Trade with My Sports Obssession

"You know it's so nice when it happens good."

That's a line from the Seinfeld episode where George and Jerry go to California,


Kramer had gotten into some trouble. The police thought he was serial killer.

Eventually they make their way back to the hotel room where George can't sleep because Lupe the chambermaid tucked his sheets in too much.

Jerry opted for "no tucking" and was able to sleep relatively easy by comparison. That's when he says, "You know it's so nice when it happens good."

The quote that Jerry utters was from Fred DeCordiva the producer from the Tonight Show.

He talked to Jerry about doing his first standup on the show and how he felt about it and the quote always stayed with Jerry because of the weird phrasing.

This phrase keeps coming to me when I start to write about my latest trade with Jeff at My Sports Obsession. He's also working on the 1973 set so I was able to help him out a little bit.

He sent over a bunch of cards including some 2011 Topps, Allen and Ginter and some 73's.

The card at the top of the post is the very last one I needed for the 2011 Opening Day set.

Technically I'm still searching for a few inserts, but everything else is complete.

About a month ago I decided to look over all my cards laying around and make sure they were all arranged correctly. I realized I had a few Opening Day cards mixed with the regular Topps cards.
With both sets having the same design that probably happens a lot with collectors getting the two mixed up.

I'm really happy to finish off this set and put the last base card in the binder. It was a fun set to collect and I occasionally I'll look over it in the binder.

binder shot.


In addition to that card he also sent over the flagship version of the same card.


And a nice Score Board in the Background candidate with this Edwin Jackson card.



I've mentioned before how nice the team cards look.

The celebration photos used in these cards are nice too.


A trade post wouldn't be complete without some Allen and Ginter. Especially some horizontal A&G.

This is shaping up to be a White Sox heavy post so far. This Edwin Jackson card and the A&G card both have something in common and that's the beady eye treatment.

I think in both cases Topps editors brought out the whites in Jackson's eyes.

Speaking of Topps editors.


Look at this airbrush job. Not as bad as the ones I mentioned a few posts ago, but pretty obvious.

Jeff sent over 7 1973 cards to help me on my way with that set.



First off is Oklahoma City's own Dave Rader. He makes an apperance on a card with Dave Conception I think.


Rudy May in one of those cool Angels uniforms.


Tim McGraw's dad in one of the many jersey over the windbreaker Mets cards.

Thanks a lot for the cards Jeff.

Cards from suldog part two- the stars

In the Suldog trade post Part One I mentioned that I thought it would be pretty hard (or expensive) to finish this set considering how many stars were included in the set. A few of those hard to find cards were showcased in the last post.

In the last post I presented a bunch of cards that had cameos from other players or cards that had players obscuring their own cards. One card that I forgot about was this Steve Garvey card.



He definitely fits in the star category, but is only making a small cameo on his own card. Wes Parker is more prominently shown than Garvey. I was reading a blog the other day where they mentioned how the timing just seemed to be off a little on some of these action shots. I can't quite remember who mentioned that, but it's seems right. Quite a few of these action photos don't seem to be timed right. I guess working with film makes it a bit harder. I don't know what the frame rate on those older 35mm cameras were. I have absolutely no experience with the film rewinders on those older cameras. Thank goodness I have digital when I do action photography.

In this post I want to focus on solo shots of the stars. Coincidentally these are all posed shots rather than action shots. It should go without saying that the posed shots would feature just one player on the card and make them the focus of the card.


Just like with the action shots sometimes the posed shots are cool, sometimes they can be a little bizarre.

Here's one of the cool ones:


Jim "Catfish" Hunter, named by Athletics owner Charles Finley for an imaginary catfish that Jim had supposedly caught. Somehow the name stuck. A more interesting bit of trivia is that Hunter was the subject of a Bob Dylan song. I'm a big Dylan fan, but I didn't know this factoid. Joe Cocker also did a version of this song. I can only find the Joe Cocker version. Apparently this was recorded and was planned to appear on Desire. My favorite Dylan album.

The name of the song is "Catfish". I could only find the Joe Cocker version online. Here's a youtube link if you want to check it out.



