Sundays at Goodwill

Have you ever been to a Goodwill on the weekend?  If so, you know that you were extremely fortunate to live through the ordeal and to tell the tale.

This past Sunday, my wife and I spent the morning thinning out our closets, cabinets, and junk drawers.  We considered it a cursory round of spring cleaning, despite the fact that the weather here in the Midwest is decidedly more Christmas-like.  Since we try not to be wasteful, we boxed up all of these lightly used articles of clothing, dishware, mugs, and odds & ends, loaded up our automobile, and hauled all of these donations to the local Goodwill.  Not only did this save us considerable clutter and keep this stuff out of the local landfill, but these donations are tax deductible AND it gives me the perfect excuse to go thrift shopping!

Okay, so maybe immediately going into a secondhand shop to buy more junk after de-cluttering the apartment slightly defeats the purpose.  I never claimed to be a logical creature.  Although, after fighting my way into and out of that Goodwill, I'm just happy to be a still living creature.

Weekends are generally a busy time for any sort of retail establishment - naturally, a great many people have those two days off, after all.  However, Saturdays and Sundays at Goodwill are an entirely different, apocalyptic, lawless wasteland.  Within minutes of opening, store displays are rifled through and torn beyond all recognition, children are running everywhere, checkout lines wind into the aisle-ways, and people are urinating in the changing room.  I'm not even kidding with that last bit, my wife worked for GW for two years and this happens more than any civilized human being should expect.

This Sunday afternoon was no exception, although to my knowledge, the only thing pissy was the mood of my fellow, close-quartered patrons.  For instance, above you can see what was left of the toy racks, which had become some unsupervised kid's unofficial playroom.  No matter, I still pressed on, as I pull of undiscovered treasures was too great to resist.

What a minute - enhance that image!  I spy trading cards among that mess of Fisher Price, Hot Wheels, and carnage:

Not only were they trading cards, they were Sports Illustrated for Kids oddballs from the 1990's.  I'd hit paydirt!  Just underneath them was a full, unopened pack of cards, as well; but, that foil envelope was for Orange County Choppers or some other such nonsense that holds no appeal to me.  Sporting-based oddballs, however, that's much more my speed!

Speaking of speed, that pile (headed by NFL Hall of Famer, Tony Dorsett) even included a new runner for my burgeoning collection of track & field/cross country/marathon runners; the multi-sport SI for Kids panels are a constant source for these rarely shown on cardboard athletes.

Edwin Moses took home gold medals in the 400 meter hurdles at the 1976 and 1984 Olympics and set the world record in the event four times throughout his career.  Speaking as someone who still thanks the heavens for cancelling the one meet I was scheduled to hurdle, that's incredibly impressive!  Along with Mr. Moses, we have Mike Schmidt, a man who I'm sure requires no introduction on this (mostly) baseball blog.

According to my research, before they ended up in the Orland Park Goodwill disaster zone, these cards were included in perforated panels in a 1997 edition of SI for Kids.  Unlike their normal in-magazine premiums, these "Legends" cards are over-sized with dimensions similar to that of you average police set.  That is about all I could dig up on these bad boys; I do not know what specific issue they were included with, who else was part of this set, or what dictated their choice of sporting legends.

Throwing me for another curve was this extremely similar, collation of  "Leader" cards included in the stack.   Featuring a green border instead of the muted grey found on their brethren, these pasteboards are otherwise identical in design and dimension and highlight athletes who hold the all-time lead in significant statistical categories.  For instance, Rickey Henderson makes the checklist for his all-time stolen base title, while "Hammerin' Hank" was still history's home run king at the time of publication in 1997.

Sidenote - nice touch by SI to actually use an image from Aaron's record-breaking blast.

Also found in the stack was my favorite card of the bunch, which kicked off this post.  Here's another look at the then all-time saves king, Lee Smith.  Even though he's shown with the Cardinals here (and was an Expo when this went to press), he's shown at beautiful Wrigley Field and the emerald borders of the card mesh perfectly with the lush, ivy-covered walls of the Friendly Confines.  Plus, any new card I can add of the former Cubs closer and should-be Hall of Famer is a win in my book.

