It must have been somewhere around 1974 when I first realized there was a great big group of people out there collecting baseball cards and that I wasn’t alone. I was fresh out of the Navy, in college and working full time at a swanky restaurant in Upstate New York, and the stories had already started to creep into the mainstream media about how baseball card collectors were coming out of the closet (or maybe the attic) and that hanging on to your treasures wasn’t as sissified as previously believed.
   I used to keep all my cards in alphabetical order, grouping my vintage Topps sets or near-sets from 1958 forward right in there with the TCMA stuff, the Laughlin World Series cards and the 1960s Fleer Hall of Fame issues. A very egalitarian system that kept me shuffling through virtually every one of the cards every couple of years.

    I never did put them together as sets until around the end of the decade when I went to my first good-sized card show in Albany, N.Y. I also took the plunge for an insurance policy from Cornell & Finkelmeier, which I mention only to offer some insight about how the hobby changes over time.

    Though I am pretty good at hanging onto baseball cards and the like, that capability doesn’t extend to paperwork, so I don’t have a copy of those early insurance forms, but I do remember that I said I had mostly complete sets from 1958 forward (with some years in the turbulent 1960s completely unrepresented, essentially my hormone-riddled teenage years from 1966-69), which still actually constituted a bit of rounding up. Since I still largely kept everything in alphabetical order, I merely assumed I had complete sets from 1962-65.

   Which is not to suggest that I was the originator of the currently in vogue mantra of this millennium, which is roughly, “It’s not a lie if you really believe it.” Nope, I was more than a little surprised when I figured out a couple of years later that I was missing quite a few cards from 1962 and 1963.

   Anyway, of more interest was the condition that I thought the cards were in: near-mint. Now, that one truly is one of those instances were it wasn’t a lie because I really did believe it. I hadn’t seen that many complete vintage sets at that point, and so I figured I had been as careful with my cards as anybody else on the planet. Yeah, right.

   Turns out, I wasn’t even in the upper echelon. Cards and sets that I listed for insurance purposes as Near-Mint would ultimately end up as VG-EX, though there were also several hundred that were/are EX-MT or even Near-Mint.

   As I started going to a lot of shows on the East Coast, especially the Philly shows, I fairly quickly figured out that I had been seriously overgrading my cards.

   That wouldn’t have been a big deal, especially since I never filed even one teenie-weenie insurance claim, except that it prompted a new development. I would come home from one of those shows and, upon looking at my sets, would now feel that a little bit of “upgrading” would be in order. Now there’s a concept: doing a little bit of upgrading.

    I started out with my favorite set: 1959 Topps. There were lots of cards in the VG-EX range, and a goodly number of others that might have better corners than that but ended up off-center enough to be jarring. It was the early 1980s, so it wasn’t as bad as it might have been had I undertaken the duties 10-15 years later. Sparkling commons could still be had for a reasonable price, and so I upgraded ... and upgraded ... and upgraded.

   I ought to be embarrassed to point out that some of commons I kept nudging into better condition with two, three or even four upgrades. That’s just silly, and the mark of somebody not quite tidy enough to be as discriminating as I ought to have been.

   And serious collectors know the rest of the story. Once you started planting genuinely Near-Mint commons in those plastic sheets, the stars sprinkled in start to look a little shabby, and so you wind up looking for better condition specimens of those as well.

   My 1960 Topps set was always in better shape than my 1959 because I had pulled off a major trade around 1963 or so, unloading every last one of my football cards for the 1960 Topps cards of one of my friends. He was a good deal more discriminating than I, plus he hadn’t hardly ever looked at his cards and thus many truly were Near-Mint. Still, there were enough cards below that grade to send me into upgrading a couple hundred cards from that set, too.

   Now I’ve been perking those two issues up for the better part of a quarter-century, and yet they still wouldn’t manage to compete with many of the sets on the various card registries. Not only are none of the cards thus entombed, but I’ve actually bought slabbed cards and freed them from the confines of their plastic holders so that I could slip them into plastic sheets where they belong with the rest of their friends.

