The Inconvenience of Red Shoe Laces

I am twenty-plus years into teaching and have ruined a few too many dress shirts and pants over the years to wear much of anything beyond moderately priced pants from The Gap, dry-fit polo shirts and quarter-zips, and a wide array of colored sneakers that typically match the polo shirts. I would guesstimate that 90% of the male teachers I know dress roughly the same.  

My school is doing an anti-bullying theme week at the moment. Monday was sports day. I wore an NC State shirt. The offensive line from the NC State football team stopped and read books and talked about college with my fifth graders.This morning, I woke up and put on a red polo shirt and a blue Cardinals hat to fit today's theme. To top off my outfit, I wore my red Nike Air Max sneakers.  

Unfortunately, as I was tying my shoe lace, one of them was broken. Really not that big of a deal, because I live two minutes from a Walgreens. So, at 6:30, I rolled into the store to find that they sold white and black shoelaces, but not red. 

Where else can you buy red shoelaces at 6:30 in the morning?  

Wally World?  

I went home, grabbed a pair of blue Adidas Superstars as a back-up plan and set off for Wally World. The Apex, North Carolina Wal-Mart has more than twenty cashier stations, but only four self-checkout stations were open this morning. I checked the shoe section and could not find red shoelaces. A token employee who appeared to be running the entire front-end of the store solo suggested I check the random junk they stock in each check-out aisle.  

No red shoelaces, but they did have one box of Allen & Ginter cards left next to their self-checkouts.  

I bought it, went out to my car, and put on my blue Adidas shoes.  

After getting my room set-up and attending a short meeting, I opened my packs of Allen & Ginter. It's been a minute since I pulled something good out of a pack of retail cards, but I think this qualifies as a quality find......

I ordered some new red shoelaces off of Amazon.  

I Love The 1990s Cardinals Part 71- Luis Alicea

Dubbed "Little Louie" by Cardinals announcer Mike Shannon, Luis Alicea started his career as a pretty highly touted prospect.  I am not sure I realized this until after I moved to North Carolina, and was bequeathed an oddball card of his from college, but Luis Alicea was a really good player in college. 

What is this card? 

It may, or may not be official, but Luis Alicea is in the Hall of Fame at Florida State.  He was an All-American, helped get the Noles to the College World Series, and was a number one draft pick of the Cardinals.

I did know he was a number one draft pick, just did not remember the Florida State part.  The card looks really shady.  I am voting not official.  Although......

found this one on Ebay.  Burt Reynolds looks 12. 

Moving on to the Cardinals cards. 

Luis had two different stints on the Cardinals during the 1990s.  He was up on the Cardinals during the 1988 season for a stint, and was up for good by the middle of 1991.  Luis might have been a light hitting second baseman on a second half of the league team, but he ended up with a decent number of quality cards over the years.  The Cardinals traded him to the Red Sox in 1995, but he was back on the Cardinals in 1996. 

A few early ones....

This 1992 Score is not the best action shot, but you get a good feel for Busch II in the early 1990s.  Blue walls, giant logos on the walls, and astroturf.  The card is a microcosm of the Cardinals 1960s era cookie cutter concrete bowl.  

I have no idea what is happening on his 1993 Topps card.  Is he flipping the ball back to Ozzie?  I like that the picture was taken in Candlestick, which had those clear walls for a long time in front of the football seats.  I also like the flip down sunglasses. 

I like the 1993 Fleer card because of the uniform.  The Cardinals ditched the polyester pullovers for the button up jerseys in the early 1990s.  Such a better look. 

Last card from 1993.....

Incredible photo, or incredible photoshopping?  If the ball is photoshopped onto the end of the bat, then Upper Deck's 1993 photoshopping technology is better than Topps in 2019.  Also, always a plus if a baseball card's picture is taken in Wrigley Field.  

Bet this was an opposite field single over Rey Sanchez's glove. 

Final two Cardinals cards.  Both good fielding action shots of Luis. 

Pretty cool action shot of Luis jumping over a runner.  It's not Ozzie Smith.....

but it also looks like that might be Tom Candiotti running the bases.  

Last Cardinals card.  

Another quality action shot.  More astroturf, more blue walls, and not many giant logos in this one.  Alex Cole is sliding in for the Rockies, another former Cardinals farmhand.  He was from the 1980s, otherwise he might get a post. 

