Monday Morning Autograph - Doug Glanville

I own a couple of thousand autograph cards, the majority have never appeared on my blog.  Here is a random autograph that I never posted before:

Today: 1999 SP Signature Edition Doug Glanville 

Why do I own this card?  

I got this card out of a $10 pack of cards back in the day and I am sure I was angry that I landed Doug Glanville. Somehow, someway this card was never stuck on Ebay and just lingered in a box of cards for the past twenty plus years. However, it has gained some significance over the past two years.  

My daughter loves music. For years, I drove her to daycare and the soundtrack to my mornings was music from Disney Princess movies and other kid-friendly albums such as the Trolls World Tour. She would frequently sing along and talk about the movies. The songs were not my cup of tea, but it made my daughter's drive into daycare more enjoyable. 

Two years ago, she graduated preschool and began Kindergarten at the school where my wife teaches. We no longer commuted together, so I began driving my oldest to middle school every morning. In fact, I transferred my own teaching job to a school that was just a few minutes away from his middle school. My oldest does not mind music, but as a kid on the autism spectrum he enjoys things that are a little more low key on his morning commute.

Often, he reads books and talks me through what he is reading about and we listen to podcasts about baseball. One of our favorites is the Tuesday ESPN Baseball podcast, which features Doug Glanville and Jayson Stark. It's typically an hour plus show, so it lasts us a few commutes. We both really enjoy Glanville on the podcast whether he is interviewing someone, sharing his stories about his time in the game, voicing opinions, or trying to answer trivia questions. Always a good listen.

Over the past two years of listening to Glanville, my appreciation for his work has grown, and with it a better appreciation for his baseball cards. If you have never heard Doug speak, here is an excellent piece he did on Dusty Baker after he finally won a World Series with the Astros......

A Haiku About Doug Glanville 

Sunday night baseball 

Starkville podcast, Penn alumni 

Phils, Cubs, Rangers too 

Card back. 

Back of the Card Bonus Trivia?  

What player is the other DG card in the autograph checklist of the 1999 SP Signature Edition Set?

Clue- Think late 1990s hyped-up prospect who may have hit over .400 during a brief stint in the Majors thanks to some mile-high air.  

It's Been A Minute

One of my favorite phrases in life.  

So much has happened over the past month and a half. Unfortunately, most of it involves me working, which nobody really wants to hear about. I am just going to skip ahead to the part where I talk about baseball cards and pretend that I still do this on a regular basis.  

I still have the time to purchase baseball cards, just not write about the baseball cards. I have narrowed this post down to 4 cards. There are some large stacks of cards sitting around my house at the moment and it's not because my wife repainted and refurnished my baseball card room in a day while I was at work.  

The stacks of cards are out of the frame, but I am actually going to make a post about the state and condition of my card room at the moment assuming I don't disappear for another six weeks.  

As I was saying, picking out just 4 cards was a bit of an accomplishment.  

The first three are all from the 2021 Topps Chrome Anniversary set.  Two former Durham Bulls players and a backup catcher for the Cardinals.  

First, former Durham Bulls player Greg Luzinski.  Great power hitter and a great signature too.  

Next up is Cardinals backup catcher Gene Tenace. Earlier in his career he was not a backup for the Oakland A's. Tenace was the 1972 World Series MVP. I do not have a Padres autograph of Tenace, but he was also a starting catcher in San Diego.  In 1980, Gene Tenace hit .222, but walked 30 more times than he struck out and had an on-base percentage of .399. 

Amazing. 

Last up on the Topps Chrome cards is former Durham Bulls player and current Minnesota Twins manager, Rocco Baldelli.  The green Rays jerseys were horrible.  

Last card is a Paul Goldschmidt autograph.  

He's been on the Cardinals a few years now, but I rarely buy any of his cards and I never post them when I do. Nothing too special, just usually cool looking parallels or base cards from when he played with the Diamondbacks. Nothing this nice.  

These Guys Are Actually Good?

