"Why Are There People Like Frank in This World?"

I know, I know. Please forgive me this quote from "Blue Velvet", a movie that blew me away when I was 18 years old, and which I saw three times that year in the theaters. It's just that the name Frank triggers it for me, even when used in conjunction with one of my all-time favorite baseball players, Mr. Frank Robinson.

Nah, I never got to see Robinson play - I just got to see him manage the San Francisco Giants a bunch in the early 1980s. When I started up card-collecting a couple years back, and when I realized (from other card bloggers) that player collecting was a thing, Robinson seemed like a guy I'd want to go after. I truly wish I had seen him play in the 60s. When I was growing up, he was known to me as an Oriole, an Indian, and even an Angel at one point - and it was only when I started digging into baseball history that he started to loom large as a Cincinnati Red, where he had many of his most Hall of Fame-worthy years.

Anyway, I'm collecting Robinson now. The affordable cards all came out the past thirty or forty years. Here are some of them that arrived in my hands recently.

10 More Relatively Random New Arrivals

As the cards continue to arrive, whether by trade or by purchase, my ability to document them slips. Not like it matters all that much anyway, but I certainly very much enjoy seeing other bloggers' recent acquisitions and trades, and thus try to float scans of mine where I can. 

Let's start with this Joe Cronin card you see here. I believe I received it in a recent blind trade, and it's certainly not a card from his playing days, and more likely came out in the 1960s or early 70s, as it references that fact that "Joe Cronin is now the president of the American League", a position he served in from 1959 through 1973. Any of you sleuths know what set this card, #14 in the series, comes from?

I found out a month or so ago about a 2020 Topps set called Super 70s that sounded like I might need to investigate. Checked on eBay to see what single cards were going for for the dudes I collect, and found that it wasn't bad at all. So grabbed the Willie McCovey and Frank Robinson cards you see here:

I believe that both of those photos are from the 1960s, but never mind, right? Speaking of legends - this one comes from a 1996 Topps "Mickey Mantle Commemorative Set" set and features a reprint of a 1962 Topps card I simply can't afford right now as I work to complete my '62 Giants set. So I bought this one instead:

Here's #1 Cardinals prospect Dylan Carlson from the 2020 Topps Update #1 Prospect series that came out recently. He looks pretty stoked to be here. He got into 35 games last season and promptly hit .200. Not like I'm gonna do any better!

The consensus choice for card of the year in 2020 was this 2020 Stadium Club Sandy Koufax, and I can't disagree. I made it a must-order in my last CardBarrel pile.

I bought a couple Topps 2020 Update series boxes and pulled this Brett Gardner 15/50 "All-Star Stitches Card" out of one of them.

Also pulled this 2008 Charlie Blackmon prospect card out of a Walgreens "baseball cards" $5 repack box. Guy had yet to hit the majors and to start winning batting titles at this point.

Here's a 2020 Bowman Platinum Eloy Jimenez, just because. 

Finally, I didn't just get this card, and I don't have many Hank Aaron cards to share in any case, but I do want to acknowledge that the guy responsible for my first baseball memory - his breaking the home run record in 1974 - has passed away. I'm bracing myself for Willie Mays. Hang in there, Willie.

Another Round of Cards Coming In Hot

Just got back from a socially-distanced, no-airplanes, careful-as-hell vacation, and I had some new cards waiting for me upon my return. As I say to my wife when there's a stack of new envelopes in the mailbox with what are obviously cards I've ordered contained within them - hey, now how did those get here?

I'm just picking off piece-parts & players & stuff I like here and there, from the usual-suspect ordering sites, using my small stack of Paypal pretend money that I use to buy cards. Many of my most recent cards were excitedly added to orders because I saw them on someone else's blog - maybe yours. This 1965 Topps Bill Rigney for sure. He's either workin' a piece of chaw here, or just has one of the most baddest-of-ass expressions of any manager of all time.

This post is an excuse to scan a few of those cards. Here goes. First, here's a guy who you may know, Mr. Frank Robinson. His 1975 SSPC card both fills a need in my pursuit of that entire set, as well as a slot in my hallowed Frank Robinson player collection:

I'm also a big fan of Vladimir Guerrero, and I picked up his 2020 Panini All-Time Diamond Kings card, no. ATDK-22...! 

We just talked about Joey Bart on the blog last week - here's my newest card of his since that post, a 2020 Bowman's Best, #TP-21:

As I work toward collecting the 1971 Topps set - I'm nowhere near even 20% of the way there - it's gem cards like this Casey Cox Washington Senators card arriving in the mail that make me realize I never want to be done, and probably never will:

You guys familiar with Willie Mays? He's a Baseball Immortal. It says so right here, on these 1980-88 SSPC Hall of Famer cards that I just became aware of. This is card #168. 1979 was the year he was inducted.

Here's another Willie, and a Buster Posey as well - both from the 2013 Topps Archives Gallery of Heroes series. These are fantastic. Yes, they're effectively "stained glass" cardboard - light shines through them and makes pretty colors and all that. The black line you see on the Posey card just happens to be an ink stain on my scanner. The card is fine.

