Thrifted

I'm not sure how far you are from your nearest Local Card Shop, but odds are you aren't too far from a thrift store. There can be some real gems out there if you don't mind sorting through a whole bunch of overproduction-era cardboard. Sometimes it's 1992 Donruss, sometimes it's a random mix with the yellow beacon of 1991 Fleer peeking out, and sometimes it's a grab bag that's just a bit older than usual.

1984 Topps #676 Brian Giles

The way cards are often packaged at Arc Thrift Stores found throughout Colorado make it fairly easy to see what you're getting. They usually come in clear plastic bags, not great for maintaining good condition and sharp corners, but ideal if you want to ensure you're not simply adding to your duplicates pile. My collection of 1984 Topps is on the small side, and two large bags of cards my girlfriend found added to that count significantly, along with many other sets.

I'm pretty confident in my knowledge of baseball history, but if I look through a set produced on or before my birth year, I'm surrounded by common cards of players I've never heard of. I always knew there was a Brian Giles who played for the Pirates, Padres, and Indians. He had a cameo on a Mike Lansing card. He was even teammates with his brother Marcus in 2007.

So imagine my surprise when I saw the same name pop up in 1984 Topps. The senior Brian Giles manged to keep his big league career going until 1990, despite a several-year gap in his late twenties. Unfortunately for him, he was no longer a Met by the time they won the World Series in 1986. He actually didn't appear in the Majors at all in 1984, but I still like this photo of him with the classic cap-under-the-helmet look.

Sometimes I wonder if MLB has a safety-minded rule in place about that now, since I haven't seen anybody sport this look in years.

1984 Topps #138 Al Holland / Dan Quisenberry LL

You're least likely to find cards of relief pitchers in your typical baseball card set, but there's an exception for the all-important closer role. "Closer" is still an unofficial position, despite how frequently the term is used. I always thought the term "Fireman" was more of a casual phrase to refer to a closer, but here it is on a League Leader card from 1984. There's a whole points system on the back that counts more than just Saves; relief wins and relief losses are also part of the calculation. There was even an unofficial Sporting News award from 1960-2000, the Fireman of the Year award. It was briefly called the Reliever of the Year award before being discontinued in 2010.

MLB finally started recognizing this position with an official award in 2005, which has evolved into the current awards named after Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman.

Al Holland and his muttonchops took the NL Fireman award in 1983, and Dan Quisenberry took home the award in five out of six years in the early '80s, winning his final award in 1985, the same year the Royals won the World Series. Lots of other firemen can be found on the back, such as Rich "Goose" Gossage, Lee Smith, and Bruce Sutter.

1984 Topps #415 Tommy John

Tommy John earned a grand total of three saves in his 26-year career. He was a starter through and through, falling just 12 wins short of the magical 300-win mark. He was 41 years old in 1984 with several seasons yet to play. His tiny stats on the card back go all the way back to 1963, but it's the blank line that speaks to his biggest impact. Those many lines of statistics show a gap in 1975, simply noted with "On Disabled List".

1975, of course, was the year in which he recovered from the elbow surgery that now bears his name. It's a procedure that extended not only his career, but also the careers of hundreds of other Major Leaguers. It has even crossed over to position players, as Aaron Hicks of the Yankees is set to go under the knife any day now.

You just don't get that context with only five years of stats on the card back, as we saw with 1988 Donruss the last time Tommy John appeared on the blog. I'm glad Topps ended that little experiment for 2019.

1981 Topps #370 Dave Winfield

Drifting back a few more years into the Topps archives, we come to 1981, the year of the little ballcap in the lower left. It was also the final year of the old Topps logo, the one with the large arc under the T, which is visible only on the back. This card has a great bat rack shot in the background, but I'm not sure who's in the on-deck circle.