I started collecting baseball cards in the early 1980s when I was in early elementary school. Some of my initial impressions of players from those cards lingered for a long time in my world.  At some point in late high school or early college, I realized that a lot of the "washed up, old guys" from those early 1980s sets were actually good players during the 1970s.  There were even a few lingering from the 1960s.  

As a baseball card collector, I have ended up circling back to collect cards of a few of these players.  This past week, I managed to snag two autographs from the 2021 Topps Archives set of players who appeared in 1983 card sets.  That was my first year opening packs and these two players seemed way past their prime. The six-year old version of me did not fully appreciate their skills for very likely superficial reasons.  

First up, Cardinals back-up catcher Gene Tenace.  

He was the Cardinals back-up catcher during the early 1980s.  Gene Tenace was a .230 hitter and managed a grand total of 12 home runs in the 2 seasons he played for the Cardinals.  Not exactly someone to be excited about pulling from a pack of cards.  I kind of ignored those 1970s seasons while he was playing for the A's.  

Some years later, I learned about the Gene Tenace from the 1970s.  He regularly hit 20 home runs a year?  Gene Tenace won the 1972 World Series MVP by hitting 4 home runs in a 7 game series against the Reds?  You're sure that wasn't Reggie Jackson?  

It turns out that before he was an old guy and the back-up catcher for the Cardinals, Gene Tenace was a good player.  It's true.  All of it.  There are other things that I really appreciate about his career beyond winning a World Series MVP and being a back-up catcher on the Cardinals. 

+Gene Tenace regularly walked more than he struck out.  

+Gene Tenace 1060 career hits and 984 career walks. 

+Baseball Reference has him rated as the 13th best catcher of all-time ahead of Roy Campanella, Buster Posey, and Yadier Molina. 

+Amongst modern catchers, Tenace has the second highest OPS (on-base percentage and slugging percentage) amongst modern catchers.  He's ahead of Johnny Bench, but behind Mike Piazza.  

He was a really good player.  Here is my latest Gene Tenace card.  

I am still waiting for Topps to make a card of him as a back-up catcher for the Cardinals.  

Next player.  

Those polyester White Sox softball uniforms were not kind to Greg Luzinski. "The Bull" was still a good player with the White Sox, but he was definitely a player ignored while I was collecting in the 1980s.  I think Luzinski was my first run-in with a professional athlete who did not look the part.  I first started to appreciate Greg Luzinski when I moved to North Carolina roughly 15 years ago and started reading up on the Durham Bulls.  

He was a member of the 1969 Raleigh-Durham Phillies, which was a renamed version of the Durham Bulls.  It was a really dumb idea to rename the team briefly, but it was not as bad as the team splitting half of its games between Durham and Raleigh.  Despite a lot of bad off-the-field decisions by the Phillies, the team absolutely bludgeoned the rest of the Carolina League.  It's arguable one of the better teams in the history of the franchise.  

The team led the league in almost every team offensive category and almost every team pitching category.  Many of the players on the team also were league leaders in individual categories. Luzinksi was an 18 year-old fresh out of high school and hit 31 home runs and drove in 92 runs.  

I have posted a bunch of Luzinski cards here over the years.  Been a fan for awhile.  

Love the 1960 Topps design on this card and Luzinski has a great signature.  

Overall, I am happy to add these two cards to my collection and I am glad that I learned a little bit more about these two players who were "old and washed up" when I first started collecting cards.  

A Giant Project: Update #8

I promised an updated checklist before the end of October and here I am, following through. I am actually making this post because I am procrastinating on things that I should be doing to get ready for my return to work tomorrow.  As a year-round teacher, I have enjoyed being tracked-out the past few weeks.  Definitely needed the break.  On to baseball cards.  

I have three more 1964 Topps Giants cards to post today.  This has not been too difficult of a set to pull together so far, but there are a few short-prints.  I have them labeled on the checklist.  I have picked up two of them so far and added another a few weeks back.  The short-prints in the Topps Giants set aren't too hard to find in most cases, they just cost more than what you'd think.   

Here is my latest short-printed card.  

