The Infield Dirt with T.S. O'Connell - Wednesday, August 26, 2009

   I wrote something the other day in a feature story about 1965 Topps Baseball saying – I paraphrase now – that one good measurement of a baseball card issue is deciding how many cards within the issue constitute the best card that individual player ever had in his career.

   While conceding that there’s a good deal of subjectivity involved in such a discussion, I still like it as a measurement tool because it involves aesthetics rather than simply calculating dollars and cents.

   Making such pronouncements about the Hall of Fame’s upper crust, meaning Mantle, Aaron, Mays and Clemente, for example, gets even trickier, since people are so familiar with most of their cards, but it should be more feasible to offer the view about many other Hall inductees and certainly a vast array of All-Stars and the like.

   So with that preamble, I contend that the 1965 Topps issue provides the best cards ever produced of the following, listed in numerical order:
No. 19 Gates Brown, No. 36 Bobby Wine, No. 144 Ed Kranepool, No. 145 Luis Tiant, No. 157 Zoilo Versalles, No. 176 Willie McCovey, No. 190 Bill White, No. 210 Jim Fregosi, No. 255 Camilo Pascual, No. 285 Ron Hunt, No. 294 Tim McCarver, No. 305 Rico Carty, No. 318 Matty Alou, No. 340 Tony Oliva, No. 419 Ruben Amaro, No. 435 Willie Davis, No. 519 Bob Uecker, No. 528 George Altman and No. 540 Lou Brock.

   I’d be interested in readers observations about specific players or sets where that “best card” designation applies.

   Subjective or not, all baseball cards are not created equal and it’s fun deciding which are more equal than others.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009 3:32:56 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Monday, August 24, 2009

What Rice really meant is that he does not like baggy pants ...
Posted by T.S.

   New HOFer Jim Rice probably realizes now that being a new member of one of the most exclusive clubs on the planet means your words are going to be reported and scrutinized to a degree that might not have been the case before.

   Rice is taking a bit of heat about a comment he made to some Little Leaguers at the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa. Gee, it seemed to me to be little more than the traditional old geezer commentary about how my generation was better than the current ones, though in Rice’s case I suspect he just got careless in tossing out a trio of modern names for the comparison.

(Rice is shown in Dick Perez original artwork at left; www.dickperez.com)

Herewith his quote: “You see a Manny Ramirez, you see an A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez), you see Jeter ... Guys that I played against and with, these guys you’re talking about cannot compare.”

   Once the uproar ensued, he was described as flabbergasted that anyone would think he was talking about the two Yankee stars. “Anybody who reads that story knows I wasn’t talking about Jeter or Rodriguez,” he said. “Look at them. Do you see any baggy pants? Do you see any dreadlocks?”

   See? He wasn’t really saying our guys were better than yours, but merely that he doesn’t like baggy pants ... and he accidentally included the two Bronx Bombers in the sentence. And I’m with him on that one, hating the baggy pants part, that is.

   Christy Mathewson looked like a baseball player. Lou Gehrig looked like a baseball player. Joe DiMaggio looked like a baseball player. Henry Aaron looked like a baseball player. George Brett looked like a baseball player. Don Mattingly looked like a baseball player. Derek Jeter looks like a baseball player. C.C. Sabathia looks like a retired postal worker wading sleepily across the front lawn to pick up the morning newspaper in his pajamas.

   That’s like five or six generations that all managed to still sorta look like baseball players despite the passage of 100 years or so and all of the changes that go with it. My suspicion is that’s what Rice was talking about.

   I don’t give a hoot about dreadlocks, since baseball history offers a fascinating range of hirsute shenanigans from the House of David to the crew cuts of the 1950s and 1960s and the uh, more complicated stylings a decade later. I suspect dreadlocks aren’t aerodynamically useful, but I concede that may not be much of a concern for the Yankees’ ace moundsman.

   When I ventured online to investigate this stuff, I saw quote attributed to Jeter seeming to express some agitation that Rice would say such a thing. Phooey.

