Player Profile: Chuck Abbott

I have two cards of Chuck Abbott. This one is from 1999 SP Top Prospects.

Playing Career: Middle infielder Chuck Abbott played six seasons in the Angels and Indians organizations from 1996-2001, making it as high as AAA before an elbow injury ended his career.

My Memories: I had not heard of him except for his baseball cards.

Post-Playing Career: Abbott teaches physical education and drivers education at Hoffman Estates High School in Illinois, is an inclusion aide at the Northwest Special Recreation Association, and is Assistant Baseball Coach at Professional Sports Performance.

Google Autocomplete Ranking: Chuck Abbott is fourth when you type in Chuck Ab, between actor Chuck Aber and artist Chuck Abraham. Another prominent Chuck Abbott is a longtime Disneyland employee who was the foreman at both Pirates of the Caribbean and Space Mountain.

Coming up next: Tomorrow's profile will be Glenn Abbott.

Player Profile: Don Aase

I have 26 different cards of Don Aase. This one is from 1986 Donruss Highlights.

Playing Career: Don Aase pitched thirteen seasons in the major leagues for the Red Sox, Angels, Orioles, Mets and Dodgers, winning 66 games and saving 82. Red Sox fans remember him for a surprisingly strong rookie season as a starter in 1977. Angels fans remember him winning the first playoff game in franchise history in 1979. Orioles fans remember his all-star season of 1986, saving 34 games. Mets fans remember him giving up back-breaking home runs to unusual suspects Willie Randolph and Mitch Williams in the doomed summer of 1989.

My Memories: I remember him in the 1986 Topps sticker book, my first introduction to Major League Baseball. I thought his name was pronounced Ace for a few years until I heard it on TV - it is pronounced Ozzie.

Interesting Stories: Aase and his wife had conceptions problems in the 1980s. In 1985 they adopted a child, then in 1986 Mrs. Aase became pregnant, only to learn that the child would probably have cystic fibrosis. Don Aase had actually been doing charity work for the Cystic Fibrosis foundation at the time. However, the worries proved unfounded and the Aases had a healthy baby boy, who went on to play baseball at UNLV. (LA Times article, 1988)

Post-playing career: In the 1990s, Aase owned two batting cages in California, Winning Streak and Don Aase's The Slam. Since then he appears to be retired.

Google Autocomplete Ranking: He is the first entry to come up when typing Don Aa, ahead of DON AA, which is the Department of the Navy's Assistant for Administration. There do not appear to be any other prominent Don Aases.

Coming up next: Tomorrow's profile is Chuck Abbott.

I wasn't going to do this but...

Just after I said I wasn't getting any baseball cards for a while, I couldn't resist checking out a garage sale in my town. Sure enough, I got a few hundred cards for $7. Here are a couple of brief highlights:

Scott Bullett's nickname might have been "Faster Than a Speeding," but probably wasn't. Great photo, though.

I had completely forgotten the game mentioned on this card, though I think we called it "Slaps," not "Slapsies," when I was a kid.


I'll get to my player profiles, starting with Don Aase, tomorrow.

A new direction for this blog

It's time for a new direction for Baseball Cards Come to Life. My observations about individual baseball cards are getting harder and harder to come by, as I have pretty much used up all the good ones. Also, I've pretty much run out of people to interview who either appeared on or photographed major league or prominent minor league cards. You might still see an occasional interview on this blog, and I'll still post trades and other card acquisitions, although with the new baby my time to spend on getting more cards has greatly diminished for the moment (that is why I did so many monster trades and purchases over the last few months - knew that would be the last time I had that kind of time). All in all, it is definitely time I did something new with this blog.

One type of baseball card blog concept I have enjoyed is the blog that focuses on a different card and individual each day. Usually they focus on a single set - Project Baseball 1976 and The Greatest 21 Days: 1990 CMC are two standout examples of blogs that delve into the person on each card. What I want to do is much more ambitious - highlight each player I have a card of, one a day. I have a spreadsheet where I keep track of cards I have for each individual player (I only collect 1978-present). I currently have cards of 5,657 different players. That means if I start with Don Aase on May 12, 2011, post one player a day and get no new players, I will reach Mike Zywica on November 6, 2026. Nice to have a blog concept that should get me at least fifteen years worth of new posts.

