1956 Topps Jack Robinson

Notice in the title I have referred the pioneering civil rights leader as Jack Robinson not “Jackie”. That is because in interviews his wife Rachel (Still living at 96!) has mentioned that is what she always called Jack.

I have also chose to use the name Jack Robinson on my latest phungo original cardboard creation

1956 Topps Jack Robinson (phungo variation)

So far I have made about three dozen colored pencil drawings and this is one of my favorites. I think to myself the drawings may not look like who I want them to, but it does sort of look like a person.

While this work is inspired by Robinson’s 1956 Topps card it is far from a replica. First off, as mentioned above, is the name modification. The next major difference is that I changed the play at the plate – I chose the iconic image from Robinson’s steal of home versus the Yankees in game 1 of the 1955 World Series. The play is filled out in color while the portrait side of the card is done with an abstract black & white background. This is a nod to the crossing of the color line – further symbolized by the foul line in the action shot.  This barrier is also illustrated by the staccato lines behind Jack’s headshot which echoes a fence – the line unbroken prior to Jackie Robinson entering major league baseball. 

I added a 42 to Jackie’s uniform. This is not historically accurate for Dodgers jerseys of the era, but I felt the number has become so much a symbol of our cultural memory it belonged in the illustration.

1956 Topps #30 Jackie Robinson

For comparison we present here the original 1956 Jackie Robinson card featuring the full background and original action shot.

Gummy Arts put together this more faithful rendition of the card.

1956 Topps #30 Jackie Robinson (Gummy Arts edition)

One of the other Robinson artworks I spotted today was done by Tim Carroll 

Carroll also uses the B/W vs color to mark the breaking of the color barrier. His works are mosaics created by using discarded baseball cards to create a new image. 

Sources and Links

Jackie Robinson HOF Index

Gummy Arts

Tim Carroll Art
Phungo Artwork

Imdb

Getty images

Topps card database

baseball-ref

Jackie Robinson 1956 Topps, Dodgers, Artwork

HoF 90th Birthday Yogi Berra: 1961 Topps #472 MVP

On Tuesday May 12th Yogi Berra will celebrate his 90th birthday. 

1961 Topps #462 Yogi Berra MVP

The 1961 Topps MVP subset honors 16 MVPs of the 1950s. Yogi Berra along with Catching Contemporary Roy Campanella are the most decorated players in the subber, each having won three MVPs during the era.

Yogi's three were in 1951, 54 and 1955. Berra didn't lead the AL in WAR any of those years, but his 59.5 career mark does rank 5th among catchers all-time.

Flip

1961 Topps #462 Yogi Berra MVP (b-side)

The reverse of the card mentions the 3 MVPs, and Yogi's HR Record for catchers which was 318 at the time. He went on to hit 40 more Home Runs to finish his career with 358. Since then Berra has been passed by Mike Piazza, Johnny Bench and Carlton Fisk and now ranks fourth all-time.

Yogi's granddaughter Lindsay is a reporter with MLB.com. She authors an entertaining Twitter feed @lindsayberra which occasionally has great historic pictures and other info for Yankees fans. 

Sources and Links
Phungo Yogi Berra HoF Index
Baseball-ref
cardboard connection

Sunday Night Baseball: Yogi Berra 1959 Topps #180

The Yankees and Red Sox are featured one again on Sunday Night Baseball this week. Despite the Red Sox being the reigning World Champs, the rivalry just hasn't had as much juice the last couple of years. The Yankees are in the mix, but the BoSox are  currently way off the pace.

1959 Topps #180 Yogi Berra

Tonight we are building up some inventory in our HoF index by adding the quotable catcher. Berra and Johnny Bench are probably the two most written about catchers in the history of the game so I bother trying to add to that canon.

Instead I would like to mention a couple of things Berra related that folks might not know about. First off is that there is a Museum dedicated to Yogi Berra. I have never been there, but it is located in North Jersey just two hours from Philadelphia. If I am ever in the area I would like to try and visit. Card Collectors may be interested in one of their gift shop item - a Card Set representing the different eras of Yankees baseball. The set runs for $5 and contains 25 cards.

Secondly I wanted to mention baseball reporter and Yogi's grand-daughter Lindsay Berra who has a pretty interesting twitter account. Lindsay's unique perspective is enhanced by some terrific vintage photos of Yogi and other players from his era.

