Birthday Boy!

Who knew that old Monte Irvin was still around to enjoy my birthday shout out to him for his 95th?!

A bit of trivia now. Who led the league in RBI in Willie Mays' rookie year 1951? Monte Irvin did.

The card is a 1953 Bowman color.

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People have been bery, bery good to me with their trading cards

I have been lucky in my collecting in that people have always been generous with me about giving me cards. For instance, a couple of my older brother's friends gave me some good stuff when I was a kid: 1969 Topps football cards (though Charlie C. liked to draw mustaches & beards on some of his cards); an inch-thick stack of 1964 Topps Giants cards loaded with Hall of Famers, many in duplicate, even quadruplicate; and a nice 1968 Topps Nolan Ryan rookie card, upon which Jerry Koosman plays eternal second fiddle to Nolan (sorry, Jerry!).

My real score was when a colleague of my dad's at my dad's office learned that I collected baseball & football cards. He gave my dad to give to me a stack of about 200 cards from the 1950, 1951, 1952 & 1953 Bowman baseball sets. Among these were Ted Williams & Stan Musial (the fate of which can be read in earlier blogs), a Whitey Ford rookie card, two 1950 Roy Campanella & many other superstars. I still have the vast majority of these cards.

Yes, I need to thank those people for their generosity. So, thank you - but you can't have your cards back!

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Old Baseball Card Nightmare #2

It was at an old-timers game in the mid-1970's at Arlington Stadium, then home of the hapless Texas Rangers. The old-timer teams were to be the old St. Louis Cardinals VS. old American League stars.

Before the game, many of the old-timers signed autographs. My family were seated some rows behind the first base dugout, so I had a good chance to get some signatures because guys were signing just below us.

I had seen a roster in the newspaper of the players who would be involved, so I had had the foresight to bring along some of my best cards, and had crammed them in a rigid plastic container.

Oh, there's Stan Musial! I hurried down to where Stan stood signing, lots of kids reaching over the rail to him w/ their programs, etc. I reached into my plastic container & pulled out my boffo 1953 Bowman color card of Stan & eagerly held it out to him.

Reaching past my card to snag some other kid's lousy 3x5 index card to sign, Stan wrecked my card with a clumsy elbow, leaving a permanent wrinkle. "CURSES!," I thought, as I reeled back my arm and examined the card . . . which never got signed; nor was Stan ever aware of what he had so carelessly done.

Well, the evening wasn't a total loss. Though I got none of my cards signed, for I was then shy of exposing any more of them to clumsy baseballers, I got many signatures on my program of old Cardinals & ALers. Also, Billy Martin, who may have been managing the Rangers at the time, took ground balls at second base and would, with tremendous coordination for a man his age, skim his glove up in the air and knock down line drives that were out of his reach, which I thought was quite cool.

Anyhow, I don't hold any real, nagging grudge against Stan the Man; but I will say he sure had a funny way of wagging his rear end when he was at bat . . .

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