Not really my type of song. Slow blues can be a little boring sometimes. He suffered from Lou Gehrig's disease and died while falling down the stairs at age 53. Too young.

I wish I had a poster of this card. Really nice clear sharp film photography. It looks like an early morning shot. Beautiful freshly cut grass and an immaculate stadium in the background. Really nice card.

It's cards like this that make me wonder if the older guys had better cards than the rookies because they were treated differently by the photographer or they had been around so long they knew how to pose and get in the mood of being in front of the camera so they wouldn't look so dorky.

There are a few cards that make me think this way.

One of which is this card of Jim Hickman. I don't know if it's the cartoon Cubs logo(which I like) or if it's the skinny neck. There's just something non-athletic about this guy. Looking at the stands it appears as if this photo looks like it was taken during a game.

One the back it mentions that he had pitched a game for the Dodgers in 67. Now that's an interesting story for a first baseman. Looking at the stat line he had been in the majors for at least 10 years at the time of this photo. So he had to be doing something right. I guess looks can be deceiving.



Manny Mota. One of my favorites in the 1980 set. Another set that I'm closer to finishing than this one. Nice pose and nice blue colors in this card.



His teammate Lee Lacy just looks insane. What a horrible trick to pull on someone on photo. "Hunker down and grunt like a psychopath while an imaginary ball bounces your way".

"Grrrrr"

"Yeah,that's a keeper. Next!"

When this picture was taken Lacy had only spent one year with the Dodgers. The other four years were spent bouncing around the minors. Safe to say at this point in his career he wasn't the star that Mota was. Could this be an example of picture day also being Haze the Rookie day?



Since we're on a Dodgers kick let's keep it going with the famous Tommy John. If memory serves (and it probably doesn't)Tommy started his rise with the Dodgers before getting hurt. According to the card back 73 was his second year with the Dodgers. 11 years previously spent in the minors as well as with the White Sox.

Pretty nice pose though.

A better fake follow through pose would be this card of Jerry Koosman. (you were wondering when the Mets would start making an appearance, didn't you?) Not to nitpick, but it would be a shade more cooler if there weren't a bunch of players playing catch in the background. Maybe they should do these fake pitching photos on the mound. That might be too revolutionary for 1973. Heck, it might be too revolutionary for 2012.

Back to the non-stars.



This one's a little hard for me. I've heard of Don Money, but from what I can tell from the front and back of this card he might not have been one of the bigger stars of the day. If you couldn't tell from the scan that's not his normal uniform. A little airbrushing has taken place. It looks so bad that he might as well be playing for Looney Tunes rather than the Brewers. I guess they couldn't erase the Philly pinstripes so they just painted them blue. The jersey looks so odd that it appears that his neck and head have been placed in someone else's uniform. That can't be right though, because then they could have just placed him in another Brewer's uni. It might have looked more realistic.



Vincente is from Mexico. You can tell from his cartoon that they all play baseball in their sombrero's.


Looking at the front of the card he might want to continue wearing the sombrero rather than this airbrushed brown dishrag on his head. He doesn't look to happy about it either.



Pre-windup shots = not so great photo.


Hands over the head = a little better. Might be a lot better if there wasn't that cluttered background. Not a great card for Ryan. He deserves better. Cool Angels logo though.

This post is getting a little sloppy going back and forth between fake pitching cards and fake batting cards.

I've got only two more cards to share and they're both fake batting shots.


First off is The Say Hey Kid. This was past his say hey day. A little older, but still had big biceps. He's wearing a black armband honoring Gil Hodges who had passed away in 72.


...and lastly a Joe Torre card. Mostly a Joe Torre sideburn card, but who's counting. More obvious than the sideburns is the big white building in the background. Takes the focus off of the players in the background taking off their windbreakers. Of course Joe still has on underneath his jersey. A lot of these posed shots have the jersey over the windbreaker theme.


Alright then. I guess that's all I have for this one. Not the best way to end a post, but thanks for reading anyway. And of course, thanks for the cards Suldog.

Cards from Suldog part one

A few days ago I blogged about receiving a package from the legendary
Suldog. I say he's legendary because of his wonderful blog. I actually did go through the entire blog reading about the exploits of him and HIS WIFE.