So, where are the stats, or cool stories about Luis?  The guy played second base for a long time, he did not really hit that well, and was a decent fielder.  He played all the way until 2002....

when he played for the Royals.

My lone Luis Alicea story.  Luis hit five home runs in 1996.  Three of them in a week.  I saw the third one, which was hit off of Todd Jones in the ninth inning to tie the game.  Pagnozzi hit a walk off in the tenth.  It's in small print, or just click here.

Set Project Update Take #2: 1983 Kelloggs

Two more weeks to finish off this set.  I know my last update was just a few days ago, but I am actually putting together a set in a timely fashion.  It has rarely happened in this space.  The cards are not very hard to find, nor are they very expensive.  When I made my post at the end of last week I was still roughly 40 cards short from completing the set.  I had already worked out two trades and have a COMC order coming through in the next day which will drastically cut down on the 40 cards needed.

First up.

Ran into a trading partner, who is a huge Angels fan, who sent me three Angels cards that were on my list.  Return package will be along shortly, but I am always happy when other collectors are generous with help on projects.  One of the great things about collecting baseball cards.

I picked up seven other cards from my checklist from another trade.  I got a few of the Kelloggs cards that I needed and they got a little bit of help with an older Topps Heritage set.

I was actually surprised when I started out on this project that I did not already have the Neil Allen and Quisenberry cards.  Both players were Cardinals at one point during their careers, and on most of these 1980s sets that I have started to work on, those are the cards that I usually already have in my collection.  Plus, Neil Allen coached with the Durham Bulls for a long time.  

Updated Checklist:

2 Rollie Fingers 

4 George Brett 

6 Pete Rose 

7 Fernando Valenzuela 

8 Rickey Henderson 

9 Carl Yastrzemski 

10 Rich Gossage 

11 Eddie Murray 

13 Jim Rice 

14 Robin Yount 

15 Dave Winfield  

17 Garry Templeton 

19 Pete Vuckovich 

26 Andre Thornton 

27 Leon Durham 

31 Nolan Ryan 

33 Len Barker 

35 Jack Morris 

39 Jim Palmer 

40 Lance Parrish 

41 Floyd Bannister 

42 Larry Gura 

44 Toby Harrah 

45 Steve Carlton 

46 Greg Minton 

52 Dale Murphy 

53 Kent Hrbek 

54 Bob Horner 

55 Gary Carter 

56 Carlton Fisk 

57 Dave Concepcion 

58 Mike Schmidt 

59 Bill Buckner 

Set Project: 1983-1990 Topps Glossy Send Ins

If you opened packs of Topps cards during the 1980s, you probably remember the contest cards that used to pop up every couple of packs.  They usually involved winning a trip to the All-Star game or Spring Training.  I think in the later 1980s Topps also offered collectors the chance to buy sweatshirts, or a chance to subscribe to Topps Magazine.  Cannot believe I passed up those opportunities.

I actually did save up my contest cards though, and at some point towards the end of each summer, I could usually convince my parents to get a money order to send in for a sweet stack of 10 glossy cards.  I actually think based on the number of cards in my collection, plus the fact that I probably split the cards my brother, I likely got a $4 dollar money order.

In retrospect as an adult, the fact that the money order probably cost $1 to buy, I am surprised my parents just didn't take me and my brother to the card shop to just buy the set of glossy send in cards. 

Four to six weeks later in the mail, we would have a stack of the glossy send-in cards.  They were really the same card design every year with a different colored border.  Still pretty exciting for the time when there were not many choices of sets to collect in the baseball card world.   

I have a few from 1983, but there are too many that are in too good of condition for them to be something that I actually got that year.  Plus, that was the first year I collected.  The first year where I actually have a somewhat significant amount of the glossy mail-ins cards is from 1984.  

Again, same design every year.  

I know that some of these cards that are in my collection have been with me since 1984.  They have rounded corners, or for some reason, the fronts of the cards are different colors than the backs of the cards.  A little weird considering my house was definitely smoke free.....

and I kept my cards in boxes and pages.  You can see the edges of this Quisenberry cards are a little bit yellowed, as is the Carew card above, especially when compared to the back of the card.  I'm actually guessing that I probably put these cards in sheets at some point.  I recall having a notebook for my cards later elementary school years that were filled with the best cards in my collection.  

