The Gems of Junk Wax, Pt. 23: 1988 Score #225 Steve Garvey

Juxtaposition.

There's a lot of it on this card.

This is Steve Garvey's final card. Interestingly, it was produced by Score, a company that was in its first year of producing baseball cards.

One of the most remembered figures of the 1970's had his final card produced by Score. Not Topps, not Donruss, not Fleer. Score.

That just doesn't seem right.

Score was the first major card company to receive a license to produce baseball cards after Fleer and Donruss joined the ranks in 1981. Upper Deck would follow in '89, followed by what must have seemed like hundreds of other companies within the next few years.

Score's initial offering in 1988 actually isn't that bad of a set, in my opinion. In fact, I think it's one of the better base sets in Score's history, although I'm not sure how much that really says.

I'm always a fan of colorful borders. Plus, most of the shots for the '88 Score set are in-action pictures, and the front of the card does a great job of showcasing them. (Although I wish they would've scrapped that little white square inside the picture frame. It serves no purpose.)

I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but Score did a great job in capturing a shot of Garvey at Wrigley Field. After all, arguably his finest moment came against the Cubs in Game 4 the 1984 NLCS, when he hit a two-run, walk-off homer to extend the series.

Although he only played five seasons in San Diego, it cemented his place in Padres lore.

Another great example of juxtaposition.

However, it's easy to see why Garvey had just one card in 1988. He played in just 27 games the year before, hitting a paltry .211 in his final season. 

While it wasn't a great way to go out on the field, Score chose a great way to send Garvey off on his final piece of cardboard. This action shot captures the precise moment that a Cubs pitch met Garvey's bat, although it looks like Garvey got under it a bit.

Some of the greatest players in baseball history had less-than-flattering swan songs in terms of their baseball cards.

However, the same cannot be said about Steve Garvey.

He got a proper send-off.

Dime Box Heroes: You know his name

1972 Topps #423 Oscar Gamble

It doesn't get much better than Oscar Gamble.

As Night Owl said in his last '71 Topps post, Gamble might well be the most talked-about player in the blogosphere.

But that's a good thing. How can you ever get sick of talking about him?

Surprisingly, my Oscar Gamble collection is less than a year old. Before I decided to start collecting him this summer, he was just kind of "that guy with the Afro". I didn't know how much of a cult figure he was in the baseball community, or that he was actually a decent ballplayer.

I came across his legendary 1976 Topps Traded card in a nickel box at the flea market this past summer. (Yes, a nickel box.) 

I'd seen the card before, but I'd never actually held a copy in my hands. In that moment, I realized that this was a guy I couldn't ignore anymore.

I had to start collecting Oscar Gamble.

At the National this past summer, my dad and I came across a table that had a dime box. Only one box, but it was gigantic. There had to have been over a thousand cards in there.

After looking through a few stacks of cards from the box, I noticed that there were quite a few 1970's cards inside, not something you see out of your everyday dime box. I just knew that there were going to be a few legendary cards inside this one.

And I was right. Although it was mostly '70s and '80s singles, the box had a few newer cards. About halfway into the first row of cards, I found a Nomar Garciaparra parallel numbered to just 40 copies from one of the Upper Deck Fortyman sets. Since I figured it could be decent tradebait, I bought it. Little did I know that the card was worth 25 bucks. (I dealt it for a bunch of Hall-of-Fame goodies for my collection that very same day.)

But the single greatest find from that box was the '72 Topps Oscar Gamble card at the top of the post. I think my dad was actually the one that originally found it, as we each took a half of the box to look through.

Other than '75 Topps, my personal favorite design from the 1970's is '72 Topps. It's just so...'70s. It's the "Magical Mystery Set".

I'm not sure that any ballplayer represented the swingin' times of the '70s like Oscar Gamble.

I call this one the "Sly Stone" card, because my dad often says Gamble looks a lot like Sly Stone in his '72 Topps photo. (Although this was just before Gamble grew his legendary Afro.)

These days, Oscar Gamble is among my favorite players to collect. I've accumulated a decent number of his cards so far, but I'm still missing a few key pieces. 

Hopefully, Oscar Gamble is hiding in a few more dime boxes out there, just waiting to be discovered.

It's good to be back

These might possibly be the greatest words I've ever typed since I started this blog:

Baseball is back!


There was a spring training game yesterday (Mariners vs. A's), but it wasn't televised, at least in my area.

MLB Network televised it's first spring training game this afternoon. Yankees vs. Phillies. I don't really have much attachment to either team, but I was so happy to finally watch a game of baseball! (The Phillies won 8-5, if anyone cares.)

Baseball got me through some particularly rough spring and summer months last year. One of the few pleasures I got during that time was watching baseball games each day.

I'm happy to say that things are going much, much better than they were at this time last year. The beginning of baseball season can only add to the happiness!