   About the only holdout from 1959 would be the No. 20 Mickey Mantle card. I just couldn’t bring myself to reach for the kind of dough needed to upgrade that particular card.

   And besides, I feel enough guilt about dumping so many of the originals for better-groomed and protected versions. At least Mickey is one of the few remaining veterans from the trenches, metaphorically speaking.  

   With our National Convention returning to Cleveland next week, it occurred to me that the five-day extravaganza offers a unique opportunity for our hobby to honor someone who has played an important, though often misunderstood, role in the world of autographs.
  
   The man who is subjected to a famous hobby aphorism about “the only thing worth more than a Bob Feller signed 8-by-10 photo is an unsigned version” has actually been a significant hobby pioneer, helping to make autograph appearances by current and former stars a mainstay in a hobby dominated by cardboard at the time.
  
   With Feller being one of the autograph headliners at the National, it would be neat if the show promoters, acting on behalf of the entire hobby, could find a way to honor him in the city where it all began more than 70 years ago. Feller is approaching 89 years old, so even though the National returns to Cleveland in a couple of years, now would seem like the ideal moment for a well-deserved tribute.

   I can remember Feller simply showing up at the Philly Show on the music pier in Ocean City, N.J., in the 1980s, charging three or four dollars for an autograph and just generally serving as an elder statesman and ambassador to the game as he regaled awestruck fans with stories from his career.

   Twenty-five years and a couple of zillion signatures later, Feller’s contribution to our hobby gets largely lost amid the trite jokes about how much he has signed. Yeah, there’s a cogent criticism we ought to level at one of the greatest pitchers of all time: you signed too many autographs, shook too many hands, posed for too many pictures with fans and did it all at prices that ought to make modern ballplayers embarrassed.

   Apparently well on the way to becoming something of a grouchy old man myself, I’m not really bothered by some of the politically incorrect Feller commentary over the years. Besides, you don’t have to agree with everything he’s ever uttered in order to take note of his contributions to the game of baseball in general and our quirky hobby in particular.




   A Chicago area card dealer is organizing a “Barry Bondsfire” that’s designed as a protest against Barry Bonds’ alleged steroid use. Keith McDonough, owner of Bleachers Sports in Winnetka, Ill., has organized a protest that is slated to follow on the heels of the moment when/if Henry Aaron’s all-time home run mark falls to Bonds.

   McDonough, who has operated his store on Chicago’s North Shore for 15 years, has apparently started something when he announced he was going in incinerate his Bonds cards, a provocative announcement that he repeated on ESPN2’s “Cold Pizza” morning talk show last week. “We want to protest it,” McDonough told SCD’s editorial director Brian Earnest in a phone interview. “We’ve got lots and lots of cards. Now we have kids coming in and dropping their Bonds cards in the fire pit, and that’s a kick.”

   In an interesting twist, McDonough said he’s been beseiged by e-mails revealing a startling dichotomy: many collectors have sent in cards and memorabilia to be included in the “Bondsfire,” but an even greater number of Bonds fan have sent a flood of angry e-mails defending the controversial slugger.

   For his part, McDonough is quick to point out the firey symbolism is not personal but merely directed at the alleged steroid use. And he added that he doesn’t sell Sammy Sosa or Rafael Palmiero cards in his store, either.

   For me, the interesting part part was that the gesture recalled another bonfire from 26 years ago. The beef back then was against Major League Baseball and the players as stunned fans looked for ways to vent their rage against the most significant labor stoppage in MLB up to that point. A New England dealer, David Carter, reportedly orchestrated the public incineration of 64,000 baseball cards, nearly half of that number coming from Carter himself and reportedly including a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle, valued at $1,300.

   At the time the demonstration seemed a bit quixotic, but no more than the current bit of pyromania. If you’re going to quibble, both events seem a little self-defeating, since Bonds presumably doesn’t care if we burn his cards and MLB and its employees also didn’t blink when Carter took a match to The Mick in 1981, but they still seem(ed) liked effective symbolism.


An expensive Clemens autograph

   I saw a news item in USA Today last week that reported a Japanese reporter had his membership in the Baseball Writers Association of America revoked because he asked Roger Clemens for an autograph.
  
