A Venerable Old Card Part 20

One of the most famous speeches in professional sports took place on this date in 1939 when Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig addressed the crowd at Yankee Stadium announcing his retirement from baseball.  Gehrig 's sudden retirement came after struggles in different parts of the 1938 season and coordination problems in Spring Training lead him to visit the Mayo Clinic where he was diagnosed him with ALS.  At the time the retirement ceremony was not only huge because one of the game's stars was walking away from their career at the age of 36, but the Yankees also decided to retire Gehrig's number.

While there are many jerseys hanging in Major League Baseball stadiums nowadays, Gehrig was the first player to receive such an honor.  The Yankees gave their first baseman a trophy inscribed with a poem written by New York Times writer John Kieran that cost $5 and was Gehrig's favorite possession during his final years.  It is on display at the Baseball Hall of Fame, though not very big item, it's definitely worth finding if you visit.

And then there was the speech.  I actually had a student who was a big Yankees fan who wrote a research paper on Gehrig after watching a video produced by Major League Baseball featuring all of the different starting first basemen in the league, and Derek Jeter who was the Yankees team captain, reciting lines of the speech.  Here is the video....

Curiously, there is not an actual video of the whole Lou Gehrig speech in existence in its entirety.  A little weird that nobody got it on film, but it explains why Major League Baseball had the video above made with modern players reading the speech.  

As a card collector I cannot say that I am going to go out of my way to collect Gehrig cards since they are well out of my price range, but I have still found a few of the years that I really enjoy having in my collection.  Here are my two favorites.....

This card looks a lot like a 1972 Kellogg's card, but it's actually from the 1970 Rold Gold All-Time Baseball Greats Set.  The words "All-Time Baseball Greats" do not appear on the Kellogg's cards and the date on the back of the card is obviously different.  I like the Kellogg's set a lot and have picked up a lot of the cards over the last few years.  I was introduced to the Rold Gold set at a card show about a year and a half ago.  

There is something really cool about having a player from the 1930s pictured on a plastic card that came in a bag of pretzels in the early 1970s.  Clearly more modern than the baseball cards of the 1930s, but they have a great picture of Gehrig with the iconic facade of the Yankee Stadium grandstand in the background.  Just a really well made card.  

My second Gehrig card is even more modern, but very classy looking....

There are tons of these modern cards sets with old players and paintings.  Some are done very poorly, some are done very well.  The Masterpieces sets were easily some of the best baseball card products in the old players/paintings set that have become really common.  Easily a set I could take out of its box in my card closet, flip through, and just look at the commons.  

Friday Five: Top 5 Sets From 2007

5. Topps Heritage- It's never a bad thing thing to start out with a Topps Heritage set.  Always a great set every year, I find myself sitting down every week and putting my thoughts down about another year and it is so difficult to avoid the Heritage products.  The 2007 Topps Heritage set is based on the 1958 Topps set.  Topps did a great job of duplicating some of the original details and also provided the usual challenge to set collectors to track down bunches of different short prints and variations.  Not really keen on any one short printed card, or variation from this set, but I do love the design.  Back in the day the first birthday present my mother-in-law ever bought me was a box of 2007 Heritage cards.  I landed a Chrome James Shields (former Durham Bull) card in the box.  Still a favorite card from a great looking set.  

4. Topps- I like when Topps goes with dark borders.  I am not sure if these cards will be as condition sensitive as some of the other black bordered Topps sets, but it still stands out for some reason.  Maybe not the blue borders from 2003, but I have always had a soft spot for the 1986 and 1971 sets.    I also threw this set in for the Jeter card.    I have never quite decided whether this was intentional, or not, but it got a lot of attention and seemed to get the ball rolling on Topps using a ton of variations, sometimes really silly ones, for their base sets.  At the time the card appear Topps had only gone to the well one time and the card brought a vibe to the 2007 Topps base set which had been missing for a few years.  Cool design and a really cool card land this 4th on my list......

3. Donruss Elite- I love college.  I love college sports.  I love cards.  Roll all of those things together and you get the 2007 Donruss Elite set.  This multi-sport product mainly focused on players selected in the baseball draft, but there are some other college athletes in the mix too.  I know that locally a lot of collectors love the Dean Smith autograph, which looks similar to the Cory Brown autograph above.  This product ran for a couple of years and has always been one of my favorites.  There are some good names in each of the sets, but even if you just are a fan of a certain college, there are patch cards are cool enough looking to own just for the sake of owning one.  

2. UD Black- This was a really cool set that I do not think gets enough love sometimes.  Loads of cool patch pieces, autographs, and all kinds of other goodies.  I have not seen too many affordable boxes of this floating around, but the singles are pretty easy to pass and can sometimes be a really good deal.  The sticker autographs are a little bit of a drag, but Upper Deck did a great job of designing this set and downplayed the stickers significantly by making them clear.  I also really like the autographed cards with the manufactured flags.  So many cool looking single cards, definitely a set you should look into if you have not done so already....

1. Upper Deck Masterpieces- This was easily my favorite set from 2007.  The cards were based on paintings, which is not really a new concept, but they had a really cool canvas card stock which was really unique.  The design of the cards was awesome with a dark border and really nice artwork.  Incredible looking relic and autograph cards with some nice names makes this, not only one of the better products of 2007, but one of the better products of the past decade.