Random Ray - 1990 Topps TV

At some point during the summer of 1990, Topps apparently sold cards via television commercials. My parents did not buy stuff off of television, so it probably did not matter that I never saw an advertisement for the Topps TV team sets. The commercials were only aired in a few select markets, as Topps only produced a set for the Cardinals, Cubs, Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, and the All-Star teams. 

I will not subject you to watch commercials from Topps, but lets just say they were not very appealing. 

Maybe I did see one, but I just do not remember it.  

It's a definite possibility. I am not sure that Topps truly appreciated the strong commercial competition in the St. Louis television market of my younger years. There were some great commercials that could have easily had national appeal.   

My favorites include.....

Dirt Cheap Liquor. They had a chicken in a bathing suit who used catch-phrase, "cheap, cheap, fun, fun" scattered in throughout the commercial. There was also a man in the ads (Fred) who added in lines like, "The more she drinks, the better you look" and "we are the home of the persecuted smoker".

There was also Becky Queen of Carpet and Wanda Princess of Tile. I do not remember the name of the store, but you knew you were going to get some per square foot prices on carpet and tile when these two came flying through the legs of the arch.

I am leaving off others, but the lineup of local St. Louis television commercials in the 1980s and 1990s is really deep and strong. 

Back to baseball cards.  

I found the 1990 Topps TV cards later in life and they are really nice cards for the time. They had a glossy finish and the checklist for the different team sets included the full Major League roster, along with a healthy number of prospects, and also the coaching staff.  The prospect and coach cards were a rarity for the time.  

Ray Lankford has a few 1990 cards, but he also made his Major League debut in late August just before the team traded away Willie McGee to the A's. He was likely on the 40-man roster throughout the season, so it is not all that surprising he snuck into a few different products. Willie McGee also appears in the set, so it is likely that Ray Lankford was originally included in the set as a prospect. In fact, many of the post-Whiteyball starters are included as prosepcts, scattered throughout with pictures from Spring Training. 

Beyond Lankford, the other young Cardinals players in the Topps TV set include Bernard Gilkey, Geronimo Pena, Todd Zeile, and Ken Hill. 

Here is the front of the Lankford card.  

I do not have a copy of the 1990 Cardinals media guide, but I bet you an Imos Pizza that Ray Lankford's entry has a cropped version of this photograph. This feels like a photo that was taken in 10 seconds while he was walking out to workout in Spring Training.  

Back of the card. 

Repeating the photo, but using it as the background behind the player stats is not working for me here. I would say that we should get a different picture than the front of the card, but I bet Topps did not have one for some of the younger players. 

The card number is also really strange. If they had put the 53 outside the yellow box it would look better, or they could have dropped the Topps logo and the phrase "in a series of 66" and been fine too. Not the best results for Topps, but they had a solid plan.  

Random Ray - 1995 Topps Finest

The baseball card purist in me cringes when I see the Topps Finest cards from the second half of the 1990s. At the time, Finest was a popular, high-end brand and had done some innovative things with cards that are still around today. Namely, the brand created the refractor cards. The 1995 Finest was the start of a short-lived, terrible "innovation".

So, what was cringeworthy about the 1995 Topps?

Let's look at this week's Ray Lankford card.  

I love this photograph of Ray Lankford batting and wearing sunglasses. The blue, road Cardinals hat is an added bonus. What the heck is stamped across his face? It's actually a protective coating that was supposed to protect the surface of card from surface flaws. It is hideous. Definitely cringeworthy.  

Why was this a thing?  

I have long been tempted to go through my boxes of late 1990s Finest cards and rip all of the "Finest Protector" sheets off, but at the same time this is how the card came out of the pack. This has all the trappings of a good mid-1990s baseball card, but the fact that I even have to think about whether to peel a plastic protector off the card is a huge negative in my book.  

Back of the card.  

There is no protective cover on the back of the card, but it is mentioned in the small print at the bottom of the card. That's unfortunate. Topps should have gone ahead and just slapped one back here too.  

Skin Protector Pat. Pending. 

I hope they got turned down, but given that the skin protector lasted until 1999, I am guess they did not.  

Random Ray - 1997 Fleer Ultra Double Trouble

The first half of Ray Lankford's career was spent with a Cardinals team that was low on talent and payroll. There were always some decent players around, but the team's overlord at Anheuser-Busch would never commit to adding players who actually made the team competitive. It was not quite as bad as the modern Pirates, likely because August Busch III was limited to a five year run before he sold the team in the winter of 1995. 

