1987 Smokey Bear 38th Annual Fresno Hot Stove League Dinner

 

     Returning to the "I've never heard of that set" department, I present this set from 1987, apparently sponsored by the U.S. Forest Service and presumably handed out at the 38th Annual Fresno Hot Stove League Dinner.  The Fresno Hot Stove League Dinner, now officially the Hot Stove Gala, began in 1948, started by a gentleman by the name of Al Radka, as a fundraiser for local charities.  1990 was the first interruption after 41 years, when the function was cancelled on account of the expense of bringing in big name players (who had donated their time in years past).

     In 2003, the Fresno Grizzlies brought it back and established the Al Radka Award to bestowe on individuals who have made important contributions to local Fresno sports.  The 55th Annual event was just held this past February, with Tony DeFrancesco, manager of the 2015 Triple-A National Champion Fresno Grizzlies as the guest speaker.

     These cards are 4"x 6", feature black and white photos and fire prevention tips (or cheesy slogans) on the back in the form of cartoons.  The design is very similar to the 1987 Fire Prevention Team set which featured a much more prominent line-up of contemporary All-Stars.  For this set, it appears some, if not all, of the photos have been recycled from other cards or publicity photos.  The Rudy May photo was clearly copied from the 1983 Yankees Photo Album.

     The set is almost entirely comprised of players from West Coast teams or those simply from the West Coast, namely Rex Hudler, who wouldn't play in California until joining the Angels in 1994, but had been a local Fresno high school standout and Ron Robinson, who would never play on the West Coast, but was drafted out of Woodlake High School in Woodlake, California (about an hour southeast of Fresno).  This set caught my eye because it included a previously unknown (to me) card of Dave Henderson.  While Hendu is shown in a Boston cap, at the time of the Dinner, he had already been traded from Boston to San Francisco, granted free agency, and signed by Oakland.

     As of this posting, copies of the set are still available on eBay.  The checklist is currently assumed to be complete.  Scans of all cards are available at the Trading Card Database.

Smokey Bear

Mike Aldrete

Chris Codiroli

Dave Henderson

Rick Honeycutt

Rex Hudler

Reggie Jackson

Wally Joyner

Bill Krueger

Don Larsen

Rudy May

Bob Melvin

Tom Niedenfuer

Ron Robinson

Steve Sax

Dave Stewart

Franklin Stubbs

Jim Wohlford

Mother's Cookies Dave Henderson (1984 - 1993)

In Memoriam
David Lee Henderson

1958-2015

1984 Mother's Cookies Seattle Mariners #3

  

1985 Mother's Cookies Seattle Mariners #4

  

1986 Mother's Cookies Seattle Mariners #4

  

1988 Mother's Cookies Oakland Athletcs #14

  

1989 Mother's Cookies Oakland Athletics #13

 

1990 Mother's Cookies Oakland Athletics #18

  

1991 Mother's Cookies Oakland Athletics #18

  

1992 Mother's Cookies Oakland Athletics #18

  

1993 Mother's Cookies Oakland Athletics #9

Thank you, Hendu, for all the smiles!

2015 Seattle Mariners 5" x 8" Photo Cards

Behold the latest addition to my Hendu collection!

     The Mariners have been pretty good about producing these over-sized photos for their yearly fanfest events, much like the Orioles, Rangers and Astros still do.  And as most teams do, the checklist is a mixture of current and former players and announcers, which is great for collectors of players who aren't getting any love from the big trading card companies.  This is the only way I ever see new cards of Dave Henderson, Roberto Kelly and Hensley Meulens, so I'm grateful.  I'd been watching this one for while, hoping the price would drop, but finally just snagged it to be done with the waiting.  As is often the case, it is very difficult to find clean copies of these cards without autographs.

     Below are the cards I have seen cross eBay this year, organized by uniform number where available.  This list almost matches the 2015 Mariners FanFest autograh appearance lineup exactly, so it is possible only individuals who were scheduled to appear had cards produced.

