1991 Baseball Checklist Card – Sully Baseball Card of the Day for December 31, 2017

Perhaps it is appropriate that we end the year with the checklist. Opening a pack of baseball cards and getting the checklist was always an awful feeling.

As I wrote back in 2009, it was borderline taunting. It almost was saying “Hey, I bet you wish you had a baseball card other than this one. In fact here is a LIST of all the cards you would rather have than this one.

What sort of OCD kid would sit down and start checking them off with any sense of regularity. I remember when I first got my first checklist card sometimes in 1979, I started checking them off thinking it was my job.

Then I thought “F— this! I have baseball to watch, Star Wars to play and clouds to stare at!” (I probably didn’t say F— this.)

So here is a 1991 version of it. At least they have organized it into teams and not some insane pile of random players, not in alphabetical order. But still, this card is a massive let down.

Evan as a Red Sox fan, seeing my team listed on here does nothing for me. Why? Because the only Red Sox player listed on the front of the card is Larry Andersen, the compensation for trading away future Hall of Famer Jeff Bagwell.

So as we wrap up this year, it has been fun sharing all of these cards with you. But keep in mind that I am so bananas that I wrote about a card a day for all 365 days of the year… and even I didn’t check the Checklist card.

Food for thought.

1981 Topps Hit to Win Baseball Game Scratch Off – Sully Baseball Card of the Day for December 30, 2017

These cards were stuck into packs of Topps cards. I can’t remember when they started and when they ended. It is clear that THESE were included in the 1981 packs.

I guess they wanted to get kids started on wonderful habits like scratch off playing.

You scratch off the little baseballs to see if you got a SINGLE, DOUBLE, TRIPLE or HOME RUN. Or maybe you got a WALK.

According to the cards, 4 WALKS and you get a photograph of a star player. Yipee.

A single would get me a Topps Baseball Book. Not sure what the book would be.

A double would get me a baseball.

A triple would get me a bat.

A home run would land me a Wilson Jim Rice glove which, for a Red Sox fan, would be sweet. I wonder how a Yankee fan would deal with it.

I bought so many packs of baseball cards in 1981, I MUST have got a hit or something. And yet I recall no prizes coming to my house.

According to the odds, I had a 1 in 100 for the single and 1 in 25,000 for the glove.

I bought a LOT of cards. I think I would nailed the glove down. Evidently I didn’t. THIS card landed me a Fly Out, Ground Out and Ground Out.

It still stings.

Pittsburgh Pirates 1978 Team Picture Topps – Sully Baseball Card of the Day for December 29, 2017

This picture gives me chills. It is everything I love about the Pirates of the 1970’s and it reminds me of a moment where my fandom was in its infancy.

I should have been a Pirates fan.

1978 was the first year I collected baseball cards. It was the first year I understood there were baseball teams and cities that had baseball teams.

I was a Red Sox fan. I called myself one for as long as I could remember. Before we moved to Massachusetts, I was called a Red Sox fan. We lived closer to New York when I had my first memories of being a baseball fan. Why wasn’t I a Yankees fan? Or a Mets fan?

When we moved to Massachusetts when I was 4, I had my Red Sox hat and watched the local games. Yet something always drew me to the Pittsburgh Pirates. They had cool funky hats, bright yellow and striped uniforms mixed with the black to make them look like Bees.

They played in those multipurpose round stadiums that I thought were so much cooler than dumpy Fenway Park (Remember, I was a kid.)

1978, a 6 year old version of your pal Sully was collecting baseball cards and kept seeing the Pirates, a more integrated team than the Red Sox with cooler looking players. Rennie Stennett, Willie Stargell, Al Oliver, Dave Parker et al were included in this team pic.

Rich Gossage was as well, but his 1978 card was airbrushed to have him in a Yankees uniform. The team pic had them in their yellow unis in Three Rivers Stadium with the classic 1970’s logo behind them.

In 1979, the Pirates would be in the World Series, the first World Series I watched every game of. I was drawn to that Pittsburgh team and have rooted for them whenever they made it to the post season (especially during the Barry Bonds years where you would have assumed I grew up in Pittsburgh.)

The history of the Pirates from Honus Wagner to Pie Traynor to Roberto Clemente to Dock Ellis to Willie Stargell to Barry Bonds has always fascinated me. And a lot can be traced back to those early days, seeing the Pirates from this series of Topps cards.

All things being equal, I would have been a Pirates fan.