A Timely Pack Break

I have about a dozen unopened packs of these 1992 Pacific "The Story of WWII" cards in my legendary stash.  In honor of Memorial Day I opened one.  It's really a cool set.  I may have to open the rest of the packs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Good Kid" Friday

Seventy years ago the Good Kid led the American League with a .327 batting average and 45 doubles.  In the field he was first among shortstops in fielding average, putouts, assists and double plays.  Oh, and he managed the team as well, though they finished sixth.  If only Lou could have cloned himself.  If you recall this was still during WWII and  it was the year the St. Louis Browns won their only pennant.

 2004 Leaf Certifed Materials #FG-67

An Orioles Shortstop

When you think of Orioles shortstops who comes to mind?  Probably Cal Ripken, Jr.?  Miguel Tejada?  If you're older, Luis Aparicio?  I grew up in the pre-internet, pre-ESPN, pre-cable era.  Living in Chicago I saw a lot of Cubs games on TV and if I was bored enough, some White Sox games.  Other than that the games we saw were NBC's Game of the Week and the World Series.  So the teams I got to know were the best of the time.  When I started collecting again I made a point of accumulating the autographs of players from  those teams.   The Baltimore Orioles were one of them.  I'm certainly not a super collector but I probably have autographed cards of between 15-20 of  late sixties early seventies O's players.  Most of them are of the certified variety and over the years I've show a bunch of them.
      That was a long digression, the point of which was to explain why when I think of Orioles shortstops it's Mark Belanger.  Also as a Cubs fan, if Brooks Robinson was the Orioles Ron Santo, then Belanger was the their Don Kessinger.  In fact, both were exactly 6'1"-170.  You could look it up.
     Belanger died of lung cancer in 1998 at the age of 54 before the certified auto era so when looking to add a card to my collection a slabbed example was the way to go.  Looking back I may have overpaid for the one I got.  On the other hand in addition to being signed it is an O-Pee-Chee.  Anyways, that's a lot of words to introduce one card and certainly a lot more words than you usually get from me.  Here's Mark!

The Purple and Gold

Tomorrow afternoon the Blackhawks face off against the Kings in the Stanley Cup Conference Finals. It's a rematch of last year when the Hawks took the series 4-1 and is the second series in a row where the Blackhawks will play  one of the 1967 expansion teams.  As with the Minnesota North Stars the Kings' first appearance in a Topps set was 1968-69.  Here's the complete team set that I pulled from packs back in 1968.