Well, At Least Dusty Won

In celebration of the World Series Championship, here is my Dusty Baker collection, since he (and maybe Trey Mancini - who I had forgotten was on that team), is the only one I'm happy for.

Pardon my streamlining the scans by leaving them in the pages.  I blacked out the empty slots and a few areas of annoying shine. 

That rookie is one of three I have - one for Dusty, one for Baylor's PC, and one for my '71 set.  Got most of them back when they were $8 or so.  Remember, in my binders, O-Pee-Chees come after Topps base cards until 1981.

My collection is pretty basic for a lot of his playing career.

'81 gets fun with Fleer Sticker, Topps Scratch-off, and Squirt, which has same basice back as Topps flagship.  I also have the full bottle hanger version of the Squirt.  I didn't get either one with the drink initially, but I do really like Squirt soda.

 

Here's the full panel Scratch-Off (with Vida Blue, another PC), the '84 Donruss Action All-Star, and the Squirt hanger.  (Not to scale, of course)

Perma-Graphics 'credit card', and his first and only Kellogg's.

The first of many Tiffany versions in the last slot.

Double shots of Traded and Tiffany here.  The '85 Traded has the bright back like the Tiffany's, but it's not shiny on the front.  I may flip the Topps A's with the OPC above to get three in a row.  Something might push them forward eventually.

Several nice pairings on this page.  The '86 Donruss is an in-person auto that I picked up somewhere cheap.  Always love those Mother's Cookies.  Everyone seems to have more of these than I can ever find.

And now we jump into post-career cards.  These pages are always a bit volatile when I find things from the years in between.  Definitely want the '06 Greats parallels...

This is the only useful place for parallel inserts like this black bordered Rivals from Hometown Heroes, since they're just annoying if you're collecting the regular set.  I don't usually try to cram more than one mini in a slot, but Dusty's are so far between, I don't have enough to quite justify a 15-pocket page...yet.

Although these Golden Age minis may help when I get more sets of all five for the other PC guys, then I'll take 'em out of the oddball binder and put 'em with each player.  The backs are in reverse order.  The Hindus are easier than the Monos, and the Croft's is the tough one.

The last player page.  These are some of my most recent pickups.  The one next to the '78-ish X Super 70's is the Aaron Judge authored set from this year.

The rest of the unusual issues.  All-Star program stamp and three (consecutive?) years of Dodger Police cards.

And now the manager cards.  Those Micros fortunately sit well with their regular-sized counterparts and don't cover up too much, especially oriented like this.  I wouldn't try to put them in a slot by themselves unless it's a 15-pocket mini page.  Oh, and another Mother's...

Subtle parallels in the early 2000's. 

I had the two Ginters together on this page, but had recently rearranged them and just left space for other parallels in between the '04's and '06's.

Heritage is the saving grace for manager cards in this century.  The last '64 design is a black back.

So that's what I have.  

At least the Astros did something right:

Collector's Log: Stardate 198210.13

Still in the midst of the 1982 World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and Milwaukee Brewers.

I'll do the second day first.  Had to look it up, but those new player collections would have been these guys.  A couple of them didn't last.  A lot of them were Orioles, and I didn't want to player collect most of the team.

Don Baylor, Bobby Grich, Doug DeCinces, Enos Cabell, Mark Belanger, Sparky Lyle, Bob Bailor.  

They all played in the minors in Bluefield, WV at some point.  My father's family is from there.  Who can name a current superstar that also had a stint in Bluefield?

Not sure what I was going by, but Game 2 wasn't actually 4-0 at any point.  It was 3-0 and then 4-4 for a couple innings...

Brewers had a lead until the Cards tied it in the 6th.  The tie lasted for a couple innings until pinch hitter Steve Braun takes the second walk in the inning, this time with the bases loaded, to score George Hendrick - not to be confused with my friend Mike Hernick...

 Man, I'm glad I just collect cards, because I'd have failed at sports reporting.  McGee robbed Gorman Thomas, not Cecil Cooper.  Guess I just defaulted to my favorite Brewer.

 Not a bad haul for a buck sixty:

I left Kessinger out because my original card turned into this many years later at a National.  Really nice dude.

The "other" Mike's brother, Brian, had a medium sized HO train layout in their basement.  He went over to N scale later.  I reaped the benefits of some choice pieces for my own HO setup in the form of a cool diesel switcher (that I can't remember enough about to produce a suitable image) and an engine house that, except for darker doors, was similar to this:

A few days later:

Here's a little video I found in my research by a guy that helped create the opening animations to the Series broadcast.  Must have been a collector too!

