Friday Five: Top 5 Curt Flood Cards

I do not fully understand how Curt Flood is not in the Hall of Fame. He had a very good playing career, which by itself is probably not Hall worthy, but his contributions to the game should make him a slam dunk. In fact, every modern player who is enjoying a league minimum salary of almost $800K with the possibility of making millions of dollars through arbitration and free agency should be name-dropping Curt Flood for the Hall on a daily basis. 

That's not going to happen, but I can dream.  

I have long enjoyed Curt Flood baseball cards and decided it would be a fun exercise to put together a list of my five favorite cards of the long-time Cardinals outfielder.  

5. 1960 Topps 

I love the contrasts on this card with the black and white photo paired with the color photo, along with the bright yellow letters with the black background. That red background behind the black and white photo really pops. I also love the old-style Cardinals bats-on-the-bat logo, really sweet. Overall, this is one of my favorite early 1960s Cardinals cards based simply on aesthetics. Great looking card.  

4. 1967 Topps 

I am not sure Clubbers is the right word to describe the combination of Lou Brock and Curt Flood in the Cardinals lineup, but I love this dual card.  The two were fixtures in the Cardinals outfield for the latter half of the 1960s helping the team win a World Series in 1967 and a National League pennant in 1968. I love the look of the old, wool 1960s Cardinals uniforms on this card. The off-white jerseys with the shortened sleeves and bright red accents and hats looked great together. The Cardinals also have some of the better socks in the league.  

3. 1971 Topps 

I love that Topps gave Curt Flood a card in 1971. After the Phillies traded him to the Senators, Flood only played in a handful of games and retired before the first month of the 1971 season ended. It would have been easy to skip over Flood. This was his final baseball card.  

2. 1964 Topps 

A bit of a sentimental choice for me to rank the 1964 Topps card second on my list. This was one of the first good vintage cards in my collection and my first Curt Flood. Wasn't there a collector who hoarded this card by the thousands? Yes.   Anyway, I love the green text on the white background, the photo of Flood standing with his glove, and who could miss that his name is spelled out on the fingers.  Classic.  

1. 1958 Topps 

My scan is pretty terrible, but this is a great card.  I love all the bright colors here with the bright green background, yellow logo box...err...triangle, and the red name box on the bottom of the card. Love the blue Cardinals cap and that Curt Flood is smiling on his rookie card.  

I Needed Some Boxes, Maybe A Few Cards Too

I have been doing a lot of sorting the past few weeks, which probably deserves a post, but not today. Instead, I wanted to post a few cards I picked up while I was purchasing a few boxes from my local card shop this past weekend. It's a newer card shop that I wrote up a few weeks back, but I am impressed every time I stop there. Lately, it's been for boxes. 

Figured I needed to check out some cards. 

Here is a quick rundown.  

First up, is an Adley Rutshman rookie card from Bowman Chrome. I am not an Orioles fan, but I do like a lot of their young players. I saw Adley a few year back in Durham, figured I would add a few of his cards when I get a chance. This was a good starting point......

Also fairly inexpensive.  

Next, an unexpected Cardinals find. This is a 2001 Bowman Chrome Stan Musial rookie reprint. Not sure the scan does this card justice, but I really like the sepia background with the greyscale photo, all with the trappings of a Chrome card. Nice to see a good blend of some vintage and modern design elements on the same card.  

Here is the back, which includes the serial number out of 299. Not the rarest Musial card by any means, but I was not expecting to find a serial numbered of The Man when I walked in the door of the card shop.  

I also found a few Snell commons.......

My effort to collect some non-autographed Blake Snell cards also should probably be there own post, but I will wait until I have time to write about some more exciting cards. There are in the fifty-cent bin at the shop.

Next up......

A few vintage cards. The Curt Flood is probably my favorite card out of the group.  All the players have a connection to the Cardinals or Durham Bulls with the exception of Norm Cash who once tried to take an at-bat against Nolan Ryan with a table leg.  

I demad a game-used table leg card, but nobody has come through for me.  

A D-Day Card

Every once in awhile my schedule allows me a little bit of time on Monday nights to take in the weekly card chat on Twitter.  @Sooz who is a Topps employee comes up with a topic every week, posts a few questions about the topic, and off goes the conversation.  Last night's topic was all about oddball cards.  I have a few favorites oddballs hanging around the old card closet with my Topps Marble Shooters Ray Lankford card, err marble, being my favorite at the moment.  

There were all kinds of cool oddball cards brought up by different collectors.  It's really worth your time if you have never participated or you do not have a Twitter account.  Which brings me to an oddball that I had to go find and dig out of a box this evening.  

I was at work today and remembered that it was D-Day.  I work at a school and one of the subjects I teach, I teach fifth grade so I really teach them all, is Social Studies.  Fifth Grade Social Studies is American History, Government, and Economy.  So, back to my story of an oddball card.....

Long ago there was a cool card shop in south St. Louis County near Jefferson Barracks if you are familiar with the St. Louis metro area.  The card shop is now gone which has made my trips back to the Lou a little less interesting.  The shop was named Southtown Sluggers.  I discovered it one summer while helping someone track down a copy of a 1997 Topps Stars Adam Kennedy rookie as a part of my college summer job....that's for a different post.  

Anyway, I was putting together a few 1960s Cardinals cards.  As I recall I was working on the 1964 Topps cards at the time......

The guy who owned the store was always super cool.  I believe his name was Dave, always gave some good deals, or threw stuff in for little extra cost.  So, after picking out a bunch of 1964 Cardinals he pulled a few oddballs out of the vintage card box I was looking through, put them in sleeves, and in the team bag with the rest of the cards I bought.  

The cards were from the 1965 Topps Battle set.  I don't know a lot about the cards, but I do know that I have a Dwight Eisenhower card from the set.  Always been a pretty interesting card in my collection.....

All of the cards in the Battle set are all persons associated with World War II or some sort of action shot of something that happened during the fighting.  I thought it would be a cool card to share on D-Day.  Definitely an important day in US history and one of the decisive battles in World War II.  Also one cool oddball if you are a fan of history....