Please do not kill the umpire …

  
You don’t need to look any further than inside the Beltway in Washington, D.C., to
know that when the powers-that-be huddle up, it usually means headaches for the rest
of us. I mention this because Major League Baseball officials continue to mumble about
adding instant replay in some fashion in order to avoid a replay of what happened
in the postseason last year.
  

   MLB even sacked three umpire supervisors recently, almost certainly connected
to some degree to the blown calls last fall.
  

   You know, these hyper-inflated, self-important bozos who have done so
much over the last two decades to safeguard the integrity of baseball, and now they
are caterwauling about the possibility of a blown call actually affecting the outcome
of a game.

   I’ve got news for them: umpires’ mistakes have been a part of baseball
history since the beginning, and you can make a pretty good case that the integrity
of the game fared a lot better – generally speaking – between 1950-80 than it has
for the last 30 years.

   Actually, I’ve probably misstated the time frame, since you could make
a pretty good argument that the arrival of the Designated Hitter Rule in 1973 heralded
one of the first great postwar goofs by MLB. Like it or not, having two different
set of rules for the American and National Leagues was a first sign that MLB was content
to pay major-league lip service to the game’s storied integrity.

  I would contend that the intrusion of technology into the game’s on-field governance
would be a major first step that would only lead to more steps later on. In short,
the upside of being able to occasionally overturn a disputed home run or fair or foul
ball would be far outweighed by the addition of a ponderous review process that only
makes the games run longer. And make no mistake about it, once we put our big toe
into the idea of video-aided umpiring, things only go in one direction after that.

   And the real chuckleheads then opine that maybe just having video review
in the postseason would take care of their problem, again tossing out the hoary notions
about integrity by having the regular-season odyssey adjudged to be significantly
less important than the Playoffs and World Series contests. Phooey.

   In theory it might be a noble goal to try to eliminate all possibility
of error when it comes to umpiring, but in practice the human element routinely prevails
… and for good reason. Anybody out there pushing for absolute certainty when it
comes to foul calls by NBA officials?

Continue reading about Please do not kill the umpire … »

   You would think that all grumpy old men would stick together, but I haven’t
been able to find much of a kinship with 2008 Hall of Fame inductee Goose Gossage.
  

   Oh, he was great fun to watch at the peak of his game 30 years ago or
so, but I think the combination of my general disdain of the save statistic and the
Gossage-induced absurdity of complaining about nuance within the already questionable
interpretation of the usefulness of the same statistic, and, like Goose, I start to
honk a bit.
  

   That and Goose did a good deal of bitching and moaning about the HOF
voting results in the years that didn’t quite bring him to the 75 percent threshold.
I’m not quibbling with the idea that he should be in the Hall of Fame, but merely
noting that his carping about other candidates – and potential future candidates –
borders on the disingenuous.
  

   In a brief interview in the March 7 New York Times, he sidestepped
a question about whether Mariano Rivera is the best closer in baseball history
with his traditional lament about the enfeebled one-inning save vs. the manly two-inning
variety that was the norm during his time. I mean really, would it have diminished
Gossage at all to have simply said, “Yeah, the historical record would seem to have
laid that question to rest some time ago.”
  

   And speaking of the tainted one-inning save, how many times do you suppose
Warren Spahn finished off yet another complete game under circumstances that would
provide for a “Save” to be awarded? It’s just changes in strategy and tactics of MLB
over the course of the game’s evolution.
  

   But my real beef with Goose comes when he – now safely installed in Cooperstown
– grandly pronounces that hardly anybody else should be. I could argue that, in terms
of his impact on the managerial ranks, Billy Martin’s footprint in MLB was
no less imposing than Goose’s, but the reliever decrees that Martin doesn’t belong
because “we didn’t get along” and “he didn’t handle (pitching) staffs well.”
  

   I’m not even a Martin apologist or advocate for his HOF chances, merely
commenting that guys who manage to get their plaque ought to be a bit more gracious
about some of those still on the outside looking in (figuratively speaking).
  

   Gossage also insists that Mark McGwire and any of the other steroid
users should not be admitted.
  

   Yikes. That could mean for some quiet midsummer weekends in Central New
York in the years ahead. Many of the biggest names in Major League Baseball over the
last two decades would be excluded by Goose, to say nothing of whoever might be on
that list of 104 names that we don’t know about … yet.
  

   For a guy who played smack dab in the middle of an era when guys were
popping Greenies like they were going out of style – fortunately they actually were
– Gossage is pretty strict about denouncing anything that might be considered performance
enhancing.
  

   Anybody want to take a stab at suggesting that amphetamines aren’t “performance
enhancing”? I’m hardly an expert – not my mood enhancer of choice or temperament –
but I understand that they are generally useful in enhancing a number of different
kinds of performances.
  

   And to forestall any criticism, I’m not suggesting that Gossage popped
anything more potent than a Tylenol. But vast numbers of his contemporaries did, and
I’ve never heard any complaints from him about the effect of all that on the integrity
of the game.

Continue reading about Goose could be lonely guy in Cooperstown … »

   The Society for American Baseball Research is one of my all-time favorite
organizations, so I did a double take when I saw that SABR had wound up on the first
page of the Sunday New York Times Sports Section two days ago.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/sports/baseball/07sabr.html

  

   According to the bylined Times article, Dorothy Jane Mills,
the widow of famed baseball historian Dr. Harold Seymour had objected when
SABR announced the names of the organization’s Henry Chadwick Award winners – what
the Times called SABR’s de facto Hall of Fame – and the citation about Seymour
had included only “glancing mention” of his wife’s role in the writing of his acclaimed
three-part history of the game of baseball.
  

   I was familiar with the unusual circumstances of the controversy, having
read about it many years ago, though I don’t recall where. Dr. Seymour’s trilogy,
produced over a 30-year span starting in 1960, was an undertaking that had its genesis
as his doctoral dissertation at Cornell University.
  

   When the first volume, Baseball: The Early Years, was published
in 1960, it listed only Seymour as the author, the same situation that prevailed for
the second leg, Baseball: The Golden Years, published 12 years later. While
she was listed in acknowledgments in both, her contention was that the more accurate
role should have been as co-author.
  

   By the time the final piece of the trilogy was published in 1990, Dr.
Seymour was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and Mills insisted that she had written
most of the final book herself. She asked her husband for co-author credit, but he
would not agree. After he died two years later, Mills remarried and 12 years later
revealed in her autobiography A Woman’s Work, that she had been the primary
researcher and essentially the co-author of all three volumes.
  

   When I first read about this so many years ago, I was intrigued by such
an awkward situation involving a husband and wife and, what the Times article
described as “intellectual spousal abuse.”
   

   SABR officials navigated these treacherous waters about as well as anybody
could have hoped, with the legendary John Thorn, a member of the committee
making the Chadwick awards, diplomatically announcing after the initial uproar that
Mills would be honored equally with her deceased husband.
 

   I was surprised at nothing in the story, since my initial amazement had
come years earlier when I first read about the disputed authorship. Talk about being
put in a tough spot: SABR found itself having to make a decision about the authorship
of an iconic book trilogy nearly two decades after Dr. Seymour’s death.
  

   My own theory, formulated back when I first read about it years ago,
was that since the “book” had started out as his dissertation, the important questions
about authorship got magnified even more. At the time I thought it was a heartbreaking
story, with a woman from well before the feminist era seemingly finding herself relegated
to decidedly second-class status when it comes to the recognition of such an historic
work.
  

   I read all three books, the last two at roughly the time of their individual
releases, and was just awed by the scholarship involved. I had been reading about
baseball history since I was old enough to read at all, and there was a boatload of
stuff here that I hadn’t known. If you haven’t read the books, I’d urge you to do
so.
  

   And as a final note, if you love baseball history and the numbers that
go with it, I’d similarly urge you to join SABR.

http://www.sabr.org/

  

   In terms of being a first-class operation, I’d liken it to the National
Geographic folks, who along with creating a vibrant organization, provide their membership
with an annual roster of publications that are worth infinitely more than the membership
fee.
  

   And for a really good time, go to one of their National Conventions.
In its own way – with commerce relegated to a decidedly peripheral role relative to
scholarship – it’s on par with our own National.

Continue reading about SABR and the Dr. Harold Seymour controversy … »

   The recently released film “Cop Out,” with a minor plot device involving
baseball cards, got me to wondering again about what I would regard as a more promising
hobby-linked vehicle, the 2008 release “Diminished Capacity,” starring Mathew Broderick
and Virginia Madsen, with Alan Alda playing the Uncle with a valuable T206-style card
that gets lost.
  

   That movie got an extremely limited release nearly two years and has
been languishing on the shelf ever since, but with high-powered talent like Broderick,
Madsen and Alda, it’s hard for me to believe it won’t eventually get a wider look.
I suppose it could go right to DVD, but I don’t think many movies with that pedigree
go that route. And just as soon as I had composed the previous sentence, I checked
on some of those online commentary sections on the “Diminished Capacity” website,
and some of the readers were talking about having seen the DVD of the film. Go figure.

   I tried even more Googling to get some updated information (I know using
“Google” as a verb upsets lawyers and maybe even English teachers, which is all the
more reason to do it), but there wasn’t much there at first blush. I had read last
year that the movie was bought by another studio – or distribution company – and was
supposed to get another turn at bat, so to speak.

   And here’s my 2-cents worth on that. Change the title and give it another
try. I don’t know how much precedent there is for changing the name of a movie after
an initial, albeit limited release, but I think they should consider it. “Diminished
Capacity” is a lousy name for a movie, and I say that with conviction because in two
years I’ve never been able to remember the name of the movie.

   And no jokes, please, about the apparent irony of my own diminished capacity.

   Just over 30 years ago, the movie “The Great Santini” with Robert Duvall
in the lead role was released, but I have been convinced that it had an earlier, obviously
limited theatrical release under a different name. It was the late 1970s, so maybe
this was some kind of flashback or similarly disruptive emotional event, but I was
pretty certain I had seen the film under another, way clunkier name, and then it got
renamed and proved to be a considerable artistic success.

   The fact that I wasn’t able to confirm this via Internet searching barely
discourages me at all. Most of the information in the Solar System can be found there,
but not all. Any help?

Continue reading about They should change the name of that movie …. »

   A nine-month stretch of utter confusion in the nutty world of modern
baseball cards has presumably come to an end with word yesterday that Major League
Baseball has settled its lawsuit against Upper Deck.
  

