Collect St. Patrick's Day uniform cards

When I left the employ of Krause/F+W publications in May, 2006, I arranged to buy about a million sportscards that had accumulated in the company's warehouse.
 
These were mostly cards that had been sent to our sports collectors' periodicals (SCD, Tuff Stuff, Baseball Cards/Sports Cards, et al.) by the card companies for product reviews, cataloging, etc.

The vast majority of the cards were from the 1990s.


I spent the next five years sorting more than 180 monster boxes down, separating the wheat from the chaff (OK, these were 1990s cards, so it was mostly separating the chaff-ish from the chaff). Mainly I was setting aside cards and sets that I felt had a value of $1 per card or more, or might in the future.

As I shuffled through these cards, a couple of themes caught my attention, and I thought it might be fun to see how many cards I could find that fit that theme. I limited my searching to baseball cards, though I imagine the same, or similar, themes could have been found among the football, basketball and hockey cards. 

One theme that I noticed was cards of players wearing special St. Patrick's Day cap and/or uniforms. St. Paddy's falls in the middle of spring training and for more than 25 years some teams have honored the occasion by sporting green jerseys and/or caps for that one day. I suppose most of these specialty uniforms are then sold for team charities, etc. 

By the mid-1990s the proliferation of card companies, and the proliferation of card sets from each of them, flooded collectors with new cards. At the peak of (over)production, there were at least 20,000 new baseball cards being produced each year.

Most of these cards used at least two, and sometimes three, photos on each player's card. This created unprecedented demand for player photos . . . portraits, candids and game-action. So it's no wonder that in the rush to get enough unique player photos for each new set, it's not surprising that some of the photos featured the spring training St. Patrick's Day outfits.

I came up with eight cards that fit that theme; there are probably more. Putting together a collection like this proves that the card hobby can still be fun, and isn't exclusively the province of superstars, autographs, game-used inserts and 1/1s.

UPDATE: This Classic St. Patrick's Day uniform card was mentioned in a reader's comment.

Allan Lewis, "The Panamanian Express," finally gets a card

Until I recently began a correspondence with collector extraordinaire Keith Olbermann, I had never heard of Allan Lewis.

In kicking around some ideas for additions to my list of custom card creations, Olbermann mentioned that Lewis had played in parts of six major league seasons between 1967 and 1973, but never appeared on a Topps card.

Intrigued, I started poking around baseball-reference.com. What I found there convinced me that Lewis should have a baseball card, even if it was four decades late.

You can read all about Allan Lewis' baseball career on the internet (I especially recommend Rory Costello's article on the SABR BioProject site --http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/75f838b4).

Basically, Lewis was maverick A's owner Charles O. Finley's first "designated runner." Though he played some in the outfield -- not too badly in the minor leagues -- Lewis was brought to the majors to steal ballgames on the base paths. He appeared in 156 major league games and had only 31 plate appearances.

In the bigs, Lewis stole 44 bases in 61 attempts, a 72.1% success rate. Conventional baseball wisdom holds that a success rate of 67% is about break-even in terms of helping or hurting a team's chances. By contrast, all-time stolen base leader Ricky Henderson had an 80.8% base-stealing success rate. Current active major league leader Juan Pierre is at 75%. While caught-stealing stats weren't kept throughout his career, for those seasons in which that number was available, Ty Cobb's success rate was 64.6%. And, the top base stealer of my generation, Maury Wills, had a lifetime swipe rate of 73.8%.

As enamored as Finley was of the concept of a designated runner, his managers were -- at best -- unreceptive to the notion, feeling that such a one-dimensional player was wasting a roster spot that could have been more effectively filled to benefit the team.

It appears as if his teammates at the major league level took their cue from the skipper. In 1973, when the A's won the World Series, his teammates voted Lewis only one-tenth of a share of the bonus money. 

Lewis retired after the 1973 season with a pair of World Championship rings. He was replaced on the A's roster by Olympic sprinter Herb Washington (who DID appear on a baseball card, in Topps' 1975 set).

