Two lots

Once again I've been tempted by some pretty cheap large lots on eBay. As fun as it is to get a big name vintage player, I also really love sorting and cataloguing and filing and trading large numbers of new cards.

Starting off with an all-Yankee lot. There were some interesting cards visible in the eBay photo and a large number of cards (~700) so I took a chance. I probably overpaid a bit because all that you see in the box below were junk wax. I should have known better.

Still, there were enough useful cards to make it an OK purchase. A few current Yankees including playoff heroes Giancarlo Stanton and Gleyber Torres. My 10-year-old has started getting into baseball with the Yankees in the playoffs, and he's latched on to Gleyber as a favorite. The Dodgers look unbeatable, but it's been a fun ride for the Yankees to get this far.

Some of the greats from the heyday of the late 1990s.

And some reprints from even greater Yankees from even longer ago.

Lots of Derek Jeter cards which was a big selling point for me. I need most of these because Jeters are hard to come by, especially locally.

I think I had most or all of these Mantles, but they're still cool to look at.

This was my favorite of the lot. A Yankee card with a 1940s New York skyline with the Empire State Building, Penn Station and a lot more.

The other lot was cheaper and had a lot more variety. Most of it was from the early 00s, useful for filling my own needs and for trade bait.

Some more great Yankees.

Shiny cards! These are all from the past few years.

Lots of fun photos. There was an extra of that Royal Futures card.

Finally, some unusual oddballs. Ukrop's is a Richmond-area food company. This was from a 1992 set. The cards are creased, but maybe someone can use that extra Justice? Maybe Johnny?

1970 Topps Booklets Rusty Staub

 Rusty Staub.

 

Some minor league highlights.

 

 In the majors with Houston. Topps was probably still sensitive about the Colt Manufacturing litigation so they are never called the Colts or Colt .45s, just Houston, and the artist even drew a made-up H uniform.

Expos was fine to say, though. Staub was known as Rusty, and then in Montreal as Le Grand Orange, due to his red hair. Unfortunately, the cartoonist drew him as a blond.

Sign the man!

This year the Yankees won 12 more games than in 2023. The big difference by far was Juan Soto, whose 7.9 WAR is basically 2/3 of that improvement. Needless to say, the Yankees HAVE to bring him back next year. Soto and Stanton basically carried the offense, and the pitching staff bent but did not break. It's still hard to believe that the Yankees are pennant winners. They will be big underdogs against whichever NL team they play (Go Dodgers!). Still, tonight's just fun to appreciate this unexpected pennant, brought to them by the big new guy.

Vintage star card roundup

Easing the sting of the Yankees' bullpen turning back into pumpkins by showing some of the cards that I've recently acquired over the past month . . . 

The weekly low-grade Greg Morris auctions continue to be fun, even though they are hit-or-miss in terms of big stars. I did well here with some big names. I ended up with two 1972 high number George Culver (732) in case anyone needs one.

I did pretty good here too. A Cepeda high-number and a couple of Wilhelm high-numbers, and my first 1952 Mothers Cookies PCL card.

This last one was lighter but had some nice oversized pitcher photos.

Other pickups include a '64 Gibson . . .

. . . a '69 Billy Martin (down to five needs on that set) . . .

. . . and a '59 Ernie Banks.

I picked up a cheap-enough lot of '57 Topps. I needed the top five. Bobby Thomson is the biggest name but Joe Ginsberg has the best-looking card. The five on the bottom are all available for trade.

Finally, not vintage but I put in a single bid for ten copies of this 1989 unlicensed Will Clark card, just because I love unlicensed 1980s cards. Anyone who wants one of these just let me know!

Cake or Gum? 1976 Lee May

Last time gum won, 5-2. Gum May win here, or it May not.

Hostess goes for a spring training shot, with a bit of an awkward batting pose. Topps captured May before a game at Oakland Coliseum. There appears to be some fraternizing with the enemy going on in the background, with some players in Orioles caps talking to someone in an A's cap.

Underrated in his time and somewhat forgotten today, Lee May was a very productive slugging first baseman with 11 straight seasons of 20+ HR. May was one of the stars of the early Big Red Machine, with 111 HR over three seasons ('69-'71), helping them win the 1970 NL pennant. However, the Reds decided to go with Tony Perez as their first baseman and traded May to the Astros for Joe Morgan. That trade worked so well for Cincinnati that it's easy to forget that May was excellent for Houston, hitting 81 HR over three years in one of the toughest hitting parks in the majors. The Astros then traded him to the Orioles, and he continued to hit well there. In 1977 rookie Eddie Murray took over as first baseman, relegating May to DH. He ended his career with two years with the Royals. Overall in 2,071 games over 18 seasons, May hit .267 with 354 HR and 1,244 RBI. After his playing career he was a minor league coach for several seasons. He died in 2017.

Hard to Judge this team

The Yankees have won five out of six now this postseason, despite not looking very good at times, including some blunders last night. They are now two wins away - no small hurdle - from their second pennant in the past 21 seasons, and first in fifteen seasons. This team doesn't seem anywhere near as strong or balanced as the Torre-era Yankees, even a team like 2004 that was at this spot and fumbled the pennant away. However, perhaps that is more the nature of baseball in 2024, as there is less of a focus on complete skills and just a laser focus on two skills - velocity (pitchers) and exit velocity (hitters). I think that is why there really aren't "great" teams anymore. Just a few great players on the best teams, and filler the rest of the roster.