   Press releases can present wildly divergent interpretations outcomes,
but the MLB version seems fairly straightforward in outlining the terms of the settlement,
with barely a lick of spin added and a minimum of official gloating.
  

   Upper Deck will pay MLB Properties more than $2.4 million from unpaid
licensing fees prior to 2010, and will ante up a “substantial sum of monies” to pay
for the unlicensed cards (three sets) already issued in 2010, the total undisclosed
as part of the confidential end of the settlement.
  

   That settlement payment apparently permits the three products to avoid
an ungainly recall situation, which while maybe not as difficult as rounding up millions
of Toyotas, is still a giant pain in the butt that probably serves no one very effectively.
  

   I got a kick out of the seemingly redundant wording that the settlement
for the infringing 2010 cards would be addressed by payment of a “substantial sum
of monies.” As opposed to taking in a couple of thousand 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey
rookies in trade, I guess.
  

   Anyway, I don’t mean to be flippant about it, and I am really rooting
for Upper Deck to figure out a way to produce viable baseball cards under the newly
agreed-to restrictions, which include no use of MLB logos, uniforms, trade dress or
club color combinations. I am a little fuzzy on what “trade dress” means, but taken
in context with the rest of that particular clause I guess I can figure it out. In
addition, Upper Deck forswears using the various and sundry airbrushing techniques
on logos (that’s a vast sigh of collector relief you’re hearing), nor will they be
allowed to alter or block MLB marks in future products.
  

   Yikes! What avenues are left would seem to be fairly limited. Upper Deck’s
curious press release about ostensibly the same ruling concedes that they are going
to “see how innovative and create they can become now.” He ain’t kidding.
  

   If Upper Deck can figure out a way to produce and market a nationally
distributed mainstream baseball card release under the aforementioned constraints,
it will be the most impressive “Save” in major league history.
  

   I’m not a big fan of that particular statistic, but I’m rooting for them
nonetheless.

Continue reading about MLB claims victory against Upper Deck …. »

   So naturally, I had to go to the movie “Cop Out” the other day,
in part because a baseball card reportedly was featured as a plot device and so I
wanted to see how our hobby was portrayed.

   Bruce Willis, playing himself playing the same cop he’s played for 20
years (I’m reminded of John Wayne, who usually played himself playing the same cowboy
over and over), is the owner of the alleged 1952 Topps Andy Pafko that gets stolen
pretty early on, and Willis needed to sell it to pay for his daughter’s $48,000 wedding.
Ahem.

   Anyway, about the extent of our hobby’s presence was a brief scene at
a card shop where Willis presents it to the store owner for inspection. For those
keeping score at home, the actual movie prop was a 1952 Topps Reprint, which is maybe
ironic or more likely just understandable since they wouldn’t want to wave around
a genuine $50,000 card if they didn’t have to.

   I thought about hollering at the screen, “Hey, that’s not a real Pafko;
that’s a reprint!” but somehow it seemed like it might have been inappropriate. They
also showed a kind of sepia-toned flashback sequence were youngsters are looking at
their 1952 Topps cards on the steps of a typical Brooklyn brownstone, and explained
that the Pafko card got ill treated by ruthless rubber bands because he was card No.
1.That was a nice enough nod to the hobby.

   But that’s about it. I wasn’t disappointed in the minuscule presence
the card actually claimed in the script, because I hadn’t expected more more. I saved
most of my disappointment for the movie itself, where it turned out the whole was
way, way less than the sum of its parts.

   I won’t diverge too severely into a movie review, other than to say Willis
was tolerable in a role he’s played with only minor alterations so many times, but
some of the dialog almost reached the point of non sequitur, and that Tracy Morgan
just annoys me something fierce. In a role that might have been phoned in by Chris
Rock, he seemed so wildly buffoonish and absurd that it strained credulity even for
cinema.

Continue reading about Baseball cards at the movies revisited … »

   As promised in yesterday’s blog, herewith is my own entry into the dizzy world of awarding medals in amateur athletic competitions, and as I hinted, this is not a flattering episode for yours truly.

   I would guess it was nearly 30 years ago, probably in 1982, during the Winter
Empire State Games held in Lake Placid, N.Y., at the same venues as the Winter
Olympics from two years earlier.
  

   As the public relations coordinator for the Games, I was charged with
directing media operations from our headquarters at the Lake Placid Club. While the
scale of the Winter Games was much smaller than the Summer program, which would typically
bring more than 6,000 athletes to Syracuse for the finals, it was still a brutal schedule
for us in the several weeks we spent in Lake Placid every winter. During the Games
themselves, 16-plus hour days were the norm. I’m not complaining, just establishing
what minimal grounds I have for a defense: I was really, really tired.
  

   Anyway, I was being interviewed on the phone by a reporter from a Syracuse
newspaper about a young girl who had competed that day in figure skating. “The good
news,” I started off breezily, “was that she won a bronze medal. The bad news is that
there were only two skaters in that particular division.”
  

  Haw, haw. It was one of the nuances of the arcane world of figure skating that
somebody could win a bronze medal when no silver had been awarded, but as odd as that
sounds to a lay person, my answer was way past ill advised. I could add, though it
again is irrelevant, that the choice of wording about “Good news, bad news” wasn’t
nearly as hackneyed in 1982 as it is today.
  

   I had been on a friendly basis with the reporter, half thinking that
my flip remark was sort of off the record, but that too was the product of being way
too tired. Just dumb.
  

   Next morning, there it was in black-and-white on the pages of the Post-Standard for
all the world to see. To this day I hope that the little gal who won the medal and
her family didn’t see it, though that’s probably a long shot.
  

   My boss, Mike Abernethy, arguably one of the most influential
names in amateur sports in the country at the time as the executive director of the
prototype state games program, was a good sport about it. He didn’t even bother to
scold me much, since he could tell how bad I felt about saying something so dumb.
  

   It probably didn’t hurt that he had a pretty good feel for just how tired
I was, since he was working longer than 16 hours a day at the same time.
  

   I would tell the story over the years in instances were public relations
and dealing with the media was the topic du jour. Good reminder, I would solemnly
intone, that even when you are talking with media types that you consider friends,
it’s best to consider that everything is fair game for reporting purposes.

Continue reading about Gold, silver and bronze Part Deux … »

 Jerry Seinfeld probably doesn’t need any help from me in the self-esteem
department, but if he did it’s hard to imagine many things cooler than having one
of your comedic riffs turned into a full-fledged Ivy League academic paper.
  

   I can’t offer any proof that’s what actually happened, but it makes for
swell conjecture, given that the comedian did a bit on the disappointment of those
Olympic athletes winning silver medals, and now – many years later – three professors
come up with a study that says bronze medal winners are generally happier than the
ones who get silver.

Photo by Claudio Villa/Getty Images

  

   I have never seen the Seinfeld bit, but I did read the transcript online
after hearing about it on Wisconsin Public Radio yesterday afternoon. This morning
I figured out that USA Today had also done a piece on the study, though reading
that online didn’t show any mention of the comedian.

   I’ll quote directly from the article: Research by three U.S. academics,
who analyzed heat-of-the-moment reactions, medal-stand temperament and interviews
of Olympians, shows that bronze-medal winners, on average, are happier with their
finishes than silver medalists. Take silver, and you tend to fixate on the near miss.
Score bronze, and you are thankful you were not shut out altogether.

   “When you come in second,” said Thomas Gilovich, chairman of Cornell’s
psychology department and one of the study’s co-authors, “it’s the most natural thing
in the world to look upward. ‘I got the silver and that’s what it is, but what is
it not? It’s not the gold.’

   “With the bronze, the natural place to look is downward. ‘I got the bronze.
That’s what it is, but what it isn’t is off the medal stand.’ “

   Psychologists describe it as counterfactual thinking; Seinfeld offered
more of a layman’s interpretation.

   “I think, if I was an Olympic athlete, I would rather come in last
then win the silver. If you think about it … if you win the gold, you feel good.
If you win in the bronze, you think: ‘Well, at least I got something.’

   “But if you win that silver, it’s like: ‘Congratulations! You … almost
won. Of all the losers, you came in first of that group. You’re the No. 1 … loser.
No one lost … ahead of you.’ ”


   There’s a lot more, but you get the idea. I’d love to know if the authors
of the paper had seen the Seinfield episode in question and if they make any reference
or footnotes to it. If anything I’d ever written had inspired any of the denizens
of academia to bona fide research, my head would get so big I’d be hard to live with.
Best I’ve ever done is get footnoted in a couple of ostensibly serious studies about
the impact of racism on baseball cards. Whoopee!

   I also got a kick out of another piece of the story that noted the researchers
had interviewed Empire State Games athletes as part of the study. On the morrow, I’ll
offer my own gold-silver-bronze anecdote from one year of the Winter Games segment
of New York’s pioneering amateur athletic competition, and unlike Jerry Seinfeld,
it’s not something for me to boast about.

Continue reading about Seinfeld Olympic bit may have inspired academic paper … »

   With all the talk about forgiveness that hovers around the sports world
and its real-world counterpart of politics, it seemed like a good time to revisit
the one guy that been most visibly left out of that circle for nearly 100 years: Joe
Jackson.

   Imagine that. More than a half century after his death, we still can’t
bring ourselves around to cutting Shoeless Joe a bit of slack for whatever his misdeed
entailed a full 91 years ago.

   So while we ponder what do make of a dozen or more All-Star ballplayers
from the steroid era – and 100 or so others whose names on a certain list have somehow
miraculously avoided the light of day – we seemingly ignore a guy whose guilty role
in the taint surrounding the 1919 World Series has never been all that clear cut.

   Eventually the Hall of Fame is going to have to come to terms with the
distorted statistics from a decade-plus of pharmacologically enhanced batting skills,
so here’s hoping that whenever that happens, there might be an attendant push to revisit
Jackson’s alleged malfeasance.

   This all comes up because I am working on a feature story about Shoeless
Joe for this week’s issue (March 19) of Sports Collectors Digest, plus he’s
also in the news a bit these days thanks to Upper Deck. The Carlsbad, Calif.-based
company will make cards of the baseball great, starting with its 2010 regular-issue
product that also includes pasteboards of Pete Rose and Sarah Palin. Don’t ask.

