Everyone knows who Lou Gehrig is. Whether it be for the disease that bears his name, the fact that he was a stud baseball player or simply as the man whom Cal Ripken Jr overtook two decades ago in Ripken’s quest to become baseball’s record holder for most consecutive games played.

Only a true baseball fan knows the name Wally Pipp.  

The legend has it that Pipp, who was a star in his own right, asked for a day off on 1925 due to a headache and Gehrig started in his place and performed good enough to keep Pipp out of the lineup, and Gehrig played 2,130 consecutive games from that point forward. I call this legend because the facts of Gehrig starting instead of Pipp in 1925 are a bit cloudy. The alternative to the “legend” is the fact that Pipp was struggling and the Yankees needed a spark, which Gehrig obviously provided.

Now, about this card.  This is not Pipp’s first card. It is a 1921 American Caramels release, but is one of the early cards to have a picture of Pipp instead of some wacky drawing.  I purchased the card on eBay about two weeks ago and watched it ship from Pennsylvania to California in just a few days.  And then it got stuck, only about 50 miles from my home.

This was the update as of Sunday morning.

  
It bounced around Richmond, Calif., and then San Francisco for a few more days. And then Monday it arrived like this.

  
Yes, the envelope tore open while it was in transit to me and the card was exposed to the world  This is likely the cause for the delay in delivery.

The funny thing is someone probably took a peek at the card and said, “Who the hell is Walter Pipp?” Thankfully, due to the circumstances, the name was not more recognizable.

That being said, there is a lesson to learn here.  If you’re going to use re-purposes bubble mailer — which I AM in favor of — tape ALL edges to ensure a more rigid package.

And in case you’re wondering the case was cracked in the mail. But that’s a moot point as I will likely have is crossed over to a Beckett Grading slab.

This entry was posted on October 26, 2015 at 1:27 pm and is filed under Mail Day with tags baseball, baseball cards, Lou Gehrig, Wally Pipp. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.