Two straight posts on 1979! Hey, I guess I'm old! Forty-five years ago tonight was Game 7 of the 1979 World Series, when Willie Stargell clinched the Series for the Pirates, the most recent championship for the Pirates. That Series is notable for Stargell stars, "We Are Family," and some of the most colorful uniforms to appear together in a single WS. It's also the first World Series that I watched almost in entirety and the first Game 7 I saw to the end. Because of that, it's been one of my favorite World Series, and it helped that it came immediately after experiencing the Dodgers lose to the Yankees in back-to-back years. Finally, I had a relaxing series to watch in which the team I rooted for actually won. (This is still a rarity). I looked forward to 1980 Topps when I could see a few cards devoted to the '79 World Series as Topps had done in previous years. But, to my surprise, there was no recognition of the Series at all. It was the first time that To
A month into this blog, I featured my copy of the 1979 Sport Americana Baseball Card Price Guide, which is the first of the James Beckett/Dennis Eckes annual price guides that I purchased all through the mid-1980s. I don't remember when I bought the '79 copy. I'm guessing 1980. It's shown up a time or two on the blog since. It's a cool peek into the past, starting with the cover, which looks nothing like the price guides to come -- no photos, just drawings. (The book is the rarer white-cover version). As you can probably tell, I've handled this book a lot -- pages have been falling out for years. Probably most of the damage happened in the first year because, let me tell you, there was nothing cooler than someone assigning prices to cards. What a concept -- which ones were ones that I had? Answer: In 1979, almost none. I brought up this book a couple days ago over on the House of Cardboard Discord site because the topic came up on "when did the concept