It goes without saying that I enjoy getting cards of Hall of Famers, especially from earlier in their careers. Even by 1981, Winfield was in the middle of a lengthy streak of consecutive All-Star selections, although he signed with the Yankees to begin the 1981 season. This print run was a bit behind, so collectors had to wait for the Traded set to see Winfield exchange his mustard-and-brown uniform for pinstripes.

Topps did a pretty good job replicating the team colors on the ballcap design element, even getting the yellow stripe on the front roughly accurate. The yellow area on the real cap was just a bit larger than pictured.

1984 Donruss #284 Tim Lollar

Of all the baseball uniforms, the early Padres jerseys are the ones that scream 1970s the most. Even the Pirates didn't fully adopt the strange color palette of that decade. You can expect the Padres to return to using brown in 2020. The 2016 Home Run Derby was just a taste.

Donruss gave us a good look at the Padres colors on this 1984 card, which shows how the hat design differs a little from the Topps ballcap. It's a thin card, but actually has some of the sharpest corners of the entire haul.

Obviously I know who Dave Winfield is, but as with the first Brian Giles, Tim Lollar is a name I am unfamiliar with. Sometimes I wonder about these older sets and who was kind of a nobody versus who was something of a minor star of the day. If I were following baseball then, would I know Tim Lollar's name as well as I remember, say, Morgan Ensberg?

1980 Topps #518 Nelson Norman (RC)

Nelson Norman is another unfamiliar player, but I couldn't resist showing this action shot from 1980 Topps. It looks like the Rangers shortstop is turning a double play, but the baserunner is diving headfirst into the base, making it look more like a steal. Interestingly, the Topps logo appears nowhere on this card, front or back. There's just the copyright notice below the cartoon.

1979 was Norman's best year, and he's another player who had a massive gap between seasons, wrapping up his career in 1987 without a home run to his name.

1980 Topps #285 Don Baylor

Fresh off his MVP award in 1979, Don Baylor joins his Kellogg's card from the same year in my collection. The photo Topps used overexposed his helmet a bit, but maybe they were trying to give him a halo of sorts to match the Angels. The card back mentions his three-homer game as an Oriole on July 2nd, 1975.

Little did he know that he'd one day be managing the Colorado Rockies. Little did he know that there would even be a baseball team called the Colorado Rockies. If he was following hockey, he'd know that there was briefly an NHL team called the Colorado Rockies during most of his tenure with the Angels, but I'm guessing that wasn't on his radar while he was leading the league in hit-by-pitches a whopping eight times.

1980 Topps #289 Bruce Bochy

Bruce Bochy, the most famous French-born baseball player, began his playing career with the Houston Astros. One of many catchers to eventually become a manager, he's been at the helm of either the Padres or the Giants for most of my baseball-watching life. He "retired" from his managerial position with the Giants this year, but is already talking about coming back in 2021 or later after taking some time off.

1979 Topps #82 New York Mets CL / Joe Torre MG

Our manager theme continues with Joe Torre as the skipper of the 1979 New York Mets. Clearly, there was a good mix of early-'80s and late-'70s cards in this thrifting adventure, but I have to admit that realizing Joe Torre's managerial career began in the '70s came as a surprise. He spent a bunch of years as a catcher, starting with the Milwaukee Braves in 1960. He acted as a player/manager in 1977 for the Mets, led the Yankees to four titles during their years of dominance, and managed the Dodgers as recently as 2010. He's still active in the MLB, currently serving as the Chief Baseball Officer.

If ever there were a job title I'd want on my business card, that would be it.

1979 Topps #136 Jim Kaat

I recently showed a Jim Kaat card from much earlier in his career, and by the time 1979 rolled around, he had plenty of service time to squeeze onto the card's green back, flanked by a trivia question about what happened on June 5th, 1911. On that day, "Smoky" Joe Wood of the Red Sox struck out three pinch hitters in the 9th inning, preserving a one-run lead and earning the win.

At the age of 40, Kaat still had two team changes left in his career, joining the Yankees later in 1979, then retiring with the Cardinals in 1983.

