The Other Great Baseball Legend Named Robinson

He was one of the more accomplished players, but not really one of the most appreciated.  Frank Robinson played for 21 years, managed for 17 more, and was elected to the Hall Of Fame in 1982.

He has all the accolades.  NL Rookie Of The Year, MVP in both leagues, 12 time All-Star...

AL Triple Crown winner, World Series MVP, All-Star MVP, Gold Glove winner,

17x 20 HR seasons, 11x 30, and one 40.  6 100 RBI seasons.  And one 200 hit season.

AL Manager of the Year, and of course, the first African-American manager in MLB history.

But those are the obvious facts.

Some other interesting items from his page on Baseball Reference's Bullpen Wiki:

If you asked any second baseman or shortstop in the 1960s who was the one guy they didn't want to see the response would have been immediately "Frank Robinson". He was the most feared baserunner of his time. 

Frank's impact in 1966 was more than the obvious Triple Crown. He brought an "edginess" to the Orioles that had not existed before. Brooksie was a sweetheart. Boog a loveable oaf. Paul Blair, everyone liked Paul. And they HAD been winning 90 plus games without Frank so how much of a big deal was his toughness? Legit point. But the team talked about it, the opposition talked about it, and the O's just seemed like a different team.  

(It) was the 10th inning of the sixth game of the 1971 World Series, where in spite of a pulled thigh muscle which he'd suffered running to third on Merv Rettenmund's single, he scored the winning run on a sacrifice fly by Brooks that was so short that it barely seemed to loft past the infield dirt. Robinson just willed himself to home plate, and I swear the throw was wide simply because the g*%#!& baseball was scared to get within ten feet of Frank Robinson. Never mind poor Manny Sanguillen

Jim Bouton wrote in Ball Four: I was warming up in the bullpen when a fan leaned out and said, "Hey Jim, how do you pitch to Frank Robinson?" I told him the truth. "Reluctantly," I said. 
 

Frank Robinson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush in 2005.
 

There are statues of him outside three different ballparks, and no one else will wear his #20 in Cincinnati, Baltimore, or Cleveland.

His tribute to Baltimore.

The boys from Intentional Talk recognize his legend.

He was assoicated with Brooks in their playing days and beyond, but Frank Robinson belongs right up there with Jackie in his legacy to the sport.

More Stuff From Outer Space

Gillian Taylor: *sarcastic* Don't tell me; you're from outer space.
James T. Kirk: No, I'm from Iowa. I only work in outer space.

Ok, these aren't from outer space, they're just about outer space.

The major target of my eBay binge the other week was the three sets of Space Shots cards from Space Ventures, Inc.  I found series 2 and 3 for a nice combo price and picked them up with a couple other odd items that I may show later.

They consist of 110 cards each and cover pretty much every significant program, launch, and accomplishment in space thoroughout history.  Made in 1990 thru 1992, they're nice and clean and printed on standard white stock.

 

All three series came in wax boxes with packs.  I've never seen a boxed set of series 1, so I think only two and three were boxed sets.  That's how I bought them.

Here are some highlights from series 2.  A lot about the planets, Gemini, Apollo, Soyuz, Skylab, and the Shuttle.  There are cards denoting the anniversaries of a lot of the missions.  And some unusual images of astronaut activities.

Series 3 is the "International Edition" and highlights a lot of the accomplishments of the USSR, Japan, and other countries.  Of course, a lot of the first people to do things in space were Russians.  There have also been several joint projects between nations. 

The backs of both series have either patches of the described missions, or trivia challenge questions.  Not sure if there is a list of answers somewhere.  The third series also has International Space Firsts.

There is also a companion set of 36 embossed cards in the Moon Mars product, which I had before.  Those are more like the old Action Packed football.

Great additions to my Astronaut binder. 

Just have to find Series 1 for a good price.  I've seen wax boxes for $20, but I wasn't sure if I could move the dupes and trade for the rest if I'm missing any.  Anyone else have some or want my dupes if I have to go that route?

