forgot about the Rose.

With the adrenaline of the moment gone, my arm started to hurt again, and my stomach felt queasy when we climbed into the truck a few minutes later. I wasn’t sure if I could eat, but I’d give it a try.

I slid across to the center of the bench seat and tried to position myself so Dad wouldn’t break my leg as he worked through the gears with the on-floor gear shift. Mom climbed in the passenger’s side, and, finally, Dad slid into the driver’s seat.

By that time, I was wrapped up in my own world — thumbing through a stack of cards, clutching my sore arm, and trying to coax my belly into the greasy meal ahead. I thought Dad was just being clumsy when he elbowed me in the side.

And when he jabbed my leg.

But then he did it again and, in that subtle way that all dad’s seem to cultivate over the years, said, “Here, can you hold this for me?”

He slid something flat from his palm and lay it on my lap.

Magic Dad

It was the 1964 Topps Pete Rose baseball card.

For an instant, I couldn’t understand what I was seeing, like when a baby tooth falls out on the floor and you just stand there looking at it. Does that really belong to you?

“Really?” I shrieked.

“Really,” Dad said. “You heard Mike, right? Pete is going to break that record, and his cards are only going to get more expensive.”

I looked at mom, and she just smiled. I suspect she may have favored Dad with a certain sort of expression over the top of my head, but I didn’t see it.

What I saw was the most beautiful baseball card in the world, and it was all mine. From Rose’s gap-toothed smile on the front to the unscratched trivia answer box on the back, it was mine.

To this day, I’m not sure how Dad pulled off his deceit because I swear he was with us on the whole walk out to the truck. Maybe it was the fever or the distraction of my other cards, or maybe my dad really is all-powerful, as I sometimes suspected.

I can’t even imagine what Dad had to give up to buy that card for me. I’m sure we still ate something on the way home that night, but I’m not at all sure my dad ate lunch for the next week — maybe even the next month.

It was a pattern that would repeat itself over the years — my Dad making sacrifices to help me get where I wanted or needed to be. It happened with my 1986 Topps set, it happened when I went to college and stayed on the family dole, and it’s still happening as an adult — Dad is always there to help with projects or lend advice.

On that day, though, my new card gave me something to think about while I trudged through the rainy, muddy forest for three days, and it became the cornerstone of my collection.

Little wonder that it’s still my favorite baseball card nearly 40 years later.

(This is Day 30 of our response to Tony L.’s 30-Day Baseball Card Challenge. See all our posts in this series here.)

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If I’m being completely honest, most pre-War baseball cards leave me colder than Municipal Stadium on Opening Day.

I think I know why, too — the players have no life in my memory.

Most of the guys who appeared on cards after World War II were at least alive at some point since I was born, and I’ve seen a good hunk of them play either in person or on television. At the very least, I’ve probably read an interview with them or heard a second-hand story about them.

But, man, those players who hung up their spikes before 1941 might as well be Plato or Ben Franklin. I know some of them were awesome and others were true characters, but I don’t have any personal evidence of that.

Don’t get me wrong — I’d love to own a T206 Honus Wagner or a box full of Goudey beauties, but none of those make my blood thrill like a glimpsed corner of a 1976 Topps Mike Schmidt or a 1963 Maury Wills.

Those guys are part of my sports story.

In the Mood for History

That said, I do find that I can warm up to the “old” vintage cards given the proper mood lighting and setting. In particular, when I read a great old book like The Glory of Their Times, or when I’ve been hitting the antique shop circuit, the dusty cardboard from 70-120 years ago starts to pull at me.

Because, even though I don’t know that much about all the players, I do know plenty about the big names in the game. And it’s getting easier all the time to find information on the Internet about most players who have ever trod a Major League field.

So, yeah, there is a certain mystique to holding a 1909 tobacco card in your greasy little fingers, even if it’s slathered in Lucite and does not depict the honorable Honus.

And the gum cards that checked in before World War II are some of the most colorful in the history of the hobby. Who wouldn’t want to add some nice Goudeys and Play Balls to his collection?

One century-old set that always calls to me whenever it’s near is the 1911 T3 Turkey Red cabinet series.

