Another "Blazing" Autograph Added to My Custom Card

After a Blazing Saddles post in June and another one in August, I wouldn't be surprised if some of you readers groaned at the title of this blog post. But I assure you, this one is worth the quick read.

You see, I was admiring the signature that Mr. Burton Gilliam had put on a few of the multi-player Blazing Saddles custom cards I'd created. . .

 

 

. . . And I figured I'd try sending one of the copies back out for a second autograph.

Sadly, Slim Pickens passed away in 1983, and Harvey Korman left us in 2008. However, the one and only Melvin James Kaminsky (a.k.a. Mel Brooks) is still going at 97 years young!

I found a fairly reliable business address, chose a card that already contained an extra-sharp Burton Gilliam signature, and put together an envelope with the following:

 

• A copy of the card
• A receipt for a small donation I made to a charity Mr. Brooks has been known to support
• A self-addressed stamped envelope
• A brief note of thanks

And then I waited. Based on other intel, it seemed like I might be waiting for a long time. And it made sense. You'd have to wonder if Mr. Brooks was spending much time signing autographs from day to day. 

 

Fast-forward about three months, and I received my answer:

 

The self-addressed stamped envelope appeared in my mailbox! 

 

The question was, would the card even be inside? And if so, would it reveal a Mel Brooks autograph? Or would the envelope perhaps only contain a note saying that Mr. Brooks doesn't sign through the mail?

Knowing that the photo of Brooks playing Gov. William J. Le Petomane was at the top right, I opened the envelope and slowly revealed the card, from bottom to top.

Halfway up the card, I had my answer.

 

 

 

It was an autograph! And a sharp one at that. Here's a close-up.

 

I'm hopeful that it's authentic. Like I mentioned earlier, I'm not sure how much time Mr. Brooks is spending on a typical day to sign photos and other memorabilia. There are various versions of his signature posted online too, so it's hard to know what really appears on this card. There's also the possibility that some of his autograph signing has been delegated to a signature machine, or something like that.

Regardless, even the smallest chance that a legend of film like Mr. Brooks actually read my note, saw the custom card, and signed it (and maybe even got a kick out of it!) is good enough for me.

 

As for the man himself, Mel Brooks has certainly led an incredible life. Actor, director, producer, entertainer. History of the World Part I, Blazing Saddles, and Robin Hood: Men in Tights are probably my top three Mel Brooks films. Young Frankenstein is great, too. 

 

But most impressive to me is that Mr. Brooks enlisted in the US Army when he was 17 years old, became a Combat Engineer, was sent to Europe, and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. There are a couple of great interviews and documentaries about him available, if you'd like to learn more.

So that's that. Another autograph on the custom card. Safe to say it's become my most prized custom so far. Thanks for reading, everyone.

 

 

PS: For an extra laugh, look up Joseph Pujol, the original Mr. Le Petomane, and discover what peculiar talent he had.

300th Post

I've reached another milestone here at Nine Pockets:  

300 blog posts!  

Because I add content here each Sunday throughout the year, 300 posts means this blog has been rolling along for almost six years now. And once again, I'm very happy that I've been able to come up with enough content to fill that many Sundays. I hope you've enjoyed doing the reading as much as I've enjoyed doing the writing.

And because this is a trading card blog, I wanted to tie in some cards with the number 300, using a sports-related milestone of some kind. 

For whatever reason, the first one that came to mind was 300 MLB wins for a pitcher. It turns out 24 guys have reached that milestone, which is too many to feature here.

Next, I thought about the same milestone for NHL goaltenders. Well, a whopping 39 of them have reached the 300-win mark. So I didn't really want to go there. However, after a little more digging, I discovered that only 6 of those 39 have accumulated all 300 of their wins with the same team. That's kind of cool.