   Jeter should know better than any of us what happens when you spend your waking moments with virtually all of your comments – in almost any setting – being duly recorded, reported and analyzed. I wouldn’t even charge Rice with an error on this one; I’d regard it more like missing the cutoff man.

Monday, August 24, 2009 3:35:00 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Thursday, August 20, 2009

Lemke Charley Pride card is my new favorite ...
Posted by T.S.

Charley Pride.jpg

   God bless Bob Lemke, he makes the coolest baseball cards, including his latest, which is more accurately a country and western singer card. I was and remain today a big Charley Pride fan going back precisely 40 years, and so seeing Lemke’s spectacular creation gave me a real kick. It also sent me to Charley Pride’s website, which I feel a little embarrassed about not visiting sooner.

   Anyway, as you can see, Bob’s ersatz 1954 Bowman of Pride is nothing short of sensational. If I were one of Charley Pride’s people – and you know he has people – I’d put that image up on the website. Negro leaguers got the short end of the stick in so many ways; among the most aggravating decades after the “leagues” folded is the fact that darn few decent photographs exist even of the more prominent Negro leaguers. Pride was hardly that, but the stories of him playing guitar on the Memphis Red Sox team bus (or getting traded to another team in exchange for a used bus) make for great fodder in conjunction with a pretty decent second career that he picked up once he hung up the spikes.


http://www.boblemke.blogspot.com/

   Having grown up in New York, embracing a country and western singer was hardly a natural evolution for me. Technically, I got onto Charley Pride from a Filipino band that performed his music. I listened to Louis DeCastro and his Countrymen perform Pride’s top hits in Olongapo City in the Philippines in 1969. I came home on leave after almost two years in the Philippines as a full-fledged Charley Pride fan (and Johnny Cash, too), to the complete bewilderment of my father, whose only familiarity with country and western music revolved around some hideously sequined yahoos that played on an Albany, N.Y., local television station on Saturday afternoons.

   I am sure it will startle younger folks, but Charley Pride was arguably the brightest light in country music in the 1970s. In the fall of 1970 I went to a concert of his at the Oakland Coliseum, and it was sold out. Charley was the headliner and Anne Murray was his warm-up. When I visited his website, I saw that he’ll be performing on Sept. 12 in Wisconsin Dells. Gotta admit I’m tempted.

   I also got a kick out of the biography page on his website that noted Pride’s biggest thrill in baseball was getting a double off Warren Spahn. I got to be friends with Spahn a bit for a couple of years before he died in 2003, and I would have loved to have asked him about that one.

Thursday, August 20, 2009 2:58:46 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Who thinks Tiger choked? Raise your hand ...
Posted by T.S.

   I got a little overwhelmed by SCD projects the earlier part of this week and didn’t get to read all the PGA Tournament coverage that I wanted to, but I did get a chuckle out of items relayed to me by colleagues to the effect that Tiger had somehow choked in losing to Y.E. Yang last Sunday.

   Supposedly some of the online commentariat had offered the choking observation, proving once again the egalitarian nature of cyberspace in providing virtually unlimited access has the drawback of giving parking space to a lot of clunkers better left in the junkyard.

   It’s not that Tiger’s necessarily incapable of choking, but rather an observation that this wasn’t the occasion. I am not sure we’ll ever bear witness to that particular spectacle in his case, but just as in the case of pornography, we may have difficulty describing what the definition entails, but we generally will know it when we see it. This wasn’t it.

   Tiger missed a half-dozen putts by a whisper, which happens to even the non-mortals on the pro tour. It’s one of the big reasons why in the prehistoric days of the PGA, say 1996 BT or so (Before Tiger), someone different seemed to win on tour just about every week. It was a profound indication of the parity that existed at the time that the champion would typically be determined by the guy who parlayed a great four rounds with the needed good fortune (i.e. putts dropping in) to push him into the winner’s circle.

   It is symptomatic of how great Tiger is that we hold him to such ridiculous standards that would scare the bejesus out of lesser men, which is to say the rest of the touring pros.