A Big Turkey

Another tobacco issue, the Turkey Reds were larger than their T206 cousins, checking in at a huge 5-3/4” x 8” and printed on heavy cardboard stock. Each card showcases a hand-painted print of the player in question, surrounded by a thick gray-brown border. The player’s name is included on a gold “plaque” along the bottom border.

These are some of the most gorgeous cards ever produced, and many of the images are downright iconic. That shot of Ty Cobb standing with his bat just off his shoulder and staring at you with a misty Bennett Park (?) looming in the background is one of the best baseball images of all time.

But the Turkey Red set wasn’t just about individual baseball players, as it also featured a handful of more generic action shots.

Among my favorite baseball cards of all time is card #46, “Safe at Third.”

This landscape masterpiece shows a New York Giants player sliding into the shins of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ third baseman, both enveloped by a cloud of dust which appears to be carrying the ball along with it.

Who Are They? What Did They Do?

I don’t know who these players are, thought the Pittsburgh third basemen during that era was Bobby Byrne, so there’s a good chance he’s manning the hot corner on this card.

What really intrigues me is the background.

Not far behind the two players is a light brown band that may be a fence of some sort, but honestly looks more like an open field or a dirt road. Beyond that is dark and gritty skyline, replete with smokestacks, blurry city dwellings, and even the hint of a crucifix emerging from the shadows.

My first impression is that we’re looking at the hard-life neighborhoods near Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field, and there are some photos from the time that might fit that idea. The uniforms of the players, however, suggest that the game is in New York. Maybe what we’re seeing, then, is Manhattan around one of the old Polo Grounds.

Whichever park it is, there are tens of thousands of personal stories lurking just behind the men playing baseball in the colorful foreground of card #46.

What did they do for a living? Where did they come from? Did any of the boys in those obscured homes go on to craft their own Major League careers?

That uncertainty and sense of wonder makes this card irresistible — once you warm up to its charms.

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(This is Day 28 of our response to Tony L.’s 30-Day Baseball Card Challenge. See all our posts in this series here.)

The most exciting baseball player I’ve ever seen in person, and probably the most exciting I’ve ever seen at all, is the great Eric Davis.

Although Davis spent time in the Cincinnati Reds outfield during both the 1984 and 1985 seasons, it wasn’t until the 1986 campaign that he really started putting it together.

That year, as the Reds tried to keep pace with the Houston Astros in the old National League West, Davis hit 27 home runs and stole 80 bases while making center field look like a postage stamp thanks to his amazing wheels.

The man could do anything on a baseball diamond it seemed, and he did most everything in 1987: .293, 37 HR, 100 RBI, 120 runs. Despite playing in just 129, he contributed 7.9 WAR to another second-place effort for the Reds. He finished ninth in the MVP vote that season, making his performance one of the most underrated in a generation.

Nevertheless, he had fully arrived at age 25.

A Fragile Peak

Unfortunately, a low number of games played would become a hallmark of Davis’ career. His slender body (6’2″, 165 pounds) seemed just a bit too slender to withstand a full season of Major League rigors.

In a 17-year run in the Bigs, Davis never played more than 135 games in any season and averaged just 96.

All those missed games — and an entire missed season in 1995, left Davis far short of the Hall of Fame numbers so many predicted for him.

But when he was on the field, there was no one like him. If number 44 was on the diamond, you paid attention to every pitch because you just never knew what could happen.

And, even though Davis played for six different franchises during his career, he’ll always be a Red to me. Not only did he break in on the Riverfront, he was also a key member of the 1990 team that won the World Series, the franchise’s last title to date.

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He’s No Relic

That’s why, when it was time to tackle Day 27 of the 30-Day Baseball Card challenge, identifying a favorite relic card, Eric Davis was an easy choice.

Of course, relic cards are a relatively modern invention, and their advent fell long after I’d pretty much stopped chasing each year’s new issues. Nevertheless, finding Davis relic cards online was a relatively straightforward Google proposition.

Among the bat cards and glitzy autograph-jersey combos, one card stood out for me: 2011 Topps Heritage ’62 Mint (as reported on the Lifetime Topps blog).