Free Samples of 2019 Series 1

Sorry, not giving them out.  Just reviewing some that I got.

Inspired by a couple first day posts about the new Topps series, and the fact that I was in the right part of town the other evening, I made a quick Target run to get a taste.  At first glance, I was on the fence about the base design, and am (still) worried about the quality and quantity of the inserts.  But luckily, I had a couple Target gift cards from some tech support I did a while back.  Those set me up for three hanger boxes, which (if I have the math right), are the best deal as far as price-per-card among the retail package offerings.  So my net cost for these was 31 cents!

My Tarzhay had three hooks of these.  Two were labeled with the Gleyber Highlights cards and one just had the Home Run contest cards line.

I wanted nothing to do with Glee boy, so I opted for three off the other hook, and I'm glad I did.

I've heard the ratios of inserts to every pack are down this year.  Then I remembered, there are no packs in these hangers.

I'm not going to scan a bunch of the base cards.  You've seen them several places already by now, I'm sure.  Not sure what the rule is for designating the first card you see in a given year.  O'Hearn was on top of the first wrapped stack, but I saw the bottom of the stack first, so Pivetta was the initial name I read.  Can we get a ruling from the commish? ;)

Best part about it - No doubles!  Three consecutive boxes on the same hook actually yielded a consistent stream of different singles!

Anyway, the parallels I pulled were all foils.  I seem to be developing a knack to pull Acuñas.  There is a nice guide page to all the different parallels here.

There he is again!  And super bonus ~ I pulled the only '84 I would have chased after, Bo Jackson!  Kershaw is a good name too.  Night Owl?

So this was a bit of an Acuña hot box...

With the base card rounding out the "trifecta".

A couple of the shameless promo cards.  "Hey kids, here's what you missed if you're all about just the superstar hype machine!  Hope you can contribute to the revenue stream this year!!"  At least there's only ten of them.  Which is in stark contrast to...

...these really decent looking 150th Anniversary tribute cards.  Unfortunately, there are, of course, 150 of them.  As if the past few years' worth of 100-100-50 insert series weren't bloated enough.  Now we have an excuse to issue them all at once!  Or, are they going to total up 450 by the end of the year?

The most horrible development this year is that there appear to be less inserts per pack(age).  But there are still a huge number of total inserts issued.  530 to be exact (thanks ArpSmith for the math and the list).  They break down like this:

150 Years of Baseball – 150 cards

’84 Topps Throwbacks – 100 cards 
(3rd annual incursion on Heritage and Archives)

Stars of the Game – 100 cards  (Annual star player worship set)

Iconic Card Reprints – 50 cards  (Annual triple redundant recycling set)

Cactus League Greats – 30 cards (retail)

Grapefruit Leage Greats – 30 cards (retail)

Evolution – 25 cards

Greatness Returns – 25 cards

Revolution of the Game – 10 cards  (Now here are some interesting subjects!)

’18 Topps Now Review – 10 cards  ('nuff said)

Now granted, they DID cut down on a few sets.  The retail spring training ones are only 30, and the last third of the list are 25 or 10 - where most of them should be.  And the total counts are down to 2008-2009 numbers, if we were talking about the WHOLE YEAR.  It is quite possible that if they repeat the '84s and add on to the 150ths or StarOTG, they may issue more total inserts than ever!  How can you justify putting less of them in packs?

(Update: Sounds like they will, in fact be issuing 150 more 150ths for series two.  And they really only reduced two insert sets by 5 cards compared to last year.)

C'mon Topps, we meant there are too many inserts TOTAL TO GET.  Not that there were TOO MANY IN A PACK!

As far as the base set goes, I'm OK with the design in general.  Some aspects are the same old thing, and some are improvements.  Most of them are somewhere in between.  Let's see what the net score is if we give points for good things and take them away for bad.