I know Galen Cisco more for being a pitching coach for the Blue Jays and Phillies than as a player. He had a short career that was most spent with the expansion Mets.  He played 7 seasons in the Majors with a career win-loss record of 25-56.  Thanks, Mets.  In 1964, Cisco had an ERA of 3.62 and lost 19 games.  Ray Sadecki, a pitcher for the Cardinals, had an ERA of 3.68 and won 20 games.  Sadly, Galen Cisco's career ended when he ended up on the expansion Royals team in 1969.  Should probably be a rule that you can't end up on two first-year expansion teams during your career.  

Nice photo on the front of the card.  

I really like this card back.  I have complained about the heavy focus on the Minors on other posts, while that is still mentioned on the back of the Galen Cisco card, I like that they gave an interesting story about a memorable game.  Pitching 8 innings of relief in a 23 inning loss is way better than hearing about what Cisco did in Double A.  I even went and found the box score.  Willie Mays went 1-10 in the game.  

As a short-print, it was not hard to find this Galen Cisco card, just cost more than the average Galen Cisco card would normally cost.  

Up next is White Sox pitcher Juan Pizarro.  

I already have a bunch of Juan Pizarro card floating around my house.  Hardly any of the them are with the same team.  He was Edwin Jackson before Edwin Jackson.  Pizarro pitched 18 years in the Majors and played for 8 different teams. He appeared on the Pirates twice with seven year gap in between. Pizarro was traded to the Reds during the 1960 off-season, but the Reds traded him to the White Sox later on the same day.  In 1970, he went to Spring Training with the Angels, did not make the team, and was traded to the Cubs.  Does that count as 11 teams?  Considering his career started with the Braves in the 1950s when there were no expansion teams, also no free agency, that's a long list.  

Juan Pizarro reached the Majors as a 20 year-old long reliever/spot starter for the good Braves teams of the late 1950s. He appeared in both the 1957 and 1958 World Series against the Yankees.  The early to mid 1960s were his best years.  Pizarro won 16 and 19 games for the White Sox in 1963 and 1964.  He made the All-Star team both seasons.  

Nice picture of him on the back of the card mid wind-up.  Nice write up about him too.  

Last card for this post.  One of my favorite player nicknames from the 1960s.  

Tony Gonzalez was an outfielder, primarily for the Phillies, and had the nickname "Little Dynamite".  He was small in stature, but had a lot of power and a great outfield arm.  Gonzalez was from Cuba and his parents worked on a sugar cane farm.  As a teenager he was able to lift 250 pound bags of sugar.  A teammate once described grabbing his arm as "touching concrete".  

Another nice write-up on the back of the card.  I like the photograph of him running down a fly ball.  The snow cone catch action-shot is not something you see often on older baseball cards.  Is this photo from Spring Training or was there a team in the 1960s with a chain link fence in their outfield?  

Maybe the Dodgers when they played in the Coliseum?  

It's the only stadium that comes to mind. 

Here is my updated checklist.  I am now up to 28 out 60 cards in the set.  

1 Gary Peters
2 Ken Johnson
3 Sandy Koufax SP
4 Bob Bailey
5 Milt Pappas
6 Ron Hunt
7 Whitey Ford
8 Roy McMillan
9 Rocky Colavito
10 Jim Bunning
11 Roberto Clemente
12 Al Kaline
13 Nellie Fox
14 Tony Gonzalez
15 Jim Gentile
16 Dean Chance
17 Dick Ellsworth
18 Jim Fregosi
19 Dick Groat
20 Chuck Hinton
21 Elston Howard
22 Dick Farrell
23 Albie Pearson
24 Frank Howard
25 Mickey Mantle
26 Joe Torre
27 Ed Brinkman
28 Bob Friend SP
29 Frank Robinson
30 Bill Freehan
31 Warren Spahn
32 Camilo Pascual
33 Pete Ward
34 Jim Maloney
35 Dave Wickersham
36 Johnny Callison
37 Juan Marichal
38 Harmon Killebrew
39 Luis Aparicio
40 Dick Radatz
41 Bob Gibson
42 Dick Stuart SP
43 Tommy Davis
44 Tony Oliva
45 Wayne Causey SP
46 Max Alvis
47 Galen Cisco SP
48 Carl Yastrzemski
49 Hank Aaron
50 Brooks Robinson
51 Willie Mays SP
52 Billy Williams
53 Juan Pizarro
54 Leon Wagner
55 Orlando Cepeda
56 Vada Pinson
57 Ken Boyer
58 Ron Santo
59 Johnny Romano
60 Bill Skowron SP

Stadium. Stadium Club.

