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.

You've Got Mail #44: Waiting 'Til Next Year

I received another package from the ever generous P-Town Tom of the Waiting 'Til Next Year blog after I commented on a recent post where he asked why there weren't any Indians collectors. While the primary team I collect is the Reds, I also enjoy collecting Indians and Expos cards. A few short weeks later, a box that was literally crammed full of Indians and Expos arrived on my doorstep, much to my delight.

There was a really good batch of Manny Ramirez cards included, so much so that I could've easily made a whole post out of just those alone. However, I picked these out as they were the rookie cards included in the batch and long before the phrase "Manny being Manny" was uttered in the baseball lexicon. The photo on the Collector's Choice card makes him look like an extra on the set of Major League 2 while most of the others feature him a road uniform. I really like the parallel of the Pinnacle card. I believe its called a "dufex parallel" by most people out there but I could be wrong. If someone knows for certain what those are called, by all means let me know in the comments.

I love me some oddballs and I love oddballs even better when they include old timers such as Lou Boudreau and Cy Young. Looking at these two things jump out at me immediately. First, I had no idea that Ralph Kiner played for the Indians. According to Baseball Reference, he played 113 games for the Tribe in 1955, his final season in the bigs. The second thing is that I have no clue who Andre Thornton is. Going back to Baseball Reference, Thornton carved out a pretty serviceable 14-year career, ten of which was with Cleveland, was a two-time all-star (1982 and 1984) and a Silver Slugger award in 1984.

USA Baseball cards seem to be a staple of Tom's packages, although they were missing from the last package. Seeing the card of Francisco Lindor in the package was definitely one of the highlights for me. Justus Sheffield was sent to the Yankees just recently by the Indians for Andrew Miller in the hopes that Miller can be a dominant closer for them down the stretch.

I may have mentioned this before but I never was a big fan of Albert Belle. He always came across to me as having no respect for the game and being in it just for the money ... but could he ever launch some homers. When playing knothole baseball, I started emulating his swing just because it looked easy to do. Pictured above are a few Donruss cards. I always liked 94 Donruss, mainly because they used a full logo.

Here's three people, Dave Roberts, Doc Gooden, and David Justice, who I'd forgotten had played for the Indians. Does anyone really remember Doc Gooden's stint in Cleveland? I don't.

This batch is a good representation of the variety that Tom's brick contained. There was both new and old, new stuff featuring old guys, reprints, etc. Just a great smorgasbord of cards to feast on. It's not every day that I get an Early Wynn card in the mail either.

I'll round this out with a sampling of Expos. About 3/4 of the brick was Indians with the remaining 1/4 being Expos cards. These were the ones that immediately jumped out to me. I'm pretty sure I might be able to use that Raines card in my 84 Topps set.

A big thanks to Tom for all the great stuff. Its always nice when I can add quality cards to my team collections.