Friday, May 25, 2012

Dave Osteen on baseball cards

Dave Osteen pitched in the Cardinals organization from 1986 to 1991. The son of former major leaguer Claude Osteen, he went 54-30 with a 3.43 ERA. Now a youth baseball coach in Texas, he kindly answered my questions about baseball cards.

"I don't have any interesting stories about cards of myself or other players (like the Billy Ripken card or the Gary Pettis card where the picture was actually of Gary's younger brother). Collected cards as a kid but, like many others my age, they got thrown out due to moves or someone not knowing how valuable they could end up being.

  I guess I do have one half-interesting story. But it concerns a basketball card. As a kid, I remember having several copies of a Lew Alcindor card that was rectangular (taller than baseball cards). Years later, when I was playing at AAA Louisville, we were signing autographs in the concourse of the stadium as they had a small card show going on. On my way back to the locker room, I stopped by several of the displays and one card caught my eye. That same Lew Alcindor card with a price tag of $1300 on it. Told my teammate that as a kid I had at least a dozen of that same card!
   As far as my favorite card, I always liked the in-action card. It was my favorite card of my father, Claude, from around 72 or 73.
And one company put one out of me while I was at Louisville. I think I have one copy of it and have tried to locate other copies but can't seem to locate any."

Thanks!

No comments:

Post a Comment