Stadium. 

I spent my Saturday afternoon watching the Durham Bulls and Norfolk Tides.  It had been a few weeks since I last attended a baseball game in-person.  The Bulls are in first place at the moment and had a chance to clinch their division this weekend, which is still possible.  The weather was a little warm, but still a nice day to take in a baseball game.  

I also got to check out Orioles catching prospect Adley Rutschman, who is the top overall prospect in all of baseball.  I saw him a few years back while he was playing at Oregon State and appeared for the USA Baseball team during the summer.  

A few pictures of Adley warming up before the game.  

Adley spent most of the time working with some Orioles coach who is wearing the black and orange wind breaker in this picture.  He needs a little bit of work on defense.  

He didn't get a hit during the game.  

The Bulls ended up losing the game 3-1.  Their lone run came on a home run by Alika Williams who was called up to the team from A Ball before the game.   Pretty good shot.  

2020 @RaysBaseball CBA pick Alika Williams clears the Blue Monster in his Triple-A debut for the @DurhamBulls. pic.twitter.com/IhmuXAN0YK

— Minor League Baseball (@MiLB) September 12, 2021

Stadium Club. 

Beyond going to the game, I also picked up three Stadium Club autographs earlier in the week.  They have been sitting on my desk for the past few days.  Really not that bad considering there a couple that have been there for multiple weeks.  These were easy to scan and post, so that's what won out today.  

First up is Ryan Jeffers.  

I saw Jeffers earlier this summer at a Tigers game.  He's from Raleigh and went to UNC-Wilmington for college.  I never saw him play in college, nor in the Minors.  I just know several local people who follow his career, seems like he might be a solid player.  The card was also really inexpensive.  

Next.  

I try to avoid Brewers cards, but Devin Williams is pretty awesome.  He's also from St. Louis.  It would be more fun to watch him if he was on the Cardinals, but they probably would have found a way to mess him up.  

Last card, which has a scratched up top-loader.  

Easily my favorite card out of the group.  I just wish it was a Cardinals card.  Topps has made a bunch of different Scott Rolen cards this year, but it feels like almost all of them are Phillies cards. 

Not Up To The Standards Of Jon Jay

We've reached the point during the calendar year where I have stumbled upon an acetate baseball card.  I am a long-time fan of acetate baseball cards, always have been.  Usually I find one of these cards earlier in the year, but without buying much current year product or even single cards, it is taken a little longer in 2021. 

Most of my acetate cards in the past were either parallel cards from the Topps base set or autographs from products like Strata or Clearly Authentic.  My first 2021 acetate card comes from the Clearly Authentic product in the form of a Scott Rolen autograph.  

The scratches are on the case and the autograph is not faded, the ink shows lighter on the acetate cards due to the translucence of the card.  Solid picture of Rolen and I like the design of the 1986 Topps cards.  Obviously, I wish this were a Cardinals cards.  Topps has made a ton of Rolen cards this year and they are seemingly almost all Phillies cards.  

Do Phillies fans even like him?

The back of the acetate card is one of the coolest parts of these cards for me.  

The blurred background behind Rolen does not look very good here.  The back of the acetate cards usually pop with a colored background and a reversed black and white image from the front.  This feels muted and drab.  Although, I always think the player signature showing through in reverse is neat.  

Like all acetate cards in my collection, I like to compare them to my 2014 Topps Acetate Jon Jay.  It's my gold standard acetate card.  It's not autographed, but the colors and photograph on the card are amazing.  

