Next Year, I'm Swinging For The Fences

I missed a month long opportunity to highlight some of my Negro League throwback cards to celebrate Black History Month.  

I promise I will swing for the fences next year.  In the meantime enjoy the whimsical short print from 2012 Topps featuring Cutch and the Pirate Parrot playing wiffleball in the old Homestead Grays uniforms made famous by guys like Josh Gibson, Judy Johnson, Cool Papa Bell, Smoky Joe Williams, and Buck Leonard.

You can revisit some posts I paid tribute to those guys by clicking on their name in the links above.

I Love The 80s: Those Uniforms Tho...

As I marched towards remembering the 1980s and at the same time promoting my contest, today I will be looking at some of the uniforms and players from the 1980s.

I will specifically look at the four teams that Andrew has played on and talk about the uniforms they wore in the 1980s along with my favorite from each team during the 80s.

Let's start with the team that Cutch played the fewest amount of games with, the New York Yankees.  Rich in tradition, the Yankees uniform remains unchanged for nearly a century.  The pinstripes are world famous, there are no names on the back, and the NY has largely remained the same on the front since the days of Babe Ruth.

(This card is insanely overpriced. It had a print run of less than 250 copies and can fetch over $50.)

Choosing my favorite Yankee of the 80s is a no brainer. It has to be Donnie Baseball.

Mattingly looked to be a lock for a Hall of Fame career as he was winning batting titles, MVP, and gold glove awards all before his age 30 season. I don't have any specific memories of Donnie Baseball, but my best friend in grade school would brag about having his 84 Topps card.

The Giants had a white home jersey with big bubbly letters for the G and S, but those uniforms haven't been worn by the team in a long time.  During Cutch's tenor with the team they used a road grey jersey worn in the 80s. It included a SF over the left breast plate of the player.

The uniform is very noticable on the 2018 Topps Update and all it's parallels including the autograph versions.

Favorite player from the Giants in the 80s? Will "The Thrill" Clark.  I collected a bunch of his cards and he was always a pesky hitter at the plate.  Will was also a good fielder.  After nearly two decades since his last game played in San Francisco, the team is doing the right thing and retiring #22.

The Pittsburgh Pirates will likely always be the team that Andrew is associated with and he helped bring a winning tradition back to the Steel City for a brief time from 2013 to 2015.  This three year stretch was only the second time since the 1979 World Series Champions made the playoffs.  The uniforms made famous by the 1979 "We are Family" Pirates were worn into the 80s by the Battlin' Bucs.

For me, there is no pitcher that influenced my little league life than Kent Tekulve.  I felt like I was him on the mound. Tall and a string bean with not enough arm strength to throw over the top.  I loved everything about this dude.

His current uniform of the Phillies has a throwback variant and has already started showing up on cardboard.

Wondering who may favorite Phillies player of the 80s is?

It's this guy again!

#tbt: For Whom The Bell Tolls

In addition to Collecting Cutch, I also have a large collection of Charlie Morton cards, a growing collection of Hall of Famers (Roberto Clemente, Reggie Miller, Jerome Bettis) I enjoy collecting, and a love for Topps Heritage Pirates cards.

In recent years Topps has produced Throwback Short Print Variants to chase. 

Josh Bell wore the Homestead Grays uniform in a way that would make "Cool Papa" Bell proud.

On June 16, 2017 the Pirates and Cubs faced off wearing throwback uniforms from the Negro Leagues.

The uniform is referenced on the back of this Andrew McCutchen card I showed off a few weeks ago.

It is also referenced on the back of Josh Bell's 2018 Salute card.

In terms of actual Cool Papa Bell, this is the only card of his that I have.  When deciding on an autograph I wanted of the speedy Negro League star, I knew I wanted it to feature him in uniform with either the Grays or Crawfords.

"Cool Papa" Bell was born James Thomas Bell on May 17, 1903 in Starkville, Mississippi.  He was the forth born of seven children.

He worked at a creamery that is now Mississippi State University.  As a teenager he moved to St. Louis to live with his older brothers and attend high school.

He would pitch knuckleballs on Sundays and holidays while working as a packer during the week.

In 1922 he earned $20 a week pitching for a semipro team.  As a pitcher he started being referred to as "Cool" for striking out other Negro League stars.  He added "Papa" himself because it sounded better.

Bell transitioned himself into a speedy switch hitting centerfielder in the years that followed.  He would often bunt for base hits and once on base he would do things to mess up the pitcher's rhythm.

Stories are told of him scoring from first base on a single.

In the motion picture Cobb, starring Tommy Lee Jones a line is made in the movie of Bell's quickness.

"Cool Papa Bell was so fast that one time he hit a line drive up the middle that hit his head sliding into second base."

Bell would bounce around from team to team and eventually would go to play in the Mexican leagues in Latin America where he played ball with the fathers of Luis Tiant and Orlando Cepeda.