I haven't run across much 1979 Topps in my travels, but this design really appeals to me. I already mentioned the green back, they used the chevron/pennant banner as they did several other times in the '70s and early '80s, and that happy-looking Topps logo appears right on the front inside a little baseball. I'm sure the 1970s experts will disagree, but I think this is a great design.

1976 Topps #545 Sparky Lyle

1976 marked the deepest layer I was able to dig to in this batch of cards. The condition of this Sparky Lyle card left a bit to be desired, but it's certainly an upgrade over not having one at all. The 1976 design clearly influenced the 1979 set, carrying over the green back and two-banner design on the bottom. 1976 had just a bit more color, no Topps logo, and a little player graphic that varies with the player's position.

Lyle served his entire career out of the bullpen. He never started a game, not once. When this was printed, he was the all-time leader in saves, with 136. His career total of 238 is still enough to keep him in the Top-40 list. And speaking of The Sporting News Fireman award, he won it in 1972, according to the card back. He'd even win the Cy Young award a year after this card, just the second reliever to do so, and first in the American League.

1984 Fleer #566 Mickey Hatcher

That was about it for Topps, but you can't get a complete look at the early 1980s in card collecting without seeing more of the competing brands.

Come to think of it, you can't get a complete look at all when you run across cards miscut this badly. It makes the already poorly-cropped photo look even worse, and several things are cut off on the card back, including one numeral in the card number, the years of each stat line, and even part of the team name, though "dgers" is more than enough to go on. It was only because the years on the adjoining card's stat lines made it on to the card back that I knew what year this was from. I'm not that good with the early Fleer sets.

Mickey Hatcher bookended his time on the Minnesota Twins with the L.A. Dodgers, starting there in 1979 and retiring in 1990. His Dodgers card in 1991 Topps entered my collection early, and what an amazing set in which to have your sunset card!

1988 Donruss #546 Mike Devereaux (RC)

1991 was a bit too new to make it into these grab bags. 1988 Donruss was the newest set I found. I've yet to merge this stack with the rest in my collection, but I hope I'll finally be able to put a dent in that set that seems to resist completion more than any other.

In choosing a card for the blog, I had a large stack to pick from, but I selected Mike Devereaux, who had just begun his career with the Dodgers. Mickey Hatcher surely showed him the ropes for a couple years, and Devereaux followed in his old teammate's footsteps, as his career was also bookended by two stints on the Dodgers. His nine games in early '98 were his last.

I mentioned him a month or so ago in the context of Cal Ripken Jr.'s record-breaking game in September 1995, and I could have sworn up and down that Mike Devereaux was still an Oriole then.

He was not.

Mike Devereaux returned to the Orioles in 1996, but in late 1995, when I started 6th grade, he was an Atlanta Brave. That would mean my memory of my 6th grade teacher correcting a student's pronunciation of Devereaux's surname was off a bit. It couldn't have happened when multiple students brought a newspaper article of Ripken's feat, so it must have been a month or so later when he won his first and only World Series with the Braves. The Braves beat the Rockies in the NLDS that year, likely the correct explanation, meaning that nearly quarter-century-old memory has been shifted in my timeline ever since.

The baseball record does not lie, but memory is fallible. I was so sure about that memory that I'd have testified to it in court had the situation called for it, but the reality is that I would have been off by at least a month.

1987 Cubs David Berg #23 Ryne Sandberg

I even found a few oddballs in here. The Cubs cards had been pretty well picked over, but this slightly oversized Ryne Sandberg card survived long enough to make it to me. It's 4 1/4" x 2 7/8", certainly an odd size. The card back contains Ryno's Major and Minor League stats, a count of his Game-Winning RBI, a stat that is no longer tracked, and most importantly, a delicious-looking Chicago dog on a poppy seed bun, courtesy of David Berg Pure Beef Hot Dogs.

