Frame Job

Recently, my wife hosted a big fundraising gala.  Without divulging too much personal information, she works for a local non-profit that benefits adults and children with mental disabilities, providing schooling, work, and social services.  With such lofty and wide-reaching goals, a large budget is required, as it works with families all across the county.  Thus, each year, the company holds an annual, year-end gala at a local country club to raise the majority of the funds needed for their noble goals.  Complete with fancy food spreads and a three-course dinner, live and silent auctions for tempting prizes, multimedia presentations showcasing the company's work, a raucous live band, and a black tie dress code, an incredible amount of work goes into making this happen.  Most of this stressful work falls squarely on the shoulders of my wife and her department, though I do volunteer when and where I can to alleviate some of the load.

On the plus side, this year's gala was a rousing success, earning rave reviews from attendees and the board of directors, as well as reaching the fundraising goals.  Plus, needless to say, my better half is in a much better mood with this event fading in the rear-view mirror.  So too am I, both because when she's stressed, I'm stressed and because I got a nifty souvenir out of the whole process.

In the lead up to the big night, a lot of storage space was needed to stash the live auction prizes, silent auction baskets of goodies, and props/decorations/equipment that made up the gala.  As such, my wife and her fellow co-workers had to completely clear out their nearby storage unit to make room for the deluge.  Over the preceding years, this unit had been treated the same way as the closet in our spare room has - as a catch-all for any and all overflow that's largely ignored until some odds and ends need to be hidden away and is then promptly forgotten again. 

Most of these cobweb-covered castoffs were earmarked for Goodwill or the dumpster out back.  Old promo materials, stacks of files, and miscellaneous junk made up the majority of the disused junk - nothing particularly useful. Clearing out storage units actually sounds like a  good time to me, seeing as you have literally no idea what you might find; however, I had to sit this one out.  Nevertheless, I ended up with some re-discovered treasure:

Mark this down on the lengthy list of reasons why I love my wife.  Even as she was digging through junk, tired from planning a stressful event, she was looking out for me and saved this intriguing find from the scrap heap.  Also, holy moly... the possibilities as to what these cards could be!!

While visions of T206 team sets danced through my head, I knew that was the longest of long-shots.  I knew it was far more likely that my spouse and her cohorts had dug up a set of reprints or some kind of retrospective set.  As it turned out, that line of thought was absolutely correct - however, there was yet another surprise to be had:

I was certainly not expecting these re-discovered pasteboards to come collated in this manner!  As you might be able to tell from the boxscores at the center of the piece, this frame job pays tribute to the World Series Championship team of 1908.

As far as the cards go, they aren't technically the 1908 Cubs, as my wife and the party which assembled the piece had posited.  Rather, these sepia-toned beauties showcase the 1907 World Series Championship team, a Cubs squad which is given far less notoriety since a century plus title drought did not follow that World Series win.  That being stated, the main players on the back-to-back championship roster are mostly the same, so the sentiment still works.  Of course, I still had to point this out to my wife, who now thinks I'm an even bigger nerd than she did before.

Without any further ado, let's take a closer look at the cards, which come from the TCMA portfolio and were originally released in 1987:

First, here's a side-by-side comparison which shows how these cards originally look, as opposed to mounted on foam board.  As you can see, the fancy, embossed, blue and gold piping is not part of the original look.

Meanwhile, as far as the set goes, all the major players are there:

The most recognizable names of the bunch, a "trio of bear cubs, fleeter than birds" are there...

... plus the rest of the starting infield.  These two are oft-forgotten, seeing as they didn't have a legendary poem written about their exploits on the diamond.  Although, fun bit of trivia, Johnny Kling was a championship billiards player when he wasn't calling pitches for the Chicago Cubs.

Only one outfielder gets the nod, Frank "Wildfire" Schulte, perhaps because the grassy part of the field was something of a timeshare on that legendary club.  With Schulte having won the National League's Chalmers Award (basically the MVP trophy) a few years later - in 1911 - his name carried the most weight out of the five men who split time chasing fly balls.  Thus, "Wildfire" spread into the TCMA checklist.

Finally, the pitching staff is represented by three big horses of the starting rotation.  Ed Reulbach was shown already and his buddies Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown and Orval Overall fill out the checklist.  This trio of hurlers led the team in pitching wins, splitting 68 victories between themselves with Mordecai accounting for 29 all on his own.  Boy oh boy, how the game has changed!

In addition to the cards, as I alluded to earlier, the frame job also includes the box scores of the 1908 World Series as a centerpiece, as well as the complete batting and pitching statistics for the victorious Chicagoans.

So, if you're like me, you might be wondering who put this crafty display piece together.  Was it some intrepid Cubs fan? A rabid baseball card collector?  Perhaps it was even TCMA themselves, as a clever way to market their oddball cards?  Well, the answer is stamped right in the middle of the bottom row of pasteboards:

Dream Team Collectibles based out of St. Louis Missouri, in case you can't read the gold embossing on a green background.  They were a big name in the hobby around this time, largely on the strength of these very sorts of items - fancy, themed frames and plaques involving sports memorabilia.  Starting in 1986, Ed Gaines and his wife Barbara and by the start of the 90's, these items were almost ubiquitous in local card shops, card shows, and wherever one could purchase sports ephemera. 

Speaking of big names, it was while researching my 1908 Cubs frame that I came across an eye-popping piece of trivia about Dream Team Collectibles.  This mom and pop company once took on a corporate behemoth and came out on top.  That big corporation was even one of the leagues that their products, no doubt, celebrated - the NBA.  That's right, that NBA - the National Basketball Association.  Wild, right?  And what was the lawsuit about?  The usage of the name "Dream Team."  Holy crap - possessive much?

In May of 1995, Dream Team Collectibles sued NBA Properties Inc., which is the licensing arm of the NBA, and later USA Basketball to try and stop them from using and licensing the term "the Dream Team," which of course was a term used to refer to the famous Team USA Olympic basketball squad, featuring the likes of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, etc.  It's hard to view this as anything other than an advantageous, headline grabbing cash grab, as I don't believe anyone was going to confuse the two entities.  If that were the case, it worked out quite well for the Gaines, as the case never made it to court and DTC received an undisclosed cash settlement for their troubles.  

What a bizarre story.

All in all, this delightful display came with beautiful sentiment, cool cards, and a fascinatingly odd bit of trivia.  Now, all it needs is a new frame and it will definitely be going up on a wall in my office in the near future.

Do you have any of these Dream Team Collectibles displays in your collection or perhaps something similar?  I can't find any current information on this company, so it seems like they may have passed by the wayside in the last couple of decades, though there's no shortage of similar products on the market today.  Just stop by your local mall and pop into Plaques Plus if you don't believe me.  Do you find these items to be as charming as I do through my rose-tinted, nostalgia-riddled glasses or do you think that they're simply tacky?  I encourage you to make your opinions known in the comment section below. 

One thing that is not up for debate though is the fact that my wife rocks!  In the throws of preparing for one of the largest and most important events in her professional life, she stepped back, thought of me and went out of her way to save a trinket that she knew I would enjoy.  I would sing her praises and defend her to ends of the earth, even if Dream Team Collectibles themselves came after me with a frivolous lawsuit to get me to stop.