The older the night card, the better it gets. The more oddball the night card, the better it gets.
So what we have here is the best kind of night card. An old oddball night card. I have a few oddball night cards, but I don't think I have an oddball night card this old.
It arrived from Kevin of Orioles Card "O" the Day. I like this card not only because it's a Post card from 1961 that you had to cut off of a box, and not only because the glowing bank of lights appear to be burning the backside of Billy Klaus' head, but because of the last sentence on the card.
"During the off-season he works in a bowling alley."
That is fantastic.
Can you imagine walking into a bowling alley, going up to the counter, telling the man that you wear a size 11 and then J.J. Hardy goes and gets them for you? What a wonderful world that must have been.
Klaus was no slouch. Sure, by this point he was a part-time player and on his way to the Senators for the 1961 season. But Klaus was kind of a big-shot in the mid-1950s, finishing second for AL Rookie of the Year honors as the Red Sox's starting shortstop.
And yet, he was fetching ugly bowling shoes for people on winter weekends.
Wonderful.
This wasn't the only Post card that Kevin sent. The rest, of course, were Dodgers.
The Post sets are a lot larger in number than I originally suspected. So I have quite a few cards left to go before completing the Dodgers.
For those of you who are bored by vintage, Kevin thought of you, too.
OK, I kind of tricked ya. That's a more modern card but the player is even older than the players featured on the Post cards.
How's that? That's a whole bunch of wondrous parallel/insert nonsense from the '90s/early '00s.
And speaking of more modern stuff to chase:
Here is another one for the Documentary cause.
And this thing. These Documentary gold parallels are among the most irksome cards ever made. Upper Deck not only wanted to see if anyone would complete all 162 cards of a team set, but then made a parallel set for each card for the truly insane.
That is a fine example of card company arrogance.
I better end this with a card I like before my happy pro-player-working-the-bowling-alley fantasy disappears forever.
There we go. Nomo cards always make me smile.
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Night Card Binder candidate: Billy Klaus, 1961 Post, #79
Does it make the binder?: If this card was in my night card binder instead of in the binder with the Upper Deck '70s Decade set, which I'm trying to complete, then I'd have big problem. However, slot #79 in the night card binder is free. Set those pins, Billy.
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