And the Ballpark Is

So where were these pictures taken?

   

If you said Candlestick Park in San Francisco then you were correct.

This was the original configuration of Candlestick.  You can see the wraparound grandstands in left field and the three-pole light towers.

Candlestick was enclosed and enlarged during the 1971 season.  There are several '72 Topps cards that give you a look at the in-season construction.

   

   

  

   

   

It seems odd for so much work to be taking place during the baseball season.  Usually you'd see work like that during the off-season.  But I guess they wanted the extra seats ready for the '49er when they moved to Candlestick for the 1971 season.  That left the Giants a construction zone stadium for the '71 season.

Name the Park

I've talked in the past about the many Cubs cards that have Shea Stadium in the background.  With the Topps headquarters located in New York, plus a team in each league, it makes sense that Shea was seen so much.  The tall outfield light towers are one of the identifiers I use for Shea.

   

Look behind both Jenkins and Spangler; the Shea light towers.

  

Look behind Altman and Koonce; light towers.  But those aren't Shea.  Up until a couple days ago, I assumed that these were two more Shea pictures.  I don't know what made me look a little closer at them, but as I did I had one of those "Ah Ha" moments.  The grandstands in the background on both are most definitely not Shea.  And as soon as I saw the stands, I knew which park it was.

Do you??

I'll post the answer tomorrow.

Go ahead and Name that Park!

Topps 1969 - 2011 Complete Set Prices

Here is my monthly look at set prices for all the year in which I have a complete set, 1969 - 2011.


I don't know why it took me so long to narrow down my searches, but I finally did so this month and it cut the time to do the searches in half.


In the past I just searched completed listings with the phrase "Topps Baseball Complete Set 1969 (and then change the year). This month my search was "Topps Baseball Complete Set -team -your 1969." The new search eliminated all of the team sets and also all of the "Complete Your Set" listings. For a majority of the years, I had five complete set sales on the screen without have to scroll down at all. It was a huge time saver.


The prices overall were not much different than in April. The price to buy one of each set, $6,241.43, was a mere $21.46 less than last month. Some past months saw a $300 - $400 difference. To have only a $21.46 difference is nothing; in fact it was the smallest month to month change since I started tracking almost three years ago.


Here are the prices:

YEAR	May 3	April 4	Mar. 1	12 Mo. Avg.
1969	$1,300.00	$1,652.33	$1,049.20	$1,156.86
1970	$749.73	$722.35	$982.44	$901.12
1971	$621.37	$780.98	$634.75	$849.96
1972	$1,243.25	$888.35	$975.96	$995.99
1973	$474.00	$317.74	$395.10	$399.45
1974	$188.70	$288.00	$284.49	$244.74
1975	$292.30	$285.59	$329.39	$269.11
1976	$180.51	$209.00	$210.59	$173.34
1977	$153.61	$155.98	$100.01	$136.06
1978	$105.07	$110.13	$92.75	$96.62
1979	$85.42	$107.28	$94.80	$83.17
1980	$63.21	$71.19	$71.20	$63.96
1981	$41.14	$30.31	$51.84	$30.41
1982	$37.22	$33.50	$46.31	$37.81
1983	$39.59	$33.10	$30.89	$33.83
1984	$58.89	$18.70	$26.99	$25.83
1985	$27.52	$27.39	$38.60	$25.98
1986	$12.16	$15.30	$9.21	$14.53
1987	$6.40	$8.19	$8.50	$9.93
1988	$5.52	$11.77	$8.04	$8.49
1989	$7.66	$6.50	$7.68	$6.47
1990	$2.80	$9.68	$10.84	$7.44
1991	$10.05	$14.40	$12.00	$10.03
1992	$5.80	$10.11	$11.22	$9.39
1993	$20.08	$22.09	$25.89	$22.11
1994	$29.98	$23.50	$23.24	$23.64
1995	$56.56	$36.46	$50.96	$47.12
1996	$37.79	$20.89	$19.45	$21.36
1997	$59.39	$34.12	$46.04	$44.17
1998	$58.79	$42.80	$38.63	$44.41
1999	$28.47	$17.56	$23.89	$23.60
2000	$21.43	$21.10	$18.97	$20.37
2001	$61.76	$69.00	$54.04	$54.52
2002	$35.82	$41.49	$26.55	$34.81
2003	$31.25	$41.90	$33.90	$33.09
2004	$23.44	$25.80	$29.45	$26.40
2005	$36.06	$27.66	$31.99	$28.96
2006	$29.01	$29.98	$19.31	$23.42
2007	$32.07	$24.56	$31.21	$20.85
2008	$33.93	$36.80	$28.37	$29.54
2009	$58.62	$46.79	$41.20	$41.61
2010	$25.23	$39.57	$44.27	$41.61
2011	$30.24	$33.79	$36.00	$30.81

Flaky Bill Faul

Bill Faul spent less than two seasons with the Cubs, parts of the 1965 and 1966 campaigns, but managed to put together an impressive list of "accomplishments."

This Topps 1966 card is his only as a Cub, though it's pretty obvious he's wearing a Tigers uniform.