After his playing days, Lewis served the A's as an instructor for several years, then scouted in his native country for the Indians and the Phillies. He helped convert Panamanians Einar Diaz and Carlos Ruiz from infielders to major league catchers. He is now fully retired.

From his work in Topps' photo archives, Olbermann had a trio of images of Allan Lewis, spanning his days with the Kansas City and Oakland A's. One of them jumped out at me as belonging on an early 1970s Topps-style card.

Initially I thought my choice of Topps formats might be limited by the lack of certain minor league stats Runs, RBI, SB) on baseball-reference.com. During Lewis' playing days, Topps cards in 1968, 1969, 1970, 1972 and 1973 printed (usually) complete minor and major league stats. 

Lacking R and RBI figures for many of Lewis' minor league stops, I thought my choices for a custom card might be limited to 1971 or a post-career 1974. The photo I wanted to use showed Lewis in a 1970-71 uniform. While it would not have been unprecedented to use a three-year-old photo on a Topps card in that era, I decided to work with the 1971 format. 

I actually completed the computer work for both front and back of a 1971-style Allan Lewis custom card. I'm showing it here, but this may be the only time you ever see it. I'm probably not going to print that design.

Upon reflection it seemed to me that the '71 style was somewhat lacking in that Lewis' considerable minor league career was ignored. 

On a hunch, I asked Olbermann if he had access to a late-1960s or early-1970s Sporting News Baseball Register, which would likely have full minor league stats for Lewis' 1961-66 minor league stops. He did, and now I do.

That opened up more of the era's Topps designs, and I decided to work with a 1970 format. That's the one I'll be printing.

A custom card is never "done"

I guess I never consider my custom cards to be "done." Maybe that makes me anal.

But when I discover an error in one of my creations, or even just a way the card could be significantly improved, my inclination is to update the card.

I've done that dozens of times in the past nine years, sometimes just correcting a stat or a misspelling, sometimes replacing a picture.

A trio of examples will give you an  insight into my thought process.

On Saturday, while watching the Wisconsin Badgers survive an opening-game scare from Northern Iowa, I noticed that the Panthers had on their helmets a logo of a brown panther.

Five and a half years ago I had created a 1955 All-American style custom card of Kurt Warner, who had played at Northern Iowa.

For that card I used as the team logo on front a black panther. It was the black panther that Topps had used on one or two of the original AA cards in 1955. I just associated the word "panther" with "black."

I could have easily ignored the faux paw (sorry), but I decided to go ahead and change the logo on my Kurt Warner custom.

Because the Topps' panther was black, there wasn't much detail to the big cat. When I tried simply changing the black to brown, the result looked like roadkill.

So I scoured the internet for a new panther logo. A google search on mascot>illustration>panther gave me some workable choices and by adding some color to a black-and-white picture, I came up with the result you see here.

I'm not going to do a special press run to print up new Kurt Warner cards for my two personal "master" sets, but next time I'm printing some new cards, I'll add the revised Warners to the printing.

Another example of an updating was undertaken a week or so ago.

I was working on a 1970-style baseball card (you can see the finished card on my blog in two days) when I had to refer to a stack of reference cards to see how Topps handled switch-hitters -- Bats: S, Bats: B or Bats: L&R.

While looking over card backs, I discovered that on pitchers' cards (at least those with a cartoon element), Topps indicated the throwing preference on the first line of biographical details under the the player's name. Pitchers' batting choice was shown on the second line, with the birth date.

The opposite was true on position players' cards: "BATS" was on the top line, "THROWS" on the second.

Since the template that I used when I created the back of my 1970 Carlton Fisk card four or five years ago was a pitcher's card, I figured I might have got that order mixed up. Sure enough, upon checking my Fisk creation, I found I'd had it wrong.

I made the correction to my computer image and printed up a couple of the new version while I was printing the new 1970 custom card.