   Personally, I think the continued condemnation of Jackson’s hotly debated
role in the 1919 World Series is nothing short of silly. I would call it malicious,
except that Jackson’s been gone for so long that seems like a stretch. Still, I have
no doubt there are descendants of the great ballplayer who would like see his rightful
place in baseball history reconfigured a bit to account for the ambiguity surrounding
the admittedly sordid maneuvering in 1919.

   The only remotely rational explanation I can see for continuing Jackson’s
“Permanently Ineligible” MLB status is for deterrence, and I think that would be a
bit of overkill. A lifetime ban plus 50 years would likely be sufficiently scary to
any ballplayers coming up today to keep them from being seduced by gambling interests.

   And just to keep it all in perspective, who exactly is the preeminent
gambling proponent in 21st century America? Why, that would be 39 or so of our beloved
states, all promoting the various games of chance as a means of shoring up sagging
state revenues.

   We ought to re-examine Joe’s situation for no other reason than to avoid
having our collective brains explode from the mind-numbing hypocrisy of having such
finely honed moral outrage about activities so ardently embraced by our elected officials.

Continue reading about Way past time to forgive Shoeless Joe … »

   A couple of months ago I wrote in one of my Sports Collectors Digest columns
that Upper Deck was adding Joe Jackson to its lineup for 2010 baseball issues
and suggested that wouldn’t it then make sense to consider bringing Pete Rose along
as well.
  

   Turns out, Upper Deck was way ahead of me, and within a couple of weeks
of that column company officials announced that Pete had indeed been included in their
2010 releases (shown here, courtesy of www.4192cards.com website).
  

   “Despite his current ban from baseball, Pete Rose’s signature and game-used
memorabilia cards continue to be sought-after by baseball fans and card collectors
everywhere,” said Gabriel Garcia, Upper Deck’s baseball brand manager. “We are extremely
excited to have Pete be a part of our newest baseball card releases.”
   

   The first Upper Deck product that will include Rose’s game-used memorabilia
cards is 2010 Goudey Baseball, which is scheduled to hit store shelves on March 18.
  

   Chuck Lumb, arguably the world’s greatest Pete Rose fan and the
reader who sent me the link to the mega-cool website (www.4192cards.com) e-mailed
me about my column and reminded me that Pete had indeed a lot of cards over the last
three years.
  

   Since I had said something about how being on MLB’s Permanently Ineligible
List had “reportedly kept both players from appearing in baseball card issues that
carried the Major League Baseball imprimatur,” at first I thought I had made a mistake.
I quickly went to the website (created by Stephen Schauer), and lo and behold, Lumb
wasn’t kidding when he said there were “a lot” of Pete Rose cards over the last three
years.
  

   Most cultures would consider 189 to be a lot, and that’s apparently how
many cards Donruss-Playoff made with Pete from 2008-09. It may be quibbling to note
that these aren’t baseball card issues, but it’s hardly impertinent in these weeks
as we await a federal court trial next month that presumably will address the issue
of MLB licensing in a big way.
  

   But to get back to the number, the big number … 189. Really? Am I just
an old fuddy-duddy to think that’s an amazing number? I guess I need to get with the
program. I’m so out of step I can’t help but feel that number is a little silly. OK,
make it very silly.
  

   Obviously, the cards are mostly inserts with snippets of uniforms and/or
autographs, and the cards themselves feature only a handful of different photographs.
In virtually all of them the team logo on the batting helmet is either obscured or
airbrushed, but on a handful that old Cincinnati “C” is right out there, bit as day.
The backs of the cards point out that they aren’t licensed by any of the teams.
  

   No wonder MLB is getting grumpy about the use of its teams’ markings.
  

   And not to put too fine a point on it, but 189? Really?

Continue reading about Pete has had plenty of cards lately … »

  
In the middle of preparing for a photo shoot for a feature story about 1960 Topps
Baseball for next week’s issue (March 26) of Sports Collectors Digest,
I visited the Topps Archives website (http://toppsarchives.blogspot.com), which
is where this cool uncut sheet image came from.
   
   The blog talks about the issue being printed in three different types
of card stock: white, cream and gray. And by golly, the images included with the blog
clearly suggest as much, but wherever those “white” backs came from, they didn’t make
it to my neighborhood in Yonkers, N.Y., in 1960 and I didn’t pick up any in the ensuing
half century as I grudgingly upgraded several hundred cards from the originals.
 

   In fact, the only way I could see much of a variation in my cream-colored
backs from the first, third and fifth series was from looking at the cards as they
are stacked in a box and spotting tiny slivers of “whiter” cards.
  

   But the ones I have aren’t really white, they are just a bit less creamy
than the surrounding cards.
  

   After a couple of calls to two of the great vintage Topps experts that
I know, Bob Lemke and Mike Jasperson of the Topps Vault, I was a bit
relieved to be assured that my assessment – if not necessarily gospel – at least matches
the conventional wisdom surrounding 1960 Topps card stock.
  

   But I gotta admit, in the three images posted on the guy’s website, the
third card back sure looks white to me. I just couldn’t find anything to match it
in my modest inventory of barely more than one complete set.
  

   And that got me to wondering if some of the bleaching mischief that went
on in the 1980s might have accounted for the odd super-white 1960s Topps back here
and there.
  

   And I certainly not impugning anything with the guy who created that
website mentioned above, which is an absolutely incredible source of information about
vintage cards.
  

   I’d certainly appreciate any feedback from readers about their own inventories:
one of my favorite guys on the planet, Dave Czuba, is going to call me later this
week with his own report about his 1960 Topps cards.

   When I go to the movies, I get mad when an automobile or deodorant commercial
comes on the screen before the movie trailers, but I certainly understand the financial
pressures that prompt that kind of intrusion. That said, I hereby urge you to check
out www.Krausebooks.com, where a number of nifty CD’s and sports collecting
books are available, including the latest edition of our Standard Catalog of Baseball
Cards.
   They made me say that.

Continue reading about A whiter shade of pale, er, cream in 1960 … »

   I saw a thread on the Network 54 Forum the other day that took note of
the tendency for online chit chat to focus on more negatives than positives and the
gentleman wanted to take the occasion to point out some of the ways the hobby has
improved over the last 20 years.
   
   He pointed out that the Internet has had a dramatic impact in terms of
access to material, market and pricing information and even detailed data about cards,
sets and the players themselves. The fourth item – listed No. 2 in his hierarchy –
was card grading, and that was about the only area where I diverged a bit from his
assessment.

   While he conceded that third-party grading was far from perfect, he insisted
that the situation today is “so much better than it was.” True enough, but he lost
me when he suggested that in the bad old days, dealers all pretty much over-graded
their wares, while discounting a collectors’ goods when the buy-sell relationship
was reversed.

   Twenty-five years ago I put together the better part of a dozen vintage
sets – including 1954-57 Topps from virtually scratch – from buying at shows and mail
order. I lived near Philadelphia and between the famed Philly shows and the vast,
nearly weekly lineup of smaller shows in the Metro Philadelphia and Delaware Valley
region, the opportunities to find good material were plentiful.

   While I’ll stipulate that some of this may be colored by the misty, clouded
memories, etc., my mail-order experience at least was vastly different from what he
described. I am leery about naming individual dealers for fear of leaving anybody
out, but I was getting daily packages from Larry Fritsch, Kit Young, Bill Goodwin
and Barnett’s, to name a handful, and would frequently find that some of the cards
I received had been under-graded, at least to my admittedly pedestrian perspective.
   
   I used to keep track of each purchase in a little red book (no kidding),
and a bunch of times cards that I had purchased as being Ex-Mt I would assign a Nr-Mt
grade in my own accounting.

   Of course, I understand that may say more about my liberal grading criteria
than it does about the system as a whole. But I would submit that the advantages of
third-party assessment, while considerable and perhaps even vital to the expansion
into Cyberville over the last 15 years, were aimed at most but not all dealers.

   I was quite fairly called out for not detailing in an earlier post about
which cards Keith Olbermann pulled out of that 1967 Topps pack that he opened
on his MSNBC  show last week.

   My only excuse is my unfamiliarity in online meanderings, since I initially
thought that the segment hadn’t aired and I didn’t want to spoil it for viewers. Turns
out, I had misunderstood the posting and should have listed the cards, but when I
went back to find the details I couldn’t.

   So with my apologies for being so clumsy and tardy, here’s what he got:
Jose Santiago (which he spotted even before opening), Bill Mazeroski, Ralph Houk,
Red Sox Rookies card and Bobby Wine, plus an insert poster of Henry Aaron.

Continue reading about But there were/are dealers who know how to grade … »

   As Hank Williams would say, “the news is out all over town” that Tiger
Woods is teeing off on Tiger Part Deux tomorrow morning at a faux press conference
in Florida designed to set the stage for his return to the PGA Tour, presumably.
  

   Even though my expectations are severely limited, based on a combination
of common sense and the draconian restrictions that are being placed on this non-press
conference, I still want to see it. That’s because I want to see his demeanor and
be able to try to make a judgment about sincerity, contriteness, etc.
  

   (Tiger Woods artwork by Darryl Vlasak, a preview of the cover of
the March 12 issue of Sports Collectors Digest.)


    I know, I know, I am setting myself up for disappointment, either because
he won’t be able to deliver on such nuance or the structure of the event will be so,
uh, constipated, that trying to draw any useful conclusions will be nothing short
of silly. But I can do silly.
  

   (Aside: Speaking of silly, how’s this? I wanted to make sure I was using
“constipated” in its appropriate figurative sense, and my dictionary offered this: slow-moving;
restricted or inhibited in some way: spontaneous girls like Ellen are never going
to be intimate with constipated deadpan fellows like me.) I swear I didn’t make
this up. I’m just not that clever.
  

   Anyway, I’ll be watching just as millions of others to see how Tiger
engineers Phase II of this most epic of American tales. From the initial reaction
to how it’s been set up, the prognosis isn’t good. For a guy with the most expensive
handlers that money can buy, you can’t help but wonder if they are somehow giving
him bad advice or he is merely nixing all the good advice and opting instead for his
own counsel.
 

   I understand the compulsion to try to control the environment for this
initial exposure, but I am confused a bit by the timing. Perhaps the announcement
tomorrow will shed some light on why this particular Friday was selected as the moment,
rather than say the following Monday after the Accenture Match Play event was completed.
  

   Ernie Els was critical of the timing, and from what I’ve seen of Els,
you have to wonder how somebody goes about getting him riled up. I’ve always considered
him unflappable, but then I’ve had a few illusions unceremoniously dissolved over
the last few years.
  

   We’ll talk on Monday.