The current Cardinals owner bought the team at that point. The Cardinals hired Tony LaRussa, signed Andy Benes and Ron Gant as free agents, and traded for half the Oakland A's roster minus Mark McGwire. They put the McGwire trade off for a year and a half, but ended up with Todd Stottlemyre, Mike Gallego, Dennis Eckersley, and Rick Honeycutt.  I am sure I am leaving someone out.  

It was great to have good players on the team. It also meant that there were finally Cardinals cards included in insert sets that required the team to have more than one player. 

For example.......

 

Now, Ron Gant's time in St. Louis ended on a sour note, but things were good when he first got to town. He hit a bunch home runs and the Cardinals made it to the National League Championship Series in 1996. Gant and Lankford were easily the Cardinals best players that season, hence the 1997 Fleer Ultra Double Trouble card.  

These were really easy to find inserts with a decent design. The letters across the top with the alternating colors are a little much, but it's a 1990s insert. You need some pizzaz and flair. Well, not too much. The odds are listed at 1 per 4 packs, or 6 per box. Most can be found for a dollar or two at most. There are flashier inserts to be had, but they don't feature Ray Lankford.  

Back of the card.  

I am going to ignore the Ron Gant side of the card.  

On the Ray Lankford side, they should have put the last sentence first and dropped the word also. 

A Giant Project Update #11

This is the giantest of Topps Giant updates. It has taken me awhile to assemble this set. Long than I thought, but I think that it actually helped to collect the tough short-prints and expensive Hall of Famers first. Since my last update in February, I have been able to find another 8 cards to cross off the checklist. Yes, there are short-prints in this post and Hall of Famers, but most were nowhere near the cost of the Mantle and Mays cards.

After my last post, I was closing in on the 2/3 mark for the set with 37 of the 60 cards. In the last month, I have brought that total up to 45. 

A quick look at the new cards.

First up is Kansas City A's infielder Wayne Causey. 

This was one of the short-prints that I still had leftover on the checklist. Causey was a glove-first, light hitting utility infielder. There are multiple Hall of Famers in this post and Wayne Causey cost more than all of them combined. If I were not putting together the set, this is a card I would 100% not purchase. At those moments where I thought about quitting on this set, Wayne Causey always flashed through my head.  

"Would I buy a really expensive Mark Lemke card?"

I will get back to you. 

Wayne Causey's career year involved him finishing twelfth in the American League batting average leaders. I am not really sure that is the type of statistic and brag you want on the back of your baseball card.  I guess it's better than saying he finished 21st in MVP voting that season. I think Topps could have squeezed it in: 

"Wayne just missed out on the American League MVP in 1963, finishing just a mere 243 points behind Yankees catcher, Elston Howard" 

Yes, this card cost a fraction of Wayne Causey.

Frank Robinson.  

This Frank Robinson guy seemed really good. I am not going to go look it up, but the Reds would be foolish if they ever traded him.

 

Pete Ward is an interesting player. He won the 1963 American League Rookie of the Year Award. Ward was a legit hitter with a .290s average, 25-30 doubles, and roughly 25 home runs in his first year or two in the Majors. He hurt his back and neck in a bad car accident after his second year and was never quite the same. Still, the guy is in the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. 

Ward still stuck around the Majors for a decade after injury, mostly with the White Sox. He played his last season as a left-handed bat off the bench for the Yankees. The back undersells his father a bit, which is the reason why I knew of Pete Ward before buying the card. 

Way back in the day, there was an antique store in my wife's hometown in northern Michigan that had a spattering of sports cards and memorabilia. It was next to the town's incredible coffee shop. One of the items in the store was an autographed photo and old O-Pee-Chee card of a Montreal Maroons hockey player, Jimmy Ward. I am not good with old hockey players, but the price for the two items was outrageous. 

I went home and Google searched the guy.  

Not mine, nor the items at the store, but he was a member of the popular 1934-1935 Montreal Maroons Stanley Cup winner.   

The card below is from Google. I don't buy hockey cards for hundreds of dollars. Nothing says popular Canadian sports star like appearing in an advertisement for syrup. Pretty dapper guy for a professional hockey player from the old days when they did not wear helmets. Although, maybe there is a reason his mouth is shut. 

Back to baseball cards.  

Not a Hall of Famer, but definitely a great of the era. I think he might have been one of the few players to appear for both the Minnesota version of the Washington Senators and the Texas Rangers version of the Washington Senators.  

The back describes his skill on the mound. His playing numbers are solid. 

Camilo was also a notable scout for the Mets, A's, and Dodgers following his retirement. Camilo convinced Cuban refugee Jose Canseco to sign with the A's, while also suggesting the team draft USC infielder/pitcher Mark McGwire. He also found a 15 year-old Tampa high school pitcher, Dwight Gooden, for the Mets. The majority of Latin American Dodgers players from the 1990s and early 2000s were discovered and signed by Camilo Pascal.  