For the Collector
About a week ago I was asking Night Owl about cards that are shot from below subject with clouds in the background. He referred to it as the Hero Pose or Hero Shot, which I think I had heard of before but hadn't bothered to process the term.  This one of Yogi is pretty much a prototype. Solid batting stance, slight up angle, great set of clouds on a clear blue sky.

Among recent auctions the low sell was $8.50 for an off condition card. Ten different auctions ended for $12 or under. A PSA 3 VG card went for $22. $25 bumps one up to PSA 4 VG-EX. The card top ended at $1,317 for MINT.

The specimen above was picked up for $9 a while back. It is nice front, corners a bit soft. Unfortunately, the back has some issue - there is paper loss on the back, likely due to being taped to a binder, and somebody wrote $45 faintly on the card edge. 

Other Voices
1959 Topps one f/g card at a time

Phungo Yogi Berra HoF Index
1961 Topps #471 3 Time MVP 1951-54-55, (90th Birthday Posting)
2008 UD Yankee Stadium Legacy #1869 Yogi Berra
2009 Goodwin Champions Black Border Mini Gypsy Queen Back #62 Yogi Berra 

Sources Baseball-ref
twitter
ebay

Pull N Junk of the Month - February 2011 - Mostly Catchers Edition

I had intended to do a whole Retail v Hobby comparison of 2011 Topps, but sort of lost my momentum on that one as I (and many others) seemed to be suffering from new release fatigue.

I picked up three packs each of Topps Retail and Topps Hobby this month plus 1 rack pack.  Out of those seven packs I was pretty happy to come up with this pull:

2011 Topps Legends Variation #198 Johnny Bench

Amazingly enough this came out of a Target gravity feeder.

Apparently the Legends Variations are pretty rare, with a 1:80 seed ratio for HTA boxes according to BaseballCardPedia.

The #198 Bench Variation shares #198 with the San Francisco Giants fine young catcher Buster Posey.

(click to enlarge)

My question to you is if you only bought 3 packs at a retail outlet and got a hit, would you:
A) return to the same store and pick up another set of packs
B)go to another retail outlet knowing that the first store was tapped out of hits
C)quit while you were ahead?

2011 Topps Phillies

2011 Topps Carlos Ruiz

Six packs plus a rack pack and I come up with 1 stinkin Phillies card. But we have a Catchers theme posts going so The Ruiz card is appropriate

Junk of the Month

(click to enlarge)

The team cards all have season highlights on the back, unfortunately one of the BoSox Highlights happens to be a Phils low-light when Joe Blanton through a clunker of a game which included giving up a Grand Slam Home Run to Daniel Nava in Nava's first career AB on the first pitch the rookie saw at the major league level.

Honorable mention:

Yet another Catcher themed card - These are CYMTO 2011 to me.  who needs them.   

2010 Pull of the Year
 
I also wanted to take the time to note the 2010 Pull of the Year.  And we have another great pick featuring one more catcher - but he is a very special catcher.      

2009 Goodwin Champions Black Border Mini Gypsy Queen Back #62 Yogi Berra

Thanks all for helping me pick out the 2010 Pull of the Year via a series of Poles - And also Junk of the Year.

2010 was the year of the mini for me - so it is very appropriate that the Pull of the Year was a mini and a 2009 Goodwin, which is one of my favorite sets that I discovered in 2010.

Previous 2011 Pull N Junk Posts
2011 January

2010 Pull N Junk Playoffs: Best Pull Finals

We are down to the Final Four of the Phungo Pull of the Year competition.


Here are the four Finalist, one from each quarter of 2010.

2009 Topps T206 #138 mini Elvis Andrus (SP)/Base

2008 UD Baseball Heroes Copper #10 Brian McCann (#d100/149)




2009 Goodwin Champions Yogi Berra

2010 Topps Chrome #192 Chris Heisey

A good collection of choices, oddly no Phils made the list.  The choices show some of the things I found exciting in 2010, notably Minis.  The Two minis are both Short Prints - The Andrus is an alternate variation.  The Yogi is a nice black bordered mini.  The Chris Heisey card gets in as a local player making it big.  


There you have it, No Autos, No Relics, just a couple of minis, a serial numbered card and a local fave.

Help Team Phungo pick the first pull of the year card by voting at the pull on your right.

2009 UD Goodwin Champions Bargain Blaster

On a recent trip to Target I found a bargain blaster of 2009 UD Goodwin Champions. The blaster was half price ($10.59 w/ tax). I hadn't opened many if any packs of Goodwin last year so I figured I'd give it a shot.