  

Continue reading about Awaiting Tiger’s faux press conference … »

   When I stopped by one of those online hobby forums today, the first thing
I spotted was a thread talking about Keith Olbermann opening a pack of 1967
Topps on his Countdown show.

   (I should note that this is a corrected version of my blog, which
I posted early this morning after apparently misunderstanding much of the important
stuff, like the fact that it happened last night.)

  

 

   These postings are typically quite brief, so there wasn’t much information
beyond the bare fact, though he did say that Olbermann shows off the folded poster
insert of Hank Aaron and reveals the cards one at a time. According to the post, the
pack was provided to Olbermann by Topps to be used as part of his consultant work
promoting Topps baseball cards, which for the last several years has involved a fun
plug on his show every spring.
  

   This time the emphasis is apparently to trumpet the Million-Card Giveaway,
which I also think is a swell idea, albeit one saddled with the unfortunate nuance
that such a huge percentage of the million cards are commons that a recurrent theme
of disappointment is unavoidable.
  

   Still, the psychologists will tell you of the vast power of intermittent
reinforcement, and that’s presumably a big element of the allure of opening older
packs.
  

   The guy who did the posting quite properly declined to reveal the contents
of the pack, though another poster seemed to later on in the thread. That’s more of
the corrected part, since the posting suggested the piece hadn’t aired yet, when in
fact in aired Tuesday night. This I found out at lunch Wednesday when I was asked
if I had seen it. Guy said there was a Ralph Houk and that was all he could remember.
  

   Some of the lame baggage of online discussions quickly sprang up on the
thread, with a number of readers voicing their dislike of Olbermann. Phooey.
  

   Not merely because he is a friend and an SCD contributor, I would
point out that, much like Alan Rosen, Olbermann has done a great deal to promote
our hobby on a stage that far exceeds our traditional confines. That, in and of itself,
would be reason enough to applaud his latest effort.
  

   Our hobby needs every bit of national exposure that it can get, and I
could have qualified that statement with a “positive,” which is precisely what these
annual visits to the joy of opening baseball card packs are all about.
 

   I get it that by the nature of his fierce political advocacy he is a
lightning rod for similarly strident reactions from the opposite end of the political
spectrum, but even in that there ought to be a limit.
  

   I know vast numbers of people from my boomer generation and older who
don’t have a thing to do with the Internet, in part because so much of what masquerades
as discourse is nothing more than malicious gibberish.
  

   Thus a poster who opines that he would like to see Olbermann and his
collection incinerated has contributed nothing whatsoever, other than to reinforce
the widespread view that reading much past the initial posting of information is often
a waste of time.
  

   Such drivel ought to be renounced by those eager to provide rational
commentary, since all it does is make it less likely that the less virulent and even
potentially useful stuff will be read.
  

   For the record, I would have been willing to watch Strom Thurmond open
a pack of 1959 Topps on Fox News at high noon on Martin Luther King’s birthday.
  

   That may just mean I’m a card whore.
  

Continue reading about Olbermann opens 1967 Topps pack … »

   There’s little doubt that Major League Baseball as currently configured
is a phenomenal enterprise, with billions of dollars at stake and a global reach that
couldn’t have been imagined just a half century ago.
  

  (Roy Campanella original artwork by Andy Jurinko.)

  But I’m here to tell you as swell as it all is, much is lost when something
gets as big as MLB now is, and much is lost when that size and global reach reflect
an emphasis of business over sport that’s as onerous as it is unavoidable.
  

   I am not suggesting that economic questions didn’t have their own relative
importance in the years, for example, immediately following the end of World War II,
but noting only that the economic questions didn’t overwhelm the daily dialog as they
do now.
  

   When Walter O’Malley decided to break millions of hearts in Brooklyn
and move the Dodgers to the West Coast after the 1957 season, obviously money was
at the center of the equation. Not survival money, just maximizing money, as in the
Dodgers wouldn’t have been doomed by staying in Brooklyn, they simply wouldn’t have
maximized their profitability.
  

   While much of conventional historical thought emphasizes all the woes
connected with an aging Ebbets Field in 1957 and the drawbacks connected with inner-city
ballparks, the reality is that O’Malley was still making good money at the time he
decided to head west: the Dodgers’ payroll was essentially covered before the first
pitch was thrown on opening day, thanks to the growing importance of fledgling television
and radio broadcast revenues.
 

   So I understand that the good old days weren’t nearly as rosy as we like
to imagine, but that doesn’t change the reality that the dialog that engulfed the
game – most especially the Hot Stove League variety – didn’t center so thoroughly
on salaries, revenues, labor woes, etc., to the extent that it does now.
  

   It does little good to bemoan all the changes, but it certainly doesn’t
hurt to remember that it wasn’t always this way. Before the expansion of television
in cable and later the myriad elements of the Internet boom, Hot Stove League talk
used to be largely marshaled by newspapers and pulp magazines that helped pique interest
in the sport over the long winter months.
  

   And about the most significant salary discussion I can remember from
those days was when Sandy and Don held out before the 1966 season. Ironically, we
have O’Malley to thank for that one, too.

Continue reading about Sometimes less is more … »

   I’ll be watching the Opening Ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics tomorrow
night, but I can’t shake the suspicion that the conventional wisdom about how to promote
amateur sports is woefully lacking. And just to be clear, I don’t think of college
football or basketball as amateur sports. Do you?
 

   Even as I write this, I hope that America’s greatest hope on the mountains
in Vancouver, Alpine skier Lindsey Vonn, isn’t yet another tragic victim of
the infamous Sports Illustrated Curse. Having appeared on the SI cover
of the Olympic Preview issue, an injury from a week or so ago has put her status in
question just as the Games are set to begin.

   I always feel like the powers-that-be simply redirect the vast star-making
machinery that would traditionally works just fine with professional athletes and
hope that it delivers with amateurs who show up on the radar on a quadrennial basis.
That’s OK when an athlete like Eric Heiden comes along, but I think they need
to rethink their broader strategy when it comes to hyping mere mortals.

   I have great sympathy for someone like Vonn, who reportedly refused to
get a an X-ray of the contusion on her right shin, presumably because a determination
that the bone was fractured would take the determination of her 2010 hopes to a different
level.

   While I proclaim empathy, I don’t think any of us avowed couch potatoes
can truly understand what it would be like to train for something 40 or more hours
a week for so many years only to have the key opportunity to compete on the grandest
stage cruelly snatched away by fate – or the editors of Sports Illustrated –
if you’re given to embrace superstition.

   A final note about Eric Heiden, the star of the 1980 Games in Lake Placid
who won a record five gold medals. I was on hand in Lake Placid for his sixth and
final press conference (one for each medal won, and one at the beginning of the games)
and I was in awe of the scale and silliness of it.
   
   With literally hundreds of reporters seated in the auditorium of Lake
Placid High School, where the speed skating track had been created on the school’s
track and field oval directly in front of the school, Heiden dutifully handled one
inane question after another.

   In fairness to the assembled fourth-estaters, there wasn’t much left
to ask somebody who had been center stage for a half-dozen press conferences in a
two-week span. What I did think was interesting was that while Heiden was being feted
for winning gold medal No. 5 in a world record time at 10,000 meters, a Russian guy
was still out on the track circling the oval. That seemed kind of cheeky and dismissive
of the Ruskie’s chances, but such was the prevailing cold war sentiment that chilly
February in the Adirondacks.

   Oh, and a final note. My grandmother, gone now from this earthly plane
for 25 years or so, watched every last minute of the 1980 Winter Olympics, right down
to the interminable rolling of the credits from ABC’s telecast. Somewhere along the
way, the name “Thomas S. O’Connell” flashed by, and she was duly delighted.

   I think we told her that it wasn’t me (O’Connell is a pretty common Irish
surname), but I don’t think she believed it. And I don’t think I expended that much
effort to disabuse her of the notion; I was, after all, the guy who used to tell my
friends back in 1959 that Giants infielder Danny O’Connell was my uncle.

   Remember my motto: It’s not a lie if you really, truly believe it.

   Let the Games begin!

Continue reading about Final musings on the start of the Winter Olympics … »

   When you watch the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics Friday
night, try to picture what it must have been like 30 years ago when the tiny Village
of Lake Placid, N.Y., hosted the 1980 version of the games.
  

   Vancouver has a population of about 600,000 or so; Lake Placid’s population
in 1980 was about 3,000 or so permanent residents, and that figure has actually declined
a bit in the ensuing 30 years despite the expansion of the U.S. Olympic facilities
since those 1980 Games.
  

   Obviously, the profile of the Winter Olympics has expanded enormously
in those three decades, so it’s hard to imagine that the Games could return there
now, but I’ll bet the local folks are still trying. The real miracle of 1980 – no
letters from hockey fans, please – may well have been that a community that size was
able to host an international event of that scale.
  

   I was a reporter in nearby Saranac Lake back then, and took part in a
couple of year’s worth of meetings about Lake Placid Olympic Organizing Committee
plans, endless confabs that tried the patience at the time but ultimately are hard
to criticize, since they pulled it off.
  

   One of the linchpins of the whole proposal was the Olympic housing for
the athletes, which ended up being undertaken by the Bureau of Prisons, with a federal
minimum-security facility built just outside the village corporation limits. It worked
handsomely for the Winter Olympic athletes in 1980, then was promptly turned over
to the feds and became part of an imposing array of New York State or federal correctional
facilities that dot the upper quadrant of the Adirondack Park.
  

   That took care of a major hurdle, but there was also the dilemma of how
a couple of two-lane state highways in and out of the tiny village could handle the
thousands of fans attending the events. That was addressed by severely limiting automobile
access into the designated Olympic area, and two enormous staging (meaning parking)
areas were set up on opposite ends of the village – and several miles outside of it
– to accommodate fans. They were then bused into the village for the events. The draconian
parking restrictions were absolutely unavoidable, and so far-reaching that even duly
accredited journalists like myself couldn’t drive into town.
   

   To this day I still can’t understand how they pulled it off, even though
I sat through so many of those LPOOC meetings. To make matters worse, a brutal cold
snap hit in the weeks leading up to the Games and right into the beginning, raising
one of the major concerns that Games planners had fretted about all along.
  