Not only is Opening Day right around the corner, but the bi-annual card show that I've mentioned before comes back on St. Patrick's Day this year. And the local flea market re-opens on April 1st. Needless to say, this is a great time of year.

So prepare for some baseball card goodness in the coming weeks!

I know I am.

The main thing I was looking for in this afternoon's game was to see if Scott Podsednik got the chance to play.

He's always been one of my favorite players. The home run he hit in Game 2 of the 2005 World Series was indeed a "Classic Walk-Off". I was literally jumping up and down in the living room after I saw the ball leave the park. It was just so shocking because he didn't hit a single homer during the regular season that year.

I'm a Cubs fan, but the White Sox are one of my favorite teams as well. (Is that blasphemy?)

Seeing the Sox win the World Series in '05 is still probably my single favorite baseball moment in my life.

Podsednik had a triumphant '09 season in which he hit .304 in his second stint for the Sox. He didn't do that bad in 2010, hitting .297 with 35 steals in a season split between the Royals and the Dodgers.

He's fallen on some rough times as of late, though. He had to settle for a minor league deal in 2011, signing with the Blue Jays. He suffered a foot injury in spring training and was released soon after. He didn't play a single game in the bigs last year.

Thankfully, the Phillies decided to take a chance on "Scotty Pods" this year, signing him to a minor-league deal. I really hope he can manage to find a spot on the Phils' roster at some point this year.

He hit a double in his first at-bat today.

It was the best moment of the afternoon.

My favorite piece of baseball trivia

There's a lot of useless baseball factoids running through my brain these days.

Rod Carew got his 3,000th hit on the same exact day Tom Seaver collected his 300th win. Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, and Willie Mays all finished their careers in the same cities they started in, only with different franchises. "Boog" Powell's real name is John.

But I'm proud of all these seemingly useless facts. Ask anyone my age who Ted Kluszewski is and all you'll get is a blank stare.

There's some great baseball tidbits out there, but here's my personal favorite. It certainly made my jaw drop the first time I read it. I had to re-read it to make sure I saw it right.

See if you can get the answer without scrolling to the bottom of the page.

Other than these two players...

...who is the only player to hit a home run in more than 15 consecutive seasons in Braves history?


I'll bet that this is probably the first guy that comes to mind:

On a side note, these inserts are among the nicest I've ever come across. 


Eddie Mathews hit at least one homer for the Braves from 1952 to 1966. (I'm pretty sure he's the only guy to have played for the Boston, Milwaukee, and Atlanta Braves as well.)

The question asks for guys who have hit a homer in more than 15 consecutive seasons, so Mathews isn't the answer.

Nope, the answer to this trivia question has an "outside the box" element to it.

Besides Chipper Jones and Hank Aaron, the only player to have hit a homer in more than 15 straight seasons in Braves history is...

...Warren Spahn.

It's true. You can look it up.

(While we're on the topic of nice-looking inserts, these "Enshrinement" ones are among my all-time favorites.)

Although he was just a .194 career hitter, Spahn hit at least one homer for the Braves for 17 straight seasons (1948-64).

His single-season career high was four, which he did in both 1955 and 1961. He'd finish with 35 career round-trippers.

On a side note, Spahn won 363 games in his career. He also finished with 363 career base hits.

Baseball's a strange sport sometimes, isn't it?

Maybe you'll impress your friends with this seemingly useless factoid.

"Short Term Stops", #9: Rick Ankiel

2010 Topps National Chicle #152 Rick Ankiel (Royals)

I was a little too young to remember pitcher Rick Ankiel bursting onto the baseball scene in 2000, coming just short of winning the NL Rookie of the Year award that year.

Unfortunately, he absolutely flamed out in '01, posting an awful 7.13 ERA in just six starts. He just flat-out lost his control.

He was sent to the minors soon after.

I remember hearing rumblings of him attempting to make a comeback as a hitter around 2005 or so. I never thought he'd actually make it, though.

I vividly remember the night Ankiel made his debut as a major-league outfielder. Seeing him hit a three-run homer in his first game back on the highlights that night was something else.

It really is amazing when you stop and think about it. He went from a once top-pitching prospect to a big-league outfielder in about two years.

He hit 25 homers in 2008 for the Cardinals.

Ever since his comeback, Ankiel has been a decent backup outfielder for a few teams. He doesn't hit for a high average, but he's a nice power source to have off the bench.

He hit a speed bump in 2010, hitting just .232 with six homers.

The Royals signed him as a free agent in January of 2010, but he lasted just 27 games in Kansas City before being dealt to the Braves. 

This 2010 National Chicle base card of Ankiel is among my favorite in the entire set. I love the colorful background. The in-action shot is also a plus. But most of all, I like that fact that it's a card of Ankiel that says "outfielder" on the back.

