Of course there's no new baseball these days. So I'm recreating what was for me a formative experience, watching the 1987 World Series.
In the fall of 1987, I was eleven years old, just about to turn twelve, and I had started seventh grade. My parents had separated less than a year ago and my older brother had started high school. Within that past year I think I had been shedding childhood interests such as Transformers and G.I. Joe, and I turned to baseball. I had always had some interest in baseball but the 1987 season is when I started following daily, and the 1987 World Series is the first that I made a point of watching. Dad wasn't around that year (my parents got back together later), and who knows what my older brother was off doing. But Mom and I watched that 1987 World Series together, and it was a great series. Fortunately the whole thing is on YouTube, and I'm currently partway through Game 4.
One thing that 1987 series did for us was make us aware of Kirby Puckett.
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| Two 1985 Topps Kirby Puckett rookie cards. |
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I of course instantly searched through my cards back then, to see if I had any Kirby Puckett rookie cards. Lo and behold, I did. I only had a handful of pre-1987 cards, but there were some good ones in there. Over the subsequent years I managed to add another copy of it. You can clearly see the flaws in both of them in this scan, but that's no matter -- these Pucketts mean a lot to me.
I went digging through my main binder to see who else from the 1987 Twins or Cardinals I had. I only turned up a handful, and maybe my secondary binder has more. But another then-valuable rookie card I had was a 1986 Donruss Vince Coleman.
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| 1986 Donruss Vince Coleman. |
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Back then the view was that Coleman was the NL's Rickey Henderson. Coleman had some great seasons, but Henderson turned out to have a much more impressive career.
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| 1987 Fleer Update (glossy?) Joe Magrane and 1987 Fleer Jack Clark. |
The other two Cardinals from that team in my main binder are Joe Magrane and Jack Clark. Magrane was in the update set, being a rookie pitcher that year. It doesn't show in the scan, but the card is actually extremely shiny/glossy, so I suppose it must have come from the Fleer tin set. I never bought a Fleer tin set, so I must have just picked up the one card somewhere. Watching the 1987 series, the announcers frequently lament that Jack Clark wasn't playing, and that Terry Pendleton wasn't at full strength. Of course there's no telling for sure, but one suspects the close series may have turned out differently had those guys been healthy.
It goes without saying that I'm having trouble finding the time to blog. My last post before this was almost four months ago! Being home all day isn't helping, as I have to take care of our almost-five-year-old son while my wife works from home (I work from home too but with more flexible hours). Let me close just by wishing that you all stay well!
