From the Archives

This is a strange strip of cards, though I can recall exactly where I got it. Growing up in Milwaukee in the 1980s, there was a fairly regular baseball card show that took place on the north side of town on 27th Street/Highway 41.  I don't recall where exactly the show was located, but I remember scouring the old Milwaukee Sentinel every morning looking for show announcements.

As the baseball card boom hit in the late 1980s, this show started bringing in former players to sign autographs for a couple of hours -- sometimes free, sometimes for a small $5 or $10 fee.  At one of these shows, the promoter brought back former Brewer pitcher Bill Castro to sign autographs.

At the time, I don't know if Castro was in baseball or if he was trying to get back into baseball.  He ended up getting hired by the Brewers in 1992 as bullpen coach when Phil Garner was hired as manager, and stuck as bullpen coach and, eventually, as pitching coach through August of 2009 -- when he was fired and replaced by Chris Bosio.

Strangely, I recall that the promoters of the card show had a stack of about 100 or 200 of the three-card strips of 1978 Topps cards shown above.  I don't know where they got them, why they got them, or why they felt the need to trim it so closely on the right side of the card but not on the left side of the card.  It was all around strange.  But, as a result, I think this might be the only Bill Castro autograph I got that day because time was short for Castro or something like that.

At least it shows two long-time Brewers on the card.