Beckett says this promo set was given out on July 29th, 1987. It's a 26-card set, one for each member of the roster, plus one more card for the coaching staff. Obviously that was a day game, as Wrigley Field was still a year away from being retrofitted with lights. Sadly, if that Beckett date is accurate, the Cubbies suffered an 11-3 blowout at the hands of the Montreal Expos.

1987 Topps #637 Bip Roberts (RC)

Frankly, it's impossible not to find 1987 Topps in an assortment of cards like this. There were hundreds, probably accounting for almost half of the entire haul. Bip Roberts's Topps Rookie Card, complete with a gum stain on the back, is a particularly good selection. We can see the evolution of the Padres uniform colors, as they finally abandoned the yellow by this time. He did have a Topps card in 1986 Topps Traded, but according to Beckett, this one gets the "RC" label.

This card reminds me of one of my favorite commercials, one where Roberts is in the dugout showing off his nondescript rookie card while Tony Gwynn sits nearby with a price guide. Bip mistakenly thinks his card is worth hundreds, when it turns out he's actually seeing a price for a Robin Roberts card. Tony corrects him, causing Bip to look at the camera in disbelief.

The actual card Bip is holding in the ad doesn't appear to be anything real, unless it's maybe some oddball or Minor League issue. But Tony got it right; this card is probably only worth about four cents. The gum stain on this one absolutely destroys the possibility of this being worth a dime.

The commercial as a whole is a great illustration of baseball card mania. Even during Bip's playing days, vintage cards commanded a pretty penny, but modern cards of regular guys weren't worth much of anything at all. Still, we all thought we'd be taking our 1987 Topps to the bank rather than the thrift store.

I referred to this '87 Topps as "collateral damage" a few weeks ago. There's a lot of it, but it's totally worth it if it means I get to add to my vintage collection for an extremely reasonable price. And what collector isn't up to their necks in 1987 Topps? Just about everyone except the ones who just dropped cards off at the thrift store.

The Pinnacle of Affordable Group Breaks (Part 2: Phillies)

The teams I got in Colbey's Pinnacle group break were basically a preview of this past weekend's series at 20th and Blake. Part 1 contained the hosting Rockies, and Part 2 will be the visiting Phillies, who dropped three out of four to Colorado, allowing the Rockies to climb out of last place.

Of course, all the names since 1995 have changed, but they should be pretty familiar to anyone who followed the Phillies and their playoff-caliber team in the early 1990s.

1995 Score Summit #34 Lenny Dykstra

Lenny Dykstra was one of the key members of that Phillies era, covering center field and putting together a near-MVP season in 1993. He retired rather early, at 34, so this 1995 card is one of the later ones of his career, which spanned from 1985 to 1996. He got his start with the Mets, but post-career (and even during), he has been in and out of lots of legal trouble.

Fraud, embezzlement, and much worse than that notwithstanding, he did get a solid horizontal card in 1995 Score Summit, showing a full extension and some allegedly steroid-enhanced muscles.

1995 Sportflix #133 Gregg Jefferies

I got cards from all three of the boxes Colbey opened, so there won't be any new designs to see until a bonus card at the very end. Still, this Sportflix card is different than most. Rather than containing two action shots, this lenticular card of Gregg Jefferies alternates between a headshot and the Phillies team logo.

The switch-hitter was reunited with Dykstra, his old Mets teammate, after signing as a free agent with the Phillies in the 1994 offseason. That shows one way the game has been changing in recent years. There's been plenty of talk about a slow free-agent market; in fact Craig Kimbrel and Dallas Keuchel are still watching the 2019 season unfold from the comfort of their homes. But back in 1994, even during the dark days of the strike, there were free agent signings happening during the Hot Stove season.

1995 Sportflix #27 Darren Daulton

Darren Daulton was another famous member of that 1990s Phillies squad, serving as their longtime backstop. His talent was rewarded with half of an entire insert set in 1994 Fleer Ultra, splitting the checklist with John Kruk.