   With a vast armada of reporters covering the actual events themselves,
I was left with the odd feature or color piece here and there. Thus, I ended up riding
behind a dog sled team on Mirror Lake in the Olympic Village, or reporting on the
then-startling phenomenon of people collecting zillions of Olympic pins. There was
also a good deal of reportage on the guys in front of the Lake Placid firehouse setting
up judging panels outside and kind of raucously rating the various attributes of female
touristas, employing the figure-skating 1-10 scale.
  

   I’ll have a couple of closing recollections in tomorrow’s blog. 

Continue reading about Lake Placid Olympics really were a miracle … »

I saw a thread on the Collectors Universe Baseball Card and Memorabilia Forum the
other day that I just couldn’t figure out, so I am hereby asking for help.

http://cgi.ebay.com/t206-honus-wagner_W0QQitemZ220549588331QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_Baseball?hash=item3359c7a56b


  I’ve tried to put the link here, but I’ll also quote the pertinent part of
the description just in case the process doesn’t work (Imagine that, a blogger who
is inherently distrustful of all things that involve meandering around in cyberspace).
   
   Anyway, the auction listing, which closed on Super Sunday, says that
the card sold for $650. And it also clearly, almost unequivocally, states that it
is a reprint. The text is below in italics:

   T206 Honus Wagner card, in fair condition. This card is a reprint,
but it is such a good one, I can not tell the difference when compared to a known
authentic T206 card, as I dabble a little in these cards. It is an exact replica of
an authentic card, same size, card stock, markings, detail, everything. Actually,
I don’t “know” it is a reprint; I got it at a flea market (no, really, I did!), but
it is a Honus Wagner, and I’m not that lucky. The scans shown are the actual card
you will receive. Bid accordingly, as this card is believed to be a reprint, just
a really, really good one.

   Huh? Obviously, here’s where I need a little help. The auction listing
says “no returns accepted,” and I guess that falls under caveat emptor, but why would
somebody pay $650 for a reprint? Even a “really, really good one,” a pronouncement
that makes me chuckle no end.

   I must be missing something here. Any help?

Continue reading about Somebody please splain to me about T206 Wagner reprint … »

   Next year it’s going to be different. I’ve had a policy in place now
for a long time that the television remote-control thingy gets put away every year
at the Super Bowl, but no more. They’ve turned everything upside down: it used
to be that the game sucked and the commercials were good, but not anymore.
  

   That was a damn good game last nite and I was rooting for a tie so we
could have had a sudden-death finish. If anything would put some pressure on the NFL’s
dumb overtime rule, having somebody win the Super Bowl based on a coin toss would
be it.
  

   But a rare Favre-like moment for Peyton Manning shelved that idea as
well – for the moment – and now I’m just left with a gala football game that’s come
full circle. Started out as a football game 44 years ago, rather quickly devolved
into a laughably silly capitalistic orgy and is slowly turning back into a football
game once again.

(The Super Bowl has gotten pretty silly in 44 years, but the potential for the
truly historic stuff – like Joe Willie’s brash prediction of upset in Super Bowl III
– means that the game itself is still important and nearly worthy of the hype.)

  

   Oh, the excess is still there, still silly as ever – old geezer rock
bands at halftime? And I’m an old geezer! – but I think all that stuff is just tolerated
because the underlying product, the championship game, still matters.
  

   All the sideshow stuff has kind of mutated into wretched self-parody,
starting first, last and always with the overpriced commercials. I can’t even say
decisively how it happened, but I do suspect that all the genuinely talented people
who used to work on Madison Avenue have spied the bigger bucks available by simply
waddling a bit further downtown. At least with the intriguing Super Bowl commercials
you always had the suspicion that real creativity was being rewarded; I don’t share
that fantasy when it comes to what happens in the financial district.
  

   So no longer will I shelve the remote control on Super Sunday. I am going
to flit around the airwaves just as I do any other Sunday, hoping to find some billiards
on ESPN2 while the NFL behemoths are swatting each other on the butts in the huddle.
  

   Still, I guess it’s an improvement to be disappointed in all the auxiliary
foolishness rather than in the game itself.

Continue reading about Next year I go back to Super Sunday channel surfing … »

   The arrival of Super Bowl Weekend got me to thinking about the
most important NFL game I ever attended, the 1970 NFC Championship Game at Kezar Stadium
in San Francisco.
  

   I’ve never been to a Super Bowl, but I can’t say that represents any
kind of significant void. I’ve never been too interested in doing stuff just so I
could say I’ve done it, and I suspect that all the corporate hoopla and then the silliness
that envelops the game would simply annoy me if I were actually in attendance.
  

   But that 1970 NFL Championship Game was all business, and coincidentally
turned out to be the 49ers last game at that quaint facility located at the southeast
corner of Golden Gate Park. Drat, but the 49ers lost it, messing up my plans to party
in a city that had just won a major professional title. I’d missed the 1969 World
Series entirely when my Mets startled the whole nation; I’d been in the Philippines
for the whole year and then some. I wasn’t technically old enough to drink (20), but
a sailor in good standing could usually manage well enough on Market Street in that
regard.

   So here was my chance and yet John Brodie & Co. came up a touchdown
short. The only reason I’d even gotten tickets was somebody donated them and somehow
I wound up being picked – along with a handful of others – out of the 3,500 sailors
on the U.S.S. Midway to go to the game. I am pretty sure I didn’t do anything special
to get the tickets; they must have been just randomly distributed to various divisions
on the ship.
  

   I do recall that Kezar was a fun if unimposing facility, which I suppose
explains why the 49ers were departing in favor of Candlestick Park.
  

   And I got a kick out of seeing the park prominently featured in the 1971
Clint Eastwood blockbuster “Dirty Harry.” That movie was fun because there were lots
of location shots of San Fran places that I had frequented, including the weenie stand
outside the bank where Harry Callahan was wolfing down a hot dog just as the bank
robbers emerged.
  

   In the years following the 49ers exit, the facility gained a good deal
of notoriety as an outdoor concert venue, hardly surprising given its close proximity
to the Haight-Ashbury District.

  

   And so names like Led Zeppelin, The Doobie Brothers, Jefferson Starship,
Joan Baez, The Grateful Dead, The New Riders of the Purple Sage, Carlos Santana, Waylon
Jennings, and Neil Young were added to the Kezar legend.
  

   The facility was also used for a number of other pro sports, most notably
soccer, but it was also the home field – if that’s what they call it – for the San
Francisco Freedom of the Pro Cricket League.
  

   Jolly good.

Continue reading about Dirty Harry at the Super Bowl would not be cricket … »

   After blogging last week about a collector who got hosed (initially
– he ultimately got his money back) by a bogus box of unopened 1971 O-Pee-Chee
Baseball, I stumbled across a thread this week on the Collectors Universe Sports Card
and Memorabilia Forum –

 http://forums.collectors.com/messageview.cfm?catid=11&threadid=760774&STARTPAGE=1

that reminded me why unopened material has such power over collectors.
  

   The guy had a 1965 Topps Cello and for legitimate reasons detailed on
the site decided he would open it. I could add that just wanting to open it would
be an adequately legitimate reason all by itself, but there were other factors in
play that made it an even less complicated decision than it might otherwise have been.
  

   With great deliberation and fanfare, the guy opened the pack and one-by-one
scanned and posted the results, starting with the 1965 Transfer decal or whatever
the hell they call those things.
  

   His process of unveiling the fruits of his undertaking was roundly and
justifiably applauded by those on the forum lucky enough to take part in real time;
I thought it was great fun even though I only took part in unreal time a few days
later.
  

   I suppose the temptation for the uninitiated would be to call the results
disappointing, since several of the best cards in the pack were off center, and I
suppose from a pure economics standpoint that’s true. But we don’t know how much the
guy had into it, though I suppose he probably would have done better to simply have
left it in the GAI holder.
  

   Still, it makes me think there could be a good market for group purchases,
like folks chipping in on large lottery ticket purchases on a weekly basis. I know
this kind of thing has been going on for virtually the whole four decades of an organized
hobby, but the Internet aspect adds a whole new dimension to the deal.
  

   I’ve got half a mind to buy a nice unopened vintage pack and then see
how many colleagues want a piece of the action. This would be a nonprofit venture,
simply for the sake of eliminating the pesky considerations that would involve.
  

   If 20 people ponied up $40 apiece, that would be $800, probably enough
to pick up a really nice early 1960s cello. Following the format that the guy used
for the 1965 Topps Cello, or something like it, we would open the pack and post the
procedure online for all to see and enjoy.
  

   If we got lucky and nailed some specimens obviously in need of third-party
grading, we would send them off and cross our fingers. Whatever the outcome, the cards
would be offered either as a single lot or multiple lots in our next Collect.com Auction,
with all of the proceeds going to the National Military Family Association.
 

   Just a thought.

Continue reading about And still I am going to open a vintage cello … »

   Well, golly, that didn’t take long, did it? Major League Baseball
Properties has filed suit against Upper Deck in Manhattan federal court
alleging trademark infringement over the company’s use of MLB logos on trading cards
without permission. “Let the games begin.”
  

   Sorry to be a couple of weeks premature with that exhortation, what with
our Canadian friends readying for their two weeks of Olympic hospitality, but for
collectors of modern baseball cards, things are about to get interesting.
  

   The immediate impetus for the suit was the recent release of a pair of
2009-dated Upper Deck baseball issues, Signature Stars and Ultimate Collection. We
displayed a couple of Signature Stars cards on yesterday’s blog and intoned at the
time that a lawsuit was likely on the way. No great talent for prescience was required
to make that leap. The lawsuit also noted that Upper Deck was “on the verge” of distributing
what it described as several other unauthorized card lines, an obvious reference to
the company’s regular-issue baseball series, which is scheduled for release in early
February.
  

   The suit said that Upper Deck’s cards improperly feature various sport
and team logos and that some 2010 packaging featuring Derek Jeter may confuse consumers
because of its similarities to authorized packaging used in 2009.
  

   “Upper Deck’s current conduct is reflective of a pattern of utter disrespect
for the contractual and intellectual property rights of those from whom it licenses
valuable trademarks,” the complaint said.
  

   In reporting on the suit, Reuters News Service also said that Upper Deck
remains in default of more than $2.4 million it owes Major League Baseball.
  

   Major League Baseball reportedly seeks to halt sales of unauthorized
cards and seeks triple and punitive damages.
  

   While the suit may seem narrow enough at first blush, the implications
for Major League Baseball and indeed other professional sports as well are potentially
significant. To my knowledge, the parameters of what is covered by league licensing
of team logos and uniform indicia has never been explicitly defined in the face of
a court challenge, and this in theory could open that particular Pandora’s box.
  