As you can see in the scans, much like the state of the Goodwill store space itself, these cards were a little bit worse for ware.  There's significant paper loss, probably from the initial separation of the panel(s) by an eager child of the 90's.  Furthermore, since they were found loose and unprotected on the chaotic store shelves, the edges and the corners are anything but crisp.  Even still, having never even seen these oddities before, there was no way that I would be leaving them behind.  So, despite the goal of the day being to rid ourselves of as much junk as possible, I couldn't help but bring a little bit more into our home.  I'm sure my wife was thrilled.

Does anyone have any further information about these "Legends" and "Leaders?"  Were they part of the same issue of SI for Kids or separate?  Why are they bigger than your standard issue SI4K card?  Was there a special reason that this issue or issues included cards of leaders and legends rather than their typical smattering of current athletes across sports?  If you know the answers to any of these questions, please feel free to enlighten me in the comment section below!

Also, is anyone else's local Goodwill anarchistic on the weekend, or is that just out here?  I feel lucky to have gotten out of there in one piece!

The Great Garage Sale Discovery

For the first time in weeks - perhaps since the beginning of 2018 - the wife and I had ourselves a free weekend.  No family get-togethers, no friendly shindigs, no extra work commitments, no surprise apartment fumigation (yes, that's happened this year)... nothing, glorious nothing.  With such a wide open itinerary, naturally, we took advantage of this unfamiliar situation and enjoyed doing absolutely nothing.  I must say, it was quite nice not trying to hurriedly pack up our Kia or frantically shop for a last minute birthday gift, for once.

During this downtime, I was able to sit down at the coffee table, grab a cool beverage, and flip through my Cubs All-Time Roster Collection binder for the first time in months.  It's my favorite cardboard endeavor, the linchpin of this entire blog; however, the behemoth requires a significant amount of free time to page through.  Thus, I was kind of excited to dust off the cover of my marquee, six-inch three-ring.

While idly flipping through these Ultra-Pro pages, I noticed something about this collection that hadn't registered with me in a long time and had gone pretty much entirely undiscussed here on Wrigley Roster Jenga.  This story involves one of my greatest garage sale finds of all-time, an oddball set of trading cards, and flashback to more than a decade ago:

Sometime in the middle part of the previous decade, I was a broke teenager, sans job, who was just launching his CATRC project - the 2003 "Why Not Us?" Cubs had recently re-ignited my passion for our nation's pastime and it's trading cards.  While I did pop into my LCS on occasion, it was during these cash-strapped days that I began mining thrift shops, flea markets, and garage sales for good deals on previously discarded cardboard.

Unsurprisingly, with my previous collecting period having occurred during the tail end of the overproduction era, my pasteboard holdings focused heavily on the 80's and 90's, while new acquisitions began to fill in gaps with the current club.  Vintage cards from the 60's and 70's were well out of my minuscule price range and were never seen outside of the sliding-glass display cabinets of the card shop and players from before that might as well have been ancient relics from Mesopotamia.  In short, nearly three-quarters of the history of my favorite franchise was almost non-existent in my then much smaller binder.

That is, until one glorious Saturday morning.

As I've mentioned on this blog before, my favorite local tradition is our village's annual Garage Sale Day, where residents are invited to lay their wares out for sale in their driveway or lawn without need of a permit.  Since the days of my chasing Beanie Babies in the 90's, I've never missed this Saturday morning festivity and, honestly, it's one of my favorite days of the entire year.  You just never know what you're going to find... maybe there'll be a giant Red Bull cooler, or a super cheap Keith Magnuson autograph,  or a long sought after LP... it's a community-wide treasure hunt!  During one such quest, circa 2005, I happened upon the box you see above.

I might not remember the exact year, but it was at a house on Lawndale Avenue that, hidden among the strewn about junk, I happened upon a complete, reprinted box set of the 1951 Bowman checklist.  I couldn't grab that sucker off of the folding table fast enough.

Back in the late-80's, a company known as Card Collectors Company jumped into the burgeoning baseball card market by reproducing iconic sets of decades previous.  Colloquially referred to as CCC for short, the group recreated highly-priced and treasured tobacco/bubblegum cards for collectors on a budget, including '51 Bowman in 1988.  Fast forward a little bit to 2005-ish and I was a collector on an extremely tight budget, whose blossoming collection of all-time Cubs contained a massive vintage blackhole.  In short, this set was basically meant for me!