For each player profile, I will feature one randomly selected card of that player from my collection, and will note how many individual cards of that player I have. I include small sets on this list, but only base cards from small or large sets. For example, this card would count:

But this one wouldn't:

After the card, I would include a brief description of their playing career, my personal memories of them, and, where possible, any interesting stories about them, either on or off the field. I will also note for former players where they are now. I also think it would be fun to put each name into Google Autocomplete to see what comes up and where they rank, as well as who else has their name. For example, Derek Jeter first comes up when you type Der into google, while Derek Livernois doesn't come up until Derek Liv. If you google Tino Martinez, the first ten entries are all about the former Yankee. If you google Paul O'Neill, the first entry is the former Treasury Secretary.

Finally, at the end of each post, I will say who's coming up next, and encourage readers to send in their own personal memories of the player, which I will add to the post. The first post is Don Aase, so if you have any personal memories of him, leave a comment below.

Free Sample

Here is a Pocket Pages card of George Brett.

The back lists it as a "free sample".

Wouldn't it be cool if baseball card stores gave out more free samples? Or how about going to a place like Costco and getting free samples of baseball cards in addition to little hot dogs or pieces of brownies?

I've never actually seen baseball cards at Costco, but they used to sell them there, apparently. In 1990, National League Umpire Bob Engel was arrested for shoplifting baseball cards at Costco. To make it even more embarrassing, the cards he stole were 1990 Score. According to this article from the LA Times, the 4,000 stolen cards were valued at $143.98. I doubt you could get half that for 4,000 1990 Score cards today.

Minnesota highlights

I don't have many cards from 1997 Pinnacle, but they look pretty cool. They have an interesting feature where they list some cultural highlights for the city or state for each team. Here is one of the few cards I have from the set, Minnesota Twin Greg Myers.

I've never been to Minnesota, but what does it say about a place that their most iconic non-sports cultural highlights are a mall and a sitcom?

Funny Fortune

I don't have many 1996 Bazooka Cards, so I don't know if all of the "Funny Fortunes" are as funny as Ray Lankford's. (Turn your computer upside down to read).

OK, for those of you who didn't turn over your computer, his "funny fortune" is: "Batting atop a revamped lineup, Ray becomes the ML's first player of 1996 to score 100 runs." I don't understand the humor, but the prediction was not way off - though not the first player of the year to hit that number, he did finish the 1996 season with exactly 100 runs.

The greatest

I don't usually use this blog for personal stuff, but I just had to mention that I became a father earlier today (actually yesterday, as it's after midnight). My daughter picked a historic day to be born (and the Yankees won, too!)

To tie into baseball cards, here are a few of the people she shares a birthday with, including one Hall of Famer.

Baseball cards from Rite Aid

Got one of those 100 card jumbo repacks from Rite Aid. I only did it because it ended up being free after some coupon deals my wife had. I was pleasantly surprised - it wasn't all 1988 Donruss and 1987 Topps. Overall 33 of the 100 cards were ones I needed.

There were minor brands from the early 90s like Bowman and Leaf...

recent cards...

and even some oddities like this card of Babe Ruth and five cans of Socony Motor Oil.

Socony stood for Standard Oil Company of New York and later became Mobil Oil.

Where's Albert?

Here's a picture of Albert Belle from 1993 Upper Deck. My question is, where is he? On the left half of the card, it looks like he is in Yankee Stadium.

However, the photo must have been altered somehow because there is no way there would be just blank sky on the right side of the card. There should have been more the facade with advertisements below and/or the right field seats, depending on the angle of the shot. Here is a photo I found online of Yankee Stadium in 1992 that will give you a good idea of what should be behind Belle. I can't figure out why it's not.