Ten days later, the shop visits continued.  (You've seen this one before.)

One of the few cards I ever got for Christmas.  Thanks Grandma & Mom!

GOAT Or Garden Variety? We Shall See

Big news on the NFL free agency this week (and of course, it was run into the ground non-stop on the NFL Network etc.) that "TB is heading to TB" or Tom Brady is now a Buccaneer.

The biggest takeaway I have from this event is: The long standing debate will pretty much be settled in the next couple seasons...

Was the secret to the Patriot's success mostly due to Tom Brady's godlike genius behind center or Bill Belichick's winning system?

I always believed it was the latter.  Brady makes good decisions with the football, and is a pretty accurate passer.  But that's about all I'm willing to crown him for.  He's never been mobile, he doesn't have a particularly powerful arm to throw 60 yards at a time, and I think he gets more credit for creating plays than he's actually doing.  Peyton Manning was known for his long calls at the line and complex adjustments in mere seconds.  I didn't see as much of that with ol' Tom.  Now the broadcasters would gush over his brilliance during any lull in the action, but all I saw was a lot of screens and out patterns - high percentage plays.

So now, on the Tampa side, you have a decent coaching staff, some talented players around him, and their major problem was the quarterback's turnovers.  That will almost definitely change in their favor.  But will Tom lead them deep into the Postseason immediately?  If he's so far above the average player he will.

On the other side, will Belichick find at least a mid-level quarterback (Winston?) with issues and turn him into a league hero?  Will they continue to dominate the AFC East and the playoffs?  They have a lot of other holes in the roster to fix as well, but the coaching staff isn't breaking up too much as far as I know.

The 2020 season will be intriguing just to see how this turns out.

Hail To The Chiefs!

As you know, I'm partial to the "other" red indian team, but I'm glad the Chiefs won the Super Bowl.  And not just because I win the pick'em league that I took over running this season.

Glad for Andy Reid finally winning one, and not for those green guys in the NFC East.

Glad for Mahomes, Kelce, and Tyrann Mathieu, who was supposed to be a trouble maker when he was first drafted, but has become a quality player and kept himself straight ever since.

Glad the halftime show had artists I actually know.  Though I had no clue who those rapper dudes were.  But I wasn't looking at them much anyhow.

And I thought it was cool that the Chiefs final score was the number of my favorite Kansas City player.

NOW = Nationals Overall Winners

In what is my first venture into an actual purchase of Topps NOW! product, I got in on the Washington Nationals World Series set.  It showed up today.

They offered four different tiers of the set -

10 base cards* for $25,
the full 20 base cards for $50,
20 base cards and one autograph for $80,
and 20 base cards and all (six?) autographs for $...  Well, that one's not there any more.

Now that I look at them again, the 10 base cards are almost all different photos than the 20-card set.  That's annoying, unless they put out the ad before they finalized the cards.

The autographs consist of:
Scherzer
Soto
Corbin
Suzuki
Robles
Kendrick.

I thought I saw Strasburg on that list earlier, but maybe I'm wrong.

Would love to get Scherzer or Soto for their star power.  I liked Robles all season, and would definitely take Kendrick for what he did in the postseason.  And it's probably Fuji's influence, but Suzuki is hard not to root for either.  So that only means one thing - I'll probably get Corbin.

In the mailer, there is a little yellow card that basically says you only got the base set right now, the auto will come in a later shipment.  This was also in the listing on their website, so they were up front about it.

The set came in a cardboard sleeve and a two-piece deck box.

I laid all the base cards out on my kitchen table for this picture, and of course discovered that it's impossible to take photos of glossy items anywhere in my dang house and not get reflections or shadows.

These are extra glossy, and are made of nice decent stock - as they should be for 40¢ each.  The backs have a cool feature...

Topps logo holograms across the entire surface, a nice deluxe touch.  The back of the first card discusses the Nats facing the Astros and their four road victories.  An appropriate caption for the celebration picture on the front.

Unfortunately, they put that one on all twenty cards in the set.  You don't get individual blurbs for each player.  There is more specialized information on their regular flagship base cards than on these.  Points off for this shortcoming.

But there are some nice features on the fronts...

Cool championship logo in the top corner and a simple name, year and team line with the curly W below.

Good shot of Kendrick celebrating.  Could be his home run off the foul pole, but we can't be sure.

And I have no idea what "Baby Shark" Parra is doing to Rendon in this shot.  It's fitting that he's doing something goofy since he brought the most energy and lightheartedness to the dugout through the season and the Series.

Just have to wait a few months until the autograph shows up.  Keeping my fingers crossed!