Heartbreaking Damage: A Trimmed Goudey Spitballer

At first when you look at my 1933 Goudey card of Burleigh Grimes you might not notice something is missing. A previous owner of this card sometime between now and 82 years ago when the card was made decided to trim the red bottom border off the card that reads "Big League Chewing Gum." 

1933 Goudey #64 Burleigh Grimes

If you were too familiar with Goudey cards you might not notice it immediately just looking at the front but on the back you can see the text is cut off.

And just yesterday Burleigh Grimes made a brief appearance on a segment on the Olbermann program on ESPN. The topic was rule changes that could help pitchers and one suggestion was to legalize the spitball which Grimes was the last pitcher allowed to legally use the pitch.

My interest in Burleigh Grimes stems from his origin in Wisconsin .He was born in a Emerald, Wisconsin and like Andy Pafko and Hank Aaron played his professional debuts in my hometown of Eau Claire, WI. I had been looking for a nice copy of Grimes's 1933 Goudey for a while but a decent copy is at least $60.00 and so I quickly scooped up this damaged card for $12.00.

Salacious R. Crumb

I meant to post this on May the 4th a.k.a. Star Wars Day but life got in the way as it often does. I've been enjoying the Topps Star Wars Card Trader app a lot more than I did Topps Bunt and I'm looking forward to seeing Episode 7 packs as the release date gets closer.

I've been pulling quite a few Salacious B. Crumb cards and with a name like that you can't help but make a connection to world famous illustrator R. Crumb. He's best known for illustrating underground comics for decades including many of the legendary American Splendor series. Crumb is also famously the creator of the cover for the Big Brother and the Holding Company album Cheap Thrills. In the documentary Crumb he says he was paid nearly nothing for the famous cover.

Here's the original card:

Combining Two Things I Love: Fleer Stickers + Andy Pafko Autographs

I'm not sure why I didn't think of the genius of combining two of my favorite collecting things before: Fleer stickers and Andy Pafko autographs. I found this beauty on eBay of an Andy Pafko TTM autograph on a 1983 Fleer sticker which got me thinking about a blog that had slipped off my radar, The Fleer Sticker Project. Much like former card blogging greats Dinged Corners and Treasure Never Buried, the number of posts have dwindled to just a handful a year but I challenge you to find a better on all things Fleer stickers.

David Wright Spring Training Photos + A Heartbreaking Original

I recently received a bunch of 1972 minis from Tony of Off Hiatus Baseball Cards and one of them was this David Wright card with his tongue out which reminded me I've got some David Wright Spring Training photos I could share.

Surely one of these would made a better photo than the one selected by Topps? Well, maybe not this one in which David Wright's tongue is out again.

These photos were taken at a Cardinals/Mets game back in March when I was down in Jupiter, Florida.

Maybe if the 1972 design was a little different I would pick a non-traditional photo like Wright taking off his brace but the design really calls for a close up photo.

More David.

Even more David.

Even more David Part 2.

And here's another one with Wright swinging with the tongue out.

Here's a nice one of Wright ready for the pitch with a smile on his face. So let's try using the 72 design with this photo. 

With a little cropping we get this.

Not too bad I think. My seats were up the first base line so I had to zoom in to get photos at the plate so the image quality is not quite perfect but I do like it better than the tongue photo.