Finally, how about Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney, throwing out the first pitch at a Seattle Mariners game in 2015? Oh yeah, I know she was on that funny TV show too, but I know her better as a guitarist for my wife's favorite 1990s band, a band I was taken to see at least 6-7 times during the latter half of that decade. This is from the 2016 Topps First Pitch series - when I saw that Brownstein had her own card, I reckoned I needed my own copy of it. According to the back of the card, she threw a total bullet, too.

Cards Are Coming In Hot

Why would anyone want to look at a baseball card blog? I'll tell you why. Well - there are those card blogs that run a bit more philosophical and prosaic in their tone, like Night Owl Cards, f'r instance, and of course those are must-reads. But for most of the rest of us, it's about the card scans themselves, am I right? I want to see what you got. You might want to see what I've got. Maybe you'll spur me onto a new set or player. Maybe I can do the same for you.

And why has the spring and summer of 2020 been such a good one, card-wise, for Jay at the Card Hemorrhage blog? I'll tell you why. First, there's Covid-19. It has, uh, focused the mind, as one says. It focused me for a while on doing mindless fun things (like rejuvenating my card collection) to escape the greater noise and misery outside. Secondly, I sold a bunch of vinyl records. I have an underground music fanzine and podcast called Dynamite Hemorrhage that has absolutely zero to do with sports, cards etc., yet which is a complement and adjunct to the large 45rpm 7-inch single collection that I've built up over the years. Now I'm selling a bunch of 'em, and the proceeds from a few of the sales have been plowed into this card collection. We're not talking big money here; I might sell a few records each week and bring in $50, a slice of which goes into my next CardBarrel, Sportlots, COMC or eBay order(s). Fun money.

Yet the cards continue to come in hot! Trades, plus buys from all of the aforementioned. Let me direct your attention to the 1950 Johnny Antonelli Bowman card up top, which is a new purchase of mine, as I seek to collect the entire career of Mr. Antonelli. It's the first 1950 Bowman card I've owned. I cherish it as I would a newborn baby. Here are a few other recent Antonelli card I was able to secure, one way or another, starting with this 1951 Bowman:

This one comes from a 1978 Grand Slam baseball set that I'm entirely unfamiliar with:

...and here's an Antonelli from a 1984 Mother's Cookies set...

...and one from a 1968 Fleer set (!):

I also decided to take a bit of that record money and apply it to some Frank Robinson cards from the 1960s that weren't too expensive. His 1962 Topps card arrived in a protective contraption that I'd never really seen before, but I dig it...! I had to head down to the garage to find the tiny screwdriver that would allow me to free it from its confines. Now it has been liberated, and lives with its new brothers in my burgeoning Frank Robinson collection:

Then there's the array of San Francisco Giants and oddball/cool non-Giant cards that have found their way to me recently. The mother of all trade hauls came to me recently from P-Town Tom of Waiting 'Til Next Year blog. Honestly, I'll be writing about and posting cards from this batch for the next few months, rather than one big "look at what I got in a trade" post. Here's a 1978 Bill Madlock Hostess card that he sent me:

...and a 2019 Topps Heritage "Adrian Beltre" story insert!

So much more to come from the P-Town Tom haul. Finally, let's take a gander at a few other new cards of mine. I added Willie Wilson to my "players I am collecting" list, and came up with this 1987 Sportflics hologram thing whilst cobbling together some of his cards. Can you even see what's going on here? I assure you that you could if I turned it into a GIF:

I kinda dislike anything and everything Yankees - except for The Lost Collector and Jomboy Media, of course - but I'm quite fond of this 2019 Donruss Optic Illusions Aaron Judge card:

Finally, how about a slightly ding'ed 1970 Kellogg's 3-D Superstar card of Mr. Juan Marichal? 

That's all I've got for this installment of a "random cards" post. We'll see what next week might bring.

Frank Robinson, Now and Forever

Frank Robinson was not one of the players I set out to collect when I initially set out to collect players. He never played for my team, he just happened to manage the Giants during a few of my peak early years as a baseball fan. We weren't very good then, and that was OK. Most people didn't blame Frank - it was just the natural state of affairs with the early 80s San Francisco Giants.

A few months ago I came across some Robinson cards of him looking like a badass superstar in his Reds uniform, and I reckoned that maybe Robinson would be a good guy to collect. He's one of those players who has several tribute cards made for him every year, as you'll see as you scroll down this post. Of course, those recent cards are the easiest and least expensive to collect, and some of them look magnificent. I picked up a big boatload of them via CardBarrel and SportLots recently, and thought you might want to take a look-see.

Before we do that, a few credentials for Frank Robinson the player. Two-time MVP, once in each league. Hall of Famer. NL Rookie of the Year in 1956. Player/Manager for a Cleveland Indians in the 1970s. 1972 member of the Los Angeles Dodgers, which is something I'd completely forgotten (!). I'm working on grabbing his "regular" Topps and Bowman cards next - yeah, the pricey ones from the 50s and 60s (Good/Poor OK!). Great, on to some more recent Robinson cards: