Vintage Fridays: Bill Wight, 1956 Topps #286

This is another of the 1950s cards that I picked up from COMC's Amazon store last week. I keep chipping away at the 1956 set, picking up lesser names and creased-up cards here and there, because it's just a great-looking design. Here we see Bill Wight bathed in a halo of light, as the smaller Bill shows off his lefthanded pitching form...which looks oddly pigeon-toed. Anyhow, Bill Wight was a true journeyman, squeezing in stints with eight teams in a 12-year career: Yankees, White Sox, Red Sox, Tigers, Indians, Orioles, Reds, and Cardinals. His three-year stay in Chicago was the longest that he ever stayed with one club. It was also with the Pale Hose that Wight had his best season, when he went 15-13 with a 3.31 ERA and 14 complete games in 1949. But he also pitched quite well for the Indians and O's in 1955, with a 6-8 record that belied his 2.48 ERA. He started 14 games and relieved in 22 that year, with all of his starts coming after being traded to Baltimore in mid-July. His 154 ERA+ in 141.1 innings was a career best. Bill continued in a swingman role for the Birds in 1956 and 1957, with middling results. He hung up his spikes after the 1958 season, finishing with a 77-99 record, a 3.95 ERA, and eight saves. He completed 66 of his 198 career starts.

Wight had a notable second act in baseball, serving as a scout for Houston and Atlanta for 37 years total. He signed Joe Morgan, Dusty Baker, Dale Murphy, Bob Horner, and David Justice, among others. Bill died of a heart attack at age 85 in 2007, while vacationing with his wife of 60 years.

Vintage Fridays: Chuck Diering, 1956 Topps #19

Yikes. Apparently nobody told the Orioles that the All-Star Break ended tonight. Let's distract ourselves with this lovely card featuring Chuck Diering, the Most Valuable Oriole from the team's inaugural 1954 season. As is usually the case with 1956 Topps, the highlight of the card is the background scene. In this case, Chuck looks like he's belly-flopping into second base, giving us a great opportunity to see most of the #32 on the back of his jersey. As for his black-and-orange striped socks...I would very much like a pair of those.

Vintage Fridays: Harry Dorish, 1956 Topps #167

Sy Berger passed away last weekend at age 91. If the name doesn't ring bells, just know that Sy was the driving force behind Topps baseball cards in the 1950s. The New York Times had a lovely obituary talking about his impact on the hobby. For my part, I'd just like to say that the 1956 Topps set is everything that is beautiful and good about little cardboard rectangles. Harry "Fritz" Dorish and his devilish grin know I'm right. He seems to be enjoying the fact that Topps chose an action shot of a relief pitcher running the bases. If that image was taken from a 1955 game, it came before the White Sox traded him to Baltimore in early June. He was 1-for-13 with one sac bunt in his limited plate appearances that season, and 0-for-10 with the O's. Things went better on the mound, at least; he went 5-3 with a 2.83 ERA in 48 total games, and 3-3 with a 3.15 ERA in 35 games as an Oriole.

So thanks, Sy, for leading me down this path.

Vintage Fridays: Bobby Adams, 1956 Topps #287

I'm in the middle of another massive, onerous attempt to organize my ever-mushrooming card collection. Since I last got all of my little cardboard ducks in a row a year or two ago, I've let things go to seed again, as several boxes' worth of Orioles cards have been carelessly filled and pushed aside instead of being merged with the already-chronologically-organized portion of my team collection. Then there's the reams of 1980s and 1990s cards I acquired earlier this year, which were mostly mixed together. I've sorted them on a box-by-box basis, but still need to do a mass sorting and cataloguing. I'm weary just thinking of it, but at least I have a few free binders to make things easier and more enjoyable. One of my first aims is to create a binder for my fledgling 1956 Topps set. I never made it a point to collect this set, which is nearly as old as my parents and undoubtedly a bigger challenge than any other I've targeted. But when I spot some especially affordable '50s cards in a bin at a hobby shop or card show, I always find myself gravitating to the iconic design of the 1956 set: the horizontal layout, the head-and-shoulders portrait, the panoramic on-field scene in the background, and of course the cartoon panels on the card back. I'll pick up a handful here, a dozen there...after a few years of this unfocused gathering, I've accumulated 62 of the 340 total cards in the set, a cool 18%. To think I did it without breaking a sweat!

Vintage Fridays: Baltimore Orioles, 1956 Topps #100

This is such a cool card that I'm going to go beyond my usual format and show you the back of it as well. First things first: the condition of the card itself. As you can see, it's been bent, nicked, creased, folded, and just generally manhandled over the course of 56 years. But it still maintains its essence. It's a baseball card, just as it ever was. Rectangular cardboard, bright colors, small-but-legible type. You can't keep a good old baseball card down.