Similarly, when I first printed my 1952 Topps-style Rogers Hornsby manager card earlier this year, one of the first persons to see the back image noticed that I had used "BATS" and "THROWS". In those years that Topps issued manager's cards, they used "BATTED" and "THREW".

I reviewed all of my manager and coaches cards and found that while I had the correct tense on my 1955 Charlie Grimm and 1956 Grimm and Casey Stengel customs, I had used the present tense on my 1972 Larry Doby (Expos coach), 1975 Duke Snider (Expos coach) and 1979 Bill Mazeroski (Mariners coach) customs. Corrections will be forthcoming.


A lot of work goes into researching and designing my custom cards. I can own up to my mistakes but feel a compunction to correct them when I can. I don't mind those who see my cards thinking I was careless or mistaken, but I wouldn't anybody to think that I didn't take pride in my creations.

Early mobile phones featured on baseball cards

When I left the employ of Krause/F+W publications in May, 2006, I arranged to buy about a million sportscards that had accumulated in the company's warehouse.
 
These were mostly cards that had been sent to our sports collectors' periodicals (SCD, Tuff Stuff, Baseball Cards/Sports Cards, et al.) by the card companies for product reviews, cataloging, etc.

The vast majority of the cards were from the 1990s.


I spent the next five years sorting more than 180 monster boxes down, separating the wheat from the chaff (OK, these were 1990s cards, so it was mostly separating the chaff-ish from the chaff). Mainly I was setting aside cards and sets that I felt had a value of $1 per card or more, or might in the future.

As I shuffled through these cards, a couple of themes caught my attention, and I thought it might be fun to see how many cards I could find that fit that theme. I limited my searching to baseball cards, though I imagine the same, or similar, themes could have been found among the football, basketball and hockey cards. 

One theme that I noticed was cards of players speaking on mobile phones. And what cell phones they were back in the early 1990s! 

By the mid-1990s the proliferation of card companies, and the proliferation of card sets from each of them, flooded collectors with new cards. At the peak of (over)production, there were at least 20,000 new baseball cards being produced each year.

Most of these cards used at least two, and sometimes three, photos on each player's card. This created unprecedented demand for player photos . . . portraits, candids and game-action. So it's no wonder that in the rush to get enough unique player photos for each new set, it's not surprising that some of the photos featured the earlier generations of mobile phones.

I came up with nine cards that fit that theme; there are probably more. Putting together a collection like this proves that the card hobby can still be fun, and isn't exclusively the province of superstars, autographs, game-used inserts and 1/1s.

Cecil Cooper, St. Louis Cardinals?

For a guy who barely made my Top 5 list of favorite Milwaukee Brewers from the Bambi's Bombers and Harvey's Wallbangers teams of the 1970s-1980s, I've made a lot of custom cards of Cecil Cooper.

Heck, I've only done two cards of my all-time favorite Brewer, Gorman Thomas. And just one of Robin Yount. And I haven't done any customs of Paul Molitor yet (I'm still waiting to find some good early Molly pictures).

Previously I created a 1977 Topps-style card of Coop as a brand-new Brewer that was designed to update his "real" 1977 Topps card picturing him with the Red Sox, and be more appealing than the airbrushed O-Pee-Chee card. Then I put together a "pre-rookie" 1971-style card of Cooper as a young Red Sox player.

Now comes a third Cooper custom -- also a 1971-style -- picturing Cooper with the St. Louis Cardinals.

Oh yes he was!

After hitting .338 at Class A in the Red Sox' organization, the St. Louis Cardinals selected Cooper in the Rule 5 minor league draft on Nov. 30, 1970. Apparently with Joe Torre's imminent move to third base, the Cards were looking for backup to light hitting Joe Hague who was to take over at first base.

Cooper went to spring training in 1971 with the Cardinals, but on April 5, the day the season opened, he was returned to the Red Sox, spending most of the year at AAA Pawtucket before making his major league debut on Sept. 8.

