This Day In Baseball History

A few unusual but significant happenings on December 29 of various years.  Mostly because I didn't want to go a week without posting something....

1969     The New York Times reports Curt Flood will challenge the reserve clause by suing major league baseball. The Cardinals' outfielder's case, which will ultimately be appealed unsuccessfully in the U.S. Supreme Court, will pave the way for the players to overturn baseball's reserve clause in their attempt to gain free agency.

1973     Philip G. Epstein, an American screenwriter best known, along with his identical twin, Julius, and Howard Koch, for writing the 1942 Academy Award-winning screenplay for Casablanca, welcomes his fraternal twin grandsons into the world.

In twenty-eight years, the 60-second younger brother of Paul, Theo, will become the youngest GM in the history of major league baseball, when the Red Sox hired him in 2002.

Night Owl Est Père Noel

A little pre-Christmas cardboard joy arrived from the other genius blogger named Greg aka Night Owl (OK, he's the only genius blogger between us).

Hit me with some local team parallels and inserts.

Untouch Ables Maddux, Mancini '87, and Arenado Rookie Cup Requisite Reprint For The Year.

A couple Post Season Celebrations (nice original concept, but not a great single picture subject), and a couple Storied World Series which seem more like team profiles.

A trio of Heritage hits from last year.  The combo cards were made into inserts for some reason.

 Nickname insert from Hometown Heroes 2013.  Always awesome to knock these out.

A Bryce Harper ATAS that goes with the first batch, but also makes the transition into the Nats parallels....

... of various years' minis from Allen & Ginter....

And some 2017 Topps foilies of different colors, plus a shiny black border Murph.

Night Owl packages are as consistently great as his posts.   Thanks Greg!

Secret Santa Loot

Matt from Bob Walk The Plank initiated the blogger Secret Santa this year.  I joined in now that I consider myself a legit blogger instead of a few-posts-a-year guy.

I ended up getting drawn by the chairman himself, as I got a package from Matt today.  He hit my player collection needs very nicely, and added some extras too, like a gold magnet One-Touch holder.

Bo Jackson 1995 Cyberstats parallel.  Bo's whole career could be a good subject for the predictive Cyberstat concept.  Had he not injured himself early, what could his numbers have really been?

Some shiny and serial numbered Royce Claytons, from another of his many team transitions.  These are great.

Some parallel Livans.  I love it when I get the actual parallels like this, instead of the base cards.

Shiny Mooses!  There's a concept you don't hear often.

And some shiny Redskins too.  The reddish Portis is numbered to 10!  Wow!  Matt, you knocked it higher than Santa's sleigh flies!

Christmas Cards & Christmas Cards

If you're a collector, there are two kinds of Christmas cards, of course.  The kind that everyone sends greetings with, and the kind we squirrel away into our collections.

Got one of each from fellow Yahoo group trader Larry today. 

And inside was this little gem...

Not to scale. 

Nice to be appreciated for past trading!  Thanks Larry!

Designs Across the Lines

Back in the mid 1990's, many of the card companies would use the same basic design formats for their main sets of the major sports.  This was, of course, back when several companies were producing cards for each of the four major sports.  (The "good times").

For example, in 1995, Topps did this:

   

 

Baseball, Football, and Basketball were all the white frame, gold foil script names and smaller all-caps positions and team names highlighted by team color jagged stripes across the bottom and up one side.  I thought it clever to use Deion for both sports he played, especially since the colors match.

Fleer Ultra did all four sports....

   

And so did Upper Deck.  Their design in a bit minimalist in that it's really only the name arc'ed across a full bleed picture.

Now, I'm more of the opinion that original designs for the four sports are better than the same one.  Usually because there are design elements specifice to the particular sport.  Gloves and bats in baseball, gridiron lines and helmets in football, etc.  But these designs don't use any of that and therefore can support all four sports well.

So can any modern designs carry over into other sports?  in a (more) perfect card world, any of the present companies could produce cards for other sports besides those that they have exclusive contracts for.  What would their products look like?

Let's get out the old Paint Shop program and find out, shall we?

2017 Topps (P)unt football:

2015 GQ football:

 

2014 A&G Hockey:

More to come...?

Baker's Dozen From Dime Box Nick

Tomorrow I go back to work, so it's chill time for the dog.  I hope.

Today I got a package from Nick with return fire from our recent trade.

A couple post-career Palmers...

The SP is oriented "correctly", but the back is upside down.

A few more player collection hits...

Fleer box set Fisk, nice SI Sparky, and a Toys'R'Us Mussina.

Also got some 2017 inserts etc.

Short-print Jackie, Untouch Able Rocket, and Carlton All timer.

A pair of Series 2 '87s...And a pair of Update ones....

But the star of the show....

Oh, Heidi....

New Addition To The Collective

My new roommate moved in Wednesday.  The fuzzy variety.

Her name (for now) is Mimi.  She's a pit mix from AAHA Rescue near Reisterstown or Baltimore.  I'm guessing her age to be about three-ish.  She's very sweet, but is skiddish about people that come by until they give her a cookie.  Then she's fine.

The trainer from the shelter called her Diva dog, and it's certainly true, but she's different than my last one in that she's not big on fluffy blankets.  Well, unless their up on the couch.

i took off the rest of the week to get her settled in and into somewhat of a routine.  Play time will probably cut into my trading and blogging at least for a little while, until I get the hang of turning this

...into this.

I mean, how do you resist this face?

Teammates Across The Century

Here's one from the Oracle of Baseball that connects the manager of my oldest team collection (T205) to one of my most recent player collections.  

 
John McGraw played with Roger Bresnahan for the 1901 Baltimore Orioles.  (There isn't a card of Bresnahan with Baltimore, but there is this one of them both that came later.)

Roger Bresnahan played with Bob O'Farrell for the 1915 Chicago Cubs

 

Bob O'Farrell played with Phil Cavarretta for the 1934 Chicago Cubs

Phil Cavarretta played with Minnie Minoso for the 1954 Chicago White Sox

Minnie Minoso played with Harold Baines for the 1980 Chicago White Sox

Harold Baines played with Jim Thome for the 1999 Cleveland Indians

Jim Thome played with Brian Matusz for the 2012 Baltimore Orioles