In other words, my glossy mail-ins and Vince Coleman rookie cards.  

Other copies of these cards in my collection have clean white borders and no rounded edges.  Likely because I bought them as an older collector.  

The Raines card above is not well centered, but is a much better card than the Quisenberry.  There used to be a card shop in south St. Louis County off of Telegraph Road where I actually think I ended up with a lot of these cards.  The guy who owned the store had a lot of sets like these and the cards usually ended up in dime and quarter boxes.

Surprisingly, I have large amounts of most of these sets, but none of them are complete.  Of the sets that I have, I am actually missing a lot of the Cardinals out of the them.  Maybe they were not in the dime and quarter boxes at that store, or some other reason that I cannot think of at the moment.  

I am not going to post the checklists of all the Glossy Mail-In sets, but I will break down each of them and give a percentage that I am starting out at.  Some are going to be easy to finish, perhaps a COMC order, others I am going to spend a little time digging around for the cards.  I have a few road trips coming up in the next few months, plus there are a few card shows around here.   

1983 - 31 out of 40 78%  

1984 - 28 out of 40 70% 

There are several 1984 cards that I will likely replace since my only copies were clearly from my actually collection in 1984.  The seven year old me was not good with corners.  Really lower than 70%

1985- 35 out of 40 88%

These are all pristine, not sure I actually ordered any as a kid in 1985.  Maybe my brother ended up with all of them.  

1986- 42 out of 60 70%

1987-  22 out of 60 37%

1988- 42 out of 60 70%

1989- 58 out of 60 97%

1990- 55 out of 60 92% 

The percentages are all pretty high starting points, outside of the 1987 set, but I still need almost 100 cards, roughly, when taking into account all the different years that I am trying to assemble here.  I am going to say that this is going to take until February.  I will be shocked if I finish it sooner.  

I am going to tack a few other set projects onto this before the end of the year.  

Set Project Update: 1983 Kellogg's

My original post for this set can be found here.

To summarize, I am trying to put together a few more sets that would be in the "oddball" category that are from the 1980s and 1990s.  Things like the Kellogg's and Hostess cards, maybe some of the Denny's sets too.  I started out with 9 cards, which were mainly Cardinals cards, a few players with connections to the Cardinals, like Jack Clark, and a few that are somehow connected to the Durham Bulls.

My goal is to finish in two months, it has now been over a month and I have crossed off another eight cards from my checklist.  That brings me up to 18 out of the 60 cards, or 30% of the set.  I am going to have to pick up the pace a little bit in the next month in order to finish this project in my allotted amount of time.

I am going to break these down into two groups.  The first five came from a Sports Lots seller.

I had a couple of more recent sets that had some holes in them, nothing worth posting as a project, but I always have trouble getting combined shipping on that site.  It's a cheap way to get single cards, but if you have to pay shipping to each person you buy a single card from, it makes it expensive.  

In this case, I found the four or five cards that I needed for my recent set, and also ran across these five Kellogg's card for this set project.  Love combined shipping.  

Next three.

I got these in a trade with someone off of a Facebook group.  They were not originally part of the trade, but I have been asking, while working on other trades, if people have any 1983 Kellogg's cards.   I ran into one collector.  

While I feel behind on this project, 70% more to fill the set, I actually have a bunch coming in off of COMC that I got by making offers, and a few more that I have pulled in from Ebay and another Facebook trade.  On paper, it looks possible, but it's going to be close.  

More Kellogg's early next week.   The updated checklist....

1 Rod Carew 

2 Rollie Fingers 

3 Reggie Jackson 

4 George Brett 

6 Pete Rose 

7 Fernando Valenzuela 

8 Rickey Henderson 

9 Carl Yastrzemski 

10 Rich Gossage 

11 Eddie Murray 

13 Jim Rice 

14 Robin Yount 

15 Dave Winfield 

16 Harold Baines 

17 Garry Templeton 

19 Pete Vuckovich 

23 Willie Wilson 

24 Johnny Ray 

26 Andre Thornton 

27 Leon Durham 

31 Nolan Ryan 

32 Dan Quisenberry 

33 Len Barker 

34 Neil Allen 

35 Jack Morris 

39 Jim Palmer 

40 Lance Parrish 

41 Floyd Bannister 

42 Larry Gura 

43 Britt Burns 

44 Toby Harrah 

45 Steve Carlton 

46 Greg Minton 

47 Gorman Thomas 

51 Fred Lynn 

52 Dale Murphy 

53 Kent Hrbek 

54 Bob Horner 

55 Gary Carter 

56 Carlton Fisk 

57 Dave Concepcion 

58 Mike Schmidt 

59 Bill Buckner 

Quick By My Standards

I have let some of the different set projects that I have posted in this space linger for a long time, either because I did not complete them quickly, or I just never updated the project to show my progress.  Back at the beginning of February, I made a post about putting together a set of the 1983 style cards in that are included in packs of this year's Topps base set.