Like Dykstra, Daulton was nearing the end of his career at this point too. He almost spent his whole career as a Phillie, but was traded to the Marlins for his final 52 games. Sadly, he passed away in 2017 at the young age of 55.

His Sportflix card is a lot more representative of the brand, as Pinnacle found a pair of action shots. They actually did an awesome job with photo selection, showing Daulton in very similar lunge positions, one wearing his catcher's gear and another as a batter. It's really a shame this brand didn't last, because these lenticular cards are mesmerizing. On the back, Pinnacle did their best to sweep the strike under the rug, telling us that "he missed the last six weeks of the '94 season with a broken clavicle". It's not wrong, but really he missed the last twelve-plus weeks of the '94 season, the second part of that for obvious, non-injury reasons.

1995 Zenith #96 Rusty Greer

For Zenith, there was a Texas Rangers stowaway in the Phillies team bag. It's an easy mistake to make, as the Rangers' colors around that time contained barely any blue. And like the Phillies, their road uniforms didn't have pinstripes. Rusty Greer was the player who managed to sneak in, a left fielder who spent his whole career with the Rangers. He wasn't a power hitter like Dante Bichette, and didn't manage to hit any opposite-field home runs in his rookie 1994 season.

Even though he was a rookie, Pinnacle chose to give his card the normal gold brick design, deciding that his 80 games of experience no longer warranted inclusion in the Rookie subset.

1995 Zenith #68 Lenny Dykstra

Len(ny) Dykstra makes another appearance in Zenith, this time with the only Phillies home uniform of the post. He was much more of a contact hitter, only hitting five homers in a "full" 1994 season. There was no way the Phillies would have made another run at defending the NL Pennant if the season was completed, but there will always be question marks. Who knows, maybe he'd have gone "oppo taco" given the rest of August and all of September.

I find it unusual that Pinnacle decided to be a bit more formal with Dykstra's first name on this card. I don't remember announcers of the day calling him Len, and anyway, Lenny seems to fit someone better whose nickname was "Nails".

1987 Topps #684 Kent Tekulve

Colbey was nice enough to throw in a couple bonus cards to close out the break. Kent Tekulve seems to have something of a cult following in this community, so here's one of his cards. Like most players in this post, his career was nearing its end, as he retired in 1989 with the Reds. The reliever's career overlapped with the emergence of the closer role, and he put up a pair of 31-save seasons in the late 1970s. He never had the name recognition of a Rollie Fingers or Dennis Eckersley, but he was a reliever through and through. In 1,050 appearances, he never once started a game.

I always look forward to these inexpensive breaks, especially when they include sets from my early collecting career. I get to add Blake Street Bombers to my binders quite regularly, but seeing a stack of cards of players who appeared in the first World Series I ever watched is a rare treat.

Rockin' Retro Group Break the First (Part 2: Athletics)

During the time between Part 1 and Part 2, my haul from Nachos Grande's newest group break arrived, including an awesome Andres Galarraga relic card. But his first Rockin' Retro Group Break has a part two to cover before we can get to that. See Part 1 for my hometown Rockies, and my random team this time around was another generally well-liked team, the Oakland (and Philadelphia) Athletics.

2017 Topps Gold Label Class 3 Black #13 Sonny Gray

My Rockies haul from 2017 Gold Label was a little more complete, but I did get this lone Sonny Gray card from Class 3. In fact, based on the final highlights, I ended up with two of only four Class 3 cards that were found in the entire break. The security stripe, as I called it last time, is a bit more legible, but the three different classes for pitcher cards are a little harder to tell apart. Position players get their three classes of cards in batting, fielding, and baserunning, but pitcher cards are split between the windup, delivery, and follow-through, making it a little tricky to tell which one you are holding.

