When the firsts were mostly fun

 

One of the most frustrating things to me is that no matter how much you prepare, research, take advice, it feels like there's no moving forward for very long. It's one step ahead and two steps back.

 

Maybe this is the point I'm at, actually moving out of middle age, or maybe it's just a period of time that will go away, but I'm dealing with more than a couple firsts in my life that aren't very pleasant. 

This is why the hobby means so much to me. There are fun firsts popping off all the time. Every new arrival is a first. I just added the 1969 Topps Gil Hodges and Joe Pepitone to my collection. Welcome newbies! (Actually, this isn't the first time Hodges has been in my collection, I foolishly got rid of my original copy -- don't remember how).

 

So that's a fun first and I'm eager to recall other fun -- or semi-fun -- firsts to take the edge off of these present-time dumb ol' firsts. So here's the sixth edition of Firsts, where I randomly run through my life. As I've said many times, when the First of senility hits, these will come in handy.

 

 

First blaster purchased

 

I'm pretty sure the first blaster I bought was 2008 Topps Series 2, the box with Albert Pujols on it. I first became aware of blasters reading blogs in the spring of 2008. I don't recall knowing about them before that, maybe 2007? But I know when I was buying 2006 Topps and Upper Deck it was all through rack packs and loosies. Also you could buy '06 Upper Deck at Walmart in weird cube things that I haven't seen since.

 

 

First parallel I knew

 

That's easy: 1975 Topps minis. It's the only parallel that gets a 100 percent pass from me, in fact it's my all-time favorite set, isn't that weird??

 

I've kept maybe half or more of the '75 minis I've owned and it surprised me how few stars were in what I had gained that year. Steve Garvey, Bert Campaneris and this Reggie World Series card are the highlights.

 

 

Here are all three Reggies with the original one at top right. It's a beauty.

 

 

First what I considered an "old card" in my collection

 

That would be the 1970 Topps Fred Norman card, but I don't own that particular copy anymore just three nicer copies, which is too bad. But the 1967 Topps Joe Moeller arrived not too long after that I remember. AND I STILL GOTS IT! Those creases weren't made by me, they were already there.

 

 

First baseball cards I purchased through mail-order (non-cereal version)

 

The cereal version would be the 1977 Kellogg's cards. That taught me patience and waiting 4-6 or 6-8 weeks. So I was ready when the TCMA Advertiser showed up in the mail and I wanted this 1975 All-Time Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers team set so much. I don't remember when I ordered this. 1978? 1979? But these were the first cards of old-time guys I owned, excluding the 1975 Topps MVP subset or the 1976 Topps All-Time All-Stars set.

 

 

First sitcom I saw

 

This is a gray area. It could have been "Happy Days" or "Good Times" or "The Brady Bunch". Or it could have been "Welcome Back Kotter," which may have been the first sitcom I saw consistently thanks to my baby sitter. (We were too old to be baby sat, but it was the '70s).

 

 

First "big kid" book I read

 

"Watership Down" was a well-known read for grade school kids once you got to around 5th or 6th grade, or at least my class read some of it. I loved this book -- obviously, I still have it. And I even bought another Richard Adams book, called "The Plague Dogs" but didn't enjoy it as much.

 

 

First cartoon that freaked me out

 

This is pretty common for kids of a certain generation, but I saw the 1941 Dumbo movie on a big screen at the drive-in and after witnessing Dumbo hallucinating pink elephants, I'm sure I didn't get any sleep that night.

 

 

First article I wrote as a professional writer

 

During the last Firsts segment, I mentioned the second article I wrote as a professional writer because I couldn't find my copy of the first article I wrote. I still don't know where that copy is, but I had completely forgotten that I had saved the newspaper that features that article. Here it is! It's the Niagara Gazette from July 25, 1988.

 

 

And there's my article at the top. Little ol' intern me getting top billing in the sports section. I covered a two-day hydroplane racing event -- knew almost nothing about it to start. And, wow, was that cannon they shot off to start races loud!

 

 

There's the Niagara Gazette sports section on that day. Even though I'm well aware of the shrinking size of newspapers, both in number of pages and length/width, it's amazing to look back and see how much space we had to fill.

 

 

First championship I experienced for a favorite team

 

I don't have a lot of favorite teams. It's pretty much three: Dodgers, Bills and Sabres. Two of those teams can't do anything when it comes to championships. But I've been fortunate with the Dodgers. The first championship for them that I experienced was the 1981 team. It came after watching them lose two World Series in a row when I was 12 and 13. But by 16 I got to celebrate a title. And it was so long ago, that there were books produced about it, like the one above. If there's a book for the 2024 Dodgers' Series title, I don't know it. Heck, I couldn't even get a commemorative set made for them except those dumb Topps Nowish things for too much money.

 

All right, so that's it for this Firsts. That was a lot of fun for me. Good times, good times. I'm going to have to work on creating some new firsts in my advancing age so I can at least match the cool firsts with the firsts that suck.