I am back from a great vacation and don't have a lot new to report. I have two days to get my lawn, which grew substantially while I was gone, mowed as I am leaving for a work conference on Wednesday. I'll be back home in time for the weekend, but will probably need mow again.
I was considering going to a card show in Plano, Texas (a northern suburb of Dallas and about a 3 hour drive) but I have a number of real life things pressing, so I think I may pass on that this month.
I may keep an eye out for the one 1956 Topps card and the nine 1972 cards I need to finish those sets, but that will be about it.
I did manage to win one Ebay auction while I was gone:
This is one of the four film positives used to produce the 1978 Topps Paul Blair card and is the second that I have acquired. The four positives are for the four colors used in printing (black, cyan, magenta, yellow.) The positive above is for yellow. The other in my collection, which I also won on Ebay two years ago is, I believe, magenta. I am not actually sure, since I can't figure out how to pull up the description on a two year old auction. But, I know it isn't black as it doesn't have the player name on it (which is black on the card.) Further, neither has the card border, which is a dark blue. This should eliminate cyan. The team name is in a dark tan color on the actual card. I can see where yellow and magenta (with a bit of black thrown in) might yield that color.
Anyways, I think it is pretty cool to own two of the film positives for a card of my favorite player on my favorite set from my youth.
What I am watching: Point of view videos for the new Steel Vengeance roller coaster at Cedar Point. It is insane! If you enjoy roller coasters, you need to go and ride it. I've posted both the official park POV video, which I find a bit sterile as the camera is mechanically fixed to the car, and an amateur version which appears to be recorded on a riders GoPro and gives a somewhat truer experience to the actually ride:
The godfather of baseball card blogging, Night Owl, threw down a challenge earlier this week: to name 10 albums that were significant to you and tie it to baseball cards. This is my effort. I've gone a little further and added videos of songs from the albums (with one exception) and tied the cards to the song. So, here we go:
1. Styx - Cornerstone
Why this album: This album changed my musical tastes. Prior to buying Cornerstone, I listened to the worst of 1970s pop music, like The Village People and KC and the Sunshine Band. The song Babe was what drew me in, but it was the rock power anthems on the record that converted me over to rock music.
Why this card: Well, I am nothing if unoriginal. Babe is the song that introduced me to Styx. And what other baseball player to show? Sure, there were many ballplayers with the nickname babe. 32, according to Baseball Reference. But, none are greater than Babe Ruth
2. AC/DC - Back in Black
Why this album: This album, bought at the KMart in Chili Center, NY really led me into the hard rock world and away from the (sometimes forced) theatrics of Styx. A lot of Styx music sounds dated now. Back in Black, at 37 years old, still fits into the modern music landscape. Plus, I remember driving to Buffalo in a blizzard to see AC/DC as a college freshman.
Why this card: What Do You Do For Money, Honey? Don Money? Like I said, I don't pretend to orginality.
3. Sammy Hagar - Standing Hampton
Why this album: The first concert I ever attended was Sammy Hagar (with Aldo Nova opening) at the Rochester Auditorium Theater in my junior year in high school.
Why this card: Well, standing hampton is a NSFW slang. Look it up and you'll understand.
4. Stevie Ray Vaughan - Texas Flood
Why this album: I remember hearing a cut from this album, SRV's debut, on the radio during my senior year in high school and being completely blown away by it. The cassette tape was pretty much on loop for me the summer between high school and college.
Why this card: Well it is Curt *Flood* and he was born in Houston, Texas.
5. R.E.M. - Reckoning
Why this album: I first heard this playing on the store sound system as I wandered about The Record Archive in Rochester during college. It blew me away and I bought it immediately. It was my entrée into alternative rock. The video is a bit of a stretch. I really spent some time thinking about this and never got anywhere. I finally googled "R.E.M. " and "baseball" and found out two members of the band formed a group called The Baseball Project and released two baseball themed albums. So, I went in that direction instead of beating my head on a wall trying to tie Harborcoat to baseball.
Why this card: Well, the song is called Harvey Haddix.
6. Metallica-S&M
Why this album: This brought me back to heavy metal after a long time away. I don't have an extensive metal library, but I do appreciate watching people that are really good at what they do. And Metallica is that.
Why this card: I defy anyone to come up with a different player. Enter Sandman played whenever Mariano Rivera came in from the bullpen at Yankee Stadium and Metallica played at his final game.
7. Pine Valley Cosmonauts - The Majesty of Bob Wills
Why this album: I came across this album in the music section of the late, lamented Borders Bookstore. They had headphones along the rows of CDs that would allow you to listen to selected albums. This album was one such selection. It introduced me to Western Swing music, an amalgam of country and jazz most popular in the 1930s and 1940s. It is still around, most notably by the Austin band Asleep at the Wheel. Bob Wills is in both the Rock and Roll and Country Music Halls of Fame.
Why this card: Well the song above is about the Alamo, which is in San Antonio. Cliff Johnson, a player on the Yankees teams of my youth is from San Antonio.
8. Social Distortion - Social Distortion
Why this album: I really like the SoCal punk sound here. And, when I found out that there was a fair amount of crossover between the SoCal punk scene and the classic country and Bakersfield sounds (typified most recently by Dwight Yoakam), I was hooked.
Why this card: Well, Casey Stengel wrote a book titled "Casey at the Bat: The Story of My Life in Baseball."
9. Slaid Cleaves - Broke Down
Why this album: I don't rightly recall if this was my introduction to Americana music, since that is a fairly broad label that encompasses a number of other genres, like folk and alt-country. I will say that, after hearing this song on a locally produced radio show, I did go right out and get the CD and it did contribute to a new direction in my music listening.