   I fully understand the principle at work here: journalists need to be doing journalism or thereabouts when they are covering teams and it opens up an ethical can of worms if they start asking for autographs while on the job. Fair enough.
  
   But in this instance the penalty seemed a bit harsh, especially since the writer, who works for a tabloid newspaper based in Tokyo, apparently didn’t realize he had broken the rules. The story didn’t make it clear just exactly what the implications were from losing his BBWAA credentials, but it’s reasonable to assume it means he can’t cover the Yankees or any other major league ballclub.

   According to the article, Hiroki Homma went up to Clemens with a stack of pictures that had been taken by the newspaper’s photographer; Homma, apparently thinking that the pitcher might like to have them to commemorate his 350th win, offered the stack to the pitcher, and asked Clemens to sign one of the photos for him. A security staffer apparently witnessed it and reported the violation.

   Bummer. Seems harsh, but I understand at that level they would want to make an example if somebody stepped, or even stumbled, over the line.

   My column in Sports Collectors Digest is called “Out of Left Field,” which turned out to be a suitable appellation for a weekly literary effort that tries to look at things from a different perspective, but I have to concede that this blogging business has helped me poke around into odd corners that I might not have pursued in print.

   Thus I can pursue various pet peeves, like baseball announcers – posturing as savants proffering “inside baseball” gems to the great unwashed – who point out that after a player makes a great fielding play he frequently winds up leading off the next inning. Grrrrr. I want to throw something at the TV when they say idiotic things like that.

   It’s called “selective perception,” meaning the doofus announcer remembers those occasions where the player led off after a great play in the field, and ignores all the instances where it doesn’t happen. In truth, the chances of leading off after making a great play in the field are roughly 1 in 9.
Taking note of this in something as benign as Major League Baseball begs the question: this process of seeing only those things that reinforce our biases plays havoc with all sorts of important areas of daily life, from social issues to politics. It’s at least helpful to be vigilant, and what better place to practice than with numbskull TV analysts.

   And speaking of same, have you ever heard even one of them take note of this particularly galling trait? A player badly misplays a fly ball or a hit rolling under his glove, and when he turns around to chase it to the wall, does so with the same degree of urgency that I employ in emptying the litter box.

   I have some sympathy for the embarrassment involved: I botched a fly ball as a sophomore in high school and was brutally vilified by angry villagers with pitchforks and torches (and yanked by the manager), but, hey, I’ve gotten over it.

   And I know that the embarrassment is different for professionals, but I still hate it when they casually lope after the ball after their misplay, as if to say, “No big deal, there’s nothing to see here.” Meanwhile the base runner is going full tilt, and I am once again looking for something to throw at the TV.

   Here’s another thing I don’t ever recall one of those analysts mentioning: headfirst slides into first base. Obviously, I am talking about running out infield hits and the like, not diving back on a pickoff throw. No one will ever convince me that the maneuver gets the runner to the base more quickly than simply continuing to sprint; the normal, self-protective reflex to slow down during the dive assures that outcome. It winds up being nothing more than idiotic showboating. And again, I’m not talking about a Pete Rose dive into third on a triple, which can be useful in avoiding tags. In bang-bang plays on infield grounders, avoiding the tag is not typically an issue.



   And peripherally related, I got a chuckle out of a newspaper article that I read a couple of days ago that characterized Barry Bonds as a no-good bum that almost everybody hated and Henry Aaron as a wonderful guy that everybody liked.

   I chuckled because my guy Henry is getting a bit of the Maris-like revisionist history process that took place nearly 10 years ago when McGwire and Sosa were in the process of sailing past the old single-season home run mark of 61, held by Roger Maris, of course.

   Maris got wonderful treatment back then, and it could be noted that McGwire played a role in that, taking every possible occasion to offer respectful nods to the Yankee slugger who had died a dozen years before that and making an effort to include surviving Maris family members in the spotlight when the occasion presented itself. All the nice talk somewhat obscured the reality that Maris got really harsh treatment from the press and many fans at the time he broke Ruth’s record in 1961. Then the prevailing sentiment was that Mantle was a more worthy subject to break Ruth’s record; ironically, the arrival of Maris at Yankee Stadium in 1960 had helped generate some of that affection for The Mick as once-thorny press coverage of the great star turned softer and some of the spotlight – and attendant pressure – shifted to Roger.

