On Monday, Night Owl announced the winner of his Awesomest Night Card Tournament. This card of Wrigley Field made it to the semifinals, but of course, couldn't win the big prize. The Cubs can't even win a championship in the blogosphere!
But the night time Wrigley card leads me to a recent purchase...
...this program from the first night game at Wrigley Field on 8-8-88. As if God were saying, "No night games at Wrigley!" the first game only lasted 3 1/2 innings before a downpour washed the game out. It's hard for me to believe that the lights were installed almost 23 years ago. A person would have to be nearly 30 years old to really remember all day baseball at Wrigley. Yet in my mind, the Cubs still are a day baseball team.
The first night game really was a circus. There was a ton of media at the game, a 91 year old Cubs fan, Harry Grossman, pushed a ceremonial button to turn on the lights, Morganna the Kissing Bandit came out on the field and kissed Ryne Sandberg, and then the rain came. The Chicago area had been going through a drought in 1988 (my front lawn was a brown patch), but rain came in buckets on August 8. There was even an incident during the rain delay. A few Cubs, including a very young Greg Maddux, decided to do belly flops on the tarp to entertain the fans. Manager Don Zimmer was not entertained and the players were all fined.
I scanned a few of the pictures from the program that show the installation of the lights. During 1988 I would always try to watch the first home game after a long road trip to see what progress was made on the lights. I have always been impressed with how well the light towers fit into the design of the ballpark. Wrigley didn't get gigantic towers like most of the old ballparks did when their lights were installed in the '30s and '40s. I guess that was the advantage of waiting 40 years to put them in!
In the past I haven't bothered with Topps' shortprint gimmicks. The pie in the face cards, Abe Lincoln; I didn't care.
But this year, I like what they've done. The 60 different sparkle cards are a nice twist. So I looked over the checklist to see if there were any Cubs. With 60 cards and 30 teams, you would think that would be two per team. But no. There is only one Cubs player on the list, Starlin Castro. I guess I should be happy with that, because that would make it easier on the wallet. But that also means, that as far as Topps is concerned, there is only one player on the Cubs that has any value to collectors. And that usually means a poor team.
There were at least three Castro cards that were up for auction on Ebay, and I am proud to say that I got mine at the lowest price of all. In fact, I got the best deal of all the Castro sparkle cards sold in the past two weeks!
So here is the card
and here is a close-up of the sparkle in his pocket.
Topps was kind enough to scan all of their base cards from 1952 - 2010 for the million card give away last year and they are using the same pictures for the Diamond giveaway this year.
I was playing around at their web site and I think I've got the URL code figured out so you can get a look at the front or back of each and every card:
You can see there are several pieces to the URL, and they are fairly easy to decode.
Every card starts the same http://cnt.toppsmillion.com/img/cards/
Next, the season is added: http://cnt.toppsmillion.com/img/cards/1959-BB-
Next, comes the series marker, either TS1 for series one, or TS2 for series two. BUT, this applies only to cards from 1993 and beyond. Everything prior to 1993 is TS1.
The next piece is the cards number: http://cnt.toppsmillion.com/img/cards/1959-BB-TS1-350-NA_
Now you add F for the front of the card or B for the back http://cnt.toppsmillion.com/img/cards/1959-BB-TS1-350-NA_F_
And they all end with the same jpeg dimension: http://cnt.toppsmillion.com/img/cards/1959-BB-TS1-350-NA_F_285x412.jpg If I want the back of Ron Santo's card from 1963, #252, the url would be
It only gets tricky for 1993 and beyond, when you need to know where series one ends and series two starts. This handy little chart of the series two numbers should help:
1993
397-825
1994
397-792
1995
397-660
1996
221-440
1997
276-496
1998
283-504
1999
243-496
2000
239-478
2001
406-790
2002
366-718
2003
368-720
2004
368-732
2005
368-732
2006
331-660
2007
331-660
2008
331-660
2009
331-660
2010
331-660
If you know a cards year, number, and for 1993 and beyond, series, you can find a nice clean picture of any Topps card quickly and easily. Then you can save it to your computer and load it into blogger.
To make it even easier, just cut and paste this template into your browser and make the appropriate changes to find your card.
I've got 8,519 Cubs cards from 49 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.