   But there would seem to be a big “if” there, too. Such a challenge to
the basic underpinnings of the licensing provisions used in various forms by virtually
all professional sports leagues would be so far reaching and potentially cataclysmic
that vast forces would be marshalled against it. The legal maneuverings could take
years and gobble up millions of dollars.
   

   The evolution of the baseball card business has a history of creating
some odd bedfellows along the way, and I’ve got a feeling that if the federal courts
don’t put this baby to bed right away, we could be in for a bumpy ride.

Continue reading about And just like that, we find ourselves in court … »

  
I had my column for Sports Collectors Digest finished last Friday when the
2009 Upper Deck Signature Series cards arrived in Iola. The significance there is
that even though the set is technically a 2009 issue, the cards, packs and even the
box itself carry a pretty stark pronouncement about the brave new world of Major League
Baseball cards. So I scrapped the original column and started over.
  

   With Upper Deck now without a license from MLB, the hobby is presumably
getting a glimpse even with this 2009 issue of what the regular-issue 2010 Upper Deck
Series I cards will look like. Each card carries the admonition “NOT Authorized by
Major League Baseball,” which seems fairly unambiguous, but that’s about all that’s
really clear cut in this instance.
  

   The cards themselves make no mention of team nicknames, opting instead
for city designations, and there’s no use of team logos as design elements on the
cards. But as the cards shown here illustrate, there was seemingly little else done
to accommodate the new licensing arrangement, unless you point to photo selection
choices that apparently obscure or avoid entirely the team script across the front
of the player’s jersey.
  

   But don’t take my word for it about the potential for litigation. Major
League Baseball Properties issued a statement that Friday morning alluding to the
two 2009 baseball card sets from Upper Deck that use MLB logos as part of the cards,
despite Topps’ role as the exclusive licensee of MLB.
  

   “We are surprised and disappointed that Upper Deck, a former partner
of ours, would violate our contract by clearly using our intellectual property without
our permission,” said the statement issued by Matt Bourne, MLB’s vice president of
business public relations. “We will vigorously use all legal means to protect the
intellectual property of Major League Baseball and its member Clubs.”
  

   Multiple attempts to solicit comment from Upper Deck officials on Friday
produced no response. Upper Deck’s Series I Baseball cards are scheduled to be released
the first week in February.

Continue reading about Initial Upper Deck cards hint of lawsuit to come … »

   Our Collect.com online auction closes this evening, and
if you haven’t visited it’s worth a couple of mouse clicks, especially if you’re interested
in some cool, old-time lots that are more reminiscent of 1985 than they are emblematic
of 2010.
   

   The lineup ranges from 1/4-ounce single T206 cards to a great big old
monster of 60,000 cards or more, the latter being more than enough to exasperate the
most genial of UPS types. I also spotted a couple of my favorite non-mainstream things,
including a 1952 Topps Reprint set and two different lots of the incredible Conlon
Collection cards from 1991-94. And no, you won’t be wrasslin’ with me: I’ve already
got both those issues and at my age movin’ stuff out is a greater priority than adding
more to the inventory.
  

   But I gotta admit I’m still tempted by both. I still remember when the
1952 Topps Reprint set came out in 1983: Whew! What an uproar ensued. Up to that time
there had never been a reprinting done by the original manufacturer and the idea just
scared by bejesus out of most everybody. Except me.
  

   I recall writing a letter to the editor of Baseball Hobby News (Don’t
ask why I didn’t send it to SCD, because I don’t know and I subscribed to both
at the time.), essentially telling all concerned to take a chill pill and that everything
would be OK. For once, I was right.
  

   Fast foward another eight years and the Conlon Collection made its debut,
and I was on board from the start. At 1,430 cards – if MLB hadn’t stepped on its crank
in 1994 it might have gotten all the way to its intended goal of 3,300 cards – it
is still the biggest set ever for a nationally distributed issue.
  

   That whole issue of 1,430 cards ought to be included in every significant
public library in the country: the photos of the famed Charles Martin Conlon are that
good. It bothers me enormously that such treasures could still be available at such
modest prices, but that’s a function of the original issues having been printed at
a time when the hobby was much larger and print runs – even of a non-mainstream issue
like that – reflected that greater size.
  

   By 1995, with MLB trying to figure out how to recover from its self-inflicted
wounds, Megacards had already dramatically scaled back the print run. The final series
of 110 is typically much harder to find that the earlier ones, and much more expensive
when you do.
  

   For some odd reason as I type this (10:30 a.m. or so), the two Conlon
Collection lots are in inverse relation in terms of the bidding. As I read the auction
description, both lots have all four series from 1991-94 (1,320 cards), but one lot
also has 31 of the 47 Color Conlon Collection cards that were also issued over that
period.
  

   Assuming overall condition matches, the lot with the added Color cards
ought to be the more expensive of the two, but it isn’t.
  

   Check it out.

Continue reading about Odds and ends as our online auction closes … »

  

   I have more fun speculating about Hall of Fame related questions than
just about anything I do in my role as editor of Sports Collectors Digest. I
have always contended that election to the Hall is one of the defining elements –
if not the defining element – of a player’s collectibility.
  

   The fact that I am on the mark in all this speculation only about half
the time discourages me not at all, though almost every time I swing and miss I ended
up being mystified that I could have done so. A batting average of .500 would sensational
for a ballplayer, but not so hot for a pundit.
  

   And so I own up to being 0-for-2 in the 2010 Hall deliberations. Though
I believed him more than worthy of election, I had thought that the wide range of
choices on this year’s ballot might have diluted his support enough to make Andre
Dawson come up just barely short.
  

   Then, to compound my error, I theorized that while Dawson had reportedly
indicated a preference to having his HOF plaque show him in a Cubs cap, the arc of
his career suggests that it should be as an Expo.
  

   So far so good, but that’s when I stumbled. I thought that since he had
apparently indicated a preference, that might sway the HOF decision. And I was wrong
(or possibly his alleged preference wasn’t quite as profound as it had been suggested).
  

   Either way, he’s going in as an Expo, and that’s just fine and certainly
the correct choice in terms of accurately reflecting his career. While I was typing
this blog, the Hall of Fame’s official annoucement showed up on my e-mail, so in the
spirit of embracing all this online immediacy, I’ll include Dawson’s quote about the
decision and that of HOF President Jeff Idelson.
  

   “I
respect the Hall of Fame’s decision to put an Expos logo on my cap, and I understand
their responsibility to make sure the logo represents the greatest impact in my career,”
Dawson said. “Cubs fans will always be incredibly important in my heart, and I owe
them so much for making my time in Chicago memorable, as did the fans in Montreal,
Boston and South Florida, my home. But knowing that I’m on the Hall of Fame team is
what’s most important, as it is the highest honor I could imagine.”

   And Idelson: “Andre
Dawson’s Hall of Fame career belongs to every one of his fans, in every city across
the country,” said Idelson. “The logo selection is only important from an historical
standpoint, as the Museum has a responsibility to properly interpret the game’s history.
Every Hall of Fame plaque lists all of the teams where an electee played or managed.
Fans of ‘The Hawk’ in every city in which he played should claim Andre as one of their
own.”


  

   And the announcement immediately prompted all the cyber chatter about
potential headgear for folks like Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson and Vlad Guerrero.
More fun when the time comes.
  

   In the meantime, I noticed that Vlad – easily my favorite modern player
because he reminds me so much of the Great Clemente – has never won a batting title
despite having a lifetime average of .321. Wow!
  

   Imagine, in this day and age of everybody swinging for the fences and
massive dinero, a guy could have a lifetime mark like that without so much as one
batting title. Nobody in the postwar era has a lifetime average that high without
winning a batting title.
  

   And I used postwar as a cutoff because the batting numbers from earlier
generations just don’t mean the same thing. You understand how that goes: kinda like
the home run numbers from say 1996 to 2004 or so.

   Maybe that’s a good reminder that baseball fans can – over time – learn
to adapt and become reasonably comfortable with statistical anomalies. I think we
are going to have to do just that.

Continue reading about With Dawson cap precedent, what about Vlad? … »

   An SCD subscriber sent me the picture you see here, illustrative of an
ostensibly unopened box of 1971 O-Pee-Chee Baseball cards that he bought on
eBay recently. As the image hints, the packs apparently weren’t all that uncirculated,
and our subscriber ultimately got his money back.
  

   It’s perfectly understandable that a hobby niche with such a particular
allure would be actively pursued by the unscrupulous, but it’s also worth noting that
the kind of malfeasance portrayed here doesn’t always end up being quite so blatant
and outrageous as having stats written in ballpoint pen on the front of a poor condition
Cookie Rojas.
  

   As veteran hobbyists are aware, there are at least a couple of hundred
“Christmas” themed rack packs that routinely circulate in the hobby that, while hardly
as flagrant as the above-mentioned O-Pee-Chee ripoff, certainly raise a lot of eyebrows
about their bona fides and lineage.
  

   The so-called Christmas Racks sell online and even in conventional
big-time catalog auctions, with a wide spectrum of careful descriptions provided.
The most reputable companies are more than a little careful in their catalog descriptions;
the rest of the gang uses language that ranges from the awkwardly circumspect to the
ridiculous.
  

   I get a kick out of some of the online descriptions, which in some cases
exhort the winning bidder not to even consider opening the pack, noting that such
an outlandish move would likely hurt the investment value. Translated: opening them
would reveal that these are not uncirculated cards.
  

   There are plenty of hints about the questionable heritage of these racks,
not the least of which is the selling price, which while not typically chump change
is rarely in line with what you would expect to pay for uncirculated vintage material.
  

   Another telling point: the cards that are included in the racks are across
several series, essentially unheard of in anything that Topps was involved in during
those years (1952-63). If you need more, there’s also the curiosity of so many stars
appearing in prominent “on top” position in the packs, frequently multiple Hall of
Famers.
  

   If you need more incriminating evidence, there’s also the recurring theme
of those very same Hall of Famers being substantially off center. Obviously, given
all the off-center cards that Topps produced during that span, finding them in racks
would be expected, but hardly in the kind of overwhelming percentages found here.
  

   I could add that a reasonable examination of the racks – I have seen
several and looked at photographs of literally dozens – either screams or loudly mutters
that these cards have some kind of a history in the hobby.
   