This 20-card issue showcases events from 1962 against a woodgrain border reminiscent of the 1962 Topps set. The “relic” is a real US coin minted in 1962.

In the case of the Davis card, the event was his birth on May 29, 1962. The coin is a 1962 penny.

The accompanying photo shows a primetime Davis in a batting pose, bathed in the Red of his Cincinnati hat and warm-up jacket. It’s just beautiful!

The only downside to the card is that it immediately reminds you of Davis’ age — 55 at the time of this writing.

No matter, though.

Eric Davis may be aging, but he’s no relic. Indeed, he’s a timeless reminder of a simpler time in baseball and the Golden Age of the hobby boom.

I’ve mentioned a few times in this series that my collecting “juice” pretty much ran out in the early 1990s and didn’t really return until a couple years ago.

While that means I haven’t collected many base cards over the last quarter century, the area of my collection that really took a hit were the oddballs.

I mean, so many of the funky cards I loved as a kid came with food products — 1987 Kraft, 1984 Nestle, 1970-1983 Kellogg’s.

But with my collecting jets turned off, I felt no need to chase after food products that I wouldn’t eat just to snag a few baseball cards.

The upside to that gap is that I got to peruse the oddball offerings of the last 25 years when I set out to tackle this assignment, Day 27 of the 30-Day Baseball Card Challenge, which invited me to write about “a favorite oddball card from 1990 or later.”

Given my previous penchant for food issues, it’s little wonder that I landed on the 1995 Stouffer’s Legends of Baseball Gary Carter card.

Here are just a few of the things that lights me up about this issue which, like all good baseball cards, makes me feel like a kid again.

Stouffer’s cards came with pizza. For kids of the 1970s, baseball cards and food products go together like Sonny and Cher, like “Love” and “American Style.”  And for kids of the 1980s, baseball cards and food products go together like Joanne and Chachi, like legs and warmers. I consider myself a product of both decades, and I’m a sucker for nostalgia. That makes the Stouffer’s set a winner.

The cards pop up. So, not only did these card come with pizza, but there is also a perforated line tracing the player himself, which allows you to pop him up for a 3-D effect. This scores on all sorts of levels. First, perforated cards and cardboard remind me of the old kid-focused TV dinners — and also the awesome Burger Chef discs from 1977. Second, they pop up, so you have Gary Carter standing on your tabletop like a cardboard R2-D2 hologram.

It’s Gary Carter … The Kid! Can you ever remember Gary Carter on the baseball diamond without a smile on his face? I’m sure he had his down moments just like every other human, but Carter sure did seem to enjoy playing the game. He was never my favorite player and always played for teams I just didn’t like very much — Expos, Mets, Giants — but, gosh darn it, I was always happy to pull a Gary Carter card from a wax pack.

Full-bleed color photos … on the card backs! It’s like someone blew up the 1957 Topps cards, enhanced the color, and shoved them in pizza boxes. Woot!

Pull tabs. How many cards do you own with pull tabs? Not many, I’d wager, but Stouffer’s has you covered on this one, too. Stand up Mr. Carter, pull the tab, and you can take in his powerful swing, full career stats, and biographical sketch all in one fell swoop. Genius!

Maybe best of all is that you can occasionally find these cards on eBay for about a buck each.

Not a bad deal at all for a cool card of the guy who — sorry, Ken Griffey, Jr. — will always be “The Kid” to me.

Want to see a video version of this article?

(This is Day 26 of our response to Tony L.’s 30-Day Baseball Card Challenge. See all our posts in this series here.)

In the 1980s, Topps developed a reputation for being the boring, stubborn, old man of baseball cards.

It’s easy to understand why, too.

When Fleer won their antitrust lawsuit against The Old Gum Company in 1980, they were joined by Donruss as new kids on the block who hurried to push out inaugural sets in 1981.

The quality of both issues was suspect, as we might have expected under the circumstances, but they both came back the next year.

More importantly, both Fleer and Donruss tried all sorts of news things, from wild designs to player stickers to 3-D foldouts and more.

And, both companies produced cards on the stark white card stock that collectors claimed to want.