On the front of the card, I like the reds and greens on the accents of the Cardinals uniforms and the bleachers against the green wall and shrubs.  The look nice on the back of the card too.  

Look at the contrast with the black and white photo of Jon Jay and Matt Holliday on the colored background versus the card back above with Rolen.  It's not even close.  

I love the new Rolen autograph, but it falls short as an acetate card.  

Shades of Pat Burrell

Long ago, the Phillies selected Pat Burrell from the University of Miami with the first pick of the Major League Baseball draft.  All the baseball card companies rushed to throw his cards into packs.  I actually managed to pull a few Pat Burrell cards when they were popular and I also felt like I had somehow been ripped off.  It was not really the quality of the baseball cards that were disappointing, but Pat Burrell's signature made them hard to love.  

I still cringe to this date.  

It's hard to believe that Pat Burrell was popular at any point based on the quality of his autograph alone.  

Fast forward twenty years into the future.  

The San Francisco Giants selected NC State catcher Patrick Bailey in the first round of the Major League Draft. I was excited to see the former Wolfpack player play for the Giants and appear on a few baseball cards.  The baseball cards were actually slightly anticlimactic.  Bailey had been playing for USA Baseball for several years and had appear in all kinds of different Panini products.  

Not the best signature, but he was also in high school when this card was made.  Still, I was on the look-out for his cards right up to the moment when I saw his signature.  

It changed. 

Bailey has now been in professional baseball for over a year. Topps and Panini have cranked out a decent number of Patrick Bailey cards.  I am just getting around to adding a few of his autographed cards.   They weren't expensive or hard to find.  They just have an uncanny resemblance to the old Pat Burrell cards.  

This is a Bowman Chrome autograph of Bailey.  

I actually think Bailey has a worse signature than Burrell.  This card is actually the better of the two Patrick Bailey signatures in this post.  It's really hard to quantify, but this is a really bad signature.  This autograph feels like it's in the neighborhood of Geronimo Gil, who was an Orioles catcher in the early 2000s.  

Last Bailey card is from Bowman's Best.  

This one is even worse.  I feel so unsatisfied.  

I cannot wait to see Patrick Bailey in the Majors and I hope he has a long career.  I also hope he takes a little more time to sign his name in the future.  Bailey's autograph can only get better.  

I think.  

Procrastination Post

I am supposed to be creating a portfolio of everything that I did this year as a virtual and hybrid (50% in-person and 50% online simultaneously), but I am finding it hard to get started.  I have a large stack of cards on my desk at the moment since my blogging is down to almost nothing.  So many to choose from, but I decided to go with some random old 1960s, 70s, and 80s cards of former Durham Bulls players.  

When summer hits, I am going to work on putting together the Durham Bulls cards from the 1960s or 1970s set, similar to what I did last year with the 1975 Topps Mini set.  In the meantime, it's fun to just find some of these old cards for cheap.  This group of cards cost me more than $10 after shipping, so roughly a dollar per card.  Hard to pass up.  

Here's what I found, in sequential order by year.  

 

  

 

First up is a 1960 Topps of long-time Major League catcher Clint Courtney.  His claim to fame was starting several fights with the Yankees during the 1960s.   I believe he was a Yankees farmhand at some point and held a grudge against them.  Clint Courtney ended up on the Bulls at the end of his career.  He was the old guy on a Carolina League team.  

 

 

 

This is a 1974 Topps Rusty Staub card from the World Series Highlights subset.  The Mets did not win, but Rusty hit .429 during the 7 game series against the Oakland A's.  Always good to find a Rusty Staub card.   Easily one of my favorite Durham Bulls players from the early 1960s.  

 

 

Next up is a 1976 Topps Ken Singleton.  This set has really grown on me over the years.  I have already found a few of the other Durham Bulls players in this set, plus I have a bunch of the Cardinals too.  I have never put together a full 1970s baseball card set as a project on here.   This would be fun.  Great looking Singleton card with the cartoon Oriole bird uniform.  