   As you may suspect, I am a Tiger fan and I regard the chance to watch all this as something truly historic. I was only briefly dismayed by this loss, then quickly got on board the happy train with most everybody else when I realized what a boost the Yang win would provide for the tour, both here and abroad.

   I came to this Zen-like understanding when I reminded myself that for me at least, the anointing of Tiger as the greatest golfer who ever lived is already a done deal. I suppose it’s even possible he might not win that 19th major to push past Jack, though it’s a little grim to ponder the circumstances that would usher in that story line.

   So I figure the unexpected, non-choking upset loss to Yang only delays the inevitable by a few months or even a year or so. Upon arriving at this enlightened plateau, I promptly started to cheer Mr. Yang’s accomplishment.

   And I stand at the ready to perform the Heimlich maneuver on Tiger’s behalf should it ever become necessary. But no one will be more surprised than me if that day ever comes.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009 8:47:40 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Monday, August 17, 2009

Will we see players in their pajamas? ...
Posted by T.S.

When I closed out my last blog, I said that I had two theories remaining of what Upper Deck would do in response to archrival Topps getting an exclusive license from Major League Baseball to produce cards next year. I suppose that’s technically accurate, but I don’t really believe there’s any chance of the final solution, which would be Upper Deck simply giving up and quietly walking away from the arena, so to speak.

   I’ve only met Richard McWilliam (Upper Deck CEO) a couple of times, so I can hardly claim to have an inside track on what he might do, but from everything I’ve heard or read, it’s hard to imagine that happening.

   So here’s the angle I really like the best, assuming that for whatever reason Upper Deck isn’t able to get an injunction to put the Topps exclusive arrangement on hold while it wades its way through the courts. Why wouldn’t Upper Deck simply go about business as usual, putting out its planned February 2010 First Series precisely as it's drawn up?

   That has a lot of appeal, most cogently because it would be the least disruptive (i.e. expensive) from a production standpoint. It would presumably lead to a monumental legal challenge – perhaps the more protracted the better – in which the underpinnings of the licensing reach and scope would be tested.

   I’m not so sure that the parameters of what is permissible with licensing from a major professional sports league is all that crystal clear. What a license provides a manufacturer from a players association seems a little more clear cut, what with court decisions for 100 years or so delineating rights of publicity, etc., but the business of logos and uniform indicia is a lot murkier.

   I concede that legal questions don’t necessarily get hung up on fairness issues, but if I were paying a whole bunch of money to the MLBPA for the use of the players’ likenesses, I don’t think I’d be too thrilled to be told I had to picture them in their jammies.

   But that’s just me.

Monday, August 17, 2009 2:08:09 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Thursday, August 13, 2009

The question is: What will Upper Deck do now?
Posted by T.S.

   Dang, it’s the most intriguing story line our hobby had dealt with in years, and there’s precious little hard information about what it’s going to mean. I am speaking, of course, about the decision by Major League Baseball to grant Topps an exclusive license to produce baseball cards next year, leaving Upper Deck in an odd, precarious position of having the rights to make cards from the players themselves (MLBPA) but unable to portray them with the logos and MLB insignias that would seem to be so vital to the presentation.

   When the New York Times broke the story late last week, it came virtually without comment from Upper Deck, other than to note that the Carlsbad, Calif.-based card maker had signed a licensing agreement with the MLBPA only weeks before. That reference was presumably intended to make it clear that Upper Deck would be producing baseball cards next year, but it didn’t shed any light on what they might look like.

   So, in the absence of clear indications from the Upper Deck folks, I’ve taken it upon myself to offer the next best thing: wild speculation. I see four possibilities of wildly varying attractiveness, though I am hardly so naive to think there can’t be others.

   I know it must aggravate the heck out of lawyers when the great unwashed weigh in on their area of expertise, which only impels me to go ahead with even more fervor. My favored theory is that Upper Deck, which boasts a battalion of legal hounds nearly as ferocious as, say, Walt Disney’s, will get an injunction that at least stalls the question of Topps exclusivity, asking that Upper Deck be allowed to continue producing baseball cards with all the various logos and indicia as it had previously until the matter is resolved.