• The Cubs purchased him from the Tigers at the end of spring training, 1965. He had been a star pitcher for the University of Cincinnati. Among his accomplishments there was a NCAA record 24 strikeouts in a game. Detroit signed him as a bonus baby in 1962 and he was 11-1 in AAA in 1964.
• He was one of only a handful of Cubs to wear #13. In fact, it would be nearly 30 years before another Cub, flaky pitcher Turk Wendell, would don the unlucky number.
• The most noted flakiness of Faul was his use of self-hypnotism. According to this article, he would hypnotize himself before a game. His teammates weren't so sure. The back of his '66 card mentions the hypnotism.
• 
• He allegedly like to bite the heads off of live parakeets and eat live toads.
• The Cubs recorded an MLB record-tying three triple plays in 1965. Faul was on the mound for all three.
• In May, 1966, he tried to get the umpire to get the Astros to stop the hand-clapping cartoons on the Astrodome scoreboard. The ump was not inclined to do so.
• In July, 1966, he questions the pitch-calling of skipper Leo Durocher. It was not a smart think to do. Leo didn't like to be second-guessed. Faul was sent to the minors and it would be nearly four years before he would resurface in the major leagues.

After being demoted by Leo, he spent the rest of the '66 season in Tacoma. He was later sold to the Indians, sold to the Reds, returned to the Indians, sent to the Royals, and the acquired by the Giants. He knocked around organized ball through the 1973 season.

Billy Williams Transogram Figure

Last July I wrote about





a Billy Williams Transogram 1969 card I bought. The card was on back of the box of a plastic Billy Williams figure. I have never seen the actual Williams figure on ebay, though several of the other players have been available.

A couple weeks ago one finally showed up. The box was in rough shape, but the figure was fine. I sent the sniper and waited....and won. Because the box was so beat up, I got a pretty good deal.

Here's the box

and here's a couple closeups of the figure.

The pieces are all interchangeable, so for Billy, they slapped a Cubs logo on the front, a 26 on the back, and they were in business.

It doesn't surprise me that it looks nothing at all like Billy Williams. About the only thing they got right was that they made him black. But then, I don't think Transogram was too concerned about accurate figures.

Before I bought this, I had two questions about the Transogram figures, and now I've got both answers.

My first question was about the size of the figures, namely just how big were they? The answer, not very big at all. I assumed they were larger than this, maybe the size of the Starting Lineup figures from the '80s. But they are only 2½" tall.




Here's the figure against Billy's 1969 Topps card, which is 3½" high. Pretty dinky, aren't they.

My second question was more of a personal one. In the July post, I mentioned that Transogram had a factory right here in beautiful Sturgis, Michigan and I wondered if they made the baseball figures at the Sturgis factory. Well, the bottom of the box has the answer...

....made in Hong Kong. I guess I should have figured that. As a kid, it seemed like just about every junk-type toy was either made in Hong Kong or made in Japan. It wasn't called "outsourcing" back then, it was cheap imports.

Transogram also made figures of Ernie Banks and Ron Santo, but unless I fall into a fantastic bargain, I'll probably just stick to the Billy Williams.

The Die Cuts Have Arrived!

It may take Topps a year to get the etopps cards ready, but I have to give them credit for the quick job they did with the 2012 Golden Moments Die Cut cards.

You may remember that I snagged both of the Die Cut Cubs with the codes I got as part of the Darwin Barney Boo Boo. It took Topps and the post office ten days to get me the cards.

The Sandberg card features Ryno in the home whites...

....while Castro is in the road grays.

Sandberg's Golden Moment was becoming the third second baseman in MLB history to hit 40 home runs in a season, which he accomplished in 1990. The card mentions the other two, plus the second basemen to most recently come the closest to 40 HRs. The oddity....all of these guys played for the Cubs at one time. The two other 40 HR guys...Rogers Hornsby and Davey Johnson. The closest to 40 since Ryno...Alfonso Soriano.

Castro's Golden Moment is a 40 game streak of reaching base at least once. It's a team record for shortstops and four shy of the overall team record. His streak was still active at the start of the 2012 season. He reached base the first three games of the season, but in the game that would have tied the team record, the was 0-5 without a walk. After that game, he went another 13 games in a row reaching base before again being stopped.

These two cards should wrap things up for me with series one.

Finishing Up Gypsy Queen

My last two Gypsy Queen cards have arrived. These two give me a total of 20 Cubs cards for this year, ten regular and ten mini. There are other cards out there - mini back variations, relics, autographs - but I'm passing on them.

Starlin Castro was included in the Future Stars set. I don't mean to quibble, but since the guy has hit .300 the past two seasons, led the league in hits last year, and was an All Star, I think we can take the "Future" label off of him and just consider him a "Star."

In addition to a base card, Mr. Cub also made the Hallmark Heroes checklist. Ernie's Hallmark, according to the card, was "Gusto for the Game"....let's play two and all of that.

I've mentioned a couple times that I'm disappointed that Topps hasn't included Ron Santo in any of its products yet this year. The Hallmark Heroes subset would have been perfect for him. I decided to take a stab at it....

....Santo's Hallmark: "Playing Though Physical Adversity"....and mention the whole diabetes story. My cheapy free editing software didn't to an especially great job of converting the picture to a drawing, but it's acceptable for now. Anyone got a freebie that would do a better job?