  

 

 

Another 1976 Topps card, only this is from the Traded set, which is famous for the Oscar Gamble card.  That airbrushed Tigers logo is terrible, but I still like the card.  This near the end of Rusty's career as an everyday player, also his last year making an All-Star team.  

 

 

 

 

 

Last Rusty Staub of the post.  He was everywhere at the end of his career, including the Rangers for the 1980 season.  He ended up going back to the Mets as a free agent after this year where he played out his career as a bench player.  I remember getting a few of his cards as a kid.  He was the token old guy on the team.  

The last two cards are from the same set.  

 

 

 

 

 These are both from the 1981 Topps Scratch-Off set.  I have one or two of these hanging around somewhere, but not many.  There have been a few other bloggers who have posted some of these cards over the last few months.  Seemed like a fun pair of cards to add to the collection.  

 

Exactly Zero Packs.

Whatever day Topps released their Series 1 cards, I ran by Target before work at 7 A.M. when the store opened.  There were no baseball cards.  I went back later in the afternoon.  There were a few display boxes, but the cards were all gone.  I have been to Target since, but I have spent zero minutes looking for baseball cards while I was in the store.  

I am feeling completely done with packs.  

I opened my first pack of cards in 1983 when I was in 1st Grade.  I have been collecting for 38 years and feel like I have better things to do in life than to chase down packs of cards at retail stores. A wife, two kids, a Betta fish, and a teaching job for starters. While we are here, I am definitely not buying any from the people who are cleaning out Target and Wally World, marking the packs of cards, and reselling them online.  

I am going to buy zero packs of cards this year.  

There are still some nice looking 2021 Topps cards that are worth owning, so during the three weeks since my last blog post I managed to track down a few.  All the players have some sort of connection to the Cardinals or Durham Bulls.  

Non-autographs are up first.  

I like that there are still Blake Snell cards in a Rays uniform.  He does not have any autographs in Series 1, but he has plenty of other cards in there.  Probably work on adding those in the coming weeks.  Not sure how I will feel about his Padres cards.  I will cross that bridge when they start rolling out.  

Next up is Dylan Carlson.  I am still not sure how good of a player he is going to be, but he's at least going to be a starter for the Cardinals this season.  People were crazy about his cards while he was in the Minors.  Settled down a bit last year, but seems like they are picking up in popularity again.  

Patino seems like a good bet for the Durham Bulls this year.  He was part of the Blake Snell trade with the Padres.  Maybe he will start in the Majors, but that would be surprising given the Rays can probably save money in the long run by keeping him in the Minors for a short time.  

I like his signature too, which brings me to my final card.  

Why isn't this a Cardinals card?  

I still like it.  

Until next time.  

A Giant Project: Update #3

I worked hard on my 1964 Topps Giants set during the past two weeks.  I am posting five new cards tonight, which includes three Hall of Famers and a great of the era.  Really happy with how well this project is going.  

Here are the new cards, saving the better cards for later in the post.  

I did not know much about Max Alvis outside of seeing the occasional card of him in common boxes at card shows.  First, he went to the University of Texas and was a two sport star at the school with the football and baseball teams.  More impressive was the fact that he played both fullback and linebacker on the football team.  A two-way player and he started at both positions.  Alvis choose to play baseball.  He was a good young player with the Indians, but ended up getting spinal meningitis during the 1964 season.  

He stuck around for a few more seasons, but was never the same player.  Alvis made the 1967 American League All-Star team.  He was not having a particularly good season, but the Indians traded Rocky Colavito and Alvis was the most popular player remaining on the team.  

Next.  

Boyer is not a Hall of Famer, but is definitely a great from the 1960s.  Boyer probably has a much better case than most people would think.  Boyer's uniform number, 14, is the retired by the Cardinals.  The only non-Hall of Famer with a retired number with the Cardinals.  Boyer was the National League MVP in 1964 and helped the Cardinals get to the World Series against the Yankees.  Boyer hit a Game 4 Grand Slam, which was the turning point in the Series, and added another in Game 7 that put the game out of reach.  