Next. 

Heard this guy ended up on the Reds at some point. 

I hope the Orioles got a good return.  

The card is off-center. Although, in the grand scheme of things, this is a really inexpensive Roberto Clemente card. I might revisit this one at some point in the future. For the moment, I will take it.  

I feel the need to make a post ranting about Topps use of "Bob" in Roberto Clemente cards. 

Another really inexpensive Hall of Famer.  

Finally a Topps Giants card talking about an established Major League players Minor League career. This set has tons of cards were parts of the back are taken up by their Minor League numbers. This is the first card in this post. The PCL was serious baseball. The Sally League? Yikes. Someone was reaching.  

Final card.  

Dodger great Tommy Davis.  

Yes, Tommy Davis has two batting titles and helped get the Dodgers to the World Series, but here is something about his time with the Spokane Indians. 

 

Eight more cards crossed off and I am at 75% of the set. Two Hall of Famers left and no short-prints. 

1 Gary Peters
2 Ken Johnson
3 Sandy Koufax SP
4 Bob Bailey
5 Milt Pappas
6 Ron Hunt
7 Whitey Ford
8 Roy McMillan
9 Rocky Colavito
10 Jim Bunning
11 Roberto Clemente
12 Al Kaline
13 Nellie Fox
14 Tony Gonzalez
15 Jim Gentile
16 Dean Chance
17 Dick Ellsworth
18 Jim Fregosi
19 Dick Groat
20 Chuck Hinton
21 Elston Howard
22 Dick Farrell
23 Albie Pearson
24 Frank Howard
25 Mickey Mantle
26 Joe Torre
27 Ed Brinkman
28 Bob Friend SP
29 Frank Robinson
30 Bill Freehan
31 Warren Spahn
32 Camilo Pascual
33 Pete Ward
34 Jim Maloney
35 Dave Wickersham
36 Johnny Callison
37 Juan Marichal
38 Harmon Killebrew
39 Luis Aparicio
40 Dick Radatz
41 Bob Gibson
42 Dick Stuart SP
43 Tommy Davis
44 Tony Oliva
45 Wayne Causey SP
46 Max Alvis
47 Galen Cisco SP
48 Carl Yastrzemski
49 Hank Aaron
50 Brooks Robinson
51 Willie Mays SP
52 Billy Williams
53 Juan Pizarro
54 Leon Wagner
55 Orlando Cepeda
56 Vada Pinson
57 Ken Boyer
58 Ron Santo
59 Johnny Romano
60 Bill Skowron SP

Random Ray - 1997 Fleer Ultra

I am actually posting a copy of the Gold Medallion parallel. Nothing special, still a really easy card to come across. Plus, it's Ray Lankford. Go to a card show and you can probably find this card for a quarter. Maybe fifty cents if the card show is in St. Louis.  

Here is the front of the card.  

I love the 1997 Cardinals cards with pictures taken inside of Busch Stadium.

Busch Stadium had astroturf for all of my childhood. I say it like it's bad. The astroturf was great for the 1980s Cardinals teams, who were speed oriented. I never liked seeing the stuff on Cardinals baseball cards, but still liked the overall appearance of Busch Stadium.

Even though it was a cookie-cutter, concrete bowl, it was instantly recognizable. The Busch Beer blue walls, red seats, and arches around the top of the stadium made it a little bit better than places like Three Rivers, Riverfront, and The Vet.  

In an attempt to class the place up a bit, the Cardinals ripped up astroturf at the end of the 1995 season and replaced it with grass. The team was also sold to its current owner, so the Busch Beer blue walls were all painted green.  

Throw in a ridiculously large scoreboard in place of the majority of upper deck outfield seats and the place looked completely different for the 1996 season. I was always a little disappointed that the Anheuser-Busch eagle on the left-field scoreboard was replaced by an advertisement from the same company.  

It's next to Highway 40 (Interstate 64 if you're not from St. Louis) now. 

The green around the stadium was crisp. 

That green grass and green paint really popped on baseball cards, especially with the white and red Cardinals home uniforms. There were a few 1996 Cardinals cards with the new grass and paint scheme in the background, but 1997 had a lot of Cardinals baseball cards with photos inside of Busch Stadium. 

The 1997 Fleer Ultra Ray Lankford is one of the better updated Busch Stadium pictures from that year. You cannot even see the green paint on the card, just the grass and what is probably a Budweiser sign on the outfield wall. Still a great photograph when you put it all together.   

Back of the card.  

Yes, there are stats, but what about the color and sepia photos in the background. Those are quality. Almost makes me want to say forget the stats, just bring me more photographs of Ray.