For about as long as I can remember, there has been a story of Babe Ruth calling his shot during Game 3 of the 1932 World Series.
We’ve all seen the questionable grainy black and white footage, game film that has been debated for years.
Some say Ruth was merely pointing to the Cubs bench after jawing with opposing players, while the legend has it that he actually called his shot — he predicted hitting a home run. (Wikipedia entry)
I believe reporters actually asked Ruth about this some 79 years ago, and even then the answer was not a simple yes or no. Ruth pussy footed around the giving something vague. And then in the video shown below we hear Ruth stating that he did indeed call his shot, a statement that even those in and around the game at the time were not completely sold on.
But I ask this: If Babe Ruth has called his shot during the World Series of 1932, don’t you think Goudey would have depicted Ruth doing such on one of his FOUR 1933 Goudey “rookie” cards?
The one shown above, from my personal collection, is the closest that any of his rookie cards gets to conveying this tale … and clearly it’s just a basic follow through pose.
Somewhere in the history of card collecting, a great myth arose: The harder the case, the better protection for your cards.
It’s a simplistic way to look at things. I mean in theory it sounds like it should work. A 1-inch thick lucite case should better protect you against common dropage than a card saver or top loader. And surely a plastic box would provide more protection than your mother’s shoe box, right?
But things are not always as they appear.
Thick screw down cases often put too much pressure on a card, causing the surface and corners to be damaged over the years. And plastic boxes mass generated for a novice collector surely are no way to protect your cardboard icons. They wind up being plastic card coffins.
The beauty, though, is that these coffins can sometimes turn out some nice treasures when they are excavated from the depths of the lowly thrift stores.
At first glance you probably see a bunch of crap. You’ve got a 1993 Score card on the left, a John Kruk 1994 Triple Play base card in the center, a few game cards that most of us don’t care.
But if that is all you see, then you lack vision.
The box has a $5 price tag, and there are roughly 700 cards in the box, so surely there has to be that much fun in here. Plus, the amount of game cards here make it worth while because … people actually do buy these things in bulk lots.
And so for $5, the coffin came with me and I became a tomb raider.
As it turned out, of the 700 cards in the box, there were FIVE HUNDRED MLB Showdown cards from years 2000-2003. Yeah, 500.
And then there were a few pretty neat 2003 Upper Deck Vintage cards. I was never a huge fan of this set — which is a total rip-off of the 1965 Topps design by the way — but I always found the retired stars in the set interesting. Yogi is a classic.
But that was not all. Here is where my location — the San Francisco Bay Area — paid off. There was 80 percent of a 2010 Topps Emerald Nuts San Francisco Giants stadium giveaway team set.
And amazingly the key card to this set was still here and not badly damaged.
That’s World Champion Catcher Buster Posey. Love it.
You can see additional Thrift Treasures posts HERE.
It’s been a long time since Bay Area football has been this good.
For about a decade, football fans in the San Francisco Bay Area have been subjected to sub-par football on both sides of the Bay in the San Francisco 49ers and the Oakland Raiders.
Raiders fans have been Raider fans. Every year calling their shot that they will return to the Super Bowl and each year they fall short of even making the playoffs. Good drama for sure, but still horrible ball.
And the Niners? People hated Alex Smith. They wanted him gone. He was no Joe Montana. Or Steve Young. Or even Jeff Garcia. Hell, he was barely one rung above Jim Drukenmiller.
But then things changed.
The Niners hired Jim Harbaugh. They began to win. Alex Smith stopped throwing dumb passes for pick sixes. And the defense started knocking fools out.
And suddenly everyone is wearing the red and gold with pride again.
It’s interesting to see what winning can do to a fanbase, no matter how serious the fans are.
But even though it has been 10 years since San Francisco has even made it to the playoffs, this feeling is not something I have forgotten.
THIS is how things were when I was growing up here.
I’ll say this right now: I don’t call myself a Niner fan. I don’t pretend to be. I don’t go around puffing my chest out saying “I have been there from the beginning.”
When time came to choose favorite teams when I was 10 or so, I chose the Buffalo Bills. I loved Bruce Smith, Jim Kelly and Thurman Thomas. I loved their status as perennial Super Bowl contenders who always got their asses handed to them when it was crunch time.
