War Has Been Declared!

Many of us have been following along in awe as two heavyweight traders in the blogosphere -- Jaybarkerfan and Bob Walk the Plank -- have been slugging it out in a manner not seen since 1892, when Harry Sharpe and Frank Crosby went head to head for 77 rounds for the Missouri Lightweight Championship...or, in more modern parlance, something akin to the Thrilla in Manila:

Back in January, these two started trading blows.  Matt got some body blows in early, and even scored a few points with the judges in March.  The tide turned when JBF brought out the big sticks...an autographed bat from a pitcher.  In the end, The Plank called time on the war and raised the white flag.

After the Great Scott -- likely clad in his Brian Boehringer jersey -- finally said "No Mas" like Roberto Duran against Sugar Ray Leonard, it seemed an obvious question for JBF to answer:

With a shout-out to former UGA football player Bill Goldberg, the question is: Who's Next?

JBF hinted at it on his final battle post:

My charges must rest for a while.  Where will we march next.  I will only take on a "VARSITY" squad.  Maybe the battle can be documented by CNN?  Perhaps it will be as easy as PEACHES and cream?  If Peabody can't tell where I'm going to march maybe SHERMAN can?

Now, let's be honest.  There are at least a few excellent bloggers here in Atlanta -- two that immediately spring to mind are Dayf the Cardboard Junkie and Matt from Heartbreaking Cards of Staggering Genius, who are the minds behind the excellent podcast The Trading Card Preservation Society -- so I was not making any presumptions.

Then, there was JBF's comment on the Bob Walk the Plank blog:

But, I had to ask in some way.  I started with an innocuous comment...and it escalated.

After that, I had to acknowledge what was coming:

But, if it is war for which I must prepare, then, at least, I can find a way to make it fun (from TheOatmeal.com).  My cat Gus will come in handy:

He will be the leader in this charge!

Failing that, I'll talk my wife into getting us another dog too:

And, the dog then becomes the secret weapon:

If all else fails, look for the hamsters to descend on Hazel Green:

More to the point, I believe there is a card show or two this weekend.  It's time to saddle up and head for battle stations!

War is declared.

Even by some punk-ish Euro-types.

I hope JBF likes oddballs.

Card Show 2, Post 2: Shall We Play A Game?

Kids of the 1980s -- or fans of 1980s movies -- should recognize that quote a mile away. Matthew Broderick made hacking cool in the 1983 movie WarGames. I mean, if a guy could get a girlfriend that looked like Ally Sheedy by being a hacker, wouldn't you try to play the game too?

That movie spurred me into asking for a Commodore 64 computer for Christmas, which only disappointed because we didn't have a modem for it.  Or an external drive. And it did not come with any internal drives, either.  It basically was a glorified keyboard that could be programmed with BASIC for as long as you could keep the power on it.  

But, that Commodore 64 and the Atari 2600 that followed soon after generated an interest in technology and games for me.  That interest has cooled somewhat -- I don't play video games online, for example...I mean, I don't need some 12-year-old kicking my ass at video games to tell me I shouldn't play video games any more.  

Yet, as a 15 to 16-year-old obsessed with games and with baseball, this game was one I played way too much:

I think I killed my game during the winter of 1988-1989 by playing it so often.  It was that and Nintendo that I was playing all the time.  I kept the cards that came with the game, of course, and never thought about the game again.

Then, I got back into card collecting and found out that, also in 1988, Parker Brothers leveraged this game from being just an All-Star game into being one that you could add all the teams in major league baseball to it.  See -- I didn't even think about that as a kid.  I didn't have the time or the money to chase after stuff like that.

Imagine my eyes, though, when on that 20 items for $20 table at the McDonough card show, I saw this box and one other:

The cartridge was inside, as were the cards -- in their original wrappers, even -- and in perfect condition even though the box was a little bit beat up.  Here are a few of the guys I got:

Yes, I'm leading off with Joey Cora.  Why?  Well, as a Vanderbilt student in the early 1990s, the only professional baseball player that had attended Vanderbilt playing at the time was none other than Joey Cora.  We jokingly called him Mr. Vanderbilt.  Sure, Scott Sanderson was still kicking around, but he was an established player.  Cora was just coming up.

Nowadays, Vanderbilt students are spoiled for options -- David Price, Pedro Alvarez, Mike Minor, Ryan Flaherty, Sonny Gray, Taylor Hill, Curt Casali, Nick Christiani, Antoan Richardson, Mike Baxter, and Drew VerHagen all played major league baseball last year.  If you're into legacies, Carl Yastrzemski's grandson Mike Yastrzemski was a 14th round pick in 2013 out of Vanderbilt.  If you're into prospecting, the 14th pick overall in the 2014 draft was a kid named Tyler Beede, whom the Giants selected.  

But we had Cora and Sanderson.  That. Was. It.

I am not at all clear as to why Kirk Gibson and Orel Hershiser are profile shots here, but they are.  Gibson's logoless helmet is pretty clearly a Tigers helmet by color, but he got shoved into the Dodgers set because, after all, he joined the Dodgers for 1988 and golfed that ball out off Dennis Eckersley in the World Series.

So, in other words, I have team sets now for the Cardinals, the Padres, the Dodgers, and the Giants that I can send to someone if they would like it.  I've already mailed out the Expos and the Cubs -- sorry guys.

While I had promised myself I would not drag out this show, I've got one more good post left in the scans folder from it.  So, I'll wrap up this second card show by showing off the remainder of my purchases either tomorrow or Wednesday.

Thanks for stopping by!