The Twelve Days of Gheorghemas: Day Three

On the third day of Gheorghemas, Big Gheorghe gave to me:

Three 80's Baseball Sports Looks
Too Many Entries
and a Cameo That Will Go Down in History

That's right, ladies. Ol' TR fell back down the rabbit hole with his baseball card fetish  infatuation hobby. In a casual conversation with a friend recently, I heard with some details that the values of cards have gone way up recently.That means my collection is officially "classic" and now sorta valuable. 

In the early pandemic days, I unearthed my collection from my attic and gave it a half-ass set-up in my man cave, vowing to dive in at some point. After my buddy's comments wormholed their way into my ear this weekend, I went through everything, including my ten stuffed binders and each of my 3,000 "common" cards. These were cards that had no value at the time. But some were players like Sosa, Fielder, Vizquel, O'Neill, Maddux and Sosa, so it was worth the effort (at least to me; wife was far less excited about all of this). 

In a nutshell, I am feeling pretty good about my childhood obsession right about now. Card values seem sorta high! And I have some good ones! Values remain opaque, with high variance on different web sites, so I am conveniently locking into the highest estimates I see. So I'll believe my three Bo Jackson 1987 Topps rookies are worth $140 each. I'll believe my Juan Gonzalez rookie "error" card (they flipped the negative and made him a lefty!) is $100. I'll buy into the equally high values for other cards I did not remember owning. This is all gravy on top of the valuable cards I know I own. 

So it's good to be a baller on paper. And the word baller brings us to the meaning of the post. As I mentioned, part of this project was reviewing all of my "common" cards to look for diamonds in the rough. In addition to the gems, I found a ton of laugher cards. Joe Niekro, the Iorg brothers, Steve Balboni, Ozzie Guillen, Rick Reuschel, Lenn Sakata, Doyle Alexander, manager cards, etc. Names that hadn't been in my head for 20+ years. 

What struck me was how much these cards showed that baseball players are rarely confused with the world's greatest athletes. I was amazed by: i) the prevalence of staches, ii) the dated glasses/shades that in no way seemed appropriate for high-level sports, iii) the combination of the two at the same time, and iv) the beer bellies, among other items. So without further ado, here are some cards I own that capture the magic from the Booger Sugar era of the MLB. We'll  start with a real baller. 

1) The Jay Baller look 

Our hardcore readers will remember Jay Baller from this post many years ago. And yeah, um, we're recycling this pic. You know why. Look at him! The chest hair, the head hair, the chains, the stache, the smell of Marlboro Reds and stale Budweiser, the look that says "I don't know what a sit-up is, but I blow rails off a stripper's chest." It's all great. You could look like this and not stand out in the 80's. You could actually get laid. The dude's last name is his lifestyle. God bless the real-life inspiration for Kenny Powers. He used to snort snowflakes by the O-Z.

Bonus Jay Baller look pic: Don Aase. To be clear, Don Aase does NOT look like a baller. I'm just including this b/c this is a picture of an apparent professional athlete. Amazing. 

2) No need for rec specs, I'll just wear my regular glasses when I play

Hard to believe that in the era of Kareem Abdul Jabbar and his sports-specific goggles, these guys said "Nah. I'm good with my regular glasses. It's not like guys are throwing hard balls 95 mph near my face." I had plenty of options for this. I just chose these guys because they were the first I came across, and because lazy. 

3) Oscar Gamble

Oscar Gamble makes me smile. Never did much with the Yankees, but the dude could grow some hair. Happy to own this card, although it's as worthless as the '82 Yankees were.