The White Whale.

        Sometimes in life you spend too much time and energy to acquire a card.  You search high and low to find it and have to work a series of paper clip trades and ancient ritual dances to track down that cardboard wonder.  For some, it is a rare 1/1 superfractor, for others, it is a PSA 10 vintage beauty.  And then there is the saga of the 1984 Topps Rack Pack Glossy All Star #20:

Here in its place of honor among other lesser moral 1984 cards

 

The card you see in the center of that page is more than just a glossy insert from a long ago time, it was a quest, a pursuit beyond all others.  Oh sure you say, you could just go on sportslots or COMC and pay 85 cents for it, but that would defeat the purpose.  No, this card taunts me, it tells me I am not worthy.  It tasks me beyond what is right or righteous. There is no way to convey the proper magnitude of what that card put me through.  The smile on Gary Carter's face hides a vicious streak of cruelty I will take to the grave and never share with another soul.  This is not some simple 1988 Phil Niekro card or a pile of Bip Roberts cards. My family will never recover from the efforts and resources it took to track down and tame this horrible beast.  Heavens to Betsy, what on earth possessed me to ever get involved with a cursed card? What fools these mortals be.

Foolish.

     I think we all could use a genuine laugh these days, so I think you should all see this 50th Anniversary box topper from this year's Heritage. It is my new favorite card:

I'm pretty sure everyone except Denny Riddleberger will think this is funny.

You might be wondering what my old favorite card was?  Well, that's easy...

It's right there in the middle of that page.  Happy birthday Phil Niekro!

October Fools?

       One of the crazy reasons my blogging has dried up recently is my building anxiety over having so many half-written posts.  Seems more and more, I scan some cards and start writing and for whatever reason(s), I just stop writing.  I don't think it is a mental block, per se, but the more it happens it seems, the easier it is to let happen.  The whole point of starting the blog was to have something simple to accomplish during the day and showcase my collection and writing and now, it would appear, like most things in my life, I am way way overthinking things.  It is a vicious cycle I am now trying to break.

Sitting amongst those 34 drafts are a variety of topics: trade posts, mailbags, clever over-the-top card commentary, design and brand analysis etc. But also, there are some very timely things like player debuts and retirements and the like whose time has come and gone.  You will probably never get to hear what I had to say about the sad goodbye tour of Mariano Rivera (too bad I never got around to Jeets either) or how my hopes and dreams for Travis d'Arnaud compare to the other Mets great catchers.  There are even some holiday themed posts that I could get around to (next year, of course) and I was reminded of one while reading Night Owl's post yesterday.  He misspelled a name - a rarity for a newspaper editor - one Sidd Finch.  I suppose he could be forgiven since Mr. Finch never really existed in the first place except in the mind of George Plimpton and his classic Sports Illustrated piece "The Curious Case of Sidd Finch."  All of this connects through an insert set from last year's Allen and Ginter called Curious Cases.  I remember seeing that set name before the product was released and thinking 'man, Sidd Finch had better be part of that.'  Unfortunately, the checklist is mostly conspiracy theory hokum and mystical mumbo jumbo.  I decided last March to rectify that with my first homemade original card:

While I am no cardboard Picasso (very few are), not to mention that this isn't exactly an original idea, I really like how the card turned out.  It is self evident that if there was anyone ever who needed to be in an insert set, it is Sidd Finch in Curious Cases.

So for whatever reason, I had this all ready to post for this last April Fools Day but never finished it.  And there it sat, a draft only really appropriate to post on one day of the year and I missed it.  But then today I thought, what better way to fool you fools than to post an April fools post as far from April fools as you can possibly get?  It is this kind of thinking that is gonna get that draft folder emptied in no time. 

Yankees.

       My absolute favorite team of all time is the New York Yankees.  I have been a Yankee fan since birth, when George Steinbrenner himself delivered me in the back of a Checker Cab outside of Shea Stadium in 1975.  My first onesies were all pinstriped, I dressed as Mickey Mantle for Halloween every single year until I was 18, when, of course, my prom tux was accented with a star spangled top hat. 

I was raised hearing all about how great the Yankees were, and I cannot tell you how good a person that has made me.  I heard about all the great players, players like Roger Maris:

He will always be the all time single season Home Run Champion to me.

Of course, Mickey Mantle:

The Mick's even handed lifestyle should be the model for all children to follow.

The ever classy Joe DiMaggio:

He was so humble, I can only imagine his blushing embarrassment at always being introduced as "The World's Greatest Living Ballplayer."

The quiet and reserved Graig Nettles...

...who kept his head and played peacemaker when things got out of hand.

The ultimate teammate Thurman Munson:

I mean, this was a man who stayed with his team through thick and thin and never let them down.

And the selfless Lou Gehrig:

The Iron Horse played every game, no matter what, and that probably made him the best hitter of all time.  And dig those Casey Stengel cards.  There was a man with the gift of gab who won wherever he went.

Speaking of mangers, I am torn over which Yankees manager is my favorite.  I mean, is it the very reserved Lou Piniella, who was the epitome of decorum on the field:

Is it the respectable Billy Martin, who always had his emotions under control and was so good, he was hired five different times to run the team?

Or is it Yogi Berra, who so gallantly stepped aside in times of trouble and was never the kind to hold a grudge?

I don't know, I think they are all tied for first.

Needless to say, growing up in the 1980's, my favorite player of all time is Don Mattingly.



I maintain my gigantic Mattingly collection in a series of hermetically sealed Tupperware bins, waiting for the day he is elected to the Hall of Fame and his cards quintuple in value.  It is a travesty that such a great player never got to play in the World Series.

The mid to late 90's brought about a renaissance in Yankee Nation.  I mean, at one point we had gone a whole 15 years without being in a World Series and a staggering 18 without winning one.  Lemme tell ya, growing up a Yankees fan was oh so torturous and painful.  Luckily, 1996 changed all that with the emergence of my second favorite Yankee, Derek Jeter:


I can't tell if he is more handsome, or a greater clutch player.  Maybe both?  If I had caught his 3,000 hit, I would have just handed it over no questions asked, too.

My other favorite "Core Four" player is Mariano Rivera:

Mariano is the best pitcher of all time and anyone who tells you different just doesn't understand baseball.

They were joined on that great 90's team by the always loyal David Cone:

The quirky and always reliable El Duque:

And my favorite pitcher of all time, Roger Clemens:

I cannot wait until 2013 when the Rocket is elected to the Hall of Fame unanimously and enters the hall wearing the mighty interlocked 'NY'

I spend most of my time building Yankees-themed sets, like the beautiful Upper Deck Yankees Classics:


And I am certain one day I will finish the 6743-card Yankee Stadium Legacy set, only the greatest set ever...


...for the greatest team ever!  We can all dream, can't we?  I'd be a fool not to.