   I see that same thing happening now with Aaron. Writers and TV pundits are making him out to be this warm and fuzzy old teddy bear, when, in fact, for much of the period after his retirement in 1976, he was regarded as a kind of a prickly personality, a notion perhaps heightened by his principled and unyielding stances concerning race relations and important civil rights issues.

   Remember, this was the 1970s, and the country was still sorting out a lot of “stuff” that seems like old news nowadays. I anguished that Henry wasn’t more beloved than he was at the time, but I won’t go so far as to rewrite the history books now.

   My greatest hope in conceding that the all-time home run status was going to have to be relinquished was that Aaron would get some much-deserved time in the spotlight once again, and I sort of like it that he’s being portrayed so positively now after a couple of decades of being either largely ignored or even occasionally scolded for espousing views that didn’t always sit well with the mainstream press.

   But let’s at least do everybody a favor and keep it “real,” as they say. None of that selective perception stuff.


   As I write this, our friend and columnist Marty Appel is in Israel helping out with the launch of the Israel Baseball League. The league opened last night with a game between the Petach Tikva Pioneers and the Modi’in Miracle at the Yarkon Sports Complex in Jerusalem.

   That information comes from the Sunday New York Times (June 24); I already knew Marty was there, since he’s one of our ace columnists and he e-mailed me several days before to tell me he would be out of town.

   It all sounds pretty cool to me: a six-team league plays an eight-week, 45 games schedule (seven-inning games). The players make $2,000 each for the season, and the play-by-play will be in Hebrew, with the inaugural game also being broadcast in English and shown on PBS affiliates in New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and West Palm Beach, Fla.

   A number of former major leaguers are on board as managers (Art Shamsky, Ron Blomberg and Ken Holtzman), plus former Red Sox and Expo GM Dan Duquette will serve as the league’s director of player development. Appel, arguably the most famous PR maven in the sports world, directs the public relations effort.

   About my only beef would be the planned home run derby to break ties, instead of playing extra innings. That doesn’t seem kosher to me.

   In Part Deux of my recent road trip, I flew from Providence, R.I., down to New York City for the June 5 Sotheby’s With SCP live auction at Sotheby’s on York Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Covering live auctions is one of the toughest things I do as a reporter because there’s a huge element of chance determining how much takes place with live bidders and how much is from absentee bids, online and over the phone.

  
   Fortunately for me, Pete Siegel of Gotta Have It in New York City turns up at all the major auctions. Siegel grabbed national media attention at auctions of the Mickey Mantle estate in 2004 and two years ago at Sotheby’s when he was the winning bidder at nearly $1 million for the sale contract that sent Babe Ruth from the Red Sox to the Yankees in 1920. He is arguably one of the most prolific collectors of Yankees memorabilia, much of which will ultimately be on display at his museum, details as yet to be finalized. In the meantime, he continues to acquire Ruthian treasures, for example, that would fit in any museum from Cooperstown to the Big Apple.
  
   “I purchased two of the small Babe Ruth photos from the tour of Japan, and in the afternoon we picked up the baseball that was signed by both Babe Ruth and Brother Matthias,” said an elated Siegel. “We are very happy to have that and it’s probably the only one in existence in terms of the history of Babe Ruth. If it weren’t for Brother Matthias (from the St. Mary’s School for Boys orphanage where Ruth was raised from age 7), Ruth might never have had an interest in baseball.”

   I always sit near the front at live auctions, hoping to be able to follow the live bidding in the room at least, which is something of a trick in itself. I had been to Sotheby’s auctions before, so I had seen Leila Dunbar in action at other sales, working as part of a rotation of auctioneers, but this time she handled the whole day. At just over 350 lots, that may not seem like such a big deal, but in this case it really was.
 