   While I am well aware that there’s often a huge difference between what is morally right and what the law would engineer, I would suppose Upper Deck could make a fairly impressive pitch that they had proffered tens of millions of dollars to MLB over the last 20 years, you know, kind of showing a good-fatith commitment to the category, as it were.

   It may not be good, solid legalese, but I’ll betcha I could make a pretty good case that telling somebody they have the rights to picture MLB players but just not in the uniforms that they wear to work every day is not unlike Ashley Judd’s publicity agent being confined to picturing her only in that outfit worn by the Phillie Phanatic or maybe the colorful costuming of the various sausages at Milwaukee’s Miller Park.

   The final phase of this particular theory is that Upper Deck ties up the whole thing in court long enough to eventually wear everybody out and then wrangle some kind of a settlement out of MLB.
   My remaining three theories will follow in future blogs.

Thursday, August 13, 2009 4:29:51 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Wednesday, August 12, 2009

I have fond memories of gambling ventures in Delaware ...
Posted by T.S.

   I never actually got around to calling myself a Delaweenie, but I did live and work for nearly a decade in the environs of Wilmington, Del., and have a soft spot for the little bitty state smooshed into the I-95 corridor between Baltimore and Philadelphia.

   So it was with some interest that I read news report that my old friends (figuratively speaking) at the Delaware State Lottery were gearing up for a Sept. 1 unveiling of sports betting in the First State. A suit filed by the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB and the NCAA to put the kibosh on the plan took a hit in U.S. District Court in Delaware in early August when the judge ruled against a request to stop the betting until the suit is settled.

   A Dec. 7 trial date is set, but the judge ruled the plans could still go forward. The plaintiffs could still ask the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the District Court decision, or at least stop the plan while the case is pending.

   Assuming it goes forward, one of the three racetracks where the betting will take place is Delaware Park, just south of Wilmington. When I was the editor of a weekly newspaper in the Wilmington suburbs more than 20 years ago, I visited the track several times for news stories, though back then all that was happening at the horse-racing track was ... drum roll, please ... horse racing.

   To have officials from the major professional sports leagues caterwauling about the perils of legalized gambling is not precisely the same as tobacco company executives telling you that one of their major goals is to reduce teenage smoking, but on the hypocrisy/disingenuousness meter both assertions register just about the same whopping score.

   In this Internet age, trying to forestall the march of legalized betting on just about anything seems cosmically futile. Better to try to adjust to the reality than expend huge resources attempting to keep at bay the inevitable.

   And by way of full disclosure, I should concede that I also have a soft spot for the Delaware Lottery, which oversees the casino gambling at the racetracks and will administer the sports gaming – I am willing to bet – beginning Sept. 1, which you’ll note is just in time for the NFL’s first week. In 1989, I won $25,000 in a scratch-off lottery game in Delaware.

   Which doesn’t exactly make me an advocate, especially since the dough is all long since gone.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009 5:04:53 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Tuesday, August 11, 2009

ESPN pundit Simmons must apologize to Irv Lerner ...
Posted by T.S.

   It’s a pretty good bet that if you are going to swing at 150 pitches or so, you are going to foul a couple of them off, so it’s understandable that ESPN’s Bill Simmons would come up empty on a handful of his observations about our National Convention.


For those who might have missed it, the acerbic chipmunk Simmons (shown at right waiting at the airport at the end of his odyssey in a photo purloined from his Photo Gallery) put together an otherwise wonderful photo collage from the Cleveland National, showing almost 150 images of all the cool stuff at the show, neatly adorned with usually suitably acid commentary.

CLICK HERE

   I am not so defensive that I worry about the prevailing stereotypes that baseball card collectors are overweight, dress horribly and by all appearances probably were compelled to pay to lose their virginity (I don’t think two cans of Campbell’s Tomato Soup and four packs of Salem Menthols smuggled past the Shore Patrol constitutes actual payment anyway).