+5 for Composition - I really like that the photos "break" the design elements.  Do more of this!

+1 for League Leaders - OK, so ya got the label on the front.  It's distinctive, but still kinda blends in with all the base cards.  Every journey begins with the first step, I guess.  League leaders should be multi-player cards, period.

+2 for World Series - OK, this is better.  Nice official logo and multi-color text below the stripe.  Maybe change the standard name to a headline about the game next time.  But good job.

-1 for Last Name First - The backwards name is a little off putting, but not an OCD dealbreaker.  Maybe if they did something like this, so you read front to back instead of top to bottom.  Shades of Stadium Club.

-3 for Massive Trademark symbols -  This is totally unnecessary and just shows amateurism at PhotoShop.  It's a simple font size adjustment.  Like this...

There, aesthetically pleasing and all legal too.

Let's go ahead and throw in +2 for Good Collation - at least in the hanger boxes that I got, I didn't duplicate any cards.   Which is rare.

Plus ten and minus four comes to a net gain of six points.  So 2019 base is generally a step forward from previous years.  Still flawed and bloated, I'm probably going to fill my base set and see how easy some of the smaller inserts are, and then call it a year.  I'm not seeing too many other potential builds this year so far.

No Barber Service, But More Ball Cards

Went in to my LCS the other week to pick up a couple 5000 count boxes to consolidate some sets and clear some shelf space.  Of course, I ended up leaving with some bonus stuff.

You'll recall the "stylist stash" I got from my mom's hairstylist a little while ago.  Bruce at PrimeTime had a couple long boxes of mixed vintage baseball and football left over from a collection he got.  It was really the same range of sets as my other batch, but in greater volume. 

There was much more football than baseball.  No late 60's this time, but a big bulk lot of 70's.  And mostly in pretty decent shape.

I initially started looking through and found some of the 1971 Topps stars that I lack for my set.  I pulled out OJ and a couple more, but Bruce asked if I wanted the whole shebang....

Who was I to refuse?  He quoted a price and home they came.  Narrowed my '71 set down to about a third of what I was missing before.  And upgraded several singles too.  Basically left me with a very large starter set.  Sorry, most of the guys shown here went to my binder.

There was also a large contingent from 1970.  Guess which set I just started?  There are extras, though.

Not to mention some nice '72s.  Even some in the higher numbers.  I filtered these in with some others I had already.  I have a decent pile of dupes for this set available too.

Who's doing '73?  I'm already finished and went through mine for upgrades.

Now baseball.  I'll start at the recent end.  Pretty much everything baseball in this bunch is trade bait.  A few '75s for the dupes box....

A few '72s including some team cards, rookies and checklists.  Nettles is a high number.

A smattering of '70, but a couple good names.  Mel looks OK on the front, but the back is kinda hideous.

A short disclaimer on the baseball.  You can tell this box sat open in a damp basement for a very long time.  A lot of the cards are stained and/or curled or wavy.  Anything you're interested in, I can send better scans.

These 69's are a little rough, but passable.  Yes, that is Clemente and Gibson.  How 'bout a better look at those?

 

They're pretty rough, but if someone needs a cheap filler, lemme know.

A few decent 73's.  There's that Clemente guy again.  If it wasn't for the bite out of the bottom edge, he'd be clean.  I'm good with '73, so he can be yours.

I'm kinda jumping around with the years here, but this is why.  The bulk of the baseball was this big stack of 1971 with its share of warps and stains.  But there's some big names in here.

You can tell they're a bit weathered.  Especially compared to the football stacks.

Which sat much flatter. The '71 stack is what's left after I pulled out all the ones I needed.

There were a few bonus cards too.  These well loved Kellogg's.  Nice names in mediocre shape.

Some very pink hoops.  Think I've heard of Bing...

And finally, some hot rods and bikes cards that are on their way to Billy Kingsley.

Still a pretty decent haul for the price of 2½ blasters.  Whatch'all need?