Looking at cards with Johnny B.

Over the weekend, I got a chance to express my inner Mike Oz and share some baseball cards with a former major league player.

I'm working on a story for my paper that involves ex-player Johnny Wockenfuss, who is almost a cult figure with fans of a certain age (I am one) and especially fans of the Detroit Tigers during the '70s and '80s.

I won't go into much detail -- at least not now -- because I'm still in the middle of working on it, have more gathering to go, and I get very protective of my stories while I'm in the middle of the process. Got to retain that exclusive, you know.

But I will say that I was able to sit in the home of Wockenfuss, give him the cards that I have of him in my collection, and ask his opinion on them.

Yeah, cool. Way cool.

I have 17 cards of Wockenfuss ("you have a lot of them," my wife said, and I thought "if that's a lot, what is my Hideo Nomo collection?"). Wockenfuss remembered the cards -- "every bit of them," he said -- and he still gets them in the mail.

I gave all of them to him to see if he had any thoughts.

He had just a few. Here are the cards he commented on:

He pointed out this one first. He said that Sparky Anderson, the manager of the Tigers during the second half of Wockenfuss' stay in Detroit, made him shave off his beard. Obviously, Wockenfuss grew it back when he was traded to the Phillies.

Anderson had a team policy of no beards, which I'm assuming he carried over from his managing days with the Reds, who outlawed all facial hair.

I'm wondering if Anderson told his new Tigers team -- he took the job with Detroit in 1979 -- "no facial hair" to start with and then relaxed it so players could at least wear mustaches. The '80s Tigers were mustache-tastic and Wockenfuss shows a progression on his cards.

Clean-shaven on his 1980 card, with a photo that was likely taken in 1979, Sparky's first year with Detroit.

Continued absence of facial hair on his 1982 cards.

Then in his '83 cards, the facial hair returns, even a little scruff on the 1983 Fleer card, which I'm assuming was during spring training when maybe the players had a little slack, or maybe Wockenfuss was flouting the rules, which after talking to John, I can see him doing.

His 1984 cards showcase a simple, rock-solid mustache. And that glorious "C-1B-OF" that Topps couldn't even fit on one line.

Wockenfuss pointed out this card and said he looked like he was "getting ready to beat someone up."

He admitted that he tried to be a tough guy on the field but then joked that if he came across a larger player, he would automatically switch into "Hey, buddy, how ya doin'" mode.

"That's a real nice one," Wockenfuss said about his 1978 Topps card.

I agreed. It is the card I think of when Wockenfuss' cards come to mind. It's from early in his career, just about at the point where he turned things around and became a productive player who would stay with the Tigers almost all the way to their World Series title in 1984.

Almost ...

We talked about that, too. It's one of his big laments.

We also talked about his famously unusual batting stance (I imitated it for him), his ability to play almost every position, his nicknames, his status as a fan favorite, his days as a minor league manager, and teammates like Kirk Gibson, Mark Fidrych, Bill Freehan and Mike Schmidt.

My knowledge of that era came in very handy during this interview and I can thank baseball card collecting for that. You are at an advantage when you can throw a name like "Champ Summers" at a former teammate of his from 35 years ago.

But that will be for a future post, probably the latest in my "Brush With Greatness" series, after the story gets published. There is so much more to this story.

But for now, I'm happy to simply say I now know what Johnny Wockenfuss thinks about his baseball cards. And I can forget about that uniform swatch of Wockenfuss that no card company will ever make.

I have something better: Wockenfuss looked through and touched my cards.