It's doubtful that Gerrit Cole could have made the 1998 Yankees rotation, but he's their "ace" with a decent 4.2 inning outing. One aspect of this team that is kind of like 1996, is relievers who were a liability during the season becoming suddenly unhittable in October. (Then, David Weathers and Graeme Lloyd, now Clay Holmes and maybe Tim Hill.) On offense they've been carried by Stanton, Soto and Torres. 

Of course, the big news is Judge finally homering. For all the talk of his struggles, he only looked really bad in the first two games of the KC series. Since then he's been making good contact and taking his walks. If he can get on a roll this team will be in a much better shape to finish off Cleveland and be competitive in the World Series. Especially considering that they are going on the road with rookie starters the next two games.

Wild win

Nice to see the Yankees get a pair of longballs and a nice six-inning performance from Carlos Rodon. Rodon sometimes seems like he'd be better off as a reliever, as he usually starts the game very strong then falters in the middle innings. Perhaps it's really as simple as controlling his emotions.

Of course, the Yankees probably don't win the game without Joey Cantillo's wildness, and that Bo Naylor kept trying to block the ball with his glove rather than his body. Yankees will continue to need breaks like this, as the offense is not clicking on all gears and the middle relief (like Tim Hill) is shaky.

Wood vs. Wood #221

Last time 1987 rolled to a 10-1 victory. Will this one be closer?

In 1961 Topps would take a photo of a player hatless in case they changed teams. Such was the case with Bill Short. Despite the pinstripes and Yankee Stadium background, Topps wants you to think Orioles. A hard thrower who struggled with control, Short came up with the Yankees in 1960, spent all of 1961 in the minors, and was a Rule 5 selection by Baltimore. He pitched in just 5 games in 1962, and spent the next three years in the minors before returning to Baltimore for 6 games in 1966. He was then sold to the Red Sox for whom he pitched in 8 more games. The journeyman then pitched in 6 games for the '67 Pirates, 34 games for the '68 Mets, and 4 games for the '69 Reds before retiring. Overall in 73 major league games he went 5-11 with a 4.73 ERA. After his retirement he was a coach in the Pirates organization. He died in 2022.

By 1987 Topps had ditched the hatless photo and instead used airbrushing when a player changed teams. Such was the case with Vern Ruhle, who signed with the Angels in February of 1986, but Topps apparently never got a photo of him with California, instead airbrushing an older photo of Ruhle. Ruhle was a back-of-the rotation starter for the Tigers and Astros in the late '70s and early '80s. His best season by far was 1980, when he went 12-4 with a 2.37 ERA for the Astros. In 1983 he switched to long relieving. He ended his career with stints in Cleveland in 1985 and the Angels in 1986. Overall in 327 games he went 67-88 with a 3.73 ERA. After his playing career he was a pitching coach for several teams. He died in 2007.

1963 Pepsi Tulsa Oilers

I love vintage baseball cars, but I also have a soft stuff for vintage Pepsi merchandise. For some reason I just really like the logo. I've been aware of these for awhile, and was lucky to find a lot of these for a good price. At eight cards (four two-card panels), these represent a third of the set.

These are "door hangers" but the door hanger is not perforated and I hate to unperforate it to stick it on a door, so I am just leaving these intact in my little Pepsi display. As you can see the Oilers were a Cardinals affiliate. Harry Watts never made the majors but Dennis Aust had a brief stint with the Cardinals and got on a Topps card.

Even though the Pepsi logo is blue, it's black on these as it looks like they were just printed in black and red ink. Not sure what uniform Lamar Drummonds is wearing. He didn't make the major leagues but Chuck Taylor did for several years.

Coach Pepper Martin was a legendary member of the Gas House Gang.  Gary Kolb had a brief major league tenure.

Jerry Wild is another guy who didn't make it to the majors. At 7.0 BB/9 in five AAA seasons, I guess he was a little too . . . wild. And finally a batboy! 12-year-old Jon Smith of Tulsa.

Here's what the backs look like. Save your cards and caps and match them to win $24. Hey that's $246 in 2024 dollars. Or maybe a better deal, ten cards get you free admission to an Oilers game.

1953 Bowman Color

I picked up a lot of these for a dollar each. 30 for $30. Pretty hard to get these for a quarter each and they are beautiful cards. I wish they had the names on the front - I'm not going to pretend I can recognize most of these by face alone. Still the photography is really fantastic and I enjoy looking at them. (And if you haven't seen it yet, the Adventures of a Baseball Card Collector blog just did a terrific post with a lot of research revealing that this is the most error-filled set of all time.)

The first one here, Red Schoendienst, is off to the side because it's the only one I had already. It's available for trade, there's tape on the front but it's better than my other one which has paper loss. Also my first Joe Garagiola card, those are hard to come by. Great shot of Yankees star Allie Reynolds too.

Charlie Grimm and Joe Nuxhall's cards both show nice views through the Polo Grounds grandstands to the apartment buildings behind. Grimm's card also notes that he is a noted teller of "German dialect stories".

Johnny Lipon is fielding a ball with a blue stamp on it. The purple sky on Cass Michaels's card is interesting. I don't know if that's a print defect or a cool sunset. I did not realize when I bought this lot that most of the cards were from the somewhat-tougher high numbers. These last three photos are all from that part of the set.

There's Tigers star Johnny Pesky posing at Yankee Stadium. My first Pesky card too. I think he might have played for another team in addition to Detroit. Larry Miggins's card has some of the same pink sky as Cass Michaels.

It wasn't intentional on my part but there's a lot of blue sky with clouds here. Some paper loss even adds to the cloudy effect. From whatever angle though, these close-up glimpses of early '50's ballplayers are really nice to add to my collection.