I had discovered all this while working on my 1971-style Cooper card. I presented that card on my blog on March 10, 2011 (feel free to pause here and look it up in the "older posts" section). 

In an addendum to that post, I added a photo that had been taken by Topps at spring training in 1971. I indicated it wasn't a good enough photo to inspire me to make a Coop-as-Cardinal custom card.

In recent correspondence with veteran collector and long-time hobby researcher/writer Keith Olbermann, he volunteered that he had a better image of Cooper with the Cardinals. Some years back, Olbermann had been privileged to comb through the Topps image archives and had acquired a number of great player photos from 1956-1980 or so.

He sent me a scan and I found that it was sufficient impetus for me to make a Cardinals version of a 1971 Cecil Cooper card. 

Having completed the Red Sox version, the Cardinals card required relatively little new work to complete the project as you see it here, thanks to Keith's willingness to share this resource with the hobby. 

You'll be seeing more collaboration in the future.

Note to blog spammers: Give it up!

For the past several months I've been getting as many as three "comments" on my blog, all from "Anonymous" and all trying to spam this site.

Here's one that came this morning:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Print run on '51 Cardinals postcards revealed": 

I'm excited to discover this site. I wanted to thank you for ones time for this wonderful read!! I definitely liked every little bit of it and I have you book marked to look at new information in your web site.
Here is my web page : XXXXXXXXXXX.

These comments are usually written in English-as-a-second-language and all include a link to another web site. 

Lord only knows what they are trying to sell you on those sites, or what viruses you'd be exposed to if you clicked their links. 

Fortunately, when I began this blog more than three years ago, I opted for the feature that requires all comments to be reviewed by me before they are posted.

I'd learned to do that from the experience of a friend whose blog on the Sports Collector's Digest web site was constantly bombarded by the ravings of a self-appointed hobby savior.

This is just another sad example of people misusing the internet to try to get over on their fellow man.

Rest assured that I'll continue to try to protect my readers from anything more harmful than my own ramblings.

Baseball cards by the numbers

When I left the employ of Krause/F+W publications in May, 2006, I arranged to buy about a million sportscards that had accumulated in the company's warehouse.
 
These were mostly cards that had been sent to our sports collectors' periodicals (SCD, Tuff Stuff, Baseball Cards/Sports Cards, et al.) by the card companies for product reviews, cataloging, etc.

The vast majority of the cards were from the 1990s.


As I sorted through these cards, a couple of themes caught my attention, and I thought it might be fun to see how many cards I could find that fit that theme. I limited my searching to baseball cards, though I imagine the same, or similar, themes could have been found among the football, basketball and hockey cards. 

By the mid-1990s the proliferation of card companies, and the proliferation of card sets from each of them, flooded collectors with new cards. At the peak of (over)production, there were at least 20,000 new baseball cards being produced each year.

Most of these cards used at least two, and sometimes three, photos on each player's card. This created unprecedented demand for player photos . . . portraits, candids and game-action. 

One theme that I pursued involved players' uniform numbers. I wondered if it would be possible to put together a set of cards showing players wearing each number from 1 through 99.  

Naturally, for all of the numbers from 1 into the 90s, I had a wide range of choices, and could pick a card showing a favorite player, or a number being prominently displayed. 

Beginning at #80, however, things got tight. While a few players chose numbers in the upper reaches as a matter of personal preference, a high uniform number was usually relegated to spring training use. And even in the days when the card companies were scrambling to produce "rookie cards" of every player with any chance of making the big clubs, there were just not a lot of cards issued showing players wearing numbers in the 80s and 90s. 

I never did find cards depicting uniform numbers 80, 81, 82, 85, 89, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96 or 98 . . . though I did find players with #0 and 00.

Putting together a collection like this proves that the card hobby can still be fun, and isn't exclusively the province of superstars, autographs, game-used inserts and 1/1s.