This blaster contains 12 packs of 4 cards each. The Base Set consists 150 cards followed by 40 short prints and then 20 super short prints - and then another set of mini-exclusive cards - I don't know you figure that one out. There are a number of parallels including a set of minis that fall about 1/pack.

The Goodwin set was probably developed to compete w/ Topps Allen & Ginter - and it shows. Lets take a look -

Phillies



Howard - Roberts - Lefty - Nice Selection there - 2 World Champions. 2 Hall of Famers. Good Lookin Cards. All of the Current Phils cards have the World Series Banner which is a nice touch. Some of the cards have a "special" team logo - note the Liberty Bell on the Robin Roberts mini.


HOFs & Minis
The Minis are Tex, CC, Junior, Phil Niekro, and Stinkin Jonathan Toews of the stupid Stanley Cup Champion Chicago Blackhawks.

The HOFs Gwynn, Ripken, Ozzie, Teddy Ballgame, and Paul Molitor.

The Niekro photo is a familiar shot that we have seen in UDs other retro product, Goudey - That image was already borrowed from Fleer I think. UD was already mailing it in a year ago.

Griffey is card #1, which is only fitting as he returned to Seattle - the team for which Griffey was on the original UD #1 card back in 1989. As it turned out Goodwin Champions was one of UDs last Baseball products.
One More Mini


A Nice Black Bordered Mini of Yogi Berra. I am assuming that the special back minis have the black borders. This is a pretty sharp looking card of an Iconic player.


Plebians
MJ, Bobby Orr, Peggy Fleming, Dave Scott

Like Allen & Ginter GWChamps contains other Notables who were not blessed with the abilities to play the great game of baseball.

Dave Scott is the original Triathlete or something like that - this card is a Short Print, the picture is different then all the rest of the cards. The cards all have a criss-cross pattern to their Backgrounds. For whatever reason the Scott card is all the painting - or photoshop of the painting anyway. Peggy Fleming looks really evil in this picture.

Base Cards

I decided to show off the base cards by constructing an All-Star team from the blaster.

Battery

McCann, Liriano, Lincecum, Thome

Two of these guys are already in the playoffs, and the other two could also get in. Notice that the McCann card is one of the ones carrying a special logo. I stuck Thome in with the Pitchers and Catchers because it was where I had space to put a DH.

Infield

Pedroia, Jeter, Bill Hall, Morneau

Ok Bill Hall is not an All-Star, but he is a short print so he got the nod as the Blaster 3rd baseman. Both Morneau and Pedroia have won MVP awards, Jeter has not.


Outfield


Manny, Josh Hamilton, Johnny Damon, Ichiro

The Manny Card is pretty cool looking - You can see the storm clouds coming in on the edge of ending his Sunny LA Days. The Ichiro card is also a winner. I am pretty sure that the Hamilton card is straight out of Goudey.

Etc
Card back of Steve Carlton - one issue with GWChamps is the font on the back. It is plain goofy looking. the lower case T's are particularly odd. I do like that UD did go to the trouble of creating a back for these cards. Every other UD product has identical backs - this reduces the personality of a set. The Phils logo here is from the 70s era Phils teams for which Carlton played.

I paired the B-Side here with a 20th anniversary card - if you pick up an UD blaster from 2009 you are bound to find a few of these. This card the Red Wings winning the 2007-08 Stanley Cup. The photo'd player is Henrik Zetterberg I think.

Mojo


Chipper Relic- mojo. Not sure what the M stands for my guess is Memorabilia or Mojo.

Overall I enjoyed the blaster. The half price is key. 4 card packs always seem weak to me. but opening 12 of them with a good mix of oddballs and minis added to the fun. Unfortunately the box was marred by the fact that maybe half of the cards had a dinged upper left corner. Regardless it was still fun to open.

I picked up 36 cards from the 150 card base set (24%). The 7 minis were all unique vs the base cards giving me 43 of 150 (27% of a whacky FrankenSet). So I could consider building a set relatively cheaply.

The 5 cards of 48 from the 12 packs of 4 are - 1&2) the 2 short prints, 3) the Chipper Relic, 4) the 20th aniv card, and 5) 1 card forfeited from the Chipper pack.

I doubt I will go to the trouble of building the set. I will more likely keep about half for various collecting projects - Phils collection, Hall of Famers, Player Collections (Thome n Damon), minis, My WBC collection (Ichiro), and My Plebes Collection.

Upper Dreck

I have posted a few Sloppy Topps in the past, today - in the interest of equal time I am posting an Upper Dreck entry.

