1971 Milk Duds Baseball #5, Thurman Munson

February 8 (yesterday, as of this writing) was "truck day" for many baseball teams, as they pack up gear and supplies for 2011 spring training destinations Florida (a.k.a., the Grapefruit League) and Arizona (the Cactus League). This NESN photo of Red Sox trucks escaping from Titanic icebergs Boston snow piles nicely captures New England's winter Zeitgeist, where baseball cannot start soon enough.

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Pitchers and catchers report first to spring training, so this blog's happy to don the tools of ignorance for one of the disco era's best, Thurman Munson. He played for only ten years before dying tragically in a 1979 plane crash, but appeared on several #5 cards. (Links below go to their set profiles.)

• 1971 Milk Duds (today)
• 1971 O-Pee-Chee (all-time great card photo)
• 1971 Topps (profile still to come)
• 1975 SSPC New York Yankees (team set)
• 1977 Hostess (snack cakes)
• 1977 Hostess (Twinkies panel)

Munson started growing his signature mustache in mid-1972 and added a beard in the late 70s, so this card photo (taken during spring training?) features his last clean-cut look.

1972 Topps #441

Milk Duds re-used numbers for multiple players, with LA Dodger Billy Grabarkewitz and California Angel Andy Messersmith also sharing #5 with Munson. Andy's card profile goes into detail about the baseball set; today's post will note that Amazon.com currently offers a sweet deal (har) on 24-packs of the selfsame candy at $11 + free shipping.

Card (box) back

Value: This complete box cost $35 on eBay, which is well over the price of individual panels. Cut-away players run a few dollars, but most boxes go for over $10.

Fakes / reprints: Haven't seen any Milk Duds reprints in the marketplace.

1975 SSPC Baseball Superstars #5, Jim Palmer

Ask female fans of a certain age to name their "sexiest baseball player from the 1970s" and you'd probably hear Jim Palmer, HOF-pitcher-slash-product-model for Jockey. The underwear brand promoted him on nationwide billboards and photo spreads for several years during Baltimore's most successful decade, making Palmer a well-known sex symbol. I think he came across as a racier version of contemporary NL All-Star Steve Garvey, who--in a twist on his all-American image--ended up scandalized for multiple paternity suits.

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Palmer ditched his baseball cap often enough that mop-top photos like this one appear on several cards. This blog already profiled a representative league leader card (1977 O-Pee-Chee #5) and fellow collector Beardy recently pulled a similar 1/1 painting from 2010 National Chicle.

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SSPC published this 42-card collection of contemporary and retired MLBers as a star-filled predecessor their 1976 630-card set and sold it by mail order through Collectors Quarterly magazine. A few of its pictured HOFers show up on unusual teams, including Ted Williams: Texas Ranger (likely taken during his turn as their manager) and Warren Spahn in a Cleveland Indians uniform, making it more attractive to team set collectors.

Value: These cards seem readily available via Internet search, but cost somewhat more than most SSPC releases at $5 - 15 for stars.

Fakes / reprints: Haven't seen any in the marketplace and it'd be tough to make money selling SSPC fakes.

1976 SSPC Baseball #5, Phil Niekro

"Tell me, son. Have you ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight? Some say they want to learn the floating sassafras that is a knuckleball--and believe me, I can teach it--but this ain't no Sunday afternoon walk in the park. Better put on your best wingtips, button up our closet's bluest collared shirt, and fluff out that hair."

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This blog pictured the knuckleballing Niekro brothers, HOFer Phil and still-pretty-good Joe, just over a year ago, as 1988 Topps #5 celebrated their surpassing of the Perrys in "wins by brothers," a record they still hold at 539. (Is there anyone alive who could pass them in the foreseeable future? I don't see it happening.) Joe also appeared solo on a 1978 Burger King Astros #5 card.

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SSPC offered this 630-card set for $10 (+ $1 postage) via mail order in 1976, which company founder Mike Aronstein advertised in his Collectors Quarterly magazine. Unfortunately, it didn't take long for Topps to send a cease-and-desist order, as they claimed an exclusive right to print photos of active players with team logos. While SSPC did comply with this demand to stop printing new sets, they could clear out remaining stock, so a limited number made it into buyers hands and remain in the hobby.

Aronstein modeled this design after 1953 Bowman, so they're clean and relatively attractive, but modern collectors value them below other 1970s sets from Topps, due to lower name recognition. I have to wonder, what kind of financial threat did this comparatively small company actually pose? Is it reasonable to think their product offered a competitive option to buyers, assuming they'd spend money on one but not both sets? Let's take a look.

Topps sold their set in packs of 10 and charged 15 cents each, so $9.90 would get you a 660-card stack of cardboard similar to what SSPC wanted $11 for. With typical pack distribution, you probably need another 50% of that number to get a nearly complete set. That's still just $14.85, not far above its mail order competition, and Topps offered a more polished and familiar product. Hard to see their legal actions as anything other than turf protection, with an eye toward keeping bigger candy competitors like Fleer out of the arena.