Here's the short list:

Name	Team	Wins
Henrik Lundqvist	New York Rangers	459
Pekka Rinne	Nashville Predators	369
Carey Price	Montreal Canadiens	361
Tukka Rask	Boston Bruins	308
Turk Broda	Toronto Maple Leafs	304
Mike Richter	New York Rangers	301

 

Still, I wanted to keep thinking about that number 300. I figured there was another milestone out there that would better suit this blog post. My thoughts went back to baseball: How about relief pitchers with 300 saves?

Welp, there are 31 relievers on that list. Some are names you'd think of right away (Rivera, Hoffman, Franco, Eckersley), while others... 

Todd Jones?

Jeff Montgomery?

Jason Isringhausen??

Yeah, those were just some of the names that surprised me.

It was all interesting research and information to this point. But I still needed to find something else related to the number 300.

How about pitchers with 300 strikeouts in a season?

Okay, now we were getting somewhere. Only 19 pitchers have hit that number. And even fewer have done it multiple times. Let's represent the top few guys on the list with some cardboard.

1999 Upper Deck Victory #16 Randy Johnson, 1977 Topps #650 Nolan Ryan,
1963 Topps #210 Sandy Koufax, 1998 Topps #332 Curt Schilling

Nolan Ryan struck out 300 batters a total of 6 times across his career, as did Randy Johnson. As for Koufax and Schilling, they achieved the feat 3 times each. The rest of the list is full of two-timers and one-timers.

Now here's a question for you: Tell me which bit of additional information about these guys is the most impressive: 

• Five of Randy Johnson's six career 300-strikeout seasons came in a row, from 1998 through 2002.
• Johnson also had seasons of 290, 291, and 294 strikeouts. That means he almost hit the 300-K mark nine times. (That's terrifying.)
• Johnson and Schilling both struck out 300 batters while they were teammates with the Diamondbacks in 2002.
• Nolan Ryan went 12 years between his 5th 300-strikeout season (1977, age 30) and his 6th (1989, age 42).

It all leaves me speechless. So I'm going to just end this post right there.

Whether you've been visiting this blog from the start, reading it today for the first time, or anything in between, I'm sending a big thank-you. And an even bigger thank-you for the comments, emails, and trading card exchanges over the years. We've got a great community of bloggers and collectors, and if you're amongst that company, here's to more great milestones and trading card content all around!

A Smorgasbord! 1986 Topps Quaker Granola

From the 1970s through the 1990s, it seemed like you could find your favorite baseball stars on food product packaging everywhere you looked: supermarkets, corner stores, restaurants, and beyond. This past year, in an effort to capture a little more nostalgia, I set a goal to expand my own collection of these "food-issue" cards. In this series I'll show the specific examples I've acquired, and share a little bit of history about the food or beverage sponsor as well. 

Previous entries can be found here.

 

School is back in session, which means kids everywhere will be once again reaching into their lunch bags and backpacks hoping to find a treat. If you're an '80s kid like me, it was always a good day if mom or dad sent you off with one of these guys.

Yeah, those good ol' chewy granola bars from Quaker. Even back then, you had a nice variety of flavors to choose from. I liked the the Chocolate Chip and Peanut Butter versions. It was big news when the S'mores flavor was released around 1984, too.

But there was even bigger news in 1986:

 

 

Baseball cards would be placed inside specially marked packages!

More specifically, you'd find a little cellophane wrapper containing 3 random cards from a 33-card set that was produced by Topps, in conjunction with the Quaker Oats Company.

Here are the two examples I have in my collection:

 

1986 Topps Quaker Granola #1 Willie McGee and #17 Fernando Valenzuela

Pretty sharp design, with those bright yellow bars across the top and the bottom. And because Topps and the MLBPA were both involved, team logos were allowed to remain on helmets, caps, and uniforms. Hooray! Touches like that provided kids with even more incentive to collect the whole set.

 

So let's go back to 1986, pretend we're in grade school, and crunch some numbers with our solar-powered calculators: 

With 3 cards per box, over the course of the school year mom or dad will have to buy you 11 boxes of Quaker chewy granola bars—at the very least—if you want to put together the entire 33-card set. Maybe if your baseball card–loving friends can also convince their moms or dads to buy specially marked boxes of granola bars, then you and your friends can pull the cards, put 'em in stacks, bring 'em into school, and trade with each other so you can all complete your sets.

