What Did I REALLY Have on My Walls as a Kid?

Earlier this week, I highlighted some posters I bought recently. I also mentioned the almost ridiculously sized "growth charts" that I almost certainly will never measure up to unless I have a sudden growth spurt at the age of 44. 

You might be surprised to learn, though, that I still have some of the posters that festooned my walls as a youth. They are not in the best of shape, unfortunately -- I suppose 30+ years of being folded up, put up and down on the walls, and otherwise moved around will do that to a piece of paper. 

Still, a couple of them are cool so I thought I'd share them.

To put you in the mood, let's go with some good music from the 1980s to add to the ambiance for these posters.

There we go. I started getting into Britpop in the 1980s. Well, musically, I started getting into everything in the 1980s -- heavy metal, Britpop, pop, dance, rap, classical, punk, jazz...literally everything. I had a debate partner who was way ahead of me in terms of being into all kinds of music. I hate to admit this, but I was always envious of how cool he was and how much he really didn't give a shit about what anyone thought about him. On top of everything else, he was very smart and very well-read. 

I found out later that he actually was a bit envious of me as well -- that I had such drive and ambition and focus about everything whereas he was always sort of floating and dabbling in practically everything. Human emotions and envy are strange, especially in our teens, in that we seem to pine for everything we don't have and focus on that instead of being grateful for all the things we do have.

As with many things in life, age and the passage of time have softened that envy. Sure, I can slip into envy when talking about baseball cards and how Topps issues 85 Yankees/Red Sox cards for every 1 Brewer card. It happens.

I don't remember when I got this poster. I think it actually was something that got handed out at an appearance at a Foot Locker or some other shoe store that Robin did. As you can see in this poster, Yount had a sponsorship deal with adidas for a while. It appears that this photo might have been taken during Game 4 of the 1982 World Series since that was a day game.

Game 5 was a day game as well, but it wasn't sunny that day. The lights may have made it appear brighter, but it was not sunny at all. I was there. Here's a video of that whole game. 

I love the intro mentioning the fact that the windchill for the game was 37 degrees. Of course, I don't remember that part at all.

Another band that 1980s Tony listened to a lot was Oingo Boingo. Danny Elfman fronted the band, but he became much more well-known for his writing scores for television and movies such as Chicago, Red Dragon, Good Will Hunting, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Men in Black. Also, he married to Bridget Fonda and his nephew Bodhi's wife Jenna Elfman is pretty well known too.

With hollywood royalty like that, we need baseball royalty. This poster was part of the Brewers-Pepsi Fan Club package in 1986 (I checked the schedule on the poster to make sure of that).

In looking back at that season, I'm actually amazed at how poor the Brewers' attendance was. Opening Day wasn't a sell-out -- about 3,000 short. The next game -- after a Wednesday cancellation -- drew just 5,823 people. Even a Saturday afternoon game on April 19 against the Yankees drew just 13,922. For the season, the team drew just 1,265,041 -- and that was better than both Minnesota and Seattle.

And finally:

I guess I have always appreciated music that was a little different than the usual pop music. Sure, this song hit the top 10 on the US Hot 100, peaking at #9, but it was definitely a weird song to hit the top of the charts. 1983 really was a simpler time in that respect, I suppose.

But if your house were burning, you'd want the firemen to show up, right?

Like the Yount poster sponsored by adidas, this poster of Rollie Fingers and Bruce Sutter was a Nike creation. I found a nice, new, perfect version of this on eBay this morning for the low, low price of just $139.95 and a mini version of it for $40. So, I really do wish I'd taken better care of this one.

This is especially true thanks to the scribble you might see next to Rollie:

Yup, the reason I have this is yet another of those "in-store" appearances at a shoe store by Rollie Fingers. This poster stayed on my wall as a kid for most of the 1980s before getting put away at some point. It stayed in storage, folded rather than rolled, for the better part of 25 years before I got it back when I got all the random stuff I saved as a kid shipped to me by my mom.

I'm thinking of framing this one and putting it back on the wall, but with so many other options, I'm thinking that I'll keep this one rolled up for now.