   In all my years of going to auctions, I can’t recall another where virtually every item got a slew of bids. It’s a little nutty to compare it to the Halper sale in 1999, since that was more like 2,500 items over seven days, but even that sale would have some lots that opened with an absentee bid, got a couple of bumps and then, bang.     In this one there was fierce bidding all the way through. There just weren’t any lots that seemed like they were phoned in, if you’ll pardon the expression.

   In a Gehrig-like performance, I never saw her make so much as a stutter, handling literally thousands of bids back and forth from the “book” in front of her at the podium, the phones, the Internet and the room. All of this accomplished while pushing her reading glasses back from time to time as they would relentlessly creep down her nose.

   And speaking of noses, I sneezed during the the middle of the second session and panicked for a moment, thinking I might have inadvertently bid on a Dave Cowens jersey, but Leila never missed a beat, and merely blessed me instead of assessing me with a $2,700 tab.
   Now that’s efficiency.

   The other reason I like to sit in front at auctions is to keep track of who shows up for the live bidding. SCP President David Kohler assured me there were celebrities bidding in the sale, but most of those were on the phone. Many of the top dealers in the country were in the audience, but the only other celebrity (that I knew of) was Jane Forbes Clark, the chairman of the board of the Baseball Hall of Fame, who quietly took a seat in the front row on the right side early in the morning ssession.
  
   Immediately after the sale of the Walter Johnson bat that was one of the highlights of the sale, five lots of Hall of Fame-related correspondence came up in Lots 107-111. The letters, which feature fascinating insight into the process the Hall used to encourage the players to donate items, included missives from the likes of Clark Griffith, Honus Wagner, Cy Young (3), Nap Lajoie, Tris Speaker, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, and Ford Frick.
  
   The five lots included more than a dozen letters from some of the greatest stars in the game who responded to museum planner Alexander Cleland’s inquiries about getting donations of memorabilia for the brand-new Hall of Fame. The letters are all dated in the 1930s and feature three from Ty Cobb, including one where he pointed out statistical errors concerning his career numbers. That lot inspired furious bidding that reached $27,000, with Clark prevailing as she did with all five lots, totaling $56,000.
  
   As serious fans are well aware, the Hall of Fame does not purchase memorabilia items for the museum but rather relies on donations from ballplayers and the collecting elite, both of which have come through to varying degrees of success over the years.
  
   “My grandfather founded the Hall of Fame, and these papers are important to my grandfather, and to the Hall of Fame in terms of being some of the original documents that began the Hall of Fame as we know it today.
   “The Hall is not bidding; I was bidding on them myself, personally, and of course I’ll put them on loan to the Hall,” said Clark.
   “As you know, the Hall of Fame does not buy artifacts,” she added.
  
   She also responded to a question about the origins of material that would have traditionally been saved by the museum. “We’re not entirely sure, but we think that when Mr. Cleland left, he took boxes of documents with him. And those have been, we think, with his family.
   “And we are very happy to get them.”

   Last leg of road trip, to our SportsFest Show in Schaumburg, Ill., to follow shortly.

   If readers are wondering if I have fallen off the edge of the universe they can be forgiven; I have been on the road for much of the past two weeks and for me that means I haven’t been able to keep up my blog. I fully realize that there are millions of people clever and computer literate enough to travel across multiple time zones, keep their blogs up to date, change the litter box and complete the wash and ironing, but I am not one of those people. I don’t even get Christmas cards from those people.

   Anyway, I was on a wonderful but exhausting road trip that sent me to the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Conn., for Dick Gordon’s June 1-3 reunion of the 1967 Boston Red Sox, then on to New York City for the Sotheby’s with SCP auction that turned out to be the doozy you would expect. Then it was back to the wilds of Wisconsin for a couple of days and down to Chicago Friday night (June 8) for our annual SportsFest show, this time relocated to the Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel about 10 miles west of the former location in Rosemont, Ill.

   First things first: the casino, touted as the largest in the world, is easily one of the most spectacular I’ve ever seen. It’s actually two casinos at opposite ends, with all the shops, restaurants and theatres you’d ever want sandwiched in between 6,000 slot machines and all the usual other games of chance, and some not so usual.