The tale of Rick Ankiel is easily one of the more fascinating baseball stories of my lifetime.

A dream come true

There's always that one card.

That one card that you dreamt about owning for a long time. That one card you always wanted.

Perhaps some of us have already acquired that one special card and are still admiring it after the fact. Maybe some of us haven't had the good fortune to be able to own it and are still trying to track it down.

My personal "holy grail" was the 1971 Topps Thurman Munson card. I'm not sure how I first became aware of it, but I know I've wanted it ever since the first time I saw it.

Trouble was that it was worth quite a few bucks, at least by Beckett's standards. A hundred and twenty bucks, at the least.

As you might know by know, I don't much care about the condition of my cards, especially when it comes to vintage. I always hoped I could find a beat-up copy of this card in one of those vintage bargain bins at the card shows I attended. No luck.

That is, until a card show a couple Novembers ago. One of the dealers had a bin of vintage cards for 10% of the listed price (which was the book value). As I searched through the box, I found a few decent cards (a 1967 Topps Felipe Alou for a buck-fifty, for one). But then...

My eyes lit up when I first saw it. An actual '71 Thurman Munson! I'd never actually held a copy in my hands before that point. The card had a price tag of $120 on it, so the card was twelve bucks with the discount.

At the time, though, I employed "Tip #7" of my low-end card show findings. I didn't want to blow too much of my budget on just that one card, considering I still had half of the card show to go through. Looking back, it wasn't that greatest idea. For a card I wanted that badly, I should've just bought it right there and then. What if someone came up and bought it before I got back to it? That would've really sucked.

As I moved on to the next table, that thought kept ringing in my head. So as I was in the middle of searching through a dime box, I had a "mission" for my dad. I asked if he could go back to that table and buy that Munson card for me. As always, he was happy to do so. I gave my dad a twenty and he came back with the hallowed card.

I was now the proud owner of a real, actual 1971 Topps Thurman Munson card.

The vendor even threw in a 1966 Topps Luis Aparicio with the Munson, free of charge.

I've seen this card featured on a lot of other blogs, so I don't know that I have anything much to add to all the praise it's already gotten.

All I can say is that it's about as close to baseball card perfection as I've ever seen.

I actually learned something new about this card as a result of the blogosphere. The runner that Munson is tagging out on this card is actually A's pitcher Chuck Dobson. I love cards of pitchers in non-pitching situations.

Just when I thought this card couldn't get any more awesome, it did.

Owning this card is indeed a dream come true.

Zero-Year Cards, Part 23

2005 Topps #594 Ben Grieve (Pirates)

Remember him?

Until I got this card, I had no idea that Ben Grieve was still active in 2005. He signed a minor-league deal with the Pirates before the 2005 season, but was cut before ever appearing in a game in Pittsburgh.

Every time I think of Grieve, I think of my Beckett magazines.

One day, I decided to flip through a bunch of my old Becketts just for fun. Each issue has the "hot list" with the 20 "hottest" cards on the market right now. (Whatever that means.)

For a while, Beckett showed what the #1 "hottest" item was at that time of the previous year, and what the #1 item was ten years ago.

A couple of my 2004 and 2005 issues had Grieve's 1994 Topps Traded rookie card as the #1 item from ten years prior. I imagine that card was trading hands for quite a bit of money in those days, as Greive was the #2 overall pick in the 1994 draft by the A's.

For a while, it looked like the people that "invested" in Ben Grieve cards might have hit a goldmine. In his first full season in 1997, Grieve hit .288 with 18 homers and 89 RBI, good enough to net him an All-Star appearance as well as the AL Rookie of the Year award.

He'd hit 55 homers in the next two years in Oakland. The A's sold high on him, dealing Grieve to the Devil Rays as part of a three-team trade that brought Johnny Damon to Oakland.

In hindsight, the A's made a really smart move.

Grieve's career derailed in Tampa Bay, his best season for them coming in '02 when he hit .251 with 19 homers and 64 RBI. He was hampered by injuries in '03, appearing in just 55 games for the Devil Rays that year. He'd have short stints with the Brewers and Cubs in the years following.

His last year in the majors came in 2005, when he made 25 plate appearances for the Cubs in a pinch-hitting role.

Stories like Ben Grieve's are the exact reason while I will never delve into "prospecting" in baseball cards.

It's too risky. Most of all, it takes all the fun away from collecting.

I'd bet that the success rates of draft picks in baseball is by far the lowest of any sport. Not a lot of former #1 picks have lived up to their potential in the previous twenty years or so. Sure, there's busts in the other sports as well, but I can't imagine that it even comes close to the amount of baseball draft picks that didn't quite pan out.

The term "can't-miss prospect" doesn't mean much to me anymore.

Just look at what happened to Ben Grieve.