McCarver Is Pretty Great, Even If You Don't Think So....

There are a lot of sports fans who do not like Tim McCarver and constantly complain about all kinds of things about his announcing.  He can be a little bit off at times, which obviously draws the ire of fans.....

and Deion Sanders......

However, this post is about Tim McCarver's baseball playing career.  Even that draws some unfounded criticism.   I was once told, while attending a Minor League game surrounded by Phillies fans, that the highlight of Tim McCarver's career was running out to shake Bob Gibson's hand after he set the World Series Game Strikeout Record against the Tigers in the first game of the 1968 World Series.....

That was pretty cool, but McCarver had a lot of more good moments in his career outside of calling a 17 strikeout effort in a World Series game.  McCarver actually won three World Series rings during his career.  Two with the Cardinals in 1964 and 1967, and much to the surprise of many Phillies fans at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park, a ring with the 1980 Phillies team.

He was only on the Phillies for a month at the end of the 1980 season, but he did get to appear in a "Welcome Back Kotter" promotional video for a local television station.

McCarver actually spent most of the second half of his career with the Phillies.  He had a stop over with the Expos for a year, came back to the Cardinals for a season, played two years for the Red Sox, but ended up with 9 years total as a Phillie.  

As a baseball card guy, I have never really been all that interested in McCarver cards.  I have a couple hanging around the collection just for the simple reason that they were needed to complete a few of the Cardinals team sets that I have tried to assemble from the 1960s.  I recently had the chance to add a McCarver card for the sake of it being a McCarver card.   The card is from a cool set too....

I thought about it.  Okay.  

I have posted a few other cards from the 1971 Topps Greatest Moments set in the past.  I also have a Nate Colbert. St. Louis native, and Cardinals Hall of Famer Lou Brock.  So, the McCarver card has a St. Louis connection too, even though the picture on the left hand side of the card is with the Phillies, the black and white photo on the right is with the Cardinals.

I have seen at least one other Greatest Moments card with a similar set up, former Durham Bulls great Rusty Staub has an Expos picture with an Astros highlight.  I had to do a little research on the caption under the picture "Becomes 1st Catcher in History to Lead Majors in Triples" to see when this happened.......

1966 National League triples leader.  Kind of a cool feat for a catcher and goes to show that McCarver did something pretty great things around a baseball field....even if you don't agree.

A Venerable Old Card Part 59

I love chasing down oddball cards.  Over the years I have been really fortunate to find some really tough cards that were not only difficult to find, but were a little bit pricey.  My best oddball find of the past year has to be my Topps ProShooters Marbles which was a test issue Topps put out in 1997.  The marbles were sold somewhere in Canada and are a pretty tough find.  The last marble I needed for my collection, to complete my Cardinals team set, was Ray Lankford.  One of the 1990s Cardinals players whom I collect extensively.  

There are still a few hard oddball cards out there that I would love to add to my collection and I was lucky enough to land one of them a few weeks back.  I ended up with a Cardinals card out of the set, but I wasn't really going to be too choosy about the player out of the set.  I have just always liked the look of this set and just wanted a card that fit my collection.  I have a Nate Colbert card I picked up awhile ago....

Here's a look at the card out of the 1971 Topps Greatest Moments card of Cardinals Hall of Famer Lou Brock....

I have been trying to find one of these cards for a few years now.  They are not too difficult to find.  If you went on Ebay right now you'd likely be able to find several copies of the different cards in the set.  Some of the better Hall of Famers can be really tough, but it's not like these cards pop up once in a blue moon.  The difficult part of the Greatest Moments set has much more to do with the fact that they are condition sensitive and clean copies of the cards can be expensive at times.

I was willing to buy any of the Cardinals cards from the set or players connected to the Durham Bulls like Joe Morgan and Rusty Staub.  After much looking I ended up with Lou Brock.  Couldn't be happier about the card that I landed.

The only thing that was a little bit weird about this card is the picture on the front.  It celebrates Brock's 6th straight season of 50 stolen bases, which is a great accomplishment, but the picture is clearly not from the 1970 season.  Red Sox and Cardinals?  1970?  I don't think that happened.

There was no interleague play at that point and I had my doubts that this game was a Spring Training game.  Although both the Cardinals and Red both train in Florida.  The two teams did meet in the World Series in 1967, while it would have been four years old at the time this card was made, I was not going to put it past a card company to use an older picture.  Especially when it is a test issue.  I would guess the threshold for accuracy and detail might diminish a little bit.  Maybe?

Here's the picture I found.....

Same picture right? Sure the picture is a few years old, but it's still a sweet looking card showing off the Cardinals Hall of Famer swiping a base.  Subject matter and card content matter match, I am a happy camper.  

Venerable Old Card Part 18

This week I am going to skip by the card aisle and make more of a toy post, or at least it feels that way to me.  What is the oddest sports cards that are in your collection?  Sometime ago, like the early 2000s, I picked up a copy of a 1997 Topps Pro Shooters Ron Gant marble.  It was cheap, weird looking, and the seller swore it was super rare.  Here is a look at the Gant:

I think it sat in a box for about a year before I discovered that there was a Ray Lankford in this set and could not find it anywhere with good reason.  After checking into the set a bit it turns out that the Topps ProShooters set was a test issue that was released a few places, supposedly Canada and the northeast US.  You can find them every once in awhile on Ebay, but they can be rather pricey.  

There are actually three Cardinals in the ProShooters set.  Outside of Gant and Lankford, there is also a Brian Jordan marble.  I managed to pick up a copy of the Brian Jordan about six or seven years ago on Ebay.  It was selling for right around $20.  Not a bad price for one of his rarer cards, err, marble.  Here is the Jordan.....

Which left me with just the Ray Lankford.  I have seen several pop up over the past few years, but they have always been fairly pricey.  While I really like Lankford, and do as much as possible to collect as many of his cards as possible, I will not break the bank for things.  Last year I ran into an Ebay auction for one of those old Donruss Crusade cards and it nearly ended up at $200.  Too much for a Lankford.  

So, a week or two ago I finally find one for a reasonable price and even got the seller to know it down a bit more with a Best Offer.  It feels good to add this card, or marble, to my collection....

Definitely one of the more challenging Lankford's I have tracked down, both due to price and scarcity.  I am also happy to pull together the Cardinals team set out of this product.  While I am sure that someone out there has managed to put together the entire set of ProShooters marbles, it can't be that many, I am really proud of assembling a team set.  

and a little bonus for this week....

I don't go out of my way to collect oddballs, but outside of the ProShooters marbles that I just highlighted in this post, I have one other really cool test issue card from back in the day....

This is from the 1971 Topps Greatest Moments baseball card set.  It too was a test release by Topps and the cards carry a pretty hefty price tag for the most part.  I had a very generous individual give me this Nate Colbert card as a gift.  If I collected this set I would probably target the Cardinals cards, but Nate Colbert is from St. Louis, so this is still a really sweet card.