I started with 8 of the 100 cards, last check in I was down to just 27 cards.  Last week that number was all the way down to 2 cards.  A few days ago in the mail I got a bubble mailer with......

the two cards that I was still missing.  I am crossing this card set off after just two and a half months.  Really pretty good considering that I did not open a box, or significant number of packs.  Almost all 92 cards that I was missing when I started were picked up in trades, or from buying small lots, no singles, off of EBay.

Yes, the set is finished, but I am also going to leave the door open to find more of these cards when Topps releases Series 2 at some point this summer.  There were some things that I really enjoyed about this project.  First, the 1983 sets were the first cards in my collection.  I started opening packs of cards at some point that summer.  I have always loved these cards.  Second, there were plenty of players that I enjoy collecting on the checklist.....

a few Cardinals, a few former Durham Bulls, and also a few players I saw while they were in college.  The Carlos Martinez card is probably my favorite Cardinal.   Also plenty of older players in the set too, which is my lone, small criticism of this set.  It would be nice if the cards of the retired players included on the checklist had a connection to the actual year of the card design.  Might have said this in another post.  My three favorite older cards in the set.....

probably have to be the three shown above since they were actually around and playing in 1983. 

All three were younger players at this point, but they still were pretty impactful that season.  Especially Ripken, considering the final play of the 1983 season was a soft line out to him, which ended the World Series.  

 There were plenty of good players who were active during the 1983 season, eager to see what Topps comes up with in the next batch of cards in Series 2.  I'd be excited to see a Tony Gwynn, Wade Boggs, or a Willie McGee.  Doubtful I will see a McGee, but a Gwynn in some brown, orange, and yellow Padres digs would be sweet.  

Farewell Beltran

Carlos Beltran was a great player for many teams.  While he was not on the Cardinals, most of his career, he was a player who made me nervous as a fan.  While he was on the Cardinals, I knew that he was clutch and would come up with some sort of big play.  

Beltran at his scariest?  Non-Cardinal version has to be the 2004 playoffs.  

The Astros lost to the Cardinals in 7 games, but Beltran hit .417 with 4 home runs, 5 RBIs, and scored 12 runs.  After the 2006 National League Championship Series, Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa described the pressure the Cardinals faced in trying to record the final out of that playoff series with Beltran up to bat with the bases loaded:

"Carlos Beltran has hit twenty home runs against us in his last ten at bats" 

It's an exaggeration, but as a Cardinals fan it always felt like he murdered our pitching staff on a regular basis.  I always felt fortunate that the Cardinals got past Beltran in both 2004 and 2006.  

Beltran at his scariest as a Cardinal has to be the 2013 playoffs.  In the first game of the National League Championship Series he threw a runner out at home in the tenth inning to keep the game tied....

  

and then walked off the Dodgers with a single in the thirteenth.  

On to baseball cards.  

I always felt like I missed out on a chunk of Beltran's baseball cards because he came up with the Royals.  He was in the 1995 Topps Traded set at a time when everyone loved them.  I am not sure how much his rookie card, or is that Juan LeBron.....  

actually cost at its height of 1990s popularity.  I didn't really care about this card until he ended up on the Cardinals in 2012.  It didn't cost me very much at that point.  Well, I got the Juan LeBron card, actually with Carlos Beltran, too....

The best card of Beltran that I actually pulled out of a pack was an autograph out of the 2005 Topps set.  There used to be a baseball card shop in Durham near my work when I first moved to North Carolina.  It was not a great card store in terms of sports cards.  Much more of a Magic and Pokemon place.  You ever seen Duke students playing card games?  Not pretty.  The shop folded and I bought the box on clearance.  

I sort of hate 2005 Topps, really busy design, but I love this card.   