   Naw, that kind of pithy commentary is to be expected from those late to the party. None of them fazed me in the least, until he got carried away and called Irv Lerner an asshole. I am something of a smart-ass myself, so I fully understand that missteps will be part of the landscape, but I hope to heaven I stop well short of the kind of defamation we saw here.

Verbatim (beneath a photo of Irv at his table): “This guy calls himself ‘The Ring Man.’ When I started to take a picture of his display of championship rings, he snapped angrily, ‘NO PICTURES!!!!’ Sure thing, Ring Man.”

(Time for a tangent: One of my favorite rules of collecting is “never buy from a dealer who’s an a-hole.” It’s just not worth it. You’ll always have the stink of the jerk who sold whatever you bought on it. Unfortunately, many of these guys are unfriendly; it’s a relatively lonely business filled with unhappy people who act like they have more power than they do and don’t mind spitting chicken fingers on you as you’re trying to negotiate a price with them. The way to combat these people is by not giving these people money. I know, crazy. What’s amazes me is their willingness to throw away any rules for selling that work in any other walk of life: being friendly and reasonable; having a sense of humor; avoiding any condescending or derisive remarks; not keeping a customer waiting because you’re busy telling another dealer a stupid story about your personal life; engaging the customer immediately instead of appearing put out because they’ve interrupted your lunch or your phone call; etc., etc. It’s one of those professions in which, when you deal with someone normal and friendly, you feel obligated to thank them for being normal and friendly. Sad but true.)

   While there is much truth to some of his criticism broadly speaking, since our crew has struggled mightily through the years with mastering the fundamentals of sound business practices, attaching the observations alongside a photograph of Irv Lerner was a sad, ill-informed and unfortunate mistake.

   I have purposely not talked to Irv about the whole affair so that the responsibility for this lies only with me. What our ESPN reporter may not understand is that Irv, one of the true pioneers in our hobby and a fine gentleman, has been mugged and robbed in a parking lot during a major card convention, leaving him presumably a bit uneasy about media undertakings that might conceivably lead to a similar occurrence.

   If anybody wants to pooh-pooh such a theory and dismiss it out of hand, go ahead, but it seems to me to be an utterly defensible response to what must have been a traumatic experience.

   And so, if the head of a municipal workers union can demand an apology from the President of the United States for making an ill-considered remark, I figure I’m on pretty firm ground in demanding one here.

   Mr. Simmons, you owe Irv that much. For the rest of us cash-on-the-barrelhead virginity-losing, Hawaiian shirt-wearing, lonely, ill-mannered reprobates, there is no offense taken.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009 3:32:00 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Monday, August 10, 2009

A final pass through the aisles at the National ...
Posted by T.S.

    News and notes: As the photographs reveal, I ran into the usual array of world-class artwork in Cleveland, including an opportunity to meet Graig Kreindler (www.graigkreindler.com), who figures to be in great demand from serious collectors of baseball art as the word gets around of his prowess. He had his own booth at the show, with more than a dozen original paintings on display, many so arresting (shown) that they would stop collectors in their tracks no matter how frantically they were scurrying around the IX Center.

   Nathalie Rattner, another remarkable artist whose work has graced the pages of SCD, didn’t have her own booth at the show but her ultra-realistic black-and-white work was prominently displayed near the front entrance of the show. And despite the fact that I wrote a feature story about her several months back and featured a whole bunch of her drawings, I still got fooled at the table by the incredible talent of the 26-year-old Rattner. With three different drawings, I thought I was looking at vintage photography, even though I had already recognized that it was her work being presented. If it were any other artist, I would simply kick myself for being obtuse; in her case, I forgive myself unreservedly for making the error.

   I was absolutely thrilled when Dr. Jim Beckett stopped by our SCD booth at the show over the weekend. I could kick myself for not getting a photograph; the hobby pioneer looked decidedly unpioneer-like, seeming to have improved with age while I, on the other hand, am apparently going downhill fast. He conceded that his virtual retirement from the day-to-day demands of directing the Beckett publishing empire has left him looking (and feeling) like a million bucks.