If I recall correctly, this bad boy only set me back about five dollars, as well; the seller appeared to have once been a big investor in the trading card boom and was looking to rid himself of the clutter.  Although created as a cheap alternative to real, super vintage, these reprint sets still often change hands for upwards of thirty bucks and are rarely broken up into affordable singles.  Thus, this was an absolute steal of a deal on product already designed for those with light wallets.

Thankfully, this discovery came near the end of the garage sale tour because I recall fighting the urge to immediately dig into the contents of the box.  Surely it was going to be a significant boon to my burgeoning Cubs All-Time Roster Collection.

Not only were my lofty expectations met, they were far exceeded!  From just one transaction that cost me nothing more than a meager Abraham Lincoln banknote, I added what had to be nearly fifty new names to my All-Time Roster tome.  In just one purchase, the decade of Elvis Presley and Sputnik went from nearly completely absent to more than halfway complete.  I don't have any recorded statistics to back this claim up; but, this has to have been the greatest one-time addition to my CATRC throughout it's existence.

This massive boost was aided by not only the Cubs team set - as showcased by Bill Serena, Wayne Terwilliger, and all those shown previously - but also by Cubs of a different color.  By that, I mean future/former Cubs shown in other uniforms.

After all, since day one of this project, I've accepted such cards as placeholders until a properly-attired card can be acquired.  Furthermore, in many cases, several such players never received a genuine Cubs card or only super duper rare regional issues; so, in the interest of completion, I welcome the colors of other clubs to this very day.

During the ensuing decade and a half, many of these cards have since been upgraded in my collection by actual vintage or by cards printed in the more traditional, standard size.  I must admit, though I would never have turned down this find, I do have an inherent bias against mini cards, be it modern Allen & Ginter or authentic Bowman dimensions.  Even still, a hefty amount of these CCC reprints still rest comfortably in my CATRC accumulation, including all of the cards featured in this post.

 

All of these years later, a total of 18 Card Collectors Company recreations are still included in my marquee collection.  Even if that total represented my initial acquisition, that would still divide out to just over 25-cents per card, an investment which I would easily pull the trigger on right now.

Sadly, this isn't an entirely happy story.  While I have no qualms about breaking up the set, I no longer have the fancy-pantsy box that originally stored the brick of cardboard (I lifted that image from Ebay, in all honesty).  As a matter of fact, I no longer have ANY of the cards which lacked a connection to the North Side franchise.  After initially sorting through my Garage Sale Day bounty, in a short-sighted move  I re-packaged all of the non-Cubs into that box and immediately tossed them in the trash.  Hell, I didn't even use the damn recycling bin.  All of that glorious cardboard, wasted to the great landfill of time.

What a nitwit!  At the very least, they would have been fun to include in various trade packages; of course, this was well before I had any communication whatsoever with other collectors. 

Oh well, how typical of your average American teenager.  At least I was able to hang onto to all of the rest of these oddballs!

All in all, I think I can say, unequivocally, that this box of 1988 CCC '51 Bowman reprints was my greatest Garage Sale Day find of all-time.  This five-dollar purchase from 2005 (or thereabouts) continues to provide a significant contribution to my Cubs All-Time Roster Collection here in 2018.  With that in mind, I know I can't be the only cardboard collector on the blogosphere who has an unbridled love for garage sales.  So, I have to ask, what is the best secondhand discovery that you've ever come across at such an event?  Please feel free to share in the comment section below.

In the meantime, my lazy weekend has officially run out - it's now Monday morning and it's time for work.  And if that wasn't joyous enough, we have a coating of snow to go with the beginning of the work week dread.  Thank goodness I was able to unwind with my big ol' binder this weekend!

National Scrabble Day

I've always been a big fan of board games. Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, Battleship, checkers... you name it, I'll play it. Maybe it's because I enjoy the strategy. Maybe it's because the stimuli keeps my overactive imagination occupied. Maybe it's because I relish the opportunity to gather round a table with family and friends for an evening of enjoyment. Heck, perhaps it's all of the above reasons. However, one thing is for certain - I will never get bored with board games.

One particular game that holds a special place in my heart is Scrabble. When my sister was a colicky infant - up all night and crying uncontrollably - my father, brother, and I would sit on the living room floor and test our vocabularies for hours while dad simultaneously rocked the baby. I mean, it was too loud to sleep and we needed something to distract our minds from the raucous sobbing. This little bit of family bonding meant a great deal to me and I'm pretty sure I can thank my baby sister for my school district spelling bee championship in seventh grade.