As always, players are on the move. Sonny Gray was traded to the Yankees right at the 2017 trade deadline, and there are tons of trade rumors swirling around him this offseason. I'm sure Topps accepts it as an inevitability that these beautiful cards they design can be obsolete in a matter of weeks. Or maybe they just know they'll sell more.

1998 Bowman Chrome International #205 Miguel Tejada

Fresh off his debut in late 1997, Miguel Tejada appeared in 1998 Bowman Chrome, and this happens to be an International parallel. I'm no Bowman expert, but this appears to be just the second year this parallel set existed. The shiny front has a map of the Eastern half of the island of Hispaniola, with Tejada's head and cap obscuring Haiti. The card back is entirely in Spanish, taking a page from some early-1990s Pacific sets, as well as Topps' old Venezuelan cards.

Coincidentally, Tejada's middle infielder counterpart on the Rockies, Neifi Perez, was my featured card in Part 1. Perez, also from the Dominican Republic, has the English "SS" abbreviation for his position. Tejada, on the other hand, gets a "PC" in that spot, and I'm not quite sure what that means. I am even less an expert in Spanish than I am in Bowman. "Campo Corto" is the translation of shortstop, and those words are found on the back, but I'm not sure how you'd get "PC' from that.

2002 Fleer Triple Crown Batting Average Parallel #78 Eric Chavez /288

2002 Fleer Triple Crown was a richer vein than those first two sets, yielding a BA Parallel of Eric Chavez. "BA" refers to his batting average, meaning Fleer printed up 288 copies of this card, matching his statistic from 2001. Troy Tulowitzki's .340 batting average led to a similar card in 2015 Donruss, and Topps completely overdid the idea with Moments and Milestones, a set I had to dig deep into the memory banks to remember.

During that .288 season, Eric Chavez, and all his fellow American Leaguers, wore a commemorative patch on their right sleeves to mark the 100th season of play for the AL. Four teams, but not Oakland, had slightly different "Charter Member" versions of that patch, going all the way back to 1901. Ban Johnson, the founding executive of the AL, isn't named on the patch, but he's a prominent figure in the early episodes of Ken Burns' Baseball documentary series.

I don't know if all the BA parallels have green foil or if that's color-coded to Oakland. My 2002 Fleer pages are sparsely populated, especially when it comes to parallels, so I don't have much to compare it to.

That's not precisely true. I have quite a few 2002 Fleer cards. It's just that there were so many sets, and some of them are pretty underrepresented.

2002 Fleer Triple Crown #118 Mark Mulder

Back to the land of the base cards, here's Mark Mulder in that gorgeous emerald green jersey. Apparently he went 21-8 in 2001, just his second big league season, and finished second in Cy Young voting that year.

Mulder was also involved in an infamous trade in my Fantasy baseball league, a not-so-great move on my part when I was getting my feet wet back in 2005. I acquired Mulder, a briefly hot shortstop, and a few others, but the price was way too high.

Lesson learned.

2002 Fleer Triple Crown #134 Miguel Tejada

By the time the Moneyball season of 2002 rolled around, Miguel Tejada (played in the movie by former major leaguer Royce Clayton) was a rapidly-ascending star. In fact, he'd win the AL MVP that year. Even at a young age, he quickly became the best shortstop ever to play for the A's, but sadly lost four straight ALDS series as his only time in the Postseason.

The more I see of this Triple Crown set, the more I like it. Collectors have been complaining for years that backgrounds have become too blurry, but when you have the glossy foreground and matte background like this set, a nice bokeh effect really blends in well. I particularly like how the ball that Tejada is fielding is glossy, clearly part of the main attraction.

2002 Fleer Triple Crown #86 Ramon Hernandez

The way this card is cropped doesn't show the ball that Ramon Hernandez is presumably about to catch, but his full array of catcher's gear comes across in a lovely shade of green. I've long gone on record as liking green cards, and between Hernandez and Mulder, this is the set that might make me start looking for more A's cards for my collection.