Why this card: Well, what else is the baseball equivalent of one good year other than the one year wonder. And Joe Charboneau falls into that category
10. Metamodern Sounds in Country Music by Sturgill Simpson
Why this album: Sturgill Simpson is the man. Along with Chris Stapleton and Jason Isbell, he is saving country music. Much to the chagrin of Nashville's Music Row. But screw them. They are peddling crappy pop and bro country. If you haven't seen his performance on Saturday Night Live recently, you should. Go here and here. While I expect that Beyonce's "Lemonade" will win, I'd love Simpson's "A Sailor's Guide to Earth" to win the Record of the Year Grammy.
Why this card: Okay, this is a stretch. I admit it. But, I do need to show some faint glimmer of originality. Turtles all the way down is a colloquial expression of the infinite regress problem in cosmology. It is also considered an example of the Anavastha concept in Indian philosophy. So, here is a card of two Indian natives who joined the Pirates minor league organization in 2009 as part of the reality show, Million Dollar Arm. Dinesh Patel only hung on for two years, both in Rookie ball. Rinku Singh made it 4 years, getting as high as A ball. He resigned with the Pirates in November 2015 and managed to pitch one scoreless inning in rookie ball during the 2016 season.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I focus my two player collections on trading cards which actual feature an image of the player, with the possible extension into postcards. That does exclude a fair amount of memorabilia. I've often seen Johnny Antonelli Armour coins (in 6 different colors!) come up for auction, but I just pass them on by. Pins, balls, and gloves are similarly ignored.
However, something came available on EBay recently that I had to bid on, despite it falling outside the defined scope of my player collections. But first, let me dispense with a recent acquisition for my Paul Blair player collection:
A 1972 Milton Bradley card. I never picked this up earlier because I wasn't sure it existed. I have had the 1969 Milton Bradley Paul Blair for a while, but never saw anything that was listed as 1972. It isn't helped by the fact that they are identical from the front. The back, however, is a different story:
Because I am a crappy scanner, I've got '72 on the left and '69 on the right. The lousy cropping just adds to my shame. This is the 112th unique card in my Paul Blair PC.
Now on to the unique item:
I know it looks a lot like a 1978 Topps trading card. A printing error, perhaps? Nope. This is a film positive for the 1978 Topps trading card that was auctioned off recently by the official Topps Vault Ebay account. I snagged it for $13 delivered. As I understand it, film positives are used during the creation of the printing plates that are used to print the actual cards. There are four different color plates (and thus film positives): black, cyan, magenta, and yellow. Needless to say, I am pretty psyched about getting this little piece of history.
With that, I think I have caught up with my recent hobby activity. With vacation coming up and the holidays fast on it's heals, it may be quiet for a while. There will be OKC shows in October and December. I can't guarantee I won't go, but if I do, it will be with a fairly limited budget.
What I am listening to: Outlaw You by Shooter Jennings
As I mentioned previously, I had traded with Cory over at Rectangle Men. I sent off my 1976 Topps duplicates and he sent back a large stack of cards from 2003 Topps All-Time Fan Favorites, a set that I have wanted to put together. Indeed, he sent me around 50 cards, a third of the set. So, I am pretty far along with one bubble mailer.
I am not sure when I will get to working on the rest of the set. I recently bought a 5 acre lot next to me and I have to do a large amount of work to make it safe to use a pasture. So, a fair amount of dinero will be going towards that for most of the rest of the year. What little I have left for cards will probably go towards the vintage sets I have in process. Hopefully, this coming winter, I will loop back around and work on this.
In any case, I was trying to decide which cards to show (cuz that is what we do) and I decided to show those where I have the actual vintage card it is based on and determine which I liked better. But first there is something I want to get out of the way.
I understand that they don't want to issue an exact duplicate card. Thus, different pictures on the front. But, I am not down with the way they chose to put career statistics on the back. Specifically, I don't like that they chose to only show the players statistics with one team. I would have preferred full career statistics. Maybe it is just me, but I prefer to study the great players entire career. But, that minor quibble aside, let's get to the cards!
In this case, I prefer the actual vintage card, the 1974 Hank Aaron Home Run King card, although it wasn't a fair comparison. The 1974 version was probably the most valuable card I owned as a child collector and, thus, is still among my favorite cards of all time. Sorry, modern Hank.
Two posed fake batting pictures. Not a lot to diffferentiate them. I guess I prefer the fake swing picture of the 2003 version to the fake waiting for a pitch picture of the 1977 version.
Toss up. Ole Bert is looking pretty creepy in both pictures, although the 2003 Bert is 1-2% less creepy.
I prefer the 2003 Mickey Rivers as he is wearing the home pinstripes and the photo os taken at Yankee Stadium rather than at Spring Training.
Have to give the nod to 1976 Fred Lynn since it is an action shot.
2003 Craig Nettles wins versus 1976 although it was close. The action shot is better than a posed shot in the home uniform.
Is it just me or does 1978 Jack Clark look a little bit like Tim Lincecum? Anyways, 78 Clark gets the win here. Posed batting pictures are kinda cliche, whereas posed fielding are somewhat novel.
So, I hope no one has been waiting a week in anticipation for this post. It is pretty poor. Certainly, Cory's generosity deserves a better effort, but I am busier than a one armed paper hanger. Work has been crazy and spring has finally arrived in force here and the yard work has multiplied exponentially since last weekend. I am off to change the oil, filter, and blades on my lawnower.
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