The reason I bring this all up is that, apparently, today is National Scrabble Day. The Hasbro trademarked creation has been around since 1948 and is sold in 121 countries with 29 different language versions. Why we have a national holiday to honor the crossword-based game is beyond me, but I'll sure as heck take any excuse to bust out the board after dinner tonight.

But, what does any of this have to do with baseball cards? This is a baseball card blog, right?

    =  29

Longtime Cubs hurler and current Giants disabled list resident, Jeff Samardzija, is famous for his tremendously difficult to spell surname.  Lord knows I can never confidently press "publish" on a post which makes mention of the Notre Dame product without cross-checking Baseball Reference.  I can only imagine what fits he put the editors at the Chicago Tribune and Sun Times through.  With that, Jeff - while better known as "Shark" - was often nicknamed as "Spellcheck" or "Scrabble," in reference to the random jumble of letters that is his last name.

Out of curiosity, I decided to see just how many points "Samaradzija" would earn in the game of Scrabble.  Of course, since it's a proper name, it would not be a legal play; but, in theory...

With the coveted "Z" and "J" tiles generating most of the oomph, the name generates twenty-nine points.  That's not bad at all; although, if one were to play the names of former Cubs players, Samardzija would not be the highest earner.

  =  29

Another former Cubs moundsman, Fred Baczewski (9 games, 1953), actually ties the "Shark" with twenty-nine tallies and with less letters, to boot.  Another "Z" is found, but the wealth is spread out a lot more here, with three, four and five-point tiles making appearances.

Now, I couldn't stop going down the road at this point - I had to figure out which player in Cubs history would have the most valuable last name in the game of Scrabble.  In the franchise's loooooong history, lords knows that they have had some mouthfuls on their active roster.

  =  13

  =  13

Here's another pair of hurlers whose family names have twisted the tongues of Cubs fans in the past.  Unfortunately for them, neither Pisciotta nor Tiefenauer combine for much in the way of scoring.  Thirteen is definitely not an embarrassing score for a turn in Scrabble, though it's hardly anything to write home about...

...much like the Cubs tenures of journeyman Bobby Tiefenauer (6.08 ERA in 13.1 innings for 1968).

= 21

Hargesheimer has the second longest last name in Cubs history; but, unlike the three men tied ahead of him, it's much more difficult for the human mind to figure out how these syllables form a pronounceable word. His lone season in the Windy City came in 1983, one year after Harry Caray shifted from the South Side to the North Side... someone please tell me that video exists of everyone's favorite drunkard struggling to pronounce this mish-mash!

For all his trouble, though, all Mr. Caray would earn from his struggle would be twenty-one points.  Good, but not great, and still behind a handful of other Cubs.

 = 26

  =  26

Tied for third most in my far-from-comprehensive research are yet another pitcher and, finally, a position player.  Apparently, those that man the mound are more naturally inclined to have peculiar names; is it a competitive advantage in distracting hitters?

Joe Schaffernoth might get points through the shear amount of letters on his name tag; however, sometimes less is more.  It's tough to beat Matt Szczur (pronounced "Caesar," somehow) and his two "Z's"... especially since in the real game you only get one such tile.  We'll suspend that disqualification though, since proper nouns aren't legal plays anyway.

  =  28

The hat-less Vic Roznovsky edges out Szczur and Schaffernoth by two tallies, on the strength of yet another "Z" and some four and five-point letters  This ranks him second on the list of best Cubs Scrabble names of all-time... or at least of my half an hour of semi-distracted research.  Speaking of which, Topps might be trying to tell me that this is an Orioles card, but they can't distract me from the fact that Vic is clearly wearing a Cubs uniform in this photograph; the blue and red trim on his color give it away.

Alright, it's all come down to this, which Cub has the highest scoring Scrabble name?  Drumroll please:

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The all-time, Scrabble king is Zizzer-Zazzer-Zastryzny - another two-Z technicality.  How appropriate that this quirky title should fall upon a lefty reliever?

With that, we've reached the end of my little exercise, inspired by National Scrabble Day.  Out of curiosity, what names from your favorite franchise's history would be best to drop on the game board?  Am I the only person who's brain is wired like this?  Will my wife kill me if I try to play "Roznovsky" in our game tonight?  So many questions begging to be answered!

Happy National Scrabble Day, everybody.