1988 Topps Big Card #79 Willie McGee

I loved Willie McGee and he was a great player and one of the rare non-power hitters of that era who could change the momentum of a game. He got clutch hits and could run the bases. Given that everyone he was playing against was on steroids, he maybe should be a Hall of Famer. I believe he won a couple of batting titles. He played for the Red Sox for a year or two, I was glad they picked him up. 

The best thing about him though was his facial expression, he always looked like he'd just smelled something bad.  

1988 Topps Mini Tim Wallach

“Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.”

I'm glad I went to see the Expos play while they still existed. Their stadium was interesting enough, and what I remember most is that tickets were crazy cheap and they had corn dogs, which pleased my kids greatly.

1988 Topps Big Cards 14 Dale Murphy

I love the little cartoons on the backs of these cards.

1977 Red Sox yearbook celebrating Yaz

Yaz! Yaz! Yaz!

I totally had Yastrzemski mania back in the late 1970s so I would have been totally into this celebration of Red Sox outfielder Carl Yastrzemski in the 1977 Red Sox Yearbook.

Red Sox 1977 Schedule and Ticket Prices

How cool is this, how do Fenway ticket prices compare to 1977?

This is scanned from the 1977 Yearbook

1988 Topps Mini Zane Smith

Card 42 Zane Smith. Always know where your towel is.

1988 Topps Mini Dave Parker

I liked this guy. Dave Parker was a great player and supposedly a pretty decent guy. 

1979 Red Sox Broadcasting teams

Ken Coleman, Rico Petrocelli on the radio and Ned Martin and Ken "Hawk" Harrelson on the television. This was a golden age of Red Sox draught baseball.

1981 Seattle Mariners schedule and some short shorts

This is a page from a 1981 Seattle Mariners game day program. I believe these shorts would qualify as "grape smugglers" The company is The Bon and they actually sell shorts.

1988 Topps Big Card Jeff Reardon

Jeff Reardon was a fearsome pitcher with the Twins but sadly late in his Red Sox career it became "Oh $%#@! Here comes Reardon" out of the bullpen. 

1979 Red Sox Yearbook Jerry Remy

Jerry Remy and Rick Burleson, what a great middle infield we had. Love Jerry as an announcer and wish him all the best in his recovery!  

1988 Topps Big Card 18 Fernando Valenzuela

I loved watching this guy pitch, the way Fernando Valenzuela breathed through his eyelids was amazing! 

JJ Nissen 1989 Bobby Bonilla baseball card

I loved Bobby Bonilla, I thought he was going to be as big a deal as his Pirates teammate Barry Bonds. The best thing about his career is that I believe the Mets are STILL paying his contract. JJ Nissen is a bread- baking company, they did several  runs of cards that came in the package with bread. I always noticed that they always airbrushed the team logo off the hat, as they paid the players association, not MLB.

1977 Red Sox Yearbook Tom House and Tom Murphy

I was an ardent Red Sox fan as a kid (and still am) but there was so little stuff to "study" in the offseason- now with the internet you can study stats and pictures and video all year but back then there was so little out there, the yearbooks became a big deal to us kids in the sticks. Here's a page from 1977. I always liked Tom House, and he's gone on to become the super guru of pitchers and throwing in general. I remember he used to throw a football around instead of a baseball!  

1975 Red Sox Yearbook Tony Conigliaro and Cecil Cooper

Here's a page from the 1975 Red Sox Yearbook. Compared to the yearbooks just a couple of years later it's a pretty drab affair- black and white pictures and stats. Some of the Red Sox players in 1975 were awesome- that was the year they made the World Series and lost to the Big Red Machine despite Carlton Fisk's famous home run.

Here are two such players- Tony Conigliaro was a Boston star until he was beaned in 1967. He was very young at the time. His career before the beaning was amazing- he was a surefire Hall of Famer if he could keep playing at the level he showed he could play at as a teenager in the major leagues! He was never the same after the beaning, and 1975 was his last year as a player.

Cecil Cooper was drafted by the Sox and played for them until right around this time. He was traded to the Brewers, changed his batting stance to one more like Rod Carew's and really started to hit. 

1979 Red Sox Coaching Staff

Some legends here from the 1979 Red Sox Yearbook. Don Zimmer, who was memorably thrown to the ground by Red Sox ace Pedro Martinez when coaching for the Stankees, here he is in his Red Sox managerial togs!

Also Johnny Pesky, who played and worked for the Red Sox for a million years. The Right Field Foul Pole (Fowl poll?) at Fenway is named after him. I met him at a baseball "camp" in Winslow or maybe Waterville, Maine way back then. He was with a young pitcher named Jim Wright and the two were doing clinics for Little League players.

Walt Hriniak I've actually mentioned on this blog before- he turned "Dewey" Dwight Evans into a hitter.

Al Jackson was a great pitcher for the Mets, and spent a lot of time as an instructor in their system. He'd been a teammate of Don Zimmer. Eddie Yost, the "Walking Man" was a long time coach with several teams.

1979 Red Sox Yearbook Carl Yastrzemski

Growing up, without exception, this guy, also known as Yaz, was my favorite baseball player in the world. I emulated his batting stance, the way he twirled the bat while staring out at the pitcher, the guy was just super cool. I really would have loved to see him play when he was in his prime.

1988 Score Great Moments in Baseball #40 Lou Brings Home the Flag

This is another of those 3D cards that says one thing if you look at it one way and another if you hold it the other. "Great Moments in baseball" and "Fenway Park, October 4, 1946" the other. The reference is to Lou Boudreau.

I like these cards the more I look at them- before the scanning project they were just a stack of tiny cards that I didn't know what to do with. Actually taking the time to read the backs of the cards has really given me an appreciation. I hope some wee fan out there is reading stuff like this and learning about the history of the game.

This card talks about several interesting things- first, the very first "end of the season playoff game" to establish who won the pennant, between the Red Sox and Indians, and second, the game that Lou Boudreau had! The guy was the shortstop AND the manager. He hit two homeruns and scored three runs himself. The starting pitcher for the Indians was a rookie, Gene Beardon. 

Even though my Red Sox lost this game, what a great game!

1979 Red Sox Roster

Back in the old days before the internet, getting a player's batting average, or the current full roster, or really any statistic, required access to a good daily paper and perhaps the town library. I used to buy the Red Sox yearbooks every year to get stats and pictures of my favorite players and all of the stuff we can get now with just a few mouse clicks. Here's a page from the 1979 Red Sox yearbook, the full team preseason roster!  

1988 Topps Mini Leaders #4 DeWayne Buice

I mentioned this a while ago when I started scanning this stack of cards and posting them here- I love "Leaders" and "Future Stars" sets and "Diamond Kings" type card sets because you look at them thirty years later (these cards are thirty years old!) and wonder "Who the Heck was DeWayne Buice?"

So I googled him. He only played 2 and a half seasons in the majors, BUT he happened to be at the right place at the right time and literally walked into a deal where he became a partner in the Upper Deck Baseball Card company at the peak of the baseball card craze in the late 1980s. 

He made WAY more money not really doing much for them than he ever made in baseball. The world we live in is just crazy.