Value: SSPC stars and HOFers cost a few dollars at most, with Phil at $2.89 on CheckOutMyCards as of this writing.

Fakes / reprints: Haven't seen any SSPC reprints in the market.

1976 SSPC Sample Baseball #5, Yogi Berra

Lawrence Peter Berra, baseball's own appointed yogi (spiritual sage), said plenty of things that our sport committed to collective memory, enough to get their own term, Yogiisms. Everyone seems to have a favorite quote--mine remains, "I really didn't say everything I said."

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SSPC, one of Mike Aronstein's two card companies (the other being TCMA), promoted their upcoming 1976 set by printing this 18-card set of "samples" in the winter issue of Collector's Quarterly magazine. Everyone pictured changed teams during 1975, so they probably used it to clear out player photos that'd be "wrong" the following year. Two HOFers appear, Yogi and the peripatetic Gaylord Perry. (New York dropped Berra as manager 109 games into their 1975 season, just two years after he took them to the 1973 World Series.)

1976 SSPC sample card back

SSPC tweaked the font for their full 1976 set, but otherwise kept the same design elements.

1976 SSPC card back

Watch this blog for more on the 630-card 1976 set soon. (Knuckleball fans rejoice! Its #5 is HOFer Phil Niekro.)

Value: SSPC stars run a few dollars, pretty affordable for 70s HOFers. Not too many cards feature Berra as a Met, so that's another note in its favor.

Fakes / reprints: Haven't seen any in the marketplace. (Small-scale publishers like SSPC sometimes ran extra printings to fill card orders, which I don't consider reprints.)

1975 SSPC New York Yankees Baseball #5, Thurman Munson

SSPC divided this 45-card set of New York teams almost evenly between their AL and NL options, with 23 Yankees, 22 Metropolitans, but (sigh) zero Brooklyn Dodgers. Both number fives feature men with distinctive facial hair--the pictured Thurman Munson and recently-profiled Mets #5, Wayne Garrett--as well as multiple World Series appearances. (Give the title edge to Munson, who won twice in 1977 and 1978; Garrett helped the 1969 Mets be amazing.)

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Already an offensive and defensive star by the early 70s, the Yankees anointed Munson their 8th captain in 1976, an honor held until his untimely death in 1979. Team rivalries being what they are, folks frequently compared Thurman to fellow star backstops Carlton Fisk and Johnny Bench. Cincy manager Sparky Anderson famously angered the Yankees by pronouncing, "Don't never embarrass nobody by comparing them to Johnny Bench," during a World Series press conference. (Oh snap! Better get off his lawn!)

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SSPC card fronts closely resemble 1953 Bowman, with nothing but pictures and a white border, but its backs read more like the text-based 1950 set.

1950 Bowman #6, Bob Feller

Values: SSPC stars cost a dollar or two, but rarely more.

Fakes / reprints: Haven't seen any reprints in the marketplace.

1975 SSPC New York Mets Baseball #5, Wayne Garrett

The 1973 World Series matched two teams best known by their abbreviations, the Athletics and Metropolitans. It lasted an entertaining seven games, the home teams winning almost every one, and Oakland ultimately captured their middle title of a back-to-back-to-back championship run. It doesn't come up in conversation much now, but only two franchises managed this feat ever, the A's from 1972 to 1974 and (much better known) the Yankees on multiple occasions.

So why a 1973 discussion for this 1975 card? Like most Vietnam-era seasons, pitching dominated the series and both lineups managed only six homers combined. Even series MVP Reggie Jackson hit just one. So who has two thumbs and slugged a pair by himself? This guy.

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Eyes on the prize, a.k.a. those right field stands.

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Today's profile is also part of the eventual end of Topps' baseball card hegemony. Mike Aronstein's SSPC (Sports Stars Publishing Company) printed several "small" sets as a run-up to their 630-card 1976 issue, including this New York combo of 23 Yankees and 22 Mets. He sold them by mail order (not at stores or candy counters) and charged a few dollars for each 45-card set.

I like SSPC's smaller sets and think this one used better photography than the bigger 1976 version, with good lighting--note no shadows on Wayne's face--and fewer "ouch, the 1970s" shots.

1976: iffy lighting and lots of hair explosions

Topps considered SSPC enough of a challenge to issue a cease-and-desist court order in 1976, but their sets remain available and affordable via eBay, CheckOutMyCards.com, and other Internet card sites. I pick Tom Seaver for "best" on the 1975 Mets checklist, unless you give manager Yogi Berra credit for his playing career.

Value: Most SSPC singles cost less than $1.

Fakes / reprints: Haven't seen any reprints in the market.

Herschel Walker wins second bout as MMA fighter

Did the former NFL star use my #5 blog profile questioning his return to football as pre-match motivation to knock the stuffing out of Scott Carson just 3 minutes into round 1? Whether he did or not, the big man's now 2-0 in the ring.