   As might have been expected, Yaz was the star of the show, but he also turned out to be intent on putting the focus of the weekend on the team as a whole, rather then himself as the guy who had an absolutely unbelievable 10 days and the end of an equally unbelievable month, capping a year that was quite fairly dubbed “The Impossible Dream.”

   I hope I didn’t repeat this to Yaz, who, no doubt has heard the same refrain a couple of zillion times, but I never saw any ballplayer have a stretch even remotely close to what he did at the close of the 1967 season. Coming at what was nearly the apex of a pitching-dominant era, his numbers in that Triple Crown season were stunning, but what he did that September defied simply being distilled and defined by mere numbers.

   This was a time when you followed baseball in the newspaper; this was long before cable TV and ESPN, and there was one “national” game on  network television every Saturday afternoon. Fans listened on radio and read gaudy, hyperbolic accounts in the newspaper, meaning the listener or reader supplied much of the imagination needed to fill out the picture. To me, a 17-year-old kid still mourning the premature retirement of Sandy Koufax at the end of 1966, it seemed like Yaz got a hit almost every time he stepped to the plate in that final stretch. At the very least, he seemed to come through every time the game hung in the balance.

   Now, four decades (and several reunions) later, Yaz sits behind a table and dutifully signs for a dedicated legion of admirers, occasionally taking a drag on a politically incorrect Marboro Red that he would rest at the edge of the tablecloth between signatures. As an ex-smoker, I closely scrutinize actors in the movies as they fake their way through inhaling; it rarely looks real, though I can hardly criticize an actor for wanting to protect a set of lungs. For Yastrzemski, the act of smoking seemed as natural as that magnificent swing of his, and besides, Yaz is New England royalty, and even if smoking was verboten in those conference rooms, who is going to call him on it?

   Gordon, who orchestrated the reunion and the attendant activities along with another well-known East Coast show promoter, Mike Riccio, came up with a marvelous location for his event. I suspect the show area, with about 50 dealers and an area to the side for the player signings, was almost certainly one of the most elegant locations for a card show in a hobby/industry that traces its roots to your Uncle Ned’s garage or maybe a tiny room at a suburban Holiday Inn.

   On the Saturday night of the show, Gordon and Riccio teamed up with the casino to run a unique reception cocktail party and dinner after the close of the show. The casino invited about 200 high rollers to the party and then treated them almost as well as they treated the ballplayers: in one of the upper-level ballrooms, the players posed for pictures and signed stuff for nearly two hours, while all invited nibbled on high-end hors doeuvres like itty-bitty lamb chops and various and sundry things wrapped in bacon and such.

   It was really interesting to watch such a monied lineup wade around in the world of sports memorabilia and autographs, but despite their collective unfamiliarity with it all, they adjusted pretty quickly and efficiently. Though they had all gotten e-mail invitations to the event, they still found themselves improvising when it came to finding things for the famous Soxers to sign.
The casino had arranged for a camerman to take pictures of the high rollers with the various players and then promptly develop the photos so they could get them signed by the players on the spot. The most innovative effort came when the assembled snagged every home plate that was part of the centerpieces on the tables, getting every player .... starting with, who else, Yaz ... to sign the piece.

   In the frenzy (dignified but, uh, energetic), one lady with a raspy voice who sounded as if she might have been cheering too enthusiastically from the bleachers thrust a souvenir program in front of my nose. “Are you a Red Sox player from way back?” she asked a bit frantically, not wanting to waste a lot of time and effort if it turned out I was a mere mortal. For a nanosecond I thought about telling her I was Pumpsie Green, but realized the gag might have missed its mark, so I politely explained that I was a lowly fourth estater. I wasn’t necessarily upset that she had lumped me into a group generally 10-plus years older than I am; I get the same treatment at the local grocery store here in Iola, with the teenagers according me the 10 percent senior citizens discount, even though I am still a couple of years away from the official status.

