C.A.: 1980 Topps Ed Farmer

(The older this blog gets, the less other bloggers can relate to it. I'm pretty sure of that. I don't particularly care because I'm certainly not going to start waxing nostalgic about the late '90s to keep up with the times. But at the rate things are going, I'll be the only blogger musing about the '70s and '80s in a mere matter of months. Anyway, for the few of you who tune in for Cardboard Appreciation, thank you. It's time once again. This is the 291st in a series):

I really don't want Cardboard Appreciation to turn into Eulogy Appreciation, but that's the way it's gone the last two times.

A week after losing a childhood favorite in Jimmy Wynn, we lost one of those baddies from my childhood, Ed Farmer.

Some of you are saying "baddie"? He was a baseball announcer for 30 years! The radio voice of the White Sox! A respected and familiar voice of someone who obviously loved the game so much! He championed the cause of organ donation (he struggled with an inherited kidney disease all his life and it eventually killed him). Really, there seemed to be so much to like about this man.

Well, you're a product of where and when you grew up.

I didn't grow up in the Midwest. I wasn't a kid in the '80s and '90s. I was a kid in the '70s, far, far away from Chicago and its baseball broadcasts. And, Farmer may have been behind the first "purpose pitch" incident I ever knew.

It's a well-known moment. Ed Farmer was pitching for the Rangers against the Royals in 1979. He hit batter Frank White in the hand, knocking him out of the game. Then in that same game, he threw a pitch that shattered Al Cowens' jaw. Cowens missed nearly a month and came back with one of those protective shields.

I was horrified. How could someone hit somebody in the face with a baseball? Then some people said it was on purpose. I believed it. The Royals didn't believe it. Or at least they said they didn't think it was intentional. But I didn't hear that part and Farmer suddenly seemed mean, a dastardly person there on the mound. Look at that 1980 card, he practically looks like Snidely Whiplash ready to tie Nell Fenwick to the train tracks.

The next year -- 1980 -- he suddenly appeared in my baseball card packs, now with the White Sox. It was my first Ed Farmer card and I didn't like it.

But that same year, Farmer, now with the White Sox, was pitching in extra innings in a game against the Tigers. Cowens had also changed teams. He now played for the Tigers.

Cowens -- this is now more than a year after he got hit by Farmer remember -- hit a ground ball to shortstop and Farmer turned toward the infield to watch the play. He didn't see Cowens detour from the usual route to first and speed toward the mound, where he tackled Farmer from behind. A brawl ensued. A big brawl.

Chicago police filed an arrest warrant against Cowens. He was suspended for seven games. Farmer filed a lawsuit against him. But the two eventually patched things up with a handshake.

That was quite the turnabout. I guess this Farmer guy wasn't too bad, I thought. And Cowens, who I liked a lot when he was with the Royals, suddenly seemed like he had a screw loose.

Anyway, that was one of my first experiences, if not the first experience, with a mound-charging bean ball brawl (most of my baseball fight viewing prior to that came from plays on the bases).

Today, I'm more interested in Farmer as being one of those Gappers.

I wrote about them a couple years ago. Those are the players who disappear off a trading card for YEARS and then suddenly they're back again.

The 1980 Farmer card was the first time Farmer was on a baseball card as far as I was concerned. But he had actually appeared on a baseball card before that, several times in fact. But the most recent one prior to 1980 was 1974:

He never appeared in the first set I collected, 1975, nor in those formative years of collecting in '76, '77, '78 and '79. That's six years between cards!

It's not the longest gap in my collection. As I mentioned in that old post, Vicente Romo appeared in a set in 1975 and then not again until 1983.

Farmer nearly quit baseball after struggling for so many years to get back to the majors.

He didn't have it easy. As a kid he struggled with his speech. Cowens' attack aggravated his kidney disease and Farmer has said he was never the same on the field. He saw family members die from the disease. Farmer lived many years longer than his mother, who died at age 38. But it was a constant battle and he succumbed eventually on Wednesday at age 70.

He doesn't sound like a baddie to me.