Vida Blue

TIME Magazine Cover: Vida Blue

I was lucky enough to witness a great Major League Baseball pitching matchup in 1971, which had an unexpected, powerful resonance in my personal life.

Oakland Athletics pitcher Vida Blue in 1971

In 1972 Topps released 6 "Awards" cards. These cards had pictures of the trophies on them. I always thought that was kind of strange. Over the next few posts I will be putting pictures of the award winners on the cards. I added facsimile autographs to identify the players while trying to keep the original look of the cards. Vida Blue went 24-8 with 301 strikeouts and a 1.82 ERA in 1971. He was also the winning pitcher of the mid-season classic that summer. Although the A's fell to the…

Teams with Themes

SI Photo Blog — Oakland A’s owner Charles O. Finley (center) poses...

The Royals beat the Blue Jays 4-3 and win the AL title.

“Vida Blue”

Dodger Blue passion mixed in with an obsessive compulsive desire to scour the world for rare and interesting Dodgers and Baseball collectibles.

Topps put out 150 card sets of retired players in 2003-2004-2005. Players are pictured on card designs from their playing days but with different photos than were in the originals. Here are my favorites, alphabetically. 2004 #50 Nice Hank Aaron in a classic Milwaukee Braves uniform. This looks like it may be a "colorized" black & white shot. The cap, instead of being blue with a red brim, is all blue. Correct me if I'm wrong. 2004 #21 An intense Luis Aparicio. I'm partial to the later…