The Rockaway News published in Far Rockaway, Queens, from 1900 to 1941. Eighty years after the newspaper's demise, it's name still stands on this building on Central Avenue. A law office for many years, it is now a Pentecostal church.
Outfielder Joey Gomes played ten seasons of professional baseball, mostly in the Devil Rays organization. In 459 minor league games he hit .297 with 50 HR and 267 RBI. Now the owner of PartyOutFront baseball instruction and the Head Coach for the Healdsburg Prune Packers of the California Collegiate League, he kindly answered my questions about baseball cards.
"I have a few cards out there floating around. I gave the game what I had, while I had it.
Truth be told I had to google search the cards because I don’t have most of them. Needed to see which ones I remember or liked.
I suppose my 2 favorite card(s) are my first card & the Upper Deck quad card w/Joe DiMaggio (Brian Grant/Rich Hill).
I was too young to put together the notion, “folks collect images of me..” Pretty cool and humbling now looking back."
Thanks!
The back: From the 1950s to the 1970s Rawlings awarded "Silver Gloves" to top fielding minor leaguers.
The player: Catcher Bill Nahorodny played parts of nine seasons in the majors with six teams. In 308 games he hit .241 with 25 HR and 109 RBI.
The man: He worked in a variety of jobs after his playing career, most notably as a guard at the Pinellas Juvenile Detention Center in Florida. He is now retired, focusing on his music and art. He recently produced a two-CD collection of baseball songs and stories, called "At the Ballyard".
My collection: I have eight of his cards, from 1978 to 1984. I would be interested in trading for 1985 Cramer #39.
The man: In 1940, Lombardi's backup, Willard Hershberger, distraught over playing poorly while Lombardi was hurt, slit his throat in his hotel room, to this day the only suicide by an active ballplayer. Lombardi slit hit own throat in a suicide attempt in 1953, and battled depression throughout his life. Lombardi spent some time in a private sanitarium after his suicide attempt, and later worked as a gas station attendant and in the press box at Candelstick Park. He died in 1977.
My collection: I do not have any playing days cards of Lombardi. His last card as an active major leaguer was in the 1947 Tip Top set (he had a minor league card with the Oakland Oaks in 1948).
Shortstop Mike Bordick played fourteen seasons in the major leagues, mostly for Oakland and Baltimore. One of the best fielders of his generation, he set the major league record for fielding percentage by a shortstop in one season (.9982 in 2002). He was also a fine hitter, with a .260 batting average, 91 HR and 626 RBI. Now the Chairman of League of Dreams, a Baltimore-based non-profit organization dedicated to providing all individuals, regardless of physical or mental capacity, the opportunity to play baseball, he kindly answered my questions about baseball cards.
"I was the kid that put cards on the forks of my bike so when the spokes hit them it made a cool noise. I didn’t collect but loved getting my own cards and liked action cards with great players on them. Turning a double play while getting taken out by Dave Winfield is one of my favorites.
I was as never a
fan of my cards that had me bunting although I loved situational ball."Thanks!
Last time, the 1987 card ran away with the voting, 9-1. Maybe this time a '62 will win for the first time. Today it's a battle of the Reds:
Too bad my copy of Cliff Cook's card was folded into quarters at some point, it kind of obscures the logo on his jacket. He is presumably at the Reds spring training site in Tampa. The '87 card features Bo Diaz in his catcher's gear minus mask, presumably warming up a pitcher between innings. The red railing makes me wonder if this is West Palm Beach, Topps took a lot of photos there in the '80s.
Cliff Cook was a power-hitting prospect who hurt his back and was unable to live up to his considerable potential. This card was out of date soon after it was printed, as the Reds traded him to the expansion Mets in May of '62 for Don Zimmer. He hit 193 minor league home runs but only seven in the majors. After his career he worked in sporting goods, and is now retired.