Continue reading about Buying unopened packs can be a risky business … »

   In last week’s issue of SCD (Feb. 12), I wrote a feature article
about 1963 Fleer Baseball cards, and somewhere in the middle of the undertaking realized
that I was seeing similarities to the current licensing situation involving Upper
Deck, Topps and Major League Baseball.
  

   After Fleer launched its first attempt at a mainstream MLB card set in
1963, Topps promptly took them to court claiming that the cards violated Topps exclusive
contracts with the individual players. The court agreed and 1963 Fleer was finished
after a single series, and the playing field – metaphorically speaking – was abandoned
to Topps alone for nearly another two decades.
  

   Now obviously any such comparisons are inexact by definition, but there
are eerie parallels between the two situations. With the 2010 version of Upper
Deck Baseball expected to hit the streets within a couple of weeks, the almost
complete radio silence from Carlsbad, Calif. about what it’s going to look like prompts
the following bit of speculation.
   

   With Topps now the exclusive licensee for MLB, Upper Deck was faced with
the daunting prospect of figuring out how to produce a card set that doesn’t run afoul
of restrictions on the use of team logos, colors and insignias, etc. While Upper Deck
officials have been mum on the subject, and visits to the company’s website offer
no hint about what the cards will look like, it’s at least possible Upper Deck’s “solution”
could end up being responsible for all this nostalgia about 47 years earlier.
  

   Under the assumption that 2010 Upper Deck Baseball will portray MLB players
in some fashion in their regular uniforms – perhaps with some nominal airbrushing
of logos here and there to provide some legal fodder for a defense – it would seem
that Topps (and MLB) might quickly file suit and set the ball rolling for a rough-and-tumble
tangle in the courts between the two archrivals.
  

   This speculation – and that’s all it really is – fits well with the paucity
of information available about 2010 Upper Deck product thus far. If the idea is to
get the cards out there and significantly distributed before Topps legal talent can
rain on their parade, Upper Deck’s handling of this precarious topic over the last
several months makes perfect sense.

Continue reading about Topps and Upper Deck could be back in court soon … »

   Here’s an admission you don’t get every day from hobby pundits: I am
hardly the final word on virtually any topic you want to name in our beloved hobby.
  

   Being a member in reasonably good standing of the hobby press and having
the kind of forum that Sports Collectors Digest represents in reaching avid
collectors every week – or in online blogs virtually every weekday – may give a faulty
impression.
  

   I have long understood that there are countless advanced collectors who
have vast knowledge and understanding of their particular areas of expertise but simply
don’t have the soapbox that others do.
  

   It is to these sages that I direct my question about 1958 Topps Baseball. After
I wrote a story a couple of weeks back in SCD about that colorful issue, I got an
e-mail from a reader asking if I was aware of the reason Topps selected that design
that year.
  

   Easiest way to do this is just quote him directly: “You do know why
Topps cut out the ballpark backgrounds and went to vivid colors for the 1958 set,
right? Because they were all in, or from, Brooklyn, and they couldn’t bear the thought
of the new cards depicting photos from Ebbets Field or the Polo Grounds (except where
unavoidable, as in the team shots and the multiple player cards).”

  

   I was startled, because I had never heard that theory, and at least potentially
mortified because I should have. But at my age mortification is rarely a big deal,
so I called a couple of old-timers who made me feel a bit better because they hadn’t
heard of it either.
  

   And so I called Sy Berger, in part because I always like finding
excuses to call him anyway. When I relayed the theory, Sy said, “Baloney.” Which seemed
fairly unambiguous. “No truth to it at all,” he added. According to Sy, the switch
to the cut-out backgrounds – I’ll paraphrase here –  was based on finding a contrasting
style to the previous year where photos were left intact to show the ballparks.
   

   Sy’s pronouncement may or may not put an end to the discussion, but I’d
certainly love to hear from any readers who had heard such a thing, including any
attribution, however sketchy it might be a half-century later.
  

   Either way, I think it’s a great bit of hobby lore.
  

   And in a personal aside, I’ll wish the Bergers a happy 64th wedding anniversary.
How cool is that?

Continue reading about How about a little help with 1958 Topps question … »

   A couple of things conspired in recent days to compel me to start musing
once again about my beloved Adirondacks. One, the growing television promotional
coverage to try to hype up interest in the upcoming Winter Games, and two, the re-running
of a special on the Adirondacks on public television a couple of weeks ago.
  

   Seeing all those places where I rambled around in the late 1970s and
1980s makes me start thinking about a return visit, though I can resist a bit more
easily in the dead of winter than I can in warmer months.
  

   But despite my aversion to actually partaking in winter sports that don’t
involve the gentle click of billiards balls in smoke-filled taverns, I must tell you
that if you’ve never visited the Adirondacks – regardless of the season – you’re missing
one of the great American treasures.
  

   And we have a New York State Legislature that was arguably 100 years
ahead of the curve in 1885 when it created a “Forever Wild” State Forest Preserve
to thank for that. At a time when the giant business tycoons ruled the earth, or at
least our little corner of it, New York State saw fit to set aside more than 6 million
acres of land for special protection for future generations, creating a unique national
park that encompassed – roughly speaking – equal parts of state-owned and privately
held land.
  

   It was from the beginning – and remains today – an uneasy alliance of
seemingly conflicting interests, but in truth both groups held/hold one prevailing
joint interest: the preservation of one of the most beautiful regions in the country
for generations to come.
  

   As I did the first time, I got a kick out of watching the PBS special “The
Adirondacks,” which included interviews with a number of people that I knew 30
years ago when I was working in the Saranac Lake/Lake Placid area as a bureau reporter
for a Plattsburgh newspaper.
  

   Starting with details about the Trudeau Sanitorium and the cure cottages
for tuberculosis patients at the turn of the century – think Christy Mathewson – the
footage included shots of the Saranac Lake Winter Carnival Parade and some of the
spectacular ice castles that are constructed along the banks of Lake Flower every
winter.
  

   That carnival, by the way, is the oldest in the country, dating back
to 1897. Famed cartoonist Gary Trudeau, the creator of “Doonesbury” and the great-grandson
of Dr. Edward Trudeau, used to create a pin design every year using many of his strip
characters, with the pins then mass produced and used as a fund-raiser for the carnival.
As you can imagine, the pins were collector items from the start; for all I know,
he may still be doing it, though 30-plus years is a long time.
  

   I would have included a photo here of one of the pins but couldn’t easily
engineer it. My ex-wife saved all the pins from those days, and that was only fair
because she once was an official part of the parade, marching down Main Street in
the sub-zero temperatures in a Billy BlueBird costume, the official Mascot of the
Empire State Games.
  

   Those games are traditionally held within a couple of weeks of the Winter
Carnival, and are sponsored by the New York State Department of Parks Recreation and
Historic Preservation.
  

   That seems appropriate enough; my old employers are also one of the sponsors
of the Adirondacks special on PBS (www.pbs.org). As they say, check your local listings.
 

   I probably will blog a bit more about that grand area as I revive what
memories I have left of the 1980 Winter Olympics over the coming weeks as the Vancouver
version gets underway.

Continue reading about Homesick for The Adirondacks … even in winter … »

    I know that according to the Chinese Zodiac, 2010 is going to be the
Year of the Tiger. Without succumbing to the obvious gag opportunities, I would suggest
that in America it’s going to be the Year of the Confession.
  

   The almost equally zany worlds of politics and entertainment will, of
course, provide their annual drip, drip, drip of such mea culpas, but my reference
is more pointedly to the world of professional sports. I think Mark McGwire might
have just opened the floodgates.
  

   My guess is that anybody who can do so without inviting legal peril is
going to step up to the mike and make official what most everybody has more or less
known all along. And hopefully they’ll do a little better job at it than McGwire,
who performed handsomely in conveying how awful he felt about the whole thing but
whiffed in a number of areas in terms of candor and believability.
  

   Just as Big Mac did, everybody else is going to have to pick their spots,
but you can’t help but think that for most the sooner they come clean – no pun intended
– the better.
  

   I liken this to Thelma and Louise as they started heading to that cliff
and the dark finish of that 1991 film. Take, for example, the 100-plus guys on the
“list” that the Major League Baseball drug testing regimen produced. If I were one
of those guys, I think I’d be pondering a way to get it out there, because I just
can’t imagine that list is going to stay under wraps forever. Frankly, I am amazed
it’s avoided the light of day for as long as it has.
  

   I think those guys should ask MLB to covertly notify each and every last
one of them on the list and create an amnesty day – how about June 6, 2010 – and encourage
all 100-plus to fess up at one time.
  

   Gee, the more I think about that the better it sounds for all concerned.
It’s huge national news, of course, but it’s remarkably blunted for each individual
simply because of the volume. The shadow is removed from the other couple of thousand
“clean” guys who played through the period, so I assume they’d be tickled with the
idea as well.
  

   And from Major League Baseball’s perspective, it would serve to largely
close a chapter that’s been as close to Chinese water torture as one can imagine,
not that I am suggesting that waterboarding is torture. And I’m back to the Chinese
again, who deserve their own apology for the water torture reference, because apparently
there’s no historical evidence pointing to them aside from popular usage of the expression
itself.
  

   I should add that urging those 100 ballplayers who participated in that
testing regimen in good faith with the understanding that the results would remain
under seal is a great departure for me. I have said all along that we have no right
to know who they are; my change of tune comes from the belief that eventually they
are going to be “outed,” and if that’s the case, a better strategy is to get out in
front of it.
  

   Amnesty Day would naturally present the same opportunity for some of
the more prominent names ensnared in the steroid debacle – Mssrs. Bonds and Clemens
come to mind – but their eventual confessions are more complicated because of the
legal proceedings already underway.
  

   And please, no scolding for the use of the expression “their eventual
confessions.” Just like Thelma and Louise, they have to know that the edge of the
cliff is out there waiting for them.
  

   And there’s at least one other big-time sports confession to come …
in the Year of the Tiger.

Continue reading about Bless me, America, for I have sinned … »

   As you might expect, I don’t see a lot of point in adding my analysis
of the Mark McGwire steroid confession. Everybody who might conceivably be
heard from either has been or will be soon enough, all the way from Bobby Knight to
the commissioner himself and points in between.
  

   I am, however, interested in the broader questions raised by the “news,”
which of course isn’t really news at all. It’s just official now.
  

   One of the FBI agents, now retired, who was involved in a 1989-93 steroid
probe did provide an interesting angle in noting that McGwire’s usage was discovered
at that time, and that information was subsequently passed along to Major League Baseball.
  

