Thanks, Night Owl!

A while ago, Night Owl put up his wantlist for 1982 Fleer.  I had opened a few packs in the early days of this blog, and had some from my original collection as well, and sent a few dozen cards his way.  He returned the favor, and here are the Phillies and one Pirate I got in exchange.
When he asked what I wanted in return, I first thought about the overwhelming bulk of my collection, and said that I'd like any pre-1994 Phillies and Pirates oddballs he might have to spare.  But then I thought about what complements my collection, and asked for some modern cards, since I have almost no modern cards.  I asked in particular for whatever he could send to commemorate the 2008 Phillies World Series winning team in my collection.  And here we have them: Hamels, Victorino, Rollins, Howard.
And another Rollins, and Utley, Ruiz, and Burrell.  I grew up in the Philadelphia region, in Delaware, which could be considered far suburbs of Philly.  I went to college in Pittsburgh, grad school in North Carolina, and then worked in New York and then South Carolina.  Then I took a job in Philly starting in fall 2008.  I moved back home just in time to see these guys win it all.  It was a great time, and I'm glad I have them in my collection now.
Night Owl took care of both of my requests, as this TCMA Wes Covington and SSPC Johnny Oates show.  Interestingly, I posted a different TCMA Wes Covington not long ago, of him with the Braves.  The main things I know about Johnny Oates are that he was the Orioles manager when I was in high school, and that he is one of the several players and managers that died of a similar brain cancer, including some other Phillies (Darren Daulton and Tug McGraw).
The lone Pirate in the haul is this Topps Big of Jose Lind.  I really liked those Topps Big sets back in the day, and I didn't have this one of Lind.
Then we have two Kellogg's cards, in various stages of beat-up condition, Dick Selma and Willie Montanez.  I think the Montanez is my favorite of all the cards Night Owl sent; I'm a sucker for Kellogg's.  The 1982-style Ryan Howard is probably the runner-up.  And the Ruiz with the rookie cup is awesome.
Finally, there were a handful more.  I don't have the stamina to write about all these guys, but I sure appreciate the cards.  So, thanks Night Owl!  And thanks, everyone, for reading!

1990 Topps Minis #39: Nolan Ryan

Having broken my recent hiatus from cardblogging, I am now back and ready to resume my usual feature of blogging through the 1990 Topps Mini League Leaders set.  We last featured card #38, Rangers pitcher Jeff Russell.  That puts us at card #39 (of 88) today, Rangers pitcher Nolan Ryan.

#39, Nolan Ryan.

I've said several times on this blog that I was never a big Nolan Ryan fan.  His longevity and ability to strike batters out and throw no-hitters were of course very impressive.  But it never seemed to translate very well to winning baseball games.  Of course as far as the wins statistic goes he has a lot (324) but he also has a lot on the losing side (292).  And the Miracle Mets were ancient history to me in the 80s, so I never saw him do much in the postseason.  Anyway, he is of course a legend, even if he isn't my personal favorite.

Nolan Ryan card back.

Ryan earned his way into this league leaders set doing what he did, striking out batters, leading the AL in 1989 with 301.  He also led in batting average against, with .187. 

Thanks for reading!  We're almost done with the AL and almost halfway through the set.

Missing card identified and found: Starting Lineup Talking Baseball Tony Gwynn

I haven't posted in a bit over two months.  This was an accidental hiatus; I've been caught up in work, but things have dissipated a bit and I hope to be able to keep up a bit better here.  At the same time I will need to keep my expectations reasonable as far as posting goes, I think -- I have a tendency to think I will make all sorts of posts with a great many cards, but when it comes to getting the cards together, scanning, cropping, and writing, it gets overwhelming.  So I will try to be realistic and post a few times a week with posts with not a huge number of cards in them.

Tony Gwynn.

As far as a subject for this post goes, I have this one card to offer, the 1988 Starting Lineup Talking Baseball game card for NL All-Star Tony Gwynn.  I posted what I thought was the whole NL All-Star set previously, explaining that I received this game for my 13th birthday in 1988.  The game itself came with two teams built-in that you could play against each other, the NL All-Stars and the AL All-Stars.  You could then buy cartridges with additional teams, and I had one cartridge that had the Pirates, Phillies, and Mets teams on it.  That cartridge came with cards for those three teams.

My AL All-Stars set had 20 cards in it, and my NL All-Stars set had 19 cards.  I thought at the time that this is the way it was, and conjectured that perhaps computer memory being what it was at the time, maybe there was room for only 39 players total.  But that was wrong, fortunately, and I found this Tony Gwynn lost in the closet of my old bedroom when I went to get a few more things from my mom's house this past weekend.  It was in the wrong place but the right general neighborhood, mixed in with some non-card baseball memorabilia.  Tony Gwynn has now gained his rightful place, joining the other NL All-Stars in a team set bag.

Thanks for reading!