Bo Diaz was a fine catcher for the Indians, Reds and Phillies, hitting 87 HR over 13 seasons. Sadly, he was killed a year after his retirement in a freak accident while adjusting a satellite dish on his roof.
I have cards from Topps's 1978 baseball, football and basketball sets. The baseball design has a clean, classic look with lots of room for the photo. Football and basketball both have the team names going up the side, but that's where the similarities end. The football set is kind of plain, while the hoops set is "jazzed up" with an interesting font for the team name, and the small headshot photo in the corner.
I don't have any of this hockey set in my possession. It's a fun-looking set. The top left corner is rarely used as the only design element on a card, so it's a pretty unique look.
No doubt buoyed by the enormous success of Star Wars in 1977, Topps tried to cover the movie market with four big releases. The designs on these are all very similar, with the logo in the bottom left corner and the card title along the bottom.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind has a black border with red outline.
There was more variety with their three big TV releases. I have a card from the Mork & Mindy set, which features cartoon word balloons, similar to some past Topps TV sets.
Three's Company got a sticker set that was pretty similar to the four movie sets, though with a thicker outline.
Finally, Battlestar Galactica. It's a simple design; but, other than baseball and Superman, it's the only new set design that Topps put out in '78 that did not have a curved rectangle as the border for the photo.
Here is the oldest and final set in this series. According to this recent post from Night Owl, this was the second minor league set TCMA created, after doing the Cedar Rapids Cardinals the previous year.
Looks like Pancho Lopez awkwardly signed his photo along the edge. This card is the reason I think TCMA used signatures on the actual photos.
TCMA managed to correctly identify Rafael Tatis here; they called him Fernando (or Fernado) the next two seasons.
Another black-and-white mid-70's Astros low minor league team set.
Astros minor league team.
If you're going to try to collect every vintage set like I am, you have to cut corners on condition. Literally, sometimes. I was able to pick up a good-sized lot of 1958's for cheap because some kid in 1958 decided they'd look better without borders.
I think they look rather nice without the borders. Almost all the cards are Orioles, Phillies, Reds or White Sox.
Trimming the borders didn't take any content away from the backs, which was an important consideration for me. The only downside is that it's a little annoying thumbing through my cards and having them be different sizes. But overall I am quite happy with them.
Here are the six minor league sets I referred to yesterday. Not as old as the ones I've been posting recently, but still a lot of fun.
1992 Bend Rockies. This team would have been quite a novelty as the major league Rockies didn't start until the following season. Lots of guys who got major league cards because they were early Rockies. Craig Counsell stood out to me because I don't think of him as a Rockie. Also highlighted the Angel Echavarria card (interesting composition, especially with the border) and the Joe Niekro coach card.
A couple of months ago, I went to the flea market and made several smaller purchases of cards, enough that before I realized it I'd spent a bit more than I expected. I did the same thing on eBay recently. There was a seller who had hundreds of auctions at once, and pretty good combined shipping, so I made a whole lot of bids and ended up getting some good individual deals, but it added up to a fair amount by the time I was all done. Still, it was fun and I don't regret it.
In football I beefed up my Giants collection with a few lots, including one that was LT only.
Most of my focus was on baseball. Like the Giants, I picked up some cheap Yankee lots. They were less junkwax-heavy than I thought. I was particularly attracted to the cards from the Renata Galasso '61 Yankees tribute in the design of the '61 Topps set, and the '89 Score Yankees set, neither of which I had owned a card from before. To my surprise, the Catfish Hunter '76 SSPC was not a standard card from the set, but a promo card with instructions on how to order the set.
I was able to snag some vintage, of the "parallel" kind. All of these came to about 15 cents a card. Here's a lot of '75 Topps minis.
And some more vintage O-Pee-Chee's! One lot was a mixed group from throughout the '70s. There were a lot of 1970, which thankfully were mostly different from the 1970 lot I bought a couple days earlier. There were also 10 1976's, one 1977 . ..
