Card Show, post 2: Gary Carter and TCMA

I'm back from Boca Raton, Florida, after attending a meeting of the American Bar Association Forum on Construction Law. That's what I do for a living, by the way -- I am a construction lawyer with a focus on litigation.  I have been an attorney for nearly 18 years now, and on most days I am happy that I followed my dream from high school and went to law school.

Just like all professions and careers, though, there are days when it's not very much fun. Thankfully, though, those days have been fewer and further between in recent times.

Being in Palm Beach County again after about a decade away reminded me of a few things -- my past jobs and cases in that county, for one thing.  The other is that Palm Beach Gardens, which is located a little over 35 miles north of Boca, is the final resting place of my favorite catcher as a kid: Gary Edmund Carter.

With my blog's focus on the Brewers and Milwaukee Braves, my childhood hero sometimes gets lost in the shuffle here.  To be fair, as a child, I would not have considered myself a Brewers collector or a Yount collector or a Molitor collector.  Yes, I liked those guys a lot, sought out their autographs, and collected their cards.  But, the one player I collected heavily as a kid was Gary Carter.

Every so often at my local card show, I find a few Gary Carter cards that have not yet made their way into my collection.  This time around, there were just three of them:

All of these cards came out of a quarter-card box.  The first was this 1988 Fleer "Tried & True Sluggers" card.  Those powder-blue away jerseys -- like Schmidt's jersey -- were nearly ubiquitous in the 1980s.  Off the top of my head, I think something like half the teams in baseball wore those.  I think Carter is wearing his away jersey as well, which leads me to believe that this might have been an All-Star Game photo from the 1987 game at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum.  
  

Am I the only one who sees these Topps Tribute cards rolling out the same photos as we've seen dozens of times before and starts humming Tenacious D?

"This is the greatest and best card in the world...Tribute."

But this is not the Greatest card in the world, no.  This is just a tribute.

The final Carter card I found in the quarter box was this "Legends of New York" from Upper Deck.  Yet another strange word association game gets played in my head with this set:

Perhaps the most depressing and yet best Christmas song ever.  If you ask someone from the UK, they will tell you that it is definitely the best Christmas song ever.  Shane MacGowan's typical growl with the late Kirsty MacColl's upbeat voice slagging him off is tough to top for a contemporary Christmas song.  My favorite back and forth?

MacGowan: "I could have been someone."
MacColl: "Well so could anyone!"

Makes me feel Christmasy all over just hearing that.

Okay, on to the remainder of today's post.  Back a few months ago, I got a start on the cards that TCMA put out in the late 1970s celebrating the lesser lights of 1960s baseball -- and a few brighter lights too.  This time, I loaded up at Frank Moiger's table with a bunch more of those Braves.  Someday soon, I'll figure out if I need more of them.  

Here are those TCMAs:

For as much as I like the TCMA cards, they just don't have me waxing lyrical.  The closest thing to a music vibe I get is the horribly overplayed, overwrought, and overdone Village People saw "YMCA", and I won't be putting that song up here today.  

This is close, though:

But man, Oscar's gotten soft these days.  

Thanks for reading, y'all -- vintage comes next!