He's a big fan of baseball and softball and has a variety of posts depicting his days as a manager/catcher for his softball teams. He's also a bass player. He seems to have had a much more exciting life than most of the people I know. Maybe it's in part to his writing that makes the journey through his stories so enjoyable. I don't know what it is. I know that it's a quality that I don't have, but it doesn't hurt to try.

He contacted me a few weeks ago about having some 1973 cards to help me out with my set. I found some stuff for him. Mainly Red Sox, Patriots and some other stuff. He's a big fan of the 1965 set. If you have a chance go read his Green Sox post. I won't ruin the story, but I feel like our trade was pretty much the same thing. A really nice gift.


Pretty nice stack of cards isn't it?

Since it was such a large stack I'm dividing the post up into a few parts.

1973 set is one of the first Topps sets to offer up action shots in the regular set along with the posed action shots. (1971 was technically the first, but action shots on a baseball card was a pretty new concept in 1973) I do a lot of action photography so I really like seeing action shots depicted on cards.

A mainstay of these cards is AL, NL and World Series highlight cards. Of course these are all going to be action shots.


This is a nice one depicting Johnny Bench scoring a run to ties up the World Series in game six. The Oakland A's would win game 7 to win the World Series, but that doesn't matter to me. It is one of the cards in the set to feature Oklahoma's own Johnny Bench even if he is a little obscured by his teammates.


He also has a regular issue base card showing him in action. Pretty nice. Catchers have the best cards.

His opponent in the 72 world series was Bert Campaneris shown in this Game 7 World Series card. Another nice action shot.



"Campy" would also have a regular issue base card. A nice posed batting shot. Normally I don't like the posed shots, but I'm warming up to them. After seeing this card I came up with a theory that older guys had better posed shots than the rookies. I need to do more research on this.

Both guys would have cameos in other players cards.


Campy running to first in this Bob Oliver card. With cards like this you have to look twice to see who it's supposed to represent. I'd like to think it's another Campaneris card.


To show you how a real nerd stores his cards this is a binder sheet with 9 cards. These are arranged numerically. You'll notice the Bob Oliver (Bert Campaneris) card shares a page with Bert's "real" card. That fact will only seem cool and interesting to me, but I thought I would share anyway.


Here is a nice Willie McCovey card. A good player in his own right. The catcher making a cameo is of course, Johnny Bench. This happens a lot in cards, but it's a little nice when it's a player that you collect. Up until the trade with Suldog I only had a couple of Johnny Bench cards from his playing days.

In keeping with the action shot theme for this post I'd like to show off a couple of these stars.



Reggie Jackson. (Wow, that's a lot of A's players in this post. In fact this is probably the most A's or Reds for that matter in one single post from me.)

Reggie's mustacheless in this shot. A little blurry, but a nice action shot.


Since I'm on a Reds/A's kick today, I'll follow up with a nice action shot of "Charlie Hustle". He got that name from Whitey Ford as a sarcastic nickname. Rose liked it enough to keep it.




Here's another cool action shot with a cameo. It's got a Hall of Famer, the ball and .... Terry Crowley. I hope I don't offend anyone, but I don't know who the heck Terry Crowley is. I know Thurman Munson. For the non-baseball fans, he's the guy front and center (#15). Pretty nice!

I wish the composition was a little better. If the camera was panned a little more to the right their wouldn't be so much dead space on the left of the card. Also, we could probably see the ball a little better. It's going to always be a Thurman Munson card to me though.

I guess that's about it for this post. When I first started collecting this set. I was pretty sure that some of the cards would be pretty hard to find. Having someone take the time to send them over in a trade is really generous. Soon, I will show off some more nice cards from this trade.

Thanks for reading.

Happy birthday Mr. Scott

Mr. George Scott pictured below was born on today's date: 3 -23- 44.



Normally I wouldn't do a birthday post, but when I came across the George Scott card the other day I knew that it would make for a good birthday post idea.
Normally these types of posts are the domain of Can't Have Too Many Cards, but I thought he wouldn't mind since it's also happens to be my birthday.