So, the front of the card. We've got a group portrait of the 1955 Orioles, who still had that new-team smell. Maybe "smell" is a poor word choice for a club that had a 57-97 record and was only spared the ignominy of the American League basement by their poorer Beltway cousins in Washington. But back to the matter at hand. We've got the fantastic original Orioles logo, with the grinning little bird perched atop a baseball bearing the team name, set in front of a pair of crossed bats. There's the rare sight of an O's team shot that lacks Brooks Robinson, who had just a cup of coffee in September at age 18. Though Brooksie is absent, three batboys are present - and acknowledged by Topps! I'm going to take a leap of faith and assume that "Batboy Diering" is the son of center fielder Chuck Diering, who at 32 could conceivably have a son of batboy age. Also getting in on the action is trainer Edward "Doc" Weidner, Jr., pictured at far right in the second row in the classic white outfit. His employment with Charm City's baseball teams spanned the 1915 through 1967 seasons. He came on board when Baltimore was still a minor league city, hosting rising stars like Lefty Grove and Max Bishop and veterans giving it one last try (Rube Marquard, Chief Bender, etc.). How's that for a bit of baseball history?

Flipping the card over, we've got a brief and garbled history of both the St. Louis Browns/Baltimore Orioles American League franchise and Baltimore's overall pro baseball history. I appreciate the effort, anyhow. At the bottom of the card, there's a notation of the one sad, lonely A.L. pennant that the Browns won before heading east to Charm City in 1954. But the best thing about this card is the diagram of Memorial Stadium, complete with the original outfield dimensions...FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY feet to straightaway center field! That's not a baseball field, it's a deserted moonscape.

Vintage Fridays: Willy Miranda, 1956 Topps #103

I mentioned earlier this week that I have a pretty small rotation of baseball card blogs that I read regularly, but now I think I have to add one to the bunch. Cliff Anderson asked me to check out his work at the bluntly-named "really bad baseball cards" blog, and I'm glad he did. Cliff focuses on offbeat photos, names, and other idiosyncracies from the rich subject material of 1950s cards. His posts are irreverent and clever, and it looks like he churns out a new one every week or so, which means that it shouldn't be too hard for us Internet junkies to keep up with reading them. I got a kick out of the "Little Guy" series of posts, examining the smaller action shots that complemented the close-up portraits on the fronts of the 1954, 1955 and 1956 Topps cards. Somehow this card, with its depiction of Willy Miranda doing either a bunny hop or a crab walk, escaped Cliff's attention. There will always be room for card blogs that exist for the pure and simple fun of it, and I hope that Cliff keeps up the good work for a long time.

Vintage Fridays: Dave Philley, 1956 Topps #222

Earlier this week, my booty from the Topps Million Card Giveaway finally arrived, some six weeks and change after I ordered them for shipping. Of course, I waited until the very last day to place my order, so there's another lesson about procrastination.The important thing is that the cards all arrived in reasonably good condition. I'll do a full show and tell a little later. This Dave Philley card was the oldest of my new additions, acquired in a trade with Ryan of recently-relaunched Phillies blog The Fightins. He said that he didn't care what he got in return, as long as it went to a good home. I took him at his word and offered a 1988 Topps Indians Team Leaders card...yes, seriously.

But that was just on the Topps website. I had been holding onto a Chase Utley relic card that I pulled from a pack of 2010 Topps last year, and when Ryan and I met up in Philly back in February I completed the trade by giving him the Utley card. I think we're both happy with the exchange. This is a pretty well-kept card considering that it's 55 years old - a bit off-center, some mild surface wear, light creases in the top and bottom right corners that are only really visible on the back, and the entirely understandable fuzzy corners. Now I have Dave Philley's first Orioles card, featuring the smooth swing that allowed him to put together 28 multi-hit games in half a season after the O's acquired him from the Indians in July 1955. If I had any criticism of this card, it would be the backdrop of (I assume) Yankee Stadium. Considering that this is more of a portrait than a photo, it would've been nice if they had taken a little creative license and depicted Dave in Memorial Stadium. Eh, what can you do?