   He didn’t have much to show for his tour around the show floor, noting instead that he had been having a lot of fun in recent months going through old boxes of stuff he bought years ago, sometimes finding material he hadn’t looked at in nearly four decades. The only thing I’ve got that old and that unexamined is my conscience.

   Another of my favorite people in the hobby, long-time show promoter, dealer and player agent Dick Gordon, regaled me with some of his own stories about famous show guests. Most notably and recently, Gordon talked about Carl Yastrzemski, who ended a near-decade-long string of skipping the festivities on induction weekend at Cooperstown by showing up two weeks ago for the induction of former teammate Jim Rice.

   Gordon pointed out that Yaz will be doing his first public signing in many years when he shows up at the Hilton Hotel in Woburn, Mass., on Nov. 14. I suspect that his last such venture was at Gordon’s spectacular reunion of the 1967 Red Sox club at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut two years ago.

   Another veteran dealer, Joce Kaligis, explained to me that he had taught German to one of our columnists many years ago as a high school teacher. Kelly Eisenhauer, Mickey Mantle collector extraordinaire and the author of the ongoing Guide to Mickey Mantle Collectibles Series this year (and probably into next) in the pages of SCD was the lucky student. No grade was reported, but when one considers the precision and exactness that Eisenhauer applies to the Mantle Series, envisioning an “A” doesn’t seem too farfetched.

   Kaligis also told me a neat story about many years before that when he was working as a teacher at a school for the blind near St. Louis. “We took the kids to a game and the players allowed them to touch their faces and uniforms to feel the texture and get that unique “look” from the moment,” said Kaligis. He mentioned specifically stars like Ken Boyer and others who were so agreeable and solicitous to the youngsters, permitting a degree of intimacy that’s hard to imagine in modern times.

   With all the discussion about steroids and PEDs these days, it was almost quaint to see some of the original pastel artwork at John and Judy Burk’s Collectible Classics table. The drawings were from the official courtroom artist nearly 25 years ago as nearly a dozen major leaguers – including several Pirates – testified to a grand jury about cocaine and amphetmine use in the major leagues. The Burks had original drawings of Dave Parker and John Milner testifying, and even though the Burk’s table was just around the corner from our SCD booth, I didn’t notice if any Cleveland-area collectors had decided to seed their art collection with such retro historical renderings. I would have thought any of those pastel drawings would make cool autographed items, assuming you could get the player to sign.

   Speaking of autographs, at one point a collector approched me and asked me to autograph an O’Connell & Son Ink card of Henry Aaron, which I quickly obliged. Those cards I produced 25 years or so ago show up now and then at the larger vintage shows, and more often at the National, and I saw a handful of them at different tables over the weekend. I signed in the upper left-hand corner; he’ll try to get Henry in the lower right. I told the collector that with my signature a freebie it should lower the overall cost of trying the get The Hammer, but of course I can’t escape the realization that he’d do better from a financial standpoint if he had put Henry on it alone.

   I probably shouldn’t be too hard on myself about autograph values, since I saw a huge stack of Joe Sewell personal checks and autographed 8-by-10s, complete with startlinging modest prices, or a box of single-signed Official Major League baseballs at $6 apiece or 10 for $40. The list of names available included the likes of Paul Blair, Felix Milan, Al Oliver, Davey Johnson, Rico Carty, Roy Sievers, Mo Vaughn, Tom Tresh, Ryan Klesko, and my personal favorite, Joe Pepitone. I concede it’s very possible that by the time I peeked at the massive pile that such luminaries as those listed above had already been removed.

   And it’s not just small stuff from non-Hall of Famers: how this for a bargain: a 30-by-40-inch autographed photo from Pete Rose for $35. I know he’s technically not a Hall of Famer, but come on!

   Noted autograph expert Phil Marks as always has a pile of seldom-seen signatures, most prominently this time a Jimmie Foxx business card. The Hall of Famer, who had a number of post-playing days careers, including managing at the University of Miami and the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, apparently worked for the State of Ohio Employment Service in 1954 and was given a business card where his name was filled in on a blank. Sounds perfect for a really tough Hall of Fame autograph.

