A Venerable Old Card (Set) Part 13

Last week in this space I showed off a cool old oddball Ozzie Smith card that showed up in a box from a college friend.  Still so many more cards to show off, so this week I am going to focus a little bit on the Cubs.  Not just today, but all week.  In sorting out the box it is clear that a bunch of the cards in the box are old Cubs giveaways.  Some look pretty cool, others not so much.  I know that I am a Cardinals fan and you may not think of this as a place to read about cool Cubs cards, but let's get something straight here before we look at the cards.

It's hard as a Cardinals fan to collect Cubs cards.  I still have nice Cubs cards.  Further, the Cubs cards we are dealing with this week are from the 1980s.  What baseball loving kid in the 1980s did not spend a percentage of their summer break watching the Cubs games on WGN?  I did all time.  I can probably name most of their starters anytime after the mid 1980s through the mid 1990s.

A little background on tonight's card set....

This is the Thorn Apple Valley Cubs team set.  It was a stadium giveaway during the 1983 season.  While the 83 season was not a great one for the Cubs, the set features rookie cards of Ryno and Joe Carter.  There are also a lot of good veterans in this set, many of whom were contributors on the 1984 Cubs team, which was a really good team.

1980s Cubs also means there is music.  Enjoy the cards, commentary free.  

A Venerable Old Card Part 2

I was working a little bit with my early 1980s cards earlier this week and ran across a cool card I thought I would use for this week's Venerable Old Card Post.  This would fit into the Cardinals part of my collection, but the card was taken pre-Cardinals.  Here's this week's card....

It was one of the first cards that I ran into while I was flipping through my stack of 1981 Donruss cards, which I know make up a complete set, but they still aren't quite sorted out.  For whatever reason, I do not really associate manager cards with Donruss.  However, the first year I really got into the Donruss cards was 1988 with the blue plaid set.  Before then, I would get a pack or two a summer.  Of course, I have filled in the earlier Donruss sets in more recent years.  I wasn't even collecting yet in 1981.  

Few things I like about the LaRussa card:

• Is that a White Sox batting jersey from the early eighties?  

• Tony retired in 2011 and I am not sure that his hair style changed at all in 30 years of managing.  Just a little bit of grey.  

• Like almost every 1981 Donruss card the picture in this card was taken in Comiskey.  You can sort of make out the pinwheel fireworks things on the scoreboard. 

• LaRussa is in the 1981 Topps set as the White Sox manager, but the managers in that set were in a tiny box on the top of the team card.  Makes me want to give this card the unofficial title of being the first manager card of the Hall of Famer.