Image courtesy Katchop.com

Sorry about that, Mr. Walker--you can go ahead and do whatever you want. Just don't kill me.

1979 Kellogg's Baseball #5, Jim Palmer

This week (late Jan 2011), former NFL star (and current mixed martial arts fighter) Herschel Walker said that he'd like to return to football at age 48. Not sure if that's predicated on the looming work stoppage and some kind of replacement team for locked-out union players, but his comment made for an interesting pre-Super Bowl distraction and tangentially reminded me of 70s underwear model and Oriole HOF pitcher, Jim Palmer.

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Palmer retired in 1984 with 268 wins, 3 Cy Young awards, and 3 World Series rings, all excellent support pillars for HOF election in his first year of eligibility. Many considered him a shoo-in for Cooperstown by the late 1970s, both for his personal fame ("underwear model" will do that) and as a key piece of Baltimore's great success in the 1960s and 70s.

Walker's announcement took me back because Jim also un-retired in 1991--a year after reaching the HOF--and joined Baltimore for spring training. Jim's comeback only lasted two innings of a single game, however, before he hung 'em back up--and that's in a non-contact sport. There's no questioning Herschel's toughness (MMA at 48!), but expect the same story to play out should he try a gridiron return.

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Kellogg's settled into their sorta-3D niche by the late 1970s and this 60-player set repeats what worked for them throughout the decade. According to the Key Man Collectibles 1979 profile, three print runs spawned a bunch of variations, so the master set contains over 100 cards.

Value: Most Kellogg's cards cost a dollar or two and even less if they have any surface cracks. Find Palmer and plenty of others at Check Out My Cards.

Fakes / reprints: Haven't seen any Kellogg's fakes in the marketplace.

1980 Kellogg's Baseball #5, Bert Blyleven

2011 Hall of Fame inductee Bert Blyleven played for 5 different teams across his 22 seasons, but one of his seasons, Pittsburgh's 1979 title winner, stands out as enigmatic for a guy used to taking the mound every scheduled day, year after year. Could it possibly be odder than those black-on-gold beehive hats and wide-wale pant striping? Let's find out.

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Blyleven went 12-5 in 1979 and struck out 172 batters, totals that seem low for his 3.8 WAR (wins above replacement), which placed tops on a pretty good Pirates staff. Seventeen decisions looks like a guy who spent time on the DL, but Bert took the mound every scheduled time, 37 starts in all. So how did all those appearances become "only" a dozen wins?

Based on 1979's box scores, Bert went two weeks between decisions five different times, a steady pulse in the arc of his season. On opening day, Blyleven threw 7 innings of 2-run ball, but Pittsburgh lost in 10 innings. By my count, he started 9 different games that went to extra innings, a lost cause for pitcher wins no matter how good their curveball. I'm sure he doesn't begrudge the World Series ring, but there must've been frustrating days watching from the bench.

Card back

"Bert's clutch pitching, during which he displayed the finest curveball in baseball, enabled the Pirates to Cincinnati in the NL Playoffs and the Orioles in the come-from-behind World Series. The Pirates certainly knew what they were doing when they acquired Blyleven from the Rangers in December, 1977."

UPDATE: Kellogg's offered this 60-player set in various brands of cereal, but specifically featured Raisin Bran on card backs. Collectors could acquire them one-per-box or buy the complete set by mail order.

Value: Kellogg's singles run a dollar or two. Cards quality improved by the late 1970s and their plastic fronts tend to crack less than early sets.

Fakes / reprints: Doubt anyone would try faking Kellogg's cards and haven't seen any in the market.

1911 T3 Turkey Red Baseball #5, Sam Crawford

This card shows "Wahoo Sam" playing catch with someone off-panel, but folks in those days knew him as a top-tier batsman. Crawford started playing in the 19th century, before parks used outfield fences consistently, so power hitters often placed among the leaders in triples, a skill modern fans associate more with speed. (No fences meant no automatic homers back then--batters had to hit the ball deep and run it out.)

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Collectors know these artful 6" x 8" cards by three terms: T3s (catalog number), Turkey Reds (associated tobacco brand), and, more generally, "cabinet cards" (for their large and presentable size). This bigger surface meant more chances for damage--note several dings and marks on its "frame"--but there's no denying their appeal. I'd even call them "classy."

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Turkey Red backs show the entire checklist, a mixture of baseball players, on-field action shots, and pro boxers. Individual panels start around $100 and HOFers cost much more, so building a complete set takes real money and dedication.

Value: Low-grade Crawford cards run a few hundred dollars, given his HOF status and popularity with Detroit fans.

Fakes / reprints: Several T3 reprints exist and there's no doubt people faked the most valuable stars. Modern companies also adapted the painted look for 21st century players, one of the best throwback designs to choose from.