Vintage Fridays: Bob Hale, 1956 Topps #231

Okay, I'd better tell you about my National experience while it's still somewhat fresh in my mind. Much as my good friend (and lifetime Oriole fan and avid collector and sometime dealer) Ed Schott predicted, one day (one half-day, really) was not enough for me to get my fill. Still, I accomplished a lot yesterday in three and one-half hours on the convention floor. The card you see above was actually given to me by Ed as something of a birthday gift. I'm that much closer to Upon entering the hall, I set out to find the Topps booth. They were hosting a meet and greet and Q and A with Topps employees and collectors on Thursday night from 5-7, and tickets were free but were also first-come-first-served. Most of the heavy hitters were at the back of the hall, as I quickly spotted hanging signs for Upper Deck, Tristar, Press Pass, and others. But I wandered for several minutes without locating Topps. As I was headed back to the front of the hall, I spotted a guy in a Topps polo shirt and asked him where in blazes his booth was. He was of course headed there, so I tagged along with him and nabbed a ticket for the event. There was a line of people waiting for a pack redemption...something about that Strasburg guy.

My first task being accomplished, I stopped by Bill Henderson's booth. Bill has a well-earned reputation as the "King of Commons", and I easily could have spent all of my time rooting through his dime boxes. He's "semi-retiring" to Florida with his wife, and is wiping out much of his inventory. I fixated on two large boxes of 1970s Topps: ten cents per card, discounts for increments of 50 ($4), 100 ($8), 200 ($15), 400 (don't remember the price). I spent at least ninety minutes going through just a few rows of the first box, plucking out set needs for 1975 Topps and otherwise grabbing players and photos that appealed to me. I wound up with a ton of 1978 Topps, which is my second-favorite set from the decade. I stopped at the 200 mark, and that was just because my muscles were stiffening up from standing in place for so long. Besides, I wanted to see what else I could find. But before I left, I dug through Bill's 30 cent bin and came away with 35 more cards, mostly 1969 Topps. My favorite find was Aurelio Rodriguez's rookie card, which had a significant error - the photo was of bat boy Lenny Garcia!

I shuffled around aimlessly for a while and realized I was dying of thirst, so I bought a bottle of Gatorade from the concession stand...for four dollars. It was probably the worst value of the day for me, but I was at their mercy! Besides, there was a table near the concessionaire that had affordable 1950s cards in binders for easy browsing. I spent $30 and came away with seven classic cards, including my first three vintage Browns: Snuffy Stirnweiss, Roy Sievers, and Clint Courtney. Just keeping in touch with the Orioles' Midwestern roots. I picked up a 1949 Bowman of Harry "the Hat" Walker, which is now the oldest card I own. I also went with Matt Batts and Sibby Sisti...yes, I chose some of these cards largely based on the player names. The final card from this dealer was a 1951 Bowman featuring an odd caricature of White Sox (and future Orioles) manager Paul Richards. None of the other cards on display from that set had such a cartoonish appearance. Weird and wonderful.

Ed met back up with me at that table, and gave me a hard time about being a newbie and neglecting to bring a bag to store my purchases (I was holding two overstuffed sandwich baggies full of my cheapie 1970s cards at the time). He gave me a spare shopping bag and introduced me to another dealer he knew. This guy had bins full of oddballs: Hostess card panels, pocket schedules, bumper stickers, bottle caps, photographs, you name it. I zeroed in on the Surf card gallery paperbacks, which had been giveaways in 1987 and 1988. They produced individual books for each team, featuring year-by-year color photos of each and every Topps card for that club and brief summaries of the team's performance. You can see an example of the 1987 Indians book at David Henderson's entertaining blog. So I bought the Orioles' 1988 book for $5, and found a few others that should make their way through the mail to other card bloggers, wink wink. Ed was busying himself with a box of dollar-per-card 1970 O-Pee-Chees, trying to complete his Orioles team set. I decided to help him search, and we found some Seattle Pilots for my collection, eight in all.

It was getting closer to five P.M., and I wanted to squeeze in another purchase before the Topps event. I spotted a table with 1950s vintage cards marked down...down from "book price", anyway. Most ranged from $5-$30, but I was on a mission for a specific player. Finally I found him in the 1951 Bowmans...former Dodgers pitcher Rex Barney, who became a Baltimore institution as the Orioles' PA announcer from 1974 until his death in 1997. He spent six years (1943, 1946-1950) with Brooklyn, winning 15 games and tossing a no-hitter in 1948 but otherwise struggling with poor control and injuries. At $6, I was more than happy to add a true gentleman with significant Charm City ties to my collection.