   The use of the home plates gave me a chuckle because I found out from one of the waitresses (I love grilling the staff) that they were leftovers from a roast of Don Zimmer a couple of weeks earlier at the casino.

   That same night, Rich Little was performing in the theatre at the casino, with Chicago not far behind. I just mention that to show that our hobby doesn’t exactly have a monopoly on the nostalgia thing.
   More on Sotheby's and SportsFest to follow.

   Seeing all the wire stories this past week about Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn taking their pre-induction tours of the Hall of Fame reminded me about what an extraordinary moment the actual enshrinement must be. I allude, of course, to virtually any ballplayer you might want to name, though of course the subject this year is those two.
  
   I can’t think of any ballplayers from their era who have consistently shown an appreciation and reverence for the game of baseball than Ripken and Gwynn, so one supposes that their wonderment and awe at this private tour was about as genuine as can be. Gwynn's attachment to the iconic Ted Williams is well know, and obviously in Ripken’s case, that probably manifests itself with his historical linkage to Lou Gehrig, so it is inevitable that he will be linked in immortality with the Iron Horse just as he was during the latter part of his playing career. Ripken’s enthusiasm for the game of baseball and its history is refreshing and laudable, but it also reminded me of another upper-rung HOFer who has proved to be a Cooperstown MVP in the memorabilia department.
  
   “I didn’t save anything from when I played, and anything that I ever won is in Cooperstown,” Henry Aaron told me in an interview a couple of years ago. That remembrance popped up as I was writing a feature story for the July issue of our sister publication, Tuff Stuff magazine, that features Hank on the cover and includes the interview inside and another article looking at the tortured fate of Aaron’s final home run ball.
  
   And he’s not kidding about Cooperstown having “anything that I ever won.” The list of Aaron artifacts at the Hall of Fame is incredible: his 1957 MVP Award and World Series ring; all three of his Gold Gloves; bats from milestone home runs, including Nos. 500, 600 714, 716; his 3,000th-hit bat; more than a dozen milestone home run baseballs, including Nos. 500, 600, 700, 714 and 716; jersey and pants from No. 715; his shoes from Nos. 714, 715 and 716; his cap from No. 600; and third base from No. 715.
  
   In a day and age when so many ballplayers wind up placing their artifacts in major auctions, it’s almost inspiring to see a donation to the Hall of Fame of such magnitude. “Henry has been very gracious and amazingly generous,” is the way Brad Horn, HOF communications director put it.
  
   Horn said that the many of the Aaron pieces have come in over a number of years, and that his major awards were donated 20 years ago, roughly five years after Aaron’s induction. A number of the milestone baseballs came from other private collectors, but combined with Aaron’s generosity, have helped make the Aaron presence at the Hall nothing short of spectacular. “He is a player who wanted his legacy preserved here,” Horn added, noting that Aaron is among the most comprehensively represented players in the Hall.


   As much as I admire Ripken and all that he accomplished over the years, I don’t suppose I will ever be able to shake the notion that the whole consecutive games streak was given a prominence well beyond what should have been accorded.

   This hasn’t graduated all the way to being a pet peeve; I would save that appelation for a similar bit of heroics: the hitting streak. What Ripken managed to do over the course of 15-plus years was extraordinary and certainly a marvelous testament to his work ethic, his durability and his dedication to the game, but ultimately a bit overblown because the point of the game is winning, not simply showing up for work.
  
   Still, as I noted above, I get a lot more worked about hitting streaks, which are, in my opinion, little more than a parlor trick that was elevated to mythic status by one Joseph Paul DiMaggio. What the Yankee Clipper pulled off that extraordinary summer was an MLB curiosity that was as much the result of timing and the power of the New York media as it was one of the great feats in the history of the game.

   It says here that what Ted Williams accomplished in that remarkable 1941 season was more significant than what Joe did. Here’s the rub: getting a hit in consecutive games doesn’t necessarily benefit the dominant agenda item of winning. Would you rather manage a team with a .276 hitter who somehow managed to discreetly sprinkle those hits out one per game for 30 or 40 games, or a guy who hit .380 but somehow managed to go hitless right smack dab in that hypothetical 40-game stretch.