Pre-1970s: Turkey Red (reprint) 1911 #32 Orval Overall Overall was a twenty game winner for the 1909 Cubs, but must have been hurt in 1910, starting only 23 games. He was out of baseball in 1911 and 1912. He tried coming back in 1913, but wasn't very effective and his big league career was over. 1970s: SSPC 1978 #261 Ray Burris This card is from the SSPC All Star Gallery team album (I have previous posts on the album here and here). An innings eater, Burris was 44-39 from 1975-1977. He slumped badly in 1978 falling to 7-13 and was banished to the bullpen. 1980s: Topps 1982 #403 Jim Tracy Though featured as a Cub, Tracy was traded to the Astros during the winter of 1981. The #23 he wore was taken over by a newly acquired rookie, Ryne Sandberg. Tracy would never make it back to the major leagues. 1990s: Fleer Ultra 1991 Update #75 Rick Wilkins This is the fourth time a Rick Wilkins card has been selected by the random number generator. That's probably three too many! This card is from his rookie season of 1991. He didn't make the team in the spring, but an injury to Joe Girardi and ineffectiveness by back-up Erik Pappas led the Cubs to turn to Wilkins. After being called to the Cubs on June 4 (which also happened to be his birthday!), he played in a total of 86 games. He hit only .222 but did throw out 40% of those trying to steal. 2000s: Upper Deck 2001 #264 Sammy Sosa Season Highlights If the highlight of the season happens on April 20, then you didn't have a very good season. The 2000 Cubs didn't. They finished at the bottom of the NL Central with a record of 65-97. Sammy led the team with 50 homers, while the next closest on the team was Henry Rodriguez with 18.
Rube Kroh was listed in the Bad Boys of Baseball chapter of the T206 book. He earned that distinction because in 1909, despite a 9-4 record, the Cubs benched him for insubordination, mainly due to curfew violations. Later in the season he pitched in an illegal game for a New Jersey team, which violated his contract; the Cubs released him. This bad boy would later become an umpire in the minor leagues.
Johnny Kling was the catcher for the Cubs during their 4 pennant run and he was arguably the best defensive catcher in the National League. The oddity of his career is that he took the 1909 season off; instead of playing baseball he opened a billiards parlor in Kansas City. He would later become owner of the Kansas City Monarchs of the American Association. And my 2009 Topps card for Johnny Kling. Check out the catchers mitt he's got.
This week's flick may not be one of the most popular baseball movies, but in my opinion, it is one of the best. Bang the Drum Slowly was released in 1973 and is based on the novel of the same name. The screenplay was written by Mark Harris, the author of the novel. That is always a plus for me, when the book and movie are written by the same person.
The movie tells the story of the friendship between New York Mammoth's ace pitcher Henry "Author" Wiggen (Michael Moriarity) and third string catcher Bruce Pearson (Robert De Niro). The movie starts with the pair leaving Mayo Clinic in February, as Pearson has just been told that has an incurable disease. The movie then shows us how Wiggen tries to protect his friend and make his final season a good one.
In some respects, the movie is a baseball version of Brian's Song. It has the star rooming with a dying bench warmer; though the racial overtones are missing from Drum. Instead, we've got a sophisticated, insurance-selling pitcher and a southern bumpkin catcher.
As the movie progresses, it becomes harder for Author to protect his friend's secret. As others on the team find out, they begin treating Pearson nicer, and Pearson becomes a better player. In fact, he is having a career year. Eventually this causes the team to bond and in the process, become a better team. The Mammoths go on to win the World Series, though, Pearson misses it as his disease made him unable to continue playing.
We don't have any "I love Brian Piccolo" moments in Drum; Author keeps his emotions to himself. But we do see the genuine love a teammate has for another, and that can still bring a tear or two to your eyes.
Both Moriarity and De Niro do an adequate job of portraying ballplayers. They both look like they played some ball when they were younger. The Mammoths uniforms are based on the Yankees, with a slightly different NY logo. They played teams from both the American and National League, which was strange. Another oddity is that while the opposing teams seem to use authentic MLB uniforms, they were old uniforms. The baseball scenes were shot at Shea and Old-pre-renovated Yankee Stadium in 1972, though the Pirates were wearing uniforms from 1970, the Indians from 1969, and the A's from 1971.
Finally, here is something eerie. The doomed catcher Bruce Pearson is wearing #15...
to match the action shots that the real Yankee catcher wore (this action scene was in the movie)....
....the doomed Thurmon Munson
CUBS CONNECTIONS Last weeks movie, the Natural, had a bunch. This movie....none! Though several MLB teams were shown in the movie, the Cubs were not.
This is a baseball card blog and I feel an obligation to show a couple baseball cards. Since there are no Cubs to show, instead I've got a couple of custom Mammoth cards from the 1973 season, the year the movie was released.
If you haven't ever seen Bang the Drum Slowly, or if its been a while since you last saw it. I recommend you do something about that....rent it, Redbox it, Netflix it, buy it, download it illegally...but see it!
