Hellos, farewells and remember whens

 

You ever have one of those blogging days where you have a post picked out and you're going through the process of scanning/picture-taking, uploading and figuring out a title, and then something else pops up that you should really write about and then something ELSE pops up that you should really write about?

Yeah, this post is going to be a bit of a mess.

 

So, several days ago I pulled out of a box the first beer stein I've ever received as a blogging present. It arrived from reader Bob, who goes by GOGOSOX60 in the comments.

 

That stein arrived with some random packs of 1986 Topps. But I'll talk about that later. And, yes, I know the binder shelf in the background is sagging. I'll talk about that later.

 

 

 

 

The stein commemorates the 1974 World Series between the Dodgers and the Oakland A's. Even without knowing who Danny Goodman is, you can tell it was created by the Dodgers. Goodman was the Dodgers' marketing/souvenir guru for 25 years and he sure hooked me in as a kid as I checked the back of the Dodgers yearbook each year to see if there was anything I could afford.

I'm sure beer steins weren't on my radar at that time but it's a nice little artifact now. Bob said he's owned it since the '70s as he was a big Dodger fan back then. The item will fit nicely into my somewhat revised card room. (But more on that later).

Let's get to the '86 packs.

I love 1986 Topps. I often wish that '86 Topps was talked about as much as '87 Topps is because '86 Topps is so much cooler. But maybe I shouldn't say that. Better that '86 is saved for the cool kids.

I've mentioned before that I've always considered '86 Topps dark and somewhat mysterious. That's because of the black top borders (and maybe the hazy photos) but also because this is the first set that I flat-out ignored since I became a collector in 1975. Then, years later I'd stare at the cards longingly and wish I hadn't ignored them.

I completed the set in the early days of the blog, but this was a fun rip and I can always see if there are upgrades because of those chippy black borders. Let's take a look at what came of each of the packs:

Pack 1

A fairly run-of-the-mill pack except for the George Brett All-Star card. The Carney Lansford card gives you an excellent example of the strangeness of '86 Topps photos.

 

Pack 2

That's the best pack right there. Fisk, Boggs, Rose. Mike Scott was a huge deal at the time.

Pack 3

Tim Raines, the final card, highlights the pack.

 

Since there was 36-year-old gum in the packs some of the cards took a hit on the back. That's the way it was as a collector in those days. You dealt with some gum bombs. Collecting was not for the weak.

That rip makes up for ignoring those cards in '86 for girls and beer and listening to Falco on the radio.

I was a bit baffled by the '86 Topps inclusion as it doesn't match up with the '74 stein (not that Bob has unopened packs of his beloved '74 Topps to give out). But I have a couple of recent acquisitions that do address that particular World Series.

The Cecil Cooper, from the set that recognizes the '74 World Series, is the 460th 1975 Topps buyback in my collection. It's a key one as not only did I like this card a whole lot as a kid but at No. 489 in the set, it gives me an unbroken string of buybacks from card no. 464 to no. 497, which is the longest in my buyback set.

The Jim Hunter Hostess card is from '75 and is great fun because the Topps card in 1975 showed him as an Oakland A (for whom he pitched in the '74 World Series). That's the advantage of putting your set out later in the year even if it makes Hunter look pretty goofy.

Both of those cards will go on my card shelf that is nearest to the door in my card room. But there are big changes afoot with the other card shelf in the room.

The sagging shelf is no more! I put up the new metal shelf this weekend!

It's a lot bigger and sturdier than the previous shelf and I can fit more stuff on there. But because it's bigger, it kind of obscures the stuff I have on the walls. I may have to do something about that (although wall space is not something this room has a lot of).

It's all still a bit of a work in progress -- somehow I've misplaced a hockey binder in the process -- and I have some cleaning up to do.

I was doing all of that today, along with preparing for my blog post, when I heard the news that Johnny Wockenfuss had died.

 

That knocked me back a little bit. I collected Wockenfuss' cards as a kid and into being a teenager, and anyone who has read this blog for the last four years knows that I interviewed Wockenfuss and wrote a big story on him in 2019.

 

The story was about him living in town here and dealing with dementia, which was the result of concussions suffered during his MLB career as a catcher and also playing football in high school. Not too long after the article, Wockenfuss was moved closer to his family down in his native Delaware, which is where he lived the rest of his days.

 

I talked to his wife briefly today to express my condolences and she said they took good care of him between his sisters and the home where he resided.

 

 That's me talking to Johnny at his apartment in the fall of 2019.

It's an honor to be invited into the home of a former major league player. It's really when the lights dim and the crowds go quiet that you realize that they're regular people -- I mean, of course they are, but all the attention and the fans and the media turns them into myth.

At least that's the way it was for Wockenfuss. I found him to be a guy who was lovable, liked to joke around, enjoyed kids and pets, fishing and hunting, still had some bitterness, and loved all his buddies in the game. Sounds like a great, down-to-earth guy to me.

RIP, Wock.