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. 

Mrs. Jay Baller

Not sure what the current (or former) Mrs. Jay Baller looks like. But I'm guessing it's something like this.


If you're not familiar with the Jay Baller story, allow me to re-direct you here. Or here.

Carry on.

Ranking Topps 1980's Baseball Card Sets: #9 - 1988

With much aplomb, we move to the second edition of our ten-part series ranking Topps baseball card sets from the 1980's. If you are unfamiliar with this groundbreaking series, allow me to direct you here for the first episode, which features an introduction to the series and a brief divergence into juvenilia. As I mentioned at the time, we intended this to be a weekly column. So, two weeks later, here is the second edition.

#9 - 1988

1988 was a simple time. Body Glove was cool, NBA shorts were short, Bob Ross and Remote Control ruled the airwaves and DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince made us get jiggy before we knew what getting jiggy really meant. In the world of baseball cards, the momentum from 1987 was immense. The bubble was fully in effect and prices were inflated. So the highly anticipated 1988 Topps set was fairly disappointing. Visually, there wasn't a whole lot going on with the cards. We had bland font on top and a name banner on the bottom right. I would've preferred something spectacularly tacky that fit with the ethos of the period.

Pros
Here are the things we like about the 1988 set. First, it featured a 7 card "Record Breaker" series. The players featured were Vince Coleman, Don Mattingly, Benny (nee Benito) Santiago, Mark McGwire, Phil Neikro, Eddie Murray and Nolan Ryan. Not too bad a list here. Second, it acknowledged Dennis Boyd only as Dennis Boyd. No Oil Can. I found that slightly comical. Third, it featured Jay Baller (picture below). I have no idea if this is an actual player, or if some plumber's son in Ashtabula doctored a photo of his coked-out Dad from back in the day. All I know is that I don't want to do research and possibly become disappointed by the truth. I just want to think that this guy, and/or his chest pelt, was the inspiration for Kenny Powers. Seriously, did anybody ever hear of this guy? And could his name be any greater? No. No it could not.

While we're on the topic of 80's hair and mustaches, look at this hirsute disaster...

...and look at Dave Palmer's form. We now know who Tim Robbins mimicked when coming up with Nuke LaLoosh's pitching motion.


Cons
One big con was the Olympic team set from this year. Not a lot of the featured players became stars in the majors. Notable 1988 Olympians included Tino Martinez, Jim Abbott, Robin Ventura, Charles Nagy and Ed Sprague. Mehh. Another problem with the set is that the rookies from this year were pretty weak, and featured a lot of steroid-era figures. Here's a list of likely dirty rookies from 1988: Ken Caminitti, Brady Anderson, Matt Williams, Ellis Burks and Roberto Alomar. Other rookies included Tom Glavine and Al Leiter. A third hit on the set was the inclusion of manager cards. Getting those in a pack was about as lame as it got. For every Tommy Lasorda or Sparky Anderson, you'd get a John Wathan or a Jim Fregosi. But in all fairness, I will admit there was a stellar crop of managers in 1988: Lasorda, Sparky, Lou Pinella, Dick Williams, Davey Johnson, Tom Kelly, Pete Rose, Larry Bowa, Bobby Valentine, Jim Leyland, Whitey Herzog and Gene Mauch. Not bad. But getting a manager in a pack of baseball cards still sucked, almost as much as when you got a checklist card. A final complaint is that Topps was still sticking to its theory that putting multiple names and faces on one card was a good thing. Topps included a "Team Leaders" card for each team. So you can remind yourself that Spike Owen was one of the best hitters on the 1987 Red Sox. A lot of the pairings still hold up - Ripken Jr./Murray, Brett/Saberhagen and Bonds/Bonilla, but we don't need to celebrate Vance Law''s1987 season, when he hit .273 with 12 HRs. Leave Hubie Brooks on that Expos card by himself.