The card back isn't quite as special, and I'm not a fan of conflicting horizontal and vertical orientations. Most of the card back is horizontal, but Fleer stuck the copyright notice and such on the right hand side, reading bottom-up. It's an awkward look. But the usual quick paragraph is there, and it tells us that Hernandez caught a whopping 143 games in 2001, not even one game off a week.

That pace slowed a lot in his later career, although he did spend the 2012 season as a Rockie. This is his first appearance on Infield Fly Rule, and it's not even in a Rockies uniform. That might be a first.

2012 Panini Cooperstown #120 Rickey Henderson

The Athletics have been around in one form or another since 1901, and have played in three different cities across America. That of course means they have quite the delegation in Cooperstown, unlike the Rockies, where I had to resort to a card of an umpire to even mention this Panini set in Part 1.

Rickey Henderson played for a lot of teams in his long career, but most people remember him with Oakland. He played 14 seasons with them, spread out across four separate stints. This being an unlicensed set, it's hard to tell which team he's on here, but it appears to be Oakland, matching his Hall of Fame plaque. The single season of stats that Panini gives us on the back are from his MVP 1990 season, the year before he'd break Lou Brock's record, which he would further demolish by almost 500 more SBs.

A few other fun facts about Rickey. We all know he's the all-time stolen base leader, with 1,406. He's also the all-time leader in runs scored, which goes to show just how valuable SBs really are. He isn't really known for it, but he had a terrific eye, leading the Majors in unintentional walks, with over 2,000. He's also a member of the 3,000-hit club. And finally, one of my favorite sports stats that shows you what a competitor he is, Rickey is the all-time leader in times caught stealing.

So when you add all that up, we can calculate a few things. In all his plate appearances, Rickey Henderson stole a base in over 10% of them. There are surely a few in which he stole second and third on his same trip around the bases, but that's a staggering rate. And if you want to take it a step further, if you add his extra-base hits into the mix, Rickey Henderson was in scoring position (or better) in about 17% of all his plate appearances. Give or take, he made it to at least second base a sixth of the time, solely by virtue of his bat, eye, and speed. And that doesn't even count the times a subsequent batter pushed him along.

Bottom line, he's one of the best players to ever grace the sport of baseball.

2012 Panini Cooperstown #8 Connie Mack

So far, this post has focused on the Athletics' time in Oakland, but they got their start in Philadelphia at the turn of the 20th century, and also had a forgettable midcentury stopover in Kansas City. This card of legendary manager Connie Mack is why I qualified the A's home city at the beginning of this post. He was the team's only manager for nearly a half-century, from their founding in 1901 all the way until 1950, the year in which Vin Scully took over broadcasting duties for the Dodgers.

In other words, until 2017, there was an unbroken line of baseball legacy from Connie Mack to Vin Scully going back to 1901. You can push that back to 1886 if you don't count the brief hiatus between Mack's playing and managerial careers.

So yes, this dapper gentleman is in the Hall of Fame. And he does make one wonder why baseball managers suit up in white performance gear as opposed to a suit and tie. It is slightly comical, seeing sharply dressed guys like Joel Quenneville and Gregg Popovich in contrast to, say, Bob Melvin in a green cap and white uniform. But take Earl Weaver, whose legendary tirades maybe wouldn't have been quite as awesome if he were worrying about dirtying up his leather dress shoes.

All I know is that a guy named Cornelius McGillicuddy wearing a bowler hat is basically the last guy I would want to mess with.

2012 Panini Cooperstown #154 Home Run Baker SP

I admit, I need to brush up on my deadball-era Hall of Famers. For someone whose nickname is also the highest-profile statistic in baseball, you'd think I'd have heard of him before. Before he became short-printed Home Run Baker, he was just Frank, but then he joined a young Athletics franchise. In 1909, he tied the AL record for triples by a rookie, with 19, a record that still stands today. And he led the American League in home runs for four straight seasons, 1911-1914. He hit 42 home runs in that span, one less than second-place J.D. Martinez hit for the Red Sox this year.

