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Showing posts with the label Buck O'Neil

Who's in the Hall and what's in my collection

    Big news for a lot of people's card collections yesterday, the Hall of Fame announced the selection of six players for induction. My collection isn't nearly as exclusive as those that feature only rookie cards of Hall of Famers and such. My collection doesn't focus on Hall of Famers at all actually. I do need to update my "sets with the most Hall of Famers" series greatly now, although I'll wait until the BBWAA vote next month for a new post. But as far as my collection, it reflects what I think about who has played the game, not who is in the Hall. There has been a lot of greatness, whether they're on a plaque in a building or not. I've written about stuff like this before. In fact, I already voted a bunch of the guys who the Hall picked yesterday into the Hall years ago .   "Small hall/big hall," "stats worthy/not worthy," I don't have time for those debates. What I do have time for is focusing on the players elected and s...

Redefining "fan," or "favorite"

One more Fan Favorites post. I've got other post ideas in the works, and a contest winner to determine, but it's a little too crazy today for that. So let's look at a much studied segment of Fan Favorites. The off-field personnel. Or, the non-major league personnel in Buck O'Neil's case. In the 2003 Fan Favorites set, I believe Topps went with only one non-MLB player/manager. It was Tigers broadcaster Ernie Harwell. (I'm missing about a dozen '03 Fan Favorites and I haven't had time to look at the checklist, so I could have missed someone). Then, in 2004, Topps went a little crazy with the non-MLB player/manager types. There was Buck O'Neil here, which is not a problem for me. O'Neil played ball very well, and he had plenty of fans. The others were kind of interesting/kind of strange. To this day I don't know how to feel about them. A lot of them redefine the definition of "fan." To me, "fans" are the baseball-v...