I am not sure where Topps got the 10 number from on the back of the card.  Boyer appeared in seven All-Star games at this point in his career.  I guess they could be including Minor League All-Star games too, although Boyer was not in the Minors very long.  He rose quickly and also spent time with the Army during the Korean War.  

This is the part of the post that I am most excited about.  There are a lot of Hall Famers on the 1964 Topps Giants checklist and I have quite a few of them left to find.  Some are going to be harder than others.   Bunning was an easy Hall of Famer to find and not very expensive.  The right corner, near his forearm, has a slight scratch, but it's only on the surface.  

I like the back of Bunning's card.  Some of the newspaper headlines on the back of the cards feel like a bit of a stretch.  Max Alvis has a fancy headline about leading a last place team in home runs and then meanders into him playing in the Pacific Coast League.  Bunning has a perfect game on the back of his card.  If I recall the details correctly, the perfect game was thrown on Father's Day and Jim Bunning had a Philip Rivers amount of children.  

They also mention the fact that Bunning threw a no-hitter for the Tigers.  Solid work here pairing an accomplishment with another good accomplishment.  Nice that Topps stayed on topic here.  Sometimes they drift.....

Another Hall of Famer, a little bit better than Jim Bunning.  Just my opinion.  This is a nice portrait style photo on the front of the card, but I really like the back of Marichal's card.  

The super-high leg kick was Marichal's claim to fame while he was playing.   The Topps Giants cards do not have action photographs on the fronts of the cards.  They really missed out here.  If I ran a card company in the 1960s, every Juan Marichal card would have a picture of his leg kick.  I also like that Topps gives him a headline for his no-hitter against the Astros in 1963, but it goes downhill after the picture and headline.  

Remember at the bottom of Jim Bunning when I mentioned drifting card backs?  

I am a little puzzled why they spent half of the back talking about where he played in the Minor Leagues. It's Juan Marichal.  Won a lot of games, struck out a lot of batters, crazy leg kick?   Do we need to know about how he pitched in Tacoma or the Eastern League?  Could we have squeezed another sentence out of 25 wins or 248 strikeouts? Talk about the leg kick.    

Last card of the post.  

This is a big one off the checklist.

I will let the card do the talking.  

A little wear along the left edge on the front of the card, but otherwise this is in really good shape.  Not nearly as painful as I had imagined it was going to be.  

Updated checklist.  19 out of the 60 cards.  

1 Gary Peters
2 Ken Johnson
3 Sandy Koufax SP
4 Bob Bailey
5 Milt Pappas
6 Ron Hunt
7 Whitey Ford
8 Roy McMillan
9 Rocky Colavito
10 Jim Bunning
11 Roberto Clemente
12 Al Kaline
13 Nellie Fox
14 Tony Gonzalez
15 Jim Gentile
16 Dean Chance
17 Dick Ellsworth
18 Jim Fregosi
19 Dick Groat
20 Chuck Hinton
21 Elston Howard
22 Dick Farrell
23 Albie Pearson
24 Frank Howard
25 Mickey Mantle
26 Joe Torre
27 Ed Brinkman
28 Bob Friend SP
29 Frank Robinson
30 Bill Freehan
31 Warren Spahn
32 Camilo Pascual
33 Pete Ward
34 Jim Maloney
35 Dave Wickersham
36 Johnny Callison
37 Juan Marichal
38 Harmon Killebrew
39 Luis Aparicio
40 Dick Radatz
41 Bob Gibson
42 Dick Stuart SP
43 Tommy Davis
44 Tony Oliva
45 Wayne Causey SP
46 Max Alvis
47 Galen Cisco SP
48 Carl Yastrzemski
49 Hank Aaron
50 Brooks Robinson
51 Willie Mays SP
52 Billy Williams
53 Juan Pizarro
54 Leon Wagner
55 Orlando Cepeda
56 Vada Pinson
57 Ken Boyer
58 Ron Santo
59 Johnny Romano
60 Bill Skowron SP