Now we're talking.

The other option would be to clip out 4 UPC symbols from the boxes and mail them, along with an order form, to the Topps/Chewy promotional department before December 31st. Then, in 6 to 8 weeks, a complete set would arrive in your mailbox. 

But what's the fun in that? You're going to put the set together card by card, the way a true collector would. Because you're a true collector. And you love a good granola bar.

Regardless, here's the front and back of the order form, which was also included in each 3-card pack.

 

I like how you also had the option to order the sticker yearbook and starter kit.

  

Now here's an image of the card backs.

 

 

They're pretty nicely done. I like the career highlights section at the bottom. All 33 players in the set were big stars of the day, so Topps and Quaker sure had enough highlights to choose from. Valenzuela, for example, had a 0.00 ERA through 4 All-Star games at that point. As for McGee, all he did was lead the NL in hits, singles, triples, and batting average the previous year. Atta boy, Willie.

You'll note that the blue banner on the card back says "1st Annual Collectors' Edition". This would indicate that Topps and Quaker planned to release more cards in following years. However, 1986 appears to be the only year that the two companies collaborated on a set. That's really a shame.

 

Quaker was a huge name back then, and had been for decades and decades before that. In fact, it was way back in 1877 that Quaker Oats registered the first trademark for a thing called "breakfast cereal". According to the company website, the Quaker name was chosen "as a symbol of good quality and honest value". As for the recognizable man that you see on the logo? He's been around for more than 100 years, and hasn't changed much in all that time.

 

And you know what? They're still making those chewy granola bars—in many of the same flavors that were around back when these baseball cards were produced!

 

 

So how about you readers? Did this post bring back some good granola bar memories? If you were a Quaker granola bar kid, which flavor was your favorite?

 

Let me know in the comment section, and thanks for reading!

Relief Hitters

One of the vocabulary words we discussed during the Baseball in French series here on the blog was frappeur d'urgence, which roughly translates to "emergency hitter". Or, as we better know it here in the States, "pinch hitter". 

 

Our good buddy Chris the Collector left a thought-provoking comment on that post, suggesting that the term "relief hitter" would also make a fair bit of sense. After all, we have relief pitchers, right?

Well, it got me thinking. Relief pitchers are players unto themselves. They take up a roster spot. They're specifically trained to come into the game at some point after it begins, in order to relieve a pitcher who might be struggling.

 

What if teams carried a player specifically for "relief-hitting", too? In other words, this player would take up his own roster spot, never starting a game, signed solely for his relief-hitting skills. Late in the game, when your team really needed a hit, he'd always be ready with bat in hand.

 

Imagine how clutch that guy would have to be? It's a fun thought.

Now like me, I'm sure many of you readers have already started to think that this would never happen. No team would burn a roster spot for a player who would just ride the pine every game until [maybe] the team needed him to step up to the plate to get a hit. Once. Not to mention how difficult it is for a player to do that when he's been sitting around, tight and cold, for a couple of hours. 

 

But wait a minute. Before dismissing the idea entirely, maybe we should think about all the other kooky rules that have been implemented over the past few years. There's a pitch clock. Bases are larger. The team up at bat in extra innings gets a ghost runner on second base. There's a DH in both leagues. Robo-umpires are around the corner. Eventually it's going to become blernsball, anyway.  

 

 

 

 

So why can't relief hitters be a thing?

 

To make it more appealing to the powers that be, maybe we should change the criteria a little bit.

 

Let's say that the relief hitter can be brought into the game no earlier than the 7th inning. The twist is that he's permitted to lead off every inning after that—8th, 9th, and extras if applicable. And he doesn't have to play a fielding position. I'm getting some ideas here. Time to make a list.

