1979 TOPPS LEE MAZZILLI I am one of those people who favor an inclusive MLB all-star game, with at least one representative from each team selected to participate. And it all comes down to my Metsian DNA. Many years during the late '70s/early '80s, I would sit glued to the game waiting to see if [...]
1985 TOPPS TOM GORMAN It became a yardstick of sorts. Did you possess the right mixture of fanaticism, masochism, and sheer love of the theater of the absurd to make it all the way through to the end? Perhaps we should add to that list “a profoundly impaired social life”-- after all, it was the [...]
1985 TOPPS DWIGHT GOODEN I caught some of the Yankees' Old-Timers Day ceremony over the weekend. It was not a moment of apostasy-- I just like baseball history. And unfortunately, my team has not given me a regular, institutionalized Old-Timers Day since back in the early '90s. They say it died of unpopularity, and out [...]
1989 TOPPS DOUBLE HEADERS TIM TEUFEL Topps spent the better part of the '80s in a panic. By 1989, they were facing competition from Donruss, Fleer, Score, Upper Deck, Sportsflics, and, I don't know, you and your baby sister. No doubt this was a shock to the system for a company that had enjoyed an [...]
1988 TOPPS EXPERIMENTAL CLOTH BARRY LYONS So what of Topps and its abiding fascination with cloth? Seems someone in the hallowed halls held fast to the hobby-horsical notion that the kids wanted to see cloth versions of their cards. In 1972, Topps created a test set of brown-backed cloth stickers. These made it out of [...]
1995 TOPPS Paul Wilson By now everyone knows the Mets took Brandon Nimmo as their first-round pick in the 2011 Draft. Everyone talks about his upside and it’s nice to have a hitter with upside in the system. Now we’re hoping that he turns into the next Darryl Strawberry or David Wright. But those guys [...]
1979 TOPPS Willie Montanez We all have them. Those good-not-great players from our youth for whom we have a deep and abiding affection. Take Guillermo Montanez here. He showed up at Shea with a decent if unspectacular resume-- finished second in the 1971 ROY voting, 24th in MVP voting twice. Was an all star once, [...]
GARY CARTER ON TOPPS: THE EARLY YEARS Gary Carter was born on this 1975 Topps Rookie Catchers-Outfielders card, occupying the Marsha slot on a Brady Bunchesque piece of cardboard. And surely Marc Hill, Leon Roberts, and Danny Meyer spent many years lamenting their place in this particular family. “Gary, Garrry, Garrrrry!” they could be heard [...]
1986 TOPPS BRUCE BERENYI Every extraordinary event has its Bruce Berenyi. They are the faceless actors who make a barely measurable contribution to a great achievement. Perhaps they performed a quick spot weld on the plaque that was attached to the ladder of the Apollo 11 lunar excursion module. Or maybe they knocked a dowel [...]
2011 TOPPS GYPSY QUEEN CARLOS BELTRAN Over at Wolfgang's Vault you can watch video of what would turn out to be the Sex Pistols' last concert, at Winterland in San Francisco back in January of 1978. This show came at the end of a short but brutal tour through the American south, where it was [...]
This is not a real card but it could have been, as Tom Seaver’s rookie card was issued in 1967 and Nolan Ryan’s came a year later. Ryan appeared in two games for the Mets in 1966 but military obligations limited him to just four minor league games in 1967. Instead, Acme Reproductions made this [...]
1966 TOPPS EDDIE BRESSOUD ORIGINAL ART When I was a kid, my friend's dad had LeRoy Neiman lithographs lining the corked walls of his study. Sometimes I'd press my nose against a picture frame and examine the angles and arcades of the penciled signature along the white border. I haven't acquired much original art of [...]