Some basic math skills were in order

There's 185 cards left on my 1974 Topps want list.  If I thought of that before I sat down last night to put the cards I had into pages, I wouldn't have expected to have more complete pages when I started.

Here's where the basic math skills come into play.

660 cards divided by 9 (cards per page) equals 73 pages + 3 cards on a 74th page.

With 185 cards to go, basic math of 185/73 pages equals almost 2.5 cards per page that aren't in hand yet.  That's a lot of chances for a page to be missing cards; and very few chances for any of the pages to be completed.

I think by the end of the paging, I had 5 complete pages.   Not bad...

Also running through the cards I have, there were some big names that I didn't see.   Pete Rose.  Nolan Ryan.  Dave Winfield (his 2nd year card).  Dave Parker's RC. 

After a while when you have a boat load of numbers on a blog that form some kind of want list, you forget to sit down and dig into what players are needed to get rid of those numbers.  It's the same for the majority of the sets I'm putting together right now.

Rickey Henderson RC.   Ken Griffey Jr RC.  Bob Gibson RC.  Nolan Ryan RC.  I could go on for a while.   It looks and sounds like a daunting task.    So far in 2018, I haven't thought of it that way.

Why?

It's because I'm happy that I'm following one of my New Years resolutions.

For 45 days, I haven't hit Wal Mart or Target at all.  No trips to the card aisle.  Not one pack of new product.  Not one thought about new product.   I haven't even got the shakes yet....

Just 45 days to go to take care of one resolution.

Thanks for reading, Robert

18 months ahead of its hockey counterpart--50 from '83 Topps

I read quite a few tweets on twitter and posts on blogs that extol the love that people have for the 1983 Topps set.   Until recently, I only had a few cards from this set in hand so I wasn't very familiar with it.

I knew more about the 84-85 OPC/Topps release which is very much the same design, but has some great rookies such as Steve Yzerman, Doug Gilmour and Cam Neely.

1983 Topps has its own great class of RCs, featuring Ryne Sandberg, Wade Boggs and Tony Gwynn.  Sorry, you won't be seeing any of these 3 here on this post.

There's a few other cards that I liked that I wanted to show.  Some of these players were not as well known in the baseball world.

I imagine that if I ever became a major leaguer that I would have played 3rd base.  It was always my favorite spot on the diamond; it usually featured a solid hitter such as these guys are.

Ken Oberkfell was the opposite of what you expected from your 3rd baseman, great for average but only single digits in homers.  Vance Law is the son of long term Pirate Vern Law, and had a decent 11 year career for Pittsburgh, Montreal, Oakland and both Chicago clubs.

I remember Wayne Gross from his days in Oakland, good power, average not so great.  I didn't know that he pitched in a game during the '83 season, pitching 2 and 1/3 scoreless innings against the Twins in a 16-5 blowout.

Enos Cabell made his career as a utility player, 3rd, 1st, short, both corner outfield spots.  He played them all.

A little trivia; one of these 6 holds the Blue Jays record for most RBI in a single game with 9.  Answer at the end of the post.

These 3 had almost 50 combined seasons of pitching experience by the time these cards came out.

I don't remember Luis Tiant pitching for the Angels, and it's no wonder as he only had 6 appearances for the Halos in '82.  This would be his sunset card.

This pair of batting/pitching leader cards might tell you that these teams were relatively close in the standings in 1982, but the Orioles finished 16 games ahead of Toronto.

The Orioles had a young rookie in 1982 that would build quite a resume for himself, Cal Ripken.

Haven't shown many catchers so far in these 50 card posts, so I figured I'd get 3 of them out for your viewing pleasure.  Sal Butera is the father of current KC Royal Drew Butera.   Rick Cerone was a Blue Jay for a couple of years before being part of a trade that saw the Jays net Chris Chambliss, Damaso Garcia and Paul Mirabella.  Chambliss was only a Jay on paper as he was traded to Atlanta which netted the Jays 3 other players that helped build a nucleus of young talent that would get the Blue Jays out of the cellar in a couple of seasons....

Len Barker gets his card scanned all by itself because of one game.  May 15th, 1981, Len pitched a perfect game against the Jays, striking out 11 in front of just 7290 fans in Cleveland Stadium.  The game took just 2 hrs and 9 minutes to finish.  Luis Leal pitched for the Jays and pitched reasonably well, pitching a complete game 7 hitter with no walks, but gave up 3 runs (1 earned).

Speaking of walks...

The wife and I love listening to Bob provide color analysis on Pirates telecasts.  Bob has been with the Pirates radio/TV crew for more than 2 decades now, so he's seen some highs and quite a few lows that the Bucs have gone through.

TRIVIA ANSWER:  Roy Howell still holds the Jays record for RBIs in a single game with 9.  He set this record on 9/10/77 in a 19-3 rout of the Yankees.  Roy had 4 hits, including 2 homers while setting a record that surprisingly has never been surpassed in the 40 year history of the Jays.

Thanks for reading, Robert

50 more off the want list--84 Topps

The biggest stack of cards that came my way in the box from Adam was of 1984 Topps.  I'm guessing right now that there's about 400 cards to go through from '84 alone.  What's been great so far is seeing the names of the players that I watched quite a bit while growing up. 

Again, I'm not going to show all 50, but I found a few cards that were interesting to me...

Season highlight cards, these are great in my opinion.  3 pitchers pitching no hitters, 3 superstars retiring.  Great ideas for a card.  These are the types of highlights that cost you $10 now so that you can have them immediately.   No thanks.