The problem is that I've been out of town and I've been pretty busy so I don't really have much to say about this card. Kind of a let down, but I didn't want the opportunity to go to waste.



I really wanted to do a post on how nice the Red Sox uniforms always look so nice on a card. I think the red letters really stand out on those white jerseys. The blue outline really helps to make the logo appear sharper too. This card isn't a good example of that, although the B logo on the hat really stands out. When I get around to scanning more of my 1973 cards I'll give a better example.

It should also be noted that Mr. Scott shares the same last name as me. Kind of a nice coincidence.

I really don't have much else to say. I did receive a nice early birthday present from Jim Sullivan AKA Suldog. He has a really nice blog wherein he talks about HIS WIFE, sports, politics, music and softball. He's a bass player and a catcher who is also a Red Sox fan.

We completed a trade recently. I sent him over the George Scott card above as well as some other cards he said he was interested in.

Here's a shot of the cards he sent over:



A bunch of 1973 Topps baseball for my set collection! A ton of really nice cards. Nice players, commons, action shots and team cards. Probably close to 200 or so for my set and another 60-70 cards that were nice upgrades to the ones I already had in the binder. I don't have enough time right now to show off the cards individually, but soon I'll be able to scan and show off the nice stuff he sent over.

Check out his blog sometime. It's a good read. I pretty much have retroactively read all of his blog posts from the beginning and he's had a funny and interesting life.

Trip to the card store

In my search for some vintage cards I made my way over to the LCS to see what he had in stock. He seems to have a lot more 1973 cards these days and that's exactly up my alley! I picked up quite a few cards for that set as well as a couple of more cool vintage cards.


Vintage has been giving me a much better feeling with my collection than just ripping open random packs. I'm not much into current sets, so I'm going to focus more on the older stuff.

I first started liking the 73 set because of the action shots I saw on the blogs. Like most sets there is a plethora of posed shots, but first I want to start off with a rare candid shot.



What a happy looking card. Smiling player spending time in the sun. With a name like May to boot! Looks like he's having a genuine good time in this photo. According to the back his nickname is "Daisy". No wonder then. Seems like a happy fellow.

It's kind of cool when you grab a bunch of cards that seem to have some connection.

This was a dup I picked because I was too stupid to pick up the smart phone and check my want list as I was picking out cards. Oh well, it was an upgrade to the card I already had.

A more prominent shot of Chaney is this one of Game 3 of the World Series between the Reds and A's.


Kind of an obvious with Chaney featured so prominently in the foreground. He's still not the actual subject of the action though. It's the dude sliding to home.



Another example would be this one of "Odom Out at Plate". To me, the main subject of the card is Oklahoma's own Johnny Bench. I guess that's the whole point of the "out at plate" thing. My first Bench card during his playing years. Pretty cool.



I picked up this nice Jim Fregosi card for two reasons: it's a nice action shot and it's a 71. I'm slowly picking up 71's and 72's when I see them. Those might be the next two sets I work on later. I have a tendency to jump around from set to set.

I recalled the name Fregosi, but it wasn't until I pulled this out of the box that I remembered he was a Met.

Uggh. A big contrast to the epic horizontal swing action shot in the 71 card. A couple of guys looking up for the ball. Somewhat interesting looking fans in the background, but bored looking teammates in the dugout all conspire to make this a pretty lame "action" shot.



This Lindy McDaniel card was an anomaly in the 25 cent box. Normally any former OU players or players who were born or reside in Oklahoma go in the more expensive OKLAHOMA PLAYERS box. I haven't been over to that box in a while. I guess Lindy was TRADED to the cheap 25 cent box. I can't think of a more humiliating card to have your face on. This was one of a few 1974 cards that I'm interested in because I knew he was in the Traded set. They editors really did a number on the hat. I think they may have even deleted some of the clouds in the background.

It's good that I'm not a real writer, if I were headlines like this would be the norm.

I guess that explains Lou as a Royal. I never really think of Lou as anything but a Yankee.
Alright, that's all I got for this installment of cheap guy goes to the card store. I have some vintage planned for later on this week.