Around the Horn: Cleveland Indians

My "Around the Horn" series returns (finally) and this time I'm heading up to the shores of Lake Erie and exploring one of my team collections ... the Cleveland Indians!

The Indians have been around since the founding of the American League in 1901 and had many different names in their formative years until settling on "Indians" in 1915.

League Park
Photo: wikipedia.org

The team played in League Park (aka Dunn Field) from 1901-1932 and a lighter schedule of games from 1934-1946 when they split home games at both League Park and Cleveland Stadium. League Park also hosted the two predecessors to the Indians, the Cleveland Spiders of the National League and the Cleveland Lake Shores of the Western League.

These Conlon cards represent players from the early years of the Tribe. I love the Colon cards because not only are the usual players featured but you also get forgotten players of the era like Neal Ball, Sarge Connally, and Ab Wright. The Neal Ball card I'm particularly fond of as it just shows how primitive major league baseball was back then. The outfield wall is littered with advertising and beyond that there are houses in the background. As for Ball himself, he was a journeyman infielder who played 7 seasons with Cleveland, New York, and Boston. The back of the card tells how he turned an unassisted triple play on July 19, 1909. 

Cleveland Stadium
Photo: wikipedia.org

The Indians abandoned League Park for good after 1946 and moved into the massive Cleveland Stadium on the shores of Lake Erie. During their time there, the Tribe had some pretty lean years but it hosted two World Series (1948 and 1954) and the All-Star Game four times (1935, 1954, 1963, and 1981).

My actual Indians card collection begins with this 1957 Topps Don Mossi. It's the oldest Indians card I have in my collection. 

Jumping ahead to the 1970s now and some of my favorite Indians cards from the 70s, including two players who played for both the Reds and the Indians, Vada Pinson and Buddy Bell. The most interesting thing here is the Ken Aspromonte manager card, not because of the manager himself, but because of the coaches, especially the pitching coach, Warren Spahn. I find it terribly hard to imagine Warren Spahn in an Indians uniform.

The 1980s were pretty thin on good teams for the majority of the 1980s and had only two winning seasons (1981 and 1986) but still never rose above 5th place during the decade. They had some good players though like Len Barker, who threw a perfect game in 1981, Toby Harrah, Andre Thornton, and Brook Jacoby. Speaking of Jacoby, checkout the dark blue uniform top on him. I don't remember that uniform at all.

To anyone else, this would be just another 1989 Topps card. However, to me, it's one of the most interesting cards of the set. The Indians drafted Mark Lewis out of high school in 1988 and it was out of Hamilton High School, which is only about 15 minutes from me. While I never went to school there, I hung out with a bunch out people there years ago and got to know the area quite well. Hamilton itself is quite the neat little city with a really awesome downtown area and a branch campus of Miami University. The neat thing about this card is that I know exactly where those baseball fields are where that picture was taken and it's of a local guy proudly representing Hamilton on a Topps baseball card. As for his career, he carved out a nice 11-year career as a journeyman infielder with two different stops in Cincinnati.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the fact that the Indians gained prominence being featured in the movie "Major League" which was released in 1989. When I first saw it, I didn't think much of it but over time it's definitely grown on me and is one of my favorite baseball movies now. It spawned a successful 1994 sequel "Major League II" and a third, not so successful entry "Major League: Back to the Minors" in 1998 which bombed at the box office.

Progressive Field (aka Jacobs Field)
Photo: wikipedia.org

The Indians began the 90s the same way they ended the 80s, near the bottom of the standings. However, Mike Hargrove took over as manager in 1992 and the team moved out of tired old Cleveland Stadium after the 1993 season and into shiny new Progressive Field (formerly Jacobs Field) and had brand new uniforms to match. I've seen a couple games at the stadium and it's a wonderful place to see a ballgame.

The Indians dominated the American League pretty much from 1994 to 2001 with players like Jim Thome, Albert Belle, Roberto Alomar, Manny Ramirez, and Kenny Lofton mixed along side older stars like Bip Roberts, Eddie Murray, Dennis Martinez, and Orel Hershiser.  The early 90s weren't without some interesting players too like Keith Hernandez, Eddie Taubensee, and Jeff Shaw, both of who were part of some of the better Reds teams of the 90s as well. I've still yet to figure out where that Kenny Lofton card in the first photo came from. If I had to guess, it was probably from a giveaway to commemorate the final season of Cleveland Stadium.

Here's a bunch of IP autographs I've acquired through various trades. I've mentioned this in a previous post but my favorite of the batch has got to be Dave Burba, with Charles Nagy a close second.