Meanwhile, Topps continued to churn out their yearly 792-card sets on the mushy old brown stock that hobbyists had decried for years. And when the field expanded again with Score in 1988 and Upper Deck in 1989, Topps looked like even more of a dinosaur.

It’s a perception that persists in some circles, and I’ve been guilty of viewing Topps as an unchanging monolith, too.

Sneaky Innovation

But, man, if you take a critical look at what the company was doing throughout the 80s, the story isn’t quite as bleak. In fact, the early-to-middle part of the decade appears downright innovative for Topps if you consider everything they did during those years.

Among the changes and experiments that Topps rolled out from 1981-1985:

• First Topps Traded set issued in 1981
• Base set expanded to 792 cards in 1982
• Crisp, artistic, and beloved picture-in-picture design in 1983
• Premium white card stock for 1983 Topps Traded set
• Topps player stickers and albums beginning in 1981
• 1983 Active Leader Foldouts
• 1983 Michigan test issue replacing wax wrappers with Mylar
• 1984 Supers
• 1984 Nestle parallel

And the list goes on an on and on.

Looking back now, it seems that maybe our infatuation with that ugly brown card stock clouded our judgment of all the good things Topps was doing. And now, of course, doesn’t that smushy cardboard make you nostalgic, just like a wax-stained card back?

A New Dimension for Baseball Cards

But as much as I loved all of the bulleted goodies above, Topps outdid themselves in 1985 when they issued one of my favorite odd-ball issues of all time — the 1985 Topps 3-D Baseball Stars cards.

Now, the idea of 3-D cards was nothing new by 1985.

Kellogg’s had just finished a decade-plus-long run in 1983, and Topps themselves issued a 3-D set in 1968 that’s among the rarest of all special-issue modern sets.

In both of those cases, though, the 3-D effect was achieved through the use of a funky corrugated plastic card surface overtop of a funky blurry photo, a combination that could make an old sailor seasick with just the flick of the wrist.

In contrast, each card in the 1985 issue was actually three-dimensional. That is, each player was rendered in soft plastic that billowed out of a flat background to mimic the real-life contours of his face or batting stance. For good measure, Topps beefed up the card dimensions to  4 3/8″ X 6″

It was an astounding effect for a 13-year-old kid accustomed to the standard flat 2 1/2″ X  3 1/2″ cardboard offerings of the day (and pretty much every day before).

The cards came one per pack and were wrapped in a crinkly paper wrapper that made the experience that much more enjoyable.

Card backs were blank, though they did feature adhesive strips so you could plaster the cards on your favorites surface. Far more enjoyable, at least for me, was studying the stark white backsides and marveling at the inverse relief of each player.

Like so much else with baseball cards in the 1980s, it was mesmerizing.

Who Else But Donnie Baseball?

But this is Day 26 of the 30-Day Baseball Card challenge, so I need to pick “A favorite oddball card from the 1980s.”

“A” card, as in a single card.

Truth is, I love every piece of this set 30-card set. My first instinct is to pick Dwight Gooden or Pete Rose, but I’ve already touched on those guys in this series.

So, instead, I’m going with the guy that was probably the hottest position player in the land during that summer of 1985: Don Mattingly.

Not only was Mattingly the best hitter on the planet and the next Yankee legend, he was from Indiana, my home state.

That was a tough combination to beat, and when you add in the classic, bat-on-shoulder pose, rendered in that terrifying and spectacular 3-D plastic molding, Donnie Baseball’s card is a perfect addition to this list.

Maybe Topps was a concrete-bound Luddite of a company in the 1980s, but their concrete sure was colorful and multidimensional.

Don’t you think?

Want to see a video version of this article?

(This is Day 25 of our response to Tony L.’s 30-Day Baseball Card Challenge. See all our posts in this series here.)

Everyone knows about McDonald’s Happy Meals and how they changed the fast food dining experience for children — and parents — forever when they debuted in 1979.

But children of the 1970s and baseball cards collectors from that era know the truth: the Happy Meal is little more than a knockoff of the Funmeal that the now dearly departed Burger Chef introduced in 1973.

What’s more, the Funmeal was arguably a lot more “Fun” than the Happy Meal is “Happy,” and it was certainly more innovative.