Up in a third-floor meeting room, Topps put on a pretty decent show. They had an open bar with wine and beer, as well as some finger foods. There was a panel of five Topps employees, including their social media guru Mike Mader (who you Twitter-philes may know as the man behind the @toppscards feed; he also blogs on topps.com). The Q-and-A wasn't incredibly captivating to me, but I'll give you some snapshots: they don't think the monopoly created by their exclusive MLB license is a bad thing, particularly since they've been able to redirect some money to things like autograph deals with star players and the Million Card Giveaway. They're NOT bringing back Topps Total because it wasn't selling before and they don't believe it will in the future either. They're trying to pull kids in with Topps Attax and they're happy with it even though it's not selling big. Next year is Topps' "Diamond" Anniversary (60 Years), so they're brainstorming in order to make it a big to-do. Football hasn't been their strong suit historically, but they're working to change that. It went on like this. The best thing about the session was finally getting the chance to meet some folks I'd only known as Internet entities, like Ryan (whom I mentioned yesterday), as well as Chris Harris (whose Stale Gum is one of the trailblazing card blogs) and Beardy (a fellow Baltimoron, whose facial hair is much more impressive than my own).

Oh yeah, there were also prizes! Each meet-and-greet attendee wrote their name on the back of their ticket and the tickets were placed in a box with winners chosen at random. The prizes included baseballs autographed by that Strasburg guy (though one of the Topps guys joked that it was Stephen "Stroudsburg", a Topps mail room employee), some hobby boxes of Bowman products, and some autographed mini-football helmets. When they got to a pair of boxes of Bowman featuring football draft picks, Ryan and I joked that we would be the winners of the products we were least interested in. As luck would have it, we did each win a prize. Ryan got a mini-helmet signed by Cowboys legend Ed "Too Tall" Jones (probably not much use to an Eagles fan like him). I got quite a pleasant birthday surprise when I won a complete factory set of 2010 Topps. Yes, it includes a card of Stephen Whatshisname.

Whew, that was what happened on day one. By the end, I was fully sold on making my way back for a few hours after work on Friday...especially since I had "only" spent $85, less than half my budget for the National. When I left last night, I drove down to my parents' house for a birthday dinner of crabs and beer and ice cream cake. I may have also talked my family's ears off about baseball cards, although I'm sure that's hard to believe.

Tomorrow, I'll tell you about the second day of my inaugural National experience. I promise it will be shorter!

Vintage Fridays: Hal Smith, 1956 Topps #62

In the terminology of baseball card collecting, one of the more egregious flaws is the crease. But to call this particular card "creased" would be to damn it with faint praise. The imperfections herein are more like fault lines, an indicator of ancient history. How did this 53-year-old piece of cardboard come to be so weathered? I have two theories.

-There were two Hal Smiths who were contemporaries. Harold Raymond Smith was a catcher for the Cardinals from 1956-1961. He was a two-time All-Star and hit a career-high 13 home runs in 1959. His career ended prematurely thanks to a heart condition, so he went into coaching (and was briefly activated in 1965, when he went 0-for-3 for the Pirates). Harold Wayne Smith, pictured above, was also a catcher. His career stretched from 1955-1964 for the Orioles, Athletics, Pirates, Colt .45s, and Reds. His single-season high in homers was also 13, in 1957. He was a better and more powerful hitter overall than his counterpart, but was never an All-Star. Perhaps a youngster who was a fan of St. Louis Smith traded a Yogi Berra for this card, only to realize later that it was the wrong guy. He then crumpled the card in anger before keeping it as a reminder to do his research in the future.

-Hal's moment of glory came in the 1960 World Series, and was almost instantly pushed to the back burner. In the eighth inning of Game Seven, his three-run home run gave Pittsburgh a 9-7 lead over the Yankees. But New York came back to tie it in the ninth, and Bill Mazeroski's game-winning shot in the bottom of that inning gave the Fall Classic to the Pirates and ensured Maz's place in baseball history. Maybe the poor kid who belonged to this card was a Yanks fan, and he took out his frustrations on it. His older brother, a Pirates fan, gladly salvaged the card for future tormenting purposes.

Sure, it's more likely that the card was used as a bookmark, or carried around in someone's wallet as a good luck charm, or stuck in the spokes of a bike. But if you ask me, the two scenarios I've laid out in this space are much more interesting.

Vintage Fridays: Dave Pope, 1956 Topps #154

I love 1956 Topps. Other than the beautiful 1953 set, I can't think of any other base Topps set that looks like pure works of art. The horizontal card format works great with the action shot/foreground portrait combo. On this particular card, the "Davey" signature is a playful touch. Dave Pope, who made only three errors in his four-year career, is leaping for a fly ball against an endless gaping gray maw. It does occur to me that outfield fences used to be made of solid concrete with no padding, which: holy crap. If you don't think running into concrete full-tilt takes its toll, do some research about former Brooklyn Dodgers outfielder Pete Reiser. Yet just over the top of this 10-to-12-foot behemoth wall, we see something not unlike a palm tree poking out. There's something better out there, and it's just out of reach.