Eighties Alphabetically - Jewel

Jewel grocery (or "da Jewels") is definitely a Chicago thing.  If you're not from the Chicago area, you probably never heard of the chain.  As a local Chicago store, they have been Chicago boosters and that has been shown with occasional baseball picture releases.  They issued sets of Cubs players in 1969, 1973, 1977, and 1984.

The 1984 set was like the others and featured pictures of players printed on large 6"x9" paper.  There are 16 pictures in all and they are all head shots.  The cropping was odd with this set, as it looks like the players that were picked up during spring training or the season were cropped with just their head showing while those with the team for a longer time were cropped at the waist.

I'm Back

 

We spent a couple of weeks working at Camp Arcadia, on the shore of Lake Michigan and then were busy for another week or so when we got home.  Things have settled down and I can get back to regular blogging soon.

Five Random Cubs Cards

 I've got 21,868 Cubs cards from 317 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1915 Cracker Jack #176 James Vaughn Hippo doesn't look very happy here.

1980s: 1981 All-Star Program Steve Henderson Henderson was in the program, but he didn't make the All-Star team.  In fact, over his twelve year career, he was never an All-Star

1990s: 1995 Stadium Club World Series #235 Randy Myers The Stadium Club logo gets the upper right corner and his head is in the upper left.  That didn't leave a decent spot for the World Series logo and they stuck it under his rear end.

2000s: 2005 Topps Chrome #307 LaTroy Hawkins It looks like Hawkins is celebrating one of his 25 saves from the 2004 season.

2010s: 2011  Topps Chrome #193 Darwin Barney  Darwin!  I also have 20 parallel versions of this card.  

Eighties Alphabetically - Jays

Last week I had a set from a Canadian potato chip company that I'd never heard of.  Today's cards are from another potato chip company.  And this one is very familiar to anyone who grew up in the Chicago area, Jays.

Everyone I knew ate Jay's potato chips.  The similarly named Lay's were a distant second.  Oddly, the Jay's name came about because of Pearl Harbor.  The company was founded by Leonard Japp and the chips had his name on them, Japps.  That was not a good name for a company after December 7, 1941, and they soon rebranded themselves as Jay's.

Their lone baseball issue as a 20-disc set that featured players from the Cubs, White Sox, and Brewers, as those were the teams in the Jay's market.  The discs were made by our usual disc maker, MSA, and were logoless.

There are seven Cubs in the set.

 

Five Random Cub Cards

 I've got 21,868 Cubs cards from 317 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1972 Topps #61 Cubs Rookies One for three here, though Hooton had his best seasons after the Cubs traded him away.

1980s: 1986 Fleer Traded #51 Guy Hoffman Hoffman is one 97 player that pitched for both the Cubs and the White Sox.  

1990s: 1993 Stadium Club #531 Sammy Sosa Looks like Sosa is celebrating a Cubs win at Wrigley, high-fiving a staff member.

2000s: 2007 Topps Chrome #280 Felix Pie  He started the season with a lot of hype, but never played up to it.

2010s: 2015 Allen and Ginter Mini #59 Hector Rondon  I miss the days when you didn't have to wait until the season was almost over to get Ginter.  Right now there is no official release date for 2024 Ginter other than a vague "September."

Eighties Alphabetically - Hostess

While the name is the same, this is not the snack company that put cards on their boxes in the 1970s.  This Hostess is a Canadian company that made potato chips.

The Canadian Hostess got into the baseball card game in 1987 with a 30-card sticker set.  The stickers were pretty small, measuring just 1 3/4" x 1 3/8".  They were found in specially marked bags of their chips.

Just one Cub player was on the checklist, but boy was that sticker a doozey!

Yes, that is Ryne Sandberg.  It looks like punk Ryne Sandberg, though, with dark eyebrow, eye liner, and lipstick.  I looked through pictures of all 30 stickers and Ryno is the only one that wes messed up like this.  Do they not like him up in Canada??

Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 21,868 Cubs cards from 317 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1972 O-Pee-Chee #29 Bill Bonham Bonham looks really young in this picture.  It was taken in Scottsdale in 1971, when he was in just his second season of pro ball.  When he made it to the majors during the 1971 season, he wore #33, not the #52 he has on in the picture.

1980s: 1985 Subway Rick Sutcliffe This is one of my most wanted acquisitions of 2024.

1990s: 1992 Pinnacle #414 Mike Morgan  What an odd place to crop his head, right at his neck.  It looks like the white border is decapitating him.

2000s: 2006 Fleer #109 Todd Walker Walker is on the go in an early spring game, with brown ivy in the background.

2010s: 2018 Donruss #80 Willson Contreras  The Donruss set should be catchers only, because hiding the logos is pretty easy with all of the gear that they wear.