   Final note on the business card front. As is traditional at the National, I came home with nearly 100 of those, including one where I had asked the man for his business card, and he promptly handed me one that said simply, “My Card.”

   Haw, haw.

Monday, August 10, 2009 5:28:14 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Thursday, August 06, 2009

And then there was one ... MLB sacks Upper Deck ...
Posted by T.S.

   Nature may, indeed, abhor a vacuum, but for news hounds like myself, it merely offers more inches for speculation and opinion all nicely gussied up to look like analysis. With that ponderous caveat in place, I sally forth to discuss the breaking news that Topps will be the exclusive baseball licensee from Major League Baseball starting next year.

   Whew! Probably by the time this gets into print in Sports Collectors Digest more will be known, but at the moment there’s little more than the bald fact, provided courtesy of the nation’s newspaper, the New York Times.

In a Richard Sandomir bylined story this morning on the www.nytimes.com site, the Times reported that Topps will become the exclusive trading card maker of Major League Baseball next year in a multiyear deal. The details presumably will come today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/06/sports/baseball/06cards.html?scp=1=Topp

   Well, after three decades of hobby rumors, one of them finally came true. The idea that MLB might opt for an exclusive arrangement for trading cards much as it does for other consumer products (i.e. official car, soft drink, credit card and cap) has been percolating for several years now and the announcement expected today probably will not be as surprising to some as to others.

   Approaching the 30th anniversary of the 1980 U.S. District Court ruling that ended a 25-year Topps monopoly in the baseball card market, the new exclusive arrangement is thought to be a response to far-ranging consumer confusion as the number of card sets (and insert cards within those issues) expanded to dizzying heights roughly since the ill-fated labor woes of 1994.

   The Times noted that by dropping Upper Deck, M.L.B. hopes that Topps, under Michael D. Eisner, the former chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, can invigorate card collecting, especially with young fans.

   “This is redirecting the entire category toward kids,” Eisner is quoted in the article. “Topps has been making cards for 60 years, the last 30 in a nonexclusive world that has caused confusion to the kid who walks into a Wal-Mart or a hobby store. It’s also been difficult to promote cards as unique and original.”

   Sandomir reported that Upper Deck, at the moment the sole surviving baseball licensee other than Topps in a cardboard cartel that once numbered a half dozen, would not comment on the Topps deal, other than to a point to a July 9 press release from the Carlsbad, Calif.-based cardmaker announcing the renewal of a trading card license with the Major League Baseball Players Association for 2010.

   Upper Deck officials told The Times that the company would keep producing cards, and the July 9 announcement included the information that the first release under the renewed license would be Upper Deck Series One Baseball, slated to launch in early February.

   It’s more than a little intriguing to ponder the possibility of the release of that product, which traces its ancestry back more than two decades to the revolutionary Upper Deck inaugural issue in 1989, being done without inclusion of the Major League Baseball insignias and trademarks. The MLBPA agreement from last month grants Upper Deck the rights to use player likenesses, but losing the ability to picture the players in their natural habitat, in a manner of speaking, poses a host of thorny problems for a card manufacturer.

   Producing sports cards without benefit of official league indicia and accoutrement has a lengthy and occasionally comical history in our hobby, though much of the hilarity stemmed from reasons other than exclusive contracts. Collectors – even as kids – used to turn away in horror at closeup portraits of capless journeymen, often pictured thusly because Topps was reacting to late-season trades or franchise movements. This time the challenge would seem even more daunting for a collecting public and hobby that’s a good deal more sophisticated in this millennium than it was in the last one.

   It’s also an area that seemingly is a bit murky in the legal sense, with the possibility existing that manufacturers could even challenge licensing arms about the inviolability and scope of the licensing restrictions themselves.

   See how much fun it is when there’s an imposing dollop of genuine news and not many folks on the official side offering comment.

Thursday, August 06, 2009 5:57:12 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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