And, yes, I know poking fun at Yankee Stadium Legacy is like picking on the Mets injury depleted 2009 lineup - but it is still fun.

The two budget packs I picked up at Rite-Aid yesterday were basically uneventful (8 base cards - no Phils) but the YSL was an interesting Yogi Berra card.

2008 UD YSL #1869 Yogi Berra

This is perfectly fine card featuring a Hall of Famer and a game the day of September 2nd 1946.

Since the featured game is from 1946, I can't even check Baseball-Reference to see if Yogi played that day. Of course I could read the Bronx Tales - click the picture to enlarge and read, sorry it may be a bit blurry. Notice anything odd. The card represents a game on September 2nd 1946 however, YOGI BERRA DIDN'T EVEN DEBUT UNTIL SEPTEMBER 22nd!!!

Ugh. Aren't insert sets supposed to be special or something?!?! - Like I said there is not much joy in poking fun at this set. I realize it is a large set and a lot of work to create - still it would of been nice for UD to at least show something on the effort end.

All this being said, I am still chasing the two specific UD YSL cards that represent the two games I saw at Yankee Stadium. The first card I chronicled in this post regarding a botched ebay bid. The other card is for the game played May 3rd 2008, which would be among the 2009 UD inserts.

More Yogi at Phungo HoF Index
1959 Topps #180

Happy New Years - Chinese Style - Year of the Ox - Yogi, Marichal, Schmidt, Donnie Baseball, the Caveman and Joba

January 26th 2009 marks the beginning of the Chinese New Year. This year is the year of the Ox. To help celebrate the New Year I dined on some Chicken Shu Mai this evening, and I also put together this Chinese New Year Post.

The Chinese Zodiac is based off of a lunar calendar and is marked by Years rather than months. I am sure you have seen this on a place mat in a Chinese restaurant at some point in your life. 2009 is the year of the Ox, as is every 12th year going backwards and forwards. The most recent celebrations of Year of the Ox have been in 1925, 1937, 1949, 1961, 1973, 1985, and 1997.

Here are some Major League Baseball Oxen.

1959 Topps #180 Yogi Berra - Born 1925
1973 Topps #480 Juan Marichal - Born 1937

1987 Topps Kmart #31 Mike Schmidt - Born 1949
1989 Fleer #258 Don Mattingly - Born 1961

2005 Leaf Century Collection #58 Johnny Damon - Born 1973
2008 Topps Foil #596 Joba Chamberlain - Born 1985

There you have a superstar Year of the Ox group of players. According to Dinged Corners "the Ox is patient, tireless in his work, and capable of enduring any amount of hardship without complaint." So what do you think, do these players demonstrate the qualities of the Ox?

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Also, If you haven't done so already please take the time to vote in the Phungo Jim Rice poll.

Sources and Links
Johnny Damon Index

It ain't over till it's over

1959 Topps #180 Yogi Berra

This popular Yogism very much applies to the 2008 Rays-Phillies World Series right now. Prior to the beginning of yesterdays fifth game the Rays were facing elimination and Cole Hamels was looming. Many Phillies fans and possibly some Rays fans seem to think the Series was over. Well on Monday night Mother Nature had a say in the matter and tossed a monsoon into the 2008 World Series mix.

The game had to be put on hold after 6 1/2 innings due to the rains. The Phils and Rays found themselves in a 2-2 tie - with the delay till at least Wednesday, Cole Hamels is out of the mix.

This all generously tips the scales. The Phils still have 3 opportunities to win one game but with their ace no longer a factor in game 5 the advantage is no longer so lopsided - in other words "It ain't over till it's over". This applies to the series and it also applies to game 5 itself - which already as the first suspended game in World Series history automatically makes it the longest game in World Series history, as it will conclude a minimum of 48 hours after it started.

I was fortunate enough to get tickets to Game 5. I am not rich, I got the tix from a friend of a friend for a little bit over face, and was very very happy to get them. I must have snapped about 100 photos last night, but not many of them came out very well.

Here are a couple of interest though - This is Citizen's Bank Ballpark during the Rays BP.


And in this shot you can see the ground crew with the hose out. Yes they did hose down the field prior to the game - rather ironic ay? Those tents to the left in the rear of the shot is where Fox was shooting pre-game festivities with Jeannie, Brett Butler, and Kevin Kennedy.


Despite the way things ended in a total MLB flustercluck and dealing with all the rain and cold and traffic, I had a really good time. Yes it cost me a bundle of money and I got pretty soaked, but I was at a World Series game and that is all that mattered.

Go Phils!