Hell, I even had a bitch-ass physical education teacher — a huge Cowboys fans — make fun of me in front of the entire locker room while I wore a Bills hat a day after the Cowboys defeated the Bills in Super Bowl XXVII. He proceeded to say “Bills, huh? You know what “BILLS” stands for right? Boy ILove Losing Super Bowls. HAHAHA”
Dude, I was 12.
Jerk.
Anyway. While I claimed the Bills as my team, I distinctly remember the atmosphere here when the Niners were king. Kids, parents and even teachers were into football. In elementary school we actually spent an entire class making posters in favor of the Niners as they prepared to play the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl XXIII. Of course they won.
And years before that, I remember having my first ever Big Mac with a Coke. Joe Montana was on the cup, and Ronnie Lott was on my first true trading card, which hailed from a set given away at McDonald’s.
The Niners were EVERYWHERE. Proof that football is a big deal here … when the teams are winning.
And from an outsider prospective, they call this Bandwagon Fanaticism.
There’s probably some truth in that. But what you have to realize is that lots of people my age (31) grew up here in an era when the Niners were second to none. Whether they were true fans or not, the people here always ended up cheering for San Francisco anyway.
And as the Niners prepare to take on the New York Giants in the biggest 49ers game in probably 16 years, they are all cheering for them again. Even Raiders fans, who probably wouldn’t admit it you asked them.
I leave you with this. A gem from the 1980s. A song I heard A LOT when I was a kid but completely forgot until earlier this year when my wife — who is not a sports fan — started singing it one day after we watched a game.
This is the second batch I received from the Topps Diamond Giveaway. As you can see, it’s more of the same — rookie cards — but some names you might find familiar … or maybe not.
As mentioned before, I have at least one more batch coming. And yes, I will be taking delivery of some Diamond Die Cuts.
1957 Topps Juan Pizarro rookie card
1969 Topps Jeff James
1973 Topps Dave Hamilton rookie card
1973 Topps Tom Walker rookie card
1973 Topps Glenn Borgmann rookie card
1974 Topps Larry Lintz
1974 Topps Tim Johnson
1974 Topps Jerry Hairston rookie card
1975 Topps Benny Ayala / Nyls Nyman / Tommy Smith / Jerry Turner rookie card
1975 Topps Bruce Ellingsen rookie card
1976 Topps Stan Perzanowski rookie card
1976 Topps Dan Osborn rookie card
1977 Topps Jim Essian rookie card
1977 Topps Chip Lang rookie card
1979 Topps Willie Upshaw rookie card
1979 Topps Jim Morrison / Lonnie Smith / Jim Wright rookie card
1980 Topps Joe Beckwith / Mickey Hatcher / Dave Patterson rookie card
Once upon a time there was a young pitcher from the state of Texas who took the baseball world by storm.
He stood tall and had poise on the mound. He had a lightening-quick fastball that made most batters silly. He had a curveball that buckled knees.
He was a proud American. He was a Cub. He was the future of baseball. He also was the poster boy for the Bowman Chrome hype machine.
Meet our good friend Kerry Wood. Oh, you laugh all you want. If you were a card collector in 1998, you know all about Kerry Wood. You wanted a piece of his Chrome rookie, and to own the card you see pictured here, the International Refractor (aka. THE Kerry Wood rookie card), was only a dream. The desire of many to own a Wood drove the price of packs — and ultimately every other card in the set — through the roof.
While Wood could not live up to the legacy that he seemed to be building with his seam-throwing rocket launcher of a right arm, his impact on the hobby will not be forgotten. And it is the memories of what could have been that has kept this card in the minds of many collectors.
On another note, the aesthetics of this card alone make this a must own. Topps really nailed the design of the “International” flavor with this parallel set, something I think the company has struggled to recapture over the last 14 years. I just don’t feel the newer parallels which feature a map-like background with the hometown of the player pinpointed. These 1997 cards featuring the flag of the players’ national country of origin give the owner a sense of pride. And when they are displayed as a refractor, they are simply gorgeous. Just look how awesome that American Flag looks today, Independence Day 2011.