I wondered why there was nothing noted on the front of the Steve Carlton card as to what the highlight was, until I read the back.   Carlton had won his 300th game in '83 as well as becoming the all time strike out leader.   That's probably a lot to put on the front of a card.

Speaking of left handed pitchers, I noticed among the first 50 cards that there were a few lefties in there.  The only one that I don't remember so much is Burgmeier; the '84 season for Tom would be his last in a 17 year career in which he would make 743 out of his 745 appearances as a reliever.  In '83, Tom would also have 13 decisions, a lot for appearing in just 49 games.

Manager cards.  Still cool.

6,329 hits in just two cards.  It's interesting to look at Molitor's history over 21 seasons.  He missed a lot of games (played just 13 times in 1984), and still wound up with 3319 hits.  Imagine if he were healthier and had played another 300 games with his talent.  Probably over 3600 hits which would put him top 5 all time.  Paul currently stands 10th with only Ichiro and Adrian Beltre active within 300 hits of passing him. 

The ageless wonder, Julio Franco.  He played another 23 seasons after this card came out.  I'm not sure, but stealing a base at age 48 might make him the oldest player ever to steal a bag.  Someone correct me if I'm wrong please...

We like getting stars on as many cards as possible, right?  What's wrong with these team leader cards?  Kershaw/Bellinger--Keuchel/Altuve--Happ/Donaldson, you get the idea.  Some great combos even in today's MLB could have extra cards such as this.

And that's no bull....

Thanks for reading, Robert

The first 50

You know, I could sit here for several hours over several days and put all these cards away that Adam sent me, but then if I did that, I wouldn't be sharing the joy of seeing some of these cards again.  Or for the first time.

So, I'm going to take the stacks and divide them into 50 card chunks.  Easier to write about, easier to scan and decide what I want to write about. 

The posts might be small, but they'll be more manageable.   I'll also be able to update my want lists slowly instead of going through several hundred cards at once and making mistakes (no doubt).

I've already put away the '89 Upper Deck cards and updated that want list, that set is down to 208 cards left.  I also stupidly put away the 1970 Topps cards before scanning them, but seeing that list drop by 61 cards was something that put a smile on my face.

So let's get started on the rest of the cards, shall we?  Let's start with 50 '85 Topps cards.

I pulled out a few of them....

Reading the backs of these record breakers cards was quite interesting.  Carlton Fisk catching all 25 innings in one game?!  Don Sutton striking out 100+ batters in 19 seasons.  Steve Garvey going over a full season without an error at first base.  Some great stuff here.  I don't know if Topps has any record breakers in this year's set, but if they don't they should find a way to include them in the future (yes I know that records aren't broken every day).

I've seen a couple of others mention bringing back manager cards.  Yea, I'm all for that as well.

• Padres brown tops with the yellow lettering.   Yes
• Powder blue Twins uniforms with the red batting helmet.   Yes Yes
• Pittsburgh with the gold tops, black pants and pill box caps.   Oh hell yes!

Bring em all back...oh and find someone in today's game that chokes up on a bat as much as Mickey Hatcher is in his photo.

Does anybody wear glasses on the field anymore?  I'm sure that some do, but I can't think of anyone who does right off hand.  Oh, and a team in Montreal?  You bet.  Toronto/Montreal games each year would sell a shit load of tickets in either city.

It's probably a cup of coffee, but I prefer to think of it as a Red Solo cup, which is what I thought it was at first.  Come on, I'm sure that there's one or two old school players that still have a belt or two in the clubhouse after games (or before depending on your preference).

So there's 14 of the first 50 I'm putting away tonight.  I'm going to try and push myself to get these posts up regularly over the next couple of weeks, mostly because I'm getting a bit anal about keeping my desk relatively clutter free, and these stacks are big.

thanks for reading, Robert

Stacks

I responded to a post a few weeks ago on the APRSmith's Sportscard Obsession blog about Adam wanting to move some cards.

I raised my hand and asked for some 82, 83 and 84 Topps starter lots if they were available.

Adam went to town.  Then some.  The stack of Blue Jays on the left wasn't even close to being the biggest pile of cards as you can plainly see.

I put about 100 of the '89 Upper Deck cards away (the clean white pile) before taking this picture.

You can see where my keyboard is on the right, it's actually been tough typing this post while not disturbing the stacks on my left.

The stack that I'm most excited about is the '70 Topps (2nd from the right).  That's 61 cards that I wasn't expecting which put a nice dent into that vintage set.  I actually toyed with the idea of abandoning the '70T build a few months back, but for some reason I persevered and now I'm over a third complete thanks to this lot.

The '84 Topps set is going from 18 cards in hand to about 18 cards left on the list (I don't know that yet, I'm just exaggerating to make a point) thanks to the giant stack 4th from the right.  '85 Topps also takes a big hit with the pile to the left of the '84.  There's also nice stacks of '79, '80 and '83 Topps as well.  I put all those want lists on the blog in the past couple of months thinking it might be a couple of years before I finish the run of Topps sets between 1978 and 1985.  Now I'm thinking it might happen by the end of the 2018 baseball season.

My guess?  My want lists just took about a 1500 card hit from this mailer that Adam sent.

Adam, there is no way I can thank you enough for the time and effort you put in to combing my want lists, it is truly appreciated!! (believe me, Adam had to have done a ton of work on this)

Time to hit Amazon to order some binders...

thanks for reading, Robert