I am probably lucky that I did not do online trading at that point in my life because I probably would have cashed this in for something really nice.  I am actually a little surprised that this didn't end up on Ebay.  Perhaps it was hiding somewhere, or I forgot about it.  The important thing is that it is still here in my house.  

Once Beltran ended up on the Cardinals, I tried my best to find some really nice Beltran cards.  The downside to Beltran's time with in St. Louis was that he never had an autographed card in a Cardinals uniform.  Nice cards meant settling for relics.  Not my favorite, but when your options are limited......

First up.  

I got this Topps Tribute card.  The jersey swatch is tall and slightly bigger than the average relic card.  I actually like the picture on the card, the high gloss finish, all limited to just 99 copies.  I actually would have been find if Topps had not placed a non-specific piece of jersey on this piece of cardboard.  

I also got this card.  

It's a jumbo piece of bat.  Jumbo.  The card is limited to 25 copies.  I am not sure the Beltran love is coming through on this card.  It's nice.  Just a little sad about not having a Beltran Cardinals autograph.  

I have moved on.   

After leaving the Cardinals I kept up with Beltran cards.  I have Yankees cards.  I have Rangers cards.  I have Astros cards.  A lot of my effort recently has been spent working on looping back to Beltran's Royals years to find some of his early gems.  There are some really good ones out there floating around.  This is my favorite post-Cardinals Beltran card that I have ended up with.....

Beltran seems like the player who might stick around and stay relevant in the baseball card world, especially if he gains traction towards being in the Hall of Fame.  He belongs.  I will miss seeing Beltran play baseball, but I still am going to find some more of his cards along the way.  Maybe there will be a Cardinals autograph at some point.  

Things I Am Sorting Part 7- 2016 Heritage Minors

My schedule has been completely off today.  I intended to write this post this morning when I woke up, then it was suddenly lunch time, and then I was stuck on the awesomeness of the NC State-Notre Dame game.  The game was in Raleigh in the rain and wind from Hurricane Matthew.

There are all sorts of funny pics, gifs, and videos floating around the internet if you want to see plays slipping and sliding around in a hurricane.  The important thing that the Wolfpack won the game....

On to baseball cards.

I spent a little bit of time earlier in the week hanging out at the Sports Card Co-Op in Raleigh.  I had done a short write up a few days back about a pair of single cards I picked up at the store, the hit cards I pulled out of Heritage High Numbers and Heritage Minors, but promised a little bit more in depth run down on both products.  I am going to start with Heritage Minors since it is always one of my favorites every year.

A quick review of my hits from the box.....

I landed two autographs in the box; promising Astros prospect Francis Martes and Royals pitcher Nolan Watson.  Martes is a solid prospect and is in the Top 100 Prospects of several major publications.  Watson is a fringe prospect at this point who has not missed many bats in the lower levels of the Minors.  

I also landed a Hunter Harvey relic card.  It's a relic card, not sure what else I can say here.  

Heritage Minors always has the same design as the Topps Heritage set which is a copy of the 1967 Topps set.  There are several products every year that have Minor League players, but the Heritage and Pro Debut are the only two with pictures of the players in their Minor League uniforms.  Here is a look at two of the base cards, I picked out Durham Bulls players....

There are also parallels for the base sets.  In previous years there have been all sorts of different colored parallel cards, but this year I have only seen the blue.  Out of my box of Heritage Minors I pulled an Austin Gomber parallel card.  Pretty good one to land.  The card is numbered out of 99.

My other two highlights out of the product are the League Leader cards.....

You don't see many Minor League sets with League Leader cards.  It's cool to see that Topps included players from across the different levels of the Minors and not just one league or one level.  While some of the short seasoned leagues aren't really well represented on the counting number stats, there are all sorts of players from all sorts of leagues on these cards.

and my final highlight is the remakes of the 1967 Topps Stickers which feature both players and mascots.  

There is a Wool E Bull card in this set which I did not manage to pull, so that will be high on my list of cards to find in the very near future.  I pulled five of these out of my box and am seriously considering working on this set this fall.  Should be fun.  

Overall, I love Heritage Minors.  Always a really cool product if you are a Minor League baseball fan and it's not exactly expensive either.  Collectors shell out all kinds of money on Bowman, these are the same players, but I think the set is a little bit more fun to assemble.