How Fun Was the Funmeal?

The Funmeal consisted of a hamburger, french fries, soft drink, and dessert all served in a tray made from thin cardboard. That’s where the fun began, because Burger Chef made parts of their tray — often the tops of food “holes” — interactive.

The disc covering the drink holder, for instance, would often feature a company character like “Jeff.” Kids could remove the disc and play with it or pocket it as a keepsake of their visit.

Other pieces were similarly removable, and there was usually a backdrop that would stand up behind the tray so that the thing looked like a colorful laptop before we even knew what those were.

Burger Chef used all that real estate to treat kids to magic shows, monster lineups, Star Wars oragami-ish toys, and … wait for it … baseball cards.

Hidden Hobby Origins

Until I started researching this piece, I was under the general impression that I acquired my first baseball card in 1981 when my mom brought some home from the store.

But this is Day 25 of the 30-Day Baseball Card Challenge, which meant that I’d be writing about “A favorite oddball card from the 1970s.”

There were a few fitting choices in that category, including 1971 Topps coins, 1977 Topps Cloth Stickers, and 1979 Burger King, but the whole exercise brought childhood memories flooding back.

The choice was clear.

My favorite oddball set from the 1970s is the series of discs issued by Burger Chef on their boxes in 1977.

Burger Chef was the best …

They had these funny little hats that my dad or grandmother would fit over my head.

They had hamburgers wrapped in shiny, transparent cellophane that would make the buns soft and steamy. Yummmmm!

And, of course, they had those irresistible and undeniably fun Funmeals.

Back in those days, if my parents gave me a choice between McDonald’s and Burger Chef, the BC would win every time. Eating out was a treat, so I had to make my limited opportunities count.

And I can clearly remember sitting at a Burger Chef in Indianapolis with my parents on a hot summer day, Mom laying my food out in front of me. I could hardly contain my excitement as I struggled to see what kind of shenanigans awaited me on the Funmeal tray.

Define Baseball

“What are those?” I said, or something like it.

My dad craned his neck and turned the box to get a better look.

“They look like baseball cards,” he said, and kept eating.

“What’s baseball?” I wanted to know.

I don’t remember exactly what Dad said, but it was probably something to divert my attention. Baseball was a froufrou sport, and not worthy of much discussion. Would have been a different story had I uncovered a tray full of football cards.

It didn’t matter much to me, though, because I had some good food to pound down and some colorful new “toys” to explore.

I remember that Jeff and his friends made an appearance here and there on the discs and on the box. And I remember that the “cards” featured black-and-white photographs inside a baseball shape that was mostly white but had two colored panels: pink, orange, blue, green.

I know now that the cards were produced by MSA, who didn’t have an MLB license and so had to airbrush out team logos.

Nevertheless, the cards were issued by team, so there were boxes for the Cincinnati Reds, the Detroit Tigers, the California Angels, etc.

How many of the baseball Funmeals I ate that summer, I couldn’t say. I’m sure it was just a handful, so I didn’t have many of the cards.

And they may have gotten thrown away before we even left the restaurant. The thin stock and diversionary nature of the Funmeal boxes made them trash once the meal was over in the eyes of most parents.

I do know that I added several of these cards through proper hobby channels later on, probably a flea market buy. I had some discs that were in pretty rough shape, and those could well have been held over from my summer culinary adventures in 1977.

Early Hero

Among these cards, Dan Driessen is one of my favorites because he was one of my favorite players when I picked up the game and the hobby in 1983.

He’s also the first player I remember seeing in person when my parents took me to a game at Riverfront Stadium in 1984. Driessen was taking fielding practice at first base when we arrived, and the sound of the ball hitting his glove is one that will stay with me forever.

The ease with which he tossed the ball across the field and his joyful demeanor also struck me and sucked me into the experience all the deeper. The fact that he went 1-for-4 that night did little to dampen my enthusiasm.

Did I really pull a Driessen disc on one of my 1977 Funmeal boxes? The odds say it’s unlikely, but it’s fun to imagine.

Fun … that’s what Funmeals and the 1977 Burger Chef baseball discs were all about.