These cards from the 2000s are just awesome. I never bough any Upper Deck Sweet Spot as my collecting had pretty much fizzled out by then but it's nice to have them now.

I don't even remember Doc Gooden's stint in Cleveland but he pitched there in 1998 and 1999 amassing an 11-10 record and a 4.92 ERA over 45 starts in those two seasons.

Some modern cards now celebrating the rich past of the team from early stars like Nap Lajoie to more modern stars like Jay Bruce who spent the the latter part of the 2017 season with the Indians to help them in the playoffs.

I've talked a lot about the team itself but haven't really talked about my player collections. There are really only a handful of Indians players I focus on with Jim Thome being at the top.

Of course, I can't talk about the Indians and not mention Dennis Eckersley. I picked up that 1976 Topps card for five bucks at the flea market probably about five or six years ago.

Bert Blyleven is another pitcher from the Indians I tend to collect. Not so much a lot of his other stuff but definitely his Indians cards for sure.

I can't talk about the current Indians without talking about one of their top players, Francisco Lindor. These are my five favorite Lindor cards I have. 

I wanted to close this out with this card, my absolute favorite card I have in my Indians collection. I acquired this card in a trade with P-Town Tom and it's absolutely stunning. As a matter of fact, it's one card I actually keep in a penny sleeve and top loaded because I like it so much and I don't want anything to ruin it. 

So there it is, a look at some of the Indians cards in my collection. I know this was rather lengthy but I dug through two binders worth of Indians cards, hence the length. The next installment should be a bit shorter. Speaking of which ...

On deck for the next entry ... the Seattle Mariners

You've Got Mail #63: Wrigley Roster Jenga

Out of the blue a while back, Tony from Wrigley Roster Jenga surprised me with a PWE stuffed full of all kinds of craziness.

I'll start with these reprints. Trying to pinpoint the year these reprints are from is a little crazy but I think they're part of the 1978 Dover reprints, although I could be completely wrong. Regardless, reprints like this are the only way I can get old school cards of old school dudes such as Nap Lajoie and Cy Young. 

Speaking of cards that are hard to pinpoint, I've always had a quandary as to if I should file TCMA cards with my vintage cards or put them with my misc cards. The more I think about it, perhaps they should go with my misc cards as they don't really fit inside any other part of my collection. These are 1979 TCMA 50s of Rocky Colavito on the left and Don Mossi, he of floppy ears fame, on the right.

As usual, some Reds cards were thrown in, both new and somewhat old. These are all from last year, with the exception of Denny Neagle chilling on a stool. Jose Peraza is now the second baseman since Brandon Phillips was shipped off to Atlanta for what amounts to pocket change. I'm excited to see what he can do playing a regular position everyday and potentially batting second with Billy Hamilton at leadoff. The Bench card is one of those "Berger's Best" inserts from last year, just another one of those inserts that Topps did last year with the flagship set that no one really liked.

Not only were there Reds cards but the envelope was predominantly full of Indians cards. I'm getting so many Indians cards now that I'm to the point where I'm going to have to start a binder for them. That might be a project for later this summer. First though, I need to finish organizing everything else.

These cards are part of baseball related games. I can't say I've played either of these games, or any card game for that matter (except for poker or rummy) but I might have to learn one of these days. 

Here's one of the co-stars of the package, this well worn, well traveled, and somewhat defaced Mel McGaha card. McGaha was the Indians manager in 1962 and managed the Kansas City A's in 1964 and briefly in 1965. His lifetime record was 123-173. During his playing days, he was a career minor leaguer, mostly at the AA level, including a five season stint with Shreveport in the Texas League.

Here's the other co-star of the envelope, my first NASCAR card in who knows how many years. While I'm not a huge NASCAR fan, I know the majority of the drivers and I'll watch a race or two when I can't find anything else on. One thing I've been considering doing this year is adding a racing card to my collection here and there and possibly buying a few packs of the Donruss Racing as it looks like something fun and different to rip into. As for this card, looking at it on the front, I thought it was just a standard Press Pass insert but then I turned it over ...

... and it's a promo card from the 1996 National Sports Collectors Convention. This is the gold foil version, which is apparently rare according to the chart on the back. There's also red foil and green foil versions. It says the gold foil is "rare" which leads me to believe that it's just the standard variety. This makes a good springboard to buying some NASCAR cards and I'm happy to add it to the collection.

Thanks again Tony for the great cards! I've got some stuff I think you'll enjoy that I'll be sending out in a few weeks.