Upon returning to the US he caught on with the Homestead Grays winning back to back titles with the team.  As a 43 year old he batted .396 for the Grays who were on the verge of their 3rd straight title.

Satchel Paige, a teammate of Bell, said in his autobiography that Bell could flip the light switch and be under the covers before the room got dark.

The Sporting News ranked Bell the 66th greatest ballplayer in a 1999 article.

Bell passed away in 1971 and was inducted into the Hall of Fame by the Negro League Committee in 1974.

#tbt: Paige(ing) Another Legend

Hopefully you will enjoy these Black History Month segments this month as there seemed to be some modest responses to the idea.

In addition to the Homestead Grays, the Pirates have paid tribute to another Negro League team throughout the years, the Pittsburgh Crawfords.

The Pirates have worn this uniform once each year since 2012.

It features a gray uniform with purplish pinstripes and red piping along the edges in addition to the numbering and lettering.

While I am not aware of any cards of Cutch being produced wearing this uniform, there have been a few relics produced where the uniform is clearly from an old Crawfords jersey.

This 2016 Gypsy Queen is my favorite as it has the purple like pin stripes and the red Majestic logo worn along the sleeve.  I will show more swatches of this jersey in future posts along with other Pittsburgh Crawfords legends.

One of the first stars that the Pittsburgh Crawfords saw rise to prominence was Hall of Fame pitcher, Satchel Paige.

I don't have nearly enough cards of the former Negro players.

Satchel had a rough childhood even landing himself in reform school before gaining the attention as a teenager and signing a contract to play for $250 a month.

Soon after that initial contract, Satchell began to sign on and play for anyone who would be willing to pay for his electric arm.

Satchel is still the oldest player to make his MLB debut at the age of 42 years old when he began his career with the Cleveland Indians in 1947.

There are many urban myths about Satchell including my personal favorite where he had his team sit down on the field with bases loaded in the bottom of the 9th and clinging to a one run game.  Naturally as the story goes, Paige struck the batter out.

He is to this day considered one of the greatest pitchers of all time.

He was elected to the baseball Hall of Fame in 1971.

If you have 30 minutes to spare, I strongly suggest you listen to this video called Black Diamonds: The Satchell Paige Story.
The YouTube video is below.

It is essentially an interview with Satchell.  Truly worth the listen if you love baseball and the history of the game.  There is an interesting segment where Satchell talks about how Jackie Robinson wasn't even on the starting roster for the Kansas City Monarchs.  He would go on to say that any Negro League team could have beaten a team in the majors because those players in the Negro Leagues were tops in the country.

Congratulations and nothing else...

Tier 1 tends to put out a bunch of lousy jersey swatch single relic cards in their product year after year.  For being a high end set, I would be extremely aggrevated if I got a single small jersey relic in a pack.  Each pack contains only 3 cards (1 relic and 2 autographs).

Here's how I have always viewed Tier 1.
It's an autograph chase set with a few relics as basecards.   I have a few Cutch autos from Tier, one of which was recently acquired from BobWalkThePlank.

There are some extremely nice looking autographs in the set year after year.  Many are on card and have some of the hottest young players in the game in addition to Hall of Famers.

I don't want to hate on the set as a whole though because there are some nice relic cards that can come out of the set.

Such is the case for the Prodigious Patches I recently purchased, which you can see below.

You might look at the pinstripe and Pirates patch uniform thinking, when did they wear uniforms like that?

The answer is the late 90s and early 2000s when the team was lead by Jason Kendall, Aramis Ramirez, and Brian Giles.

As you may recall I showed off this Super Short Print (SSP) Heritage Throwback card back in June.  The card commands hundreds of dollars because of it's rarity and master set collectors.  The patch on the Tier 1 card I recently got is from Cutch's jersey number "2".

Video highlights from the game can be found here.

The back of the card wants to CONGRATULATE you on receiving this card along with some fine print legal information.  No stats.  No write-ups.  Just congratulations.

Speaking of Congratulations...
I want to thank everyone who participated in the Cutch hits #200 contest.  Greg and SCC will be receiving the big prizes (Hall of Fame Autographs), but for everyone who predicted a date I am going to offer up a consolation prize.  If any of you play Fantasy Football you know the joy (and frustrations) of watching a game that your team isn't playing in, but you want 1 or 2 players to do good in those games.  There's probably not a lot of Titans fans here, but if you got Demarco Murray, you're paying attention to how the Titans are doing.

I am offering up this fun rooting exercise for the blogosphere and those that predicted dates.  If Cutch hits a HR on a day that you thought he would go yard for #200 you will receive a prize.  I will try to make the package focused on your team and collecting ways.

The first person to get a prize will be Daniel from It's Like Having my Own Card Shop.  Daniel predicted Cutch would hit #200 on September 16th, but in fact hit career HR #201.

Thanks as always for reading the blog.
God Bless!