Pitching in

I have been running this blog for long enough that I have received cards from all kinds of places -- even overseas locations where I didn't even know they knew about baseball -- and all kinds of people from all walks of life.

The blog has also led me to interactions with former pro baseball players, as well as members of their families. But I'm not sure if I've ever traded with an ex-ball player.

No, I didn't get cards from Tracy Woodson. Don't be so literal.

But I did receive cards from someone Woodson managed!

A guy named Michael contacted me recently about some cards he had for me. Michael pitched in the New York-Penn League during the late 1990s and mentioned that while he was playing for the team, he passed through Watertown, N.Y., and appeared in both ends of a doubleheader.

I looked through the archives of my newspaper and found a report on the games he mentioned and emailed him a copy of the story (unfortunately, his name wasn't in the story).

Michael mentioned a couple of times that his manager that year was Woodson, who will always be remembered by Dodgers fans as part of the 1988 World Series championship team. Woodson, a defensive backup at third base, was mostly a blip in Dodgers history but he picked the right time to get called up.

It's always been interesting to me that out of the card companies that were functioning at the time, Donruss was the only one that made a card of Woodson in its main set in 1988 (Fleer added a card of Woodson in its update set).

Then, when Woodson played in the Series in '88, the other companies scrambled to include him in their 1989 sets.

Except Donruss!!!!

They ignored him. I guess they figured they had done their duty already.

That was about it for Woodson's Dodger cards. He didn't appear with a major league team on a card again until 1993 with the Cardinals (his '93 Upper Deck card in which he's wearing the St. Patrick's day green Cardinals cap is probably his most famous card).

Anyway ... that was a tangent.

Michael mentioned that manager Woodson would often take over the team VCR on long bus trips that year and put in tapes of the 1988 World Series. Michael said sometimes he'd wake up in the middle of the night during a trip and see the Dodgers celebrating once again.

Michael once sent me a 1975 Topps buyback card about five years ago. He's been collecting full-steam for awhile now and he showed me his PSA-graded rookie Hall of Famers collection. My goodness! That is serious, grown-up collecting.

But he was kind enough to send a handful of cards to me after seeing that I had landed the 1956 Hank Aaron card recently.

Two of the four cards he sent were super-fine upgrades to the '56 Topps cards I had of Jim Konstanty and Hoyt Wilhelm. Both of these guys are high numbers and the cards they are now replacing will be headed to Bo of Baseball Cards Come to Life. See how the circle of card collecting life works???

The third card is the Milwaukee Braves checklist. Hank Aaron is in the back row, toward the right side.

I just need the Yankees and Pirates checklists to have them all.

Final card from Michael:

Yes.

This card had been sitting in my ebay cart for quite awhile -- a much rougher Spahn card, by the way. I probably would have eventually pulled the trigger on buying it, but the seller went on vacation for awhile and that allowed Michael to swoop in with this generous item! I love saying "never mind" to my online cart!

I have really done a number on the Braves in the '56 set in the last month or so. Thanks to a rapid-fire acquisition of Aaron, Mathews, the Braves team and Spahn, I now have all the Braves in the set.

I'm also down to just 16 cards to finish the '56 set!

I'm not sure why I added the exclamation point. A bunch of those needed guys have names like Clemente, Mays and Mantle. But this is the commitment I made!

A big thanks to Michael for the cards, which only cost me a few dupes of Dodgers stars.

You never know when those cardboard opportunities are going to come up or who is going to pitch in. Sometimes it can even be a former pitcher.