   Like the admission itself, that’s not particularly surprising, but it
is worthy of note to remind yourself that when baseball was seemingly resurrecting
itself in that bizarrely glorious 1998 season, MLB officials knew – or at the very
least should have known – that their historic home run blizzard was artificially enhanced.
  

   I know all the arguments about how MLB was pushing for testing and the
players union was resisting, but none of that alters the reality that after shooting
itself in the foot with a disastrous truncated season and canceled World Series in
1994, the game was revived on an illusion. And the checks were cashed. Lots of them.
  

   But to me, the steroid-enhanced 800-pound elephant in the room is the
likely reality that players themselves probably wouldn’t give a hoot about using such
things except that we – fans, media, Congress and even an occasional President – frantically
insist that they must.
 

   Without debating the nuance of whether somebody started using to assist
a return from an injury or merely to add muscle and thus maybe some long-ball ooomph
to his resume, I can’t shake the suspicion that athletes making millions of dollars
would seek any remote edge available to keep the paychecks rolling in.
 

   Call me cynical, but I think the primary reason you hear the right things
from players about this topic is because the pressures of political correctness force
them to be outraged, or at least to give that impression. I think the outrage is as
phony as the home run totals from (insert your favored span of years here).
  

   And before anyone suggests I am minimizing the impact of “cheating,”
I would say instead that we ought to be truly vigilant about how “cheating” is defined
in a professional sport where so many billions of dollars are at stake.
  

   To do any less would just be incredibly naive, and we already know where
that got us (think Summer of ’98).  

(McGwire/Sosa artwork courtesy of www.goodsportsart.com)

Continue reading about Steroids are an embarrassment only by proclamation … »

  Truth to tell, there wasn’t much that was surprising about the results of the
BBWAA vote for the 2010 Hall of Fame Class, and I am relieved that Andre Dawson got
the nod and that Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven got so close that it would seem
induction in 2011 is virtually a lock.
  

   I haven’t heard a peep about which cap will be pictured on Dawson’s HOF
plaque; my vote would be for Montreal, if for no other reason than to get another
Expo into the Hall (Gary Carter (shown here) is by himself at the moment).
  

   Since Dawson played more than half his career there, it would seem like
the probable choice by the Hall, but The Hawk’s MVP season did come with the Cubbies.
  

   Dawson played a handful of games at Jarry Park (Mon dieu, excusez-moi
– Parc Jarry), which was a curious little local ball field that had been turned
into an almost major-league stadium. Which was not to be confused with Olympic Stadium,
where Dawson played most of his career, which was a monstrosity of the first order
that was built for something other than major league baseball and thus was quite fairly
cursed when it pretended to embrace same.
 

   I have been to both parks; the former was great fun because after growing
up at Shea and Yankee Stadium, it was almost spooky to watch a major league game at
such a yahoo facility. And the latter, Olympic Stadium, was an abomination unto the
eyes of the baseball gods, and not just because the awful artificial surface helped
to ruin Dawson’s knees, among countless others.
  

   Nope, it was just an awful joint, and it didn’t help that Montreal fans
couldn’t seem to get the hang of rooting decorum for baseball. I had been to the Montreal
Forum to watch the Canadiens, and though I wasn’t much of a hockey fan, watching that
team in that facility with those fans could have been enough to bring anybody on board.
It was a surreal experience.
  

   And yet you plant those same butts on the plastic seats at Olympic Stadium
and all the rabid fan fervor would just disappear. Polite and reserved, which works
well at Rotary Club meetings but sucks big time at a baseball game.
  

   Still, I lived close enough to the Canadian border for the better part
of 10 years to develop some real affection for those funny-sounding little hosers.
Since they had to endure the ignominy of having their franchise unceremoniously stripped
away from them, I figure one more little nod from our Hall of Fame would be a nice
gesture and sound international relations to booth, eh?

Continue reading about So which cap does Andre wear this summer? … »

   While I poke around this a.m. waiting patiently for the Hall of Fame
announcement later on, I thought I’d take the opportunity to plug some of the work
of one of our favorite artists, Arthur K. Miller.
  

“Bride of Frankenstein”
2009
20-by-24 inches, acrylic on masonite

   As readers of Sports Collectors Digest are fully aware, Miller’s
elegant work portraying many of the greatest players in baseball history has been
gracing our covers for more than a decade. When I heard he had his own exhibition
at OK Harris Art Gallery in New York City, I wanted to mention it even if only a segment
of our readership would have the opportunity to actually visit.

  

   I wasn’t even surprised to learn that the exhibition was entitled: Arthur
K. Miller – Classic Horror; Movie Monsters from the Golden Era, since I had talked
to him a long time ago and he told me about his venture into this area.
  

   I doubt if I could improve on the promotional text so I won’t try: “MONSTERS!
VAMPIRES! WEREWOLVES!  Come witness, if you dare, spirited living-color portraits
of classic HORROR movie icons from an earlier black-and-white cinematic world! 
See melodramatic paintings rendered in stark, painterly realism, richly executed in
acrylics! Frightful images so lifelike you’ll need to keep telling yourself, “It’s
only a painting, it’s only a painting.”

  

   The exhibition runs from Jan. 16 to Feb. 20 at the OK Harris Gallery
on Broadway in New York City, and the artist will be on hand on opening day from 3-5
p.m. to throw out the first pitch, in a manner of speaking.
 

   Obviously, Miller’s spectacular work can be accessed by going to the
gallery website at www.OKharris.com,
where all these monsters reside, or you can go to Miller’s own site, www.artofthegame.com and
have a crack at the monsters and his incredible baseball work.

Continue reading about Naturally, Arthur Miller ends up on Broadway … »

   I think it’s kinda cool that one of my all-time favorite sports legends
is a guy that a lot of casual sports fans might never have heard of. I used to be
disappointed and dismayed that the shadowy world of professional pocket billiards
had such difficulty getting mainstream media coverage, but now …
  

   (Photo courtesy of www.insidepoolmag.com)

   So much time as passed since the days when I used to gripe about that
situation that I now understand it’s probably not going to change substantially in
my lifetime, and I guess that’s OK. Too bad for the many great players and all the
fans, but probably an understandable situation given the aforementioned “shadowy”
nature of the game.
  

   I have been wading around cyberspace for quite awhile looking up information
about Efren Reyes, so long in fact that I have forgotten what got me onto it
in the first place.
  

   I want to say that Reyes was the greatest pool player I had ever seen,
but anybody who knows anything about pool understands that the “sport” defies the
idea of that kind of broad labeling. Best you can hope for is “best you’ve ever seen”
at this or that particular game.
  

   Since I practiced for several months with Irving Crane, he has
to easily get the nod as the greatest straight-pool player I’ve ever seen, but Reyes
is my pick for 9-ball. He also has the purest and most elegant stroke I’ve ever seen,
and I suspect that anyone who’s ever seen him play would probably agree. It’s probably
no coincidence that the three sports I am most involved with – baseball, golf and
billiards – each offers a particularly compelling reverence for the purest swing,
or in the case of pool, stroke.
  

   However I happened upon Reye’s Wikipedia entry, I was struck by the extensive
listing of his “Titles and Achievements,” numbering to 78 in all. I noticed there
were only seven listings in the 1980s, and I was looking for the event in Atlantic
City, N.J., where I first saw him play.
  

   The other cool thing I remembered was that he used to play under an alias
in those days – Cesar Morales – which he said he used because at the time U.S.
players knew of Efren Reyes by name (he was already a legend in his native Philippines
and in the Far East) but wouldn’t necessarily recognize him by sight.
  

   But once they saw his stroke, as I did at that 1988 tournament on the
boardwalk in Atlantic City, they would have had no doubt.
  

   The other reason I liked Reyes was that he was born in Angeles City just
outside of what was Clark Air Force Base. I had been to Angeles City a couple of times
when I was stationed at Subic Bay Naval Base during the Vietnam War, and the thought
of a world-class pool player emerging from my adopted homeland tickled me no end.
  

   There is perhaps no other sport in the United States played by so many
millions of citizens that seems so completely unable to effectively market its professional
tour than pool. Catching “The Magician” on one of those taped matches on ESPN or ESPN2
can be a hit-or-miss undertaking, but I would urge you to do so if the opportunity
arrives.
  

   You should never pass up a chance to see one of the all-time greats.

Continue reading about Efren Reyes one of my favorites sports legends … »

   “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” We seem to
have come a long way since that hoary old aphorism was in its prime, presumably in
the Vince Lombardi days of Green Bay Packer dominance in the 1960s.
  

   Though he is widely linked with the pronouncement, its actual originator
is 1950s UCLA Bruins football coach Red Sanders, with the legendary Packer coach reportedly
first taking it out for an oratorical spin nearly a decade after Sanders’ reported
first utterance in 1950.
  

   Perhaps now its been unofficially modified to something more in line
with the alleged moral relativism of modern times. I blather in this fashion as a
result of watching a couple of weeks of NFL tap dancing in the closing weeks of the
regular season that seems markedly different from the win-at-all-costs image that
gave the game its initial verve and vitality.
  

   I don’t know about you, but regardless of the quite understandable explanations,
I don’t much care for watching NFL games where one team has little or no interest
in winning and instead is more concerned with avoiding injury. With those as the parameters,
that makes it exactly a half-ass exhibition game.
  

   I suspect that the expansion of this particular problem came about because
the parity theme in the NFL seems to have gotten strained a bit this year, with several
teams posting such imposing records that the final stretch of games was almost guaranteed
to pose difficulties along these lines.
  

   While I understand that winning the Super Bowl is the ultimate goal,
I think it raises really troublesome issues when you have things like an undefeated
team essentially throwing in the towel early in the second half, even with the understandable
goal of avoiding injury to the front liners.
  

   I object to this simply on the basis of upsetting the fundamental underpinnings
of the sport; a game where physical contact is such an elemental component is not
meant to be played halfheartedly. The very bastardization of the process is enough
to invite injury itself, since the game is being performed in a fashion diametrically
opposite to its primary function.
  

   And if it seems too snooty to decry it on such broad philosophical grounds,
how about this: What happens if – for example – the New York Jets somehow pull
off the second miracle in the history of that often moribund franchise? Would a Jets
Super Bowl win in four weeks be forever tainted by the argument that they never should
have set foot in the playoffs in the first place?
 

   I’m just sayin’.  

Continue reading about When winning becomes just another thing … »