Relief Hitter Rules:

• Can enter the game no earlier than 7th inning.

• Must be lead-off batter in every inning after that. (Taking away the at-bat from the hitter in the lineup who would have led off.)
  

• Does not play fielding position during defensive half of inning.

• Must remain in game for at least two innings, unless first at-bat is in 9th inning.

• Must run the bases if he gets on base.

• Can be used as a relief hitter in maximum of two consecutive games. Then must be made unavailable the following game.

• Each team can carry only one relief hitter on its roster.
  

 

That last rule means there's 30 MLB roster spots for those relief hitters to claim. So, who would be good candidates? 

 

Wade Boggs could find the holes, that's for sure. So could Tony Gwynn, who was especially proficient at hitting with two strikes in the count. Ichiro could get on base with line-drives, grounders, infield singles, or bunts at any time. Derek Jeter was pretty good in the clutch. Pete Rose could probably muster up a hit whenever the team really needed one, and he's a switch-hitter, which is a definite asset. Ted Williams and his .400 average would be something. (He'd have a serious intimidation factor on his side too, because he hit for power. Plus, he's got the best on-base percentage in MLB history.) Rod Carew, Edgar Martinez, and Rickey Henderson would be other solid choices. 

 

The problem is, of course, that you'd want all of those folks in your starting lineup. Not as relief hitters.

 

But let's imagine they're winding down their careers, and almost ready to retire. If you were to play them as relief hitters for only the last two or three innings of certain games, it might allow them to stay in the big leagues for an extra couple of years.

 

If the idea were to catch on, I wonder if baseball developmental schools would eventually start looking for young hitters with less power but superior bat control, and start training those guys to be super-good at hitting singles and drawing walks. On the right team, deployed in the right way, they could end up playing up to 90-ish games per season and getting at least an at-bat or two per game, which isn't so bad. 

 

You never know.

In the meantime, because this is a blog about trading cards, here are my top three choices for a relief hitter, featured in cardboard form:

The position designation on the card could be changed to "Relief Hitter", or even "RH".

 

So what do you think? Is it too kooky of an idea to even consider? 

 

Even if that's the case, which player(s) nearing retirement, current or past, would be your choice for relief hitter? 

 

Share in the comment section, and thanks for reading!

From the Favorites Box: Greg Maddux, 1995 Lykes SGA Atlanta Braves (NNO)

A series where I post some thoughts about favorite cards. Previous cards in the series are available here.

 

 

Look at this dork.

 

 

Next time you're walking behind him in the school hallway, you're definitely going to dump his books.

 

A few days later you spot him. But you hesitate. The hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and you tell yourself that you'd better be careful with this guy. You're not sure why, but something tells you that he will destroy you if you try to embarrass him. And there will be two options:

 

 

(1) He'd use a high-brow barrage of psychological-speak on you that leaves you messed up for months.

 

(2) He'd execute a low-brow, sick prank on you that leaves you messed up for months.

 

 

And you don't want part of either. You're just trying to play some baseball. So instead of dumping his books, you take a wide berth around him. Or better yet, you just get to class using another hallway altogether.

After all, he's the starting pitcher in two days. And he's been pitching so well lately that you know he's not going to give the other team much of a sniff at winning.

 

So just get ready for the game, go out there and get a couple of hits and play solid defense behind him, and everything will be just fine. 

 

Just. Fine.

 

As for Mr. Maddux, he'd also be just fine after his high school baseball career came to a close. You don't need me to tell you much about that, but here are some rather noteworthy accomplishments anyway:

 

4x Cy Young

4x ERA Title

8x All-Star

18x Gold Glove

3,000+ Strikeouts

300+ Wins

1995 World Series Champion 

All of that with fastball speeds that often topped out around 90 mph. Accuracy, smarts, and tenacity. Absolutely brilliant.

And for reminding us that brilliance comes in many shapes, sizes, and forms, 1995 Lykes SGA Atlanta Braves (NNO) has a spot in my box of favorite cards.