Baker wasn't even the first player to lead the home runs category in four straight years. He wasn't even the first Athletic to do it. His teammate Harry Davis did precisely the same thing, though with 38 home runs, from 1904-1907. Yet Home Run Baker got the nickname. With all the power hitters we've seen over the decades, from Babe Ruth to Ken Griffey, Jr., the guy who is in the Hall of Fame with "Home Run" in quotes on his plaque is a guy who hit 96 in his career.

1997 Sports Illustrated #57 Scott Brosius SIV

Back to modern times, if there's one thing I've learned about 1997 Sports Illustrated, it's that there are a lot of subsets. SI was not missing the boat in the early days of the Information Superhighway (I wish we still called it that), giving us a vaguely computer-themed subset called SIber Vision. It looks a little like the Nintendo logo, with a bright red starburst design in the background and some circuit board 90-degree angles.

1997 would be Scott Brosius' final year in Oakland, as he ended up being The Player To Be Named Later in a trade they made with the Yankees for pitcher Kenny Rogers. Brosius, an average utility player, would go on to become a key member of the Yankees' dynasty in the late 1990s and early 2000s, even winning World Series MVP honors in 1998, his first year as a Yankee. This card had it right in saying, "Brosius seems to improve as a hitter each season he's in the majors."

The card also mentions his college career at Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon. That happens to also be the location of the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum, which airplane fans might recognize as the home of Howard Hughes' famous boondoggle, the H-4 "Spruce Goose". It remains the largest aircraft by wingspan that has ever flown, but those who saw The Aviator know that it only flew once.

1997 Sports Illustrated #175 Mark McGwire / Will Clark CC

Yet another subset from '97 SI gives us a miniature reproduction of actual SI magazine covers. This one shows sluggers Will Clark and Mark McGwire preparing for their third major league season in 1988. Little did they know they would square off in the World Series the very next year, with Oakland coming out on top.

I like this idea a lot. We all know that SI photos make for great baseball cards, but they really are kind of cute when scaled down to this size. And in case you were wondering, 6-seed Kansas did indeed complete the upset during March Madness in 1988, defeating top-seed Oklahoma 83-79.

2010 Upper Deck #365 Brad Ziegler

That about does it for the main attraction, as the 1998 Gold Label and Donruss Optic wells ran dry, but there are always a couple extras to be found when Nachos Grande sends out a shipment. It's almost like getting a free repack with your group break winnings. Many of us have seen 2010 Upper Deck in repacks, and the several shades of green on this card look great. Not much is said about Upper Deck anymore, besides the vague lamentation of "I wish Topps didn't have a monopoly". But their final couple sets were pretty great, in my opinion.

There is a ton of blank white space on the back of this card, however. It's too bad that Brad Ziegler, back with Arizona for a second time before announcing his retirement last month, didn't get to fill out Upper Deck card backs any further past this. And I find it a little strange that UD squeezed the submariner's scouting report into the small brown area on the left, leaving lots of open space on the rest of the card.

1987 Topps #311 Rickey Henderson TBC

We'll close today's post with Stolen Base Henderson, gracing the front of Topps' look back to 1982, a mere five years before the iconic 1987 woodgrain set was released. There's a little reproduction of Rickey's 1982 Topps card on the front, and lots of fun 1982 tidbits on the back, such as Larry Parrish's three grand slams in one week, Salome Barojas' five-save MLB debut (whom Night Owl coincidentally just wrote about), Rollie Fingers' 300th save, and of course Rickey Henderson's 130 stolen bases.

It is nice to have another team to delve into once in a while. Even though I'm an avid Rockies fan, there's only so much that's happened in the last 25 years. Given the opportunity to dig back to 1901, there's plenty of history that remains untold. I've uncovered a lot in 250 posts, but there's plenty more to come.