   And I know it’s considered heresy to question the legitimacy of one of the most legendary “accomplishments” in baseball history, but there it is. And I also know that as quixotic undertakings go, trying to convince baseball fans that Joe’s 56-game streak was no big deal ranks right up there on the futility scale.

   A colleague e-mailed me a link to an ESPN.com news article the other day relating to former San Francisco 49er John Taylor, which in turn brought back memories of an unusual collectible (shown here) and a wonderful time in my life more than 20 years ago.
  
   The “Where Are They Now?” feature on the ESPN site told how Taylor had been working for nearly a decade driving a truck for his own firm, J.T. Taylor Trucking, which he started in 1998. “I knew trucking before I knew football,” Taylor is quoted in the article saying. “My grandfather and all of my uncles drove, so I grew up around it.”
  
   The story noted that Taylor drives his W900L Kenworth cross country from his home in California to Philadelphia every week. He and his wife, Elana, who sometimes accompanies him on his cross-country trips, have two daughters in college – one at Utah State and another at Taylor’s alma mater, Delaware State.
  
   Which is roughly where I come in. In 1984, only recently married and relatively new to Delaware, having moved from Albany, N.Y., a year earlier, I went to work at Delaware State in the sports information department. Though I initially had to travel more than an hour each week three days a week, it ended up being one of the neatest jobs I ever had, and one I stuck with until 1988 or 1989, despite the lengthy commute.

   The image shown depicts a promotional flyer we created in the sports information department to advocate for All-America balloting for Taylor. I met Taylor a couple of times when he visited the sports information department offices, and he was a very quiet guy, but he spoke volumes every time he took the field. I don’t recall if one of those meetings was after we came out with the Time-like flyer, but even if it had been, I wouldn’t have had the foresight to ask him to sign one.

   In all my years of watching college football, I’ve never seen another instance where an athlete was so clearly head-and-shoulders above his level of competition. Taylor was a wide receiver, but the Division 1AA Hornets, admittedly one of the powerhouse teams in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference in the mid-1980s, were a running team first and foremost. And besides, even if we had been more inclined to the passing game, we would have been hard pressed to come up with a quarterback who could consistently get the ball to him.

   When I came up with the idea of the look-alike Time magazine cover, I had to do a pretty serious sales job on school administrators, who were fearful that Time editors might somehow object. Ultimately, we prevailed in getting it done, due largely to the efforts of the sports information director at the time, Maxine Lewis. Like Taylor, she went on to bigger things, snagging a job with ABC Sports in New York City, including a stint working with legendary broadcaster Keith Jackson.
Eventually, I had to surrender those duties when the demands of being the editor of a weekly newspaper in northern Delaware became so great that it wasn’t feasible to drive down to Dover even once a week.

   But as I noted above, I had a lot of fun on that job. I was the official scorer for the baseball team, and frequently traveled with the women’s basketball team, in addition to doing the routine things for the sports information department. I was the rare white guy on a campus of an historically black school, and took a lot of good-natured ribbing from the gals on the basketball team.
   If anybody’s ever seen this Time flyer before today or have any other information about Taylor and some oddball collectibles, I’d appreciate if they let me know via the blog.


   A reader (Ken) commented about last week’s blog that detailed my concern over the omnipresent commercialization in Major League Baseball. Ken described himself as a baseball purist who hates the designated hitter, but noted that the purist in him doesn’t object to the “proliferation of sponsorships everywhere.”

   He concedes that while he once loathed the rotating signs behind home plate, he’s actually found useful products and services from same. He also points out, quite fairly, I would add, that the advertisements on the fences can add color to the ballpark and at the same time hit the nostalgia buttons for the good old days.

   I can’t take issue with most of what he said, though I’d stop well short of the part about finding useful products and services from the home plate Ad-O-Ramas, but I’m not a very good consumer anyway. He’s also right about some of the throwback advertising signs adding color in the outfield.
“As for ads on uniforms, it works for the most popular sport in the world: soccer – and it worked for my Little League team,” was Ken’s final observation.

   For once, I am speechless.