10 Dave Valle
16 Austin Jackson
32 Taijuan Walker
33 J.A. Happ
42 Dave Henderson
54 Tom Wilhelmsen
65 James Paxton
NNO John Hicks
NNO Alex Jackson
NNO Patrick Kivlehan
NNO DJ Peterson
NNO Stefan Romero
NNO Dave Sims (broadcaster)
NNO Carson Smith
NNO Chris Taylor

    Here is the list of those scheduled to appear back on 24 & 25 January 2015 for FanFest:

Current Stars
Nelson Cruz
Charlie Furbush
J.A. Happ
Austin Jackson
James Paxton
Fernando Rodney
Taijuan Walker
Tom Wilhelmson
Mike Zunino

Mariners Legends
Jay Buhner
Julio Cruz
Dave Henderson
Dave Valle
Dan Wilson
Mariner Moose

Future Stars
John Hicks
Alex Jackson
Patrick Kivlehan
D.J. Peterson

Other Special Guests
Lloyd McClendon
Jack Zduriencik

Mariners Broadcasters
Mike Blowers
Aaron Goldsmith
Rick Rizzs
Dave Sims

The following cards are similar in design, but lack the position at the bottom of the card, there is just a thin blue stripe.  I'm not sure of these are also 2015 issues.

Aaron Goldsmith (broadcaster)
James Jones
Dominic Leone

Shut up and deal! Playing cards and baseball

     Baseball and gambling. Two things that go together like, well, baseball and gambling. For nearly as along as there has been baseball, there has been gambling on baseball. And in an effort to combine the two in a more collector friendly way, for decades there have been baseball-themed decks of playing cards. Most teams have offered their own souvenir decks of cards adorned with the team emblem for awhile, but fortunately for the card collectors among us there have been several sets depicting actual players.

     Sadly, there was never a Columbus Clippers set of playing cards during Hensley Meulens three years with the club, but fortunately for me (and by proxy, for you) between Dave Winfield and Dave Henderson I have several to show off (Roberto Kelly has a couple, but I've not managed to pick them up yet). From 1990-1995, the U.S. Playing Card Company issued several sets of stars, rookies and teams (always with the disclaimer "Major League Baseball and Major League Baseball Players Association do not approve of any form of gambling." tacked under the top flap of the box), and also several sets for specific teams.

    I managed to snag some sets from 1990-1994 as they were released.  Not sure why I missed the 1991 set.

    In 1991, Dave Henderson made the starting lineup of the American League All-Star team, and that rated him inclusion in the U.S. Playing Card Co's 1991 All-Stars set:

    There were also two variations of this set. The first was a set with a silver edge, which doesn't really show up in a flat scan, but if you had a stack of them, the edge of the stack would be silver instead of white. The other variation was sold in Canada under the International Playing Card Co. brand. Both of those versions typically command about 2x-5x what the standard set goes for.  I have the silver version, I'm still hunting the International version.

    The U.S. Playing Card Co. continued the trend in 1992, issuing another All-Stars set, very similar to the previous years as represented by the New York Yankees' Roberto Kelly:

    In 1995, under their Bicycle brand, the U.S. Playing Card Co. issued a set for the Toronto Blue Jays featuring players from the previous 10 years. Somewhat surprising for a set covering that 10 year span is the absence of cards for Dave Stieb, Lloyd Moseby and George Bell considering the inclusion of Cecil Fielder and Fred McGriff and multiple cards of players from their 1992 & 1993 World Champion rosters.  However, that set included not just one, but two different cards of Dave Winfield.

    Fast forward to 2005, and a company called Parody Productions began producing "Hero" sets.  Now known as Hero Decks (you can see their site at HeroDecks.com), they have issued sets for multiple teams across several sports and all manner of other novelty sets covering different genres (military heroes, politics, entertainers, etc).  In 2005, one of their first sets was a Heroes of New York set featuring the best of the Yankees lineups from the team's history.  Dave Winfield scored a spot as the 7 of Hearts for one of the greats of their 1980s teams.

   The selection of Hero Decks was expanded greatly in 2008, adding sets for Seattle, Chicago, Minnesota, Cleveland and others, and along with the new teams came a new set for the Yankees.  Winfield was still seated in the 7 of Hearts slot and the set had been updated a bit to include more career details for each player and featured a new pinstripe design on the back.

    And as the Hero Decks sets were arranged in a sort of best of a certain decade format, Hendu was represented in the Seattle set, having been their starting center fielder for a good chunk of the 1980s.

1982 Topps Seattle Mariners (Before They Were) Future Stars

      It would probably be no surprise to learn that players on the same team on a Future Stars card would be on the same team in the minor leagues.  What was slightly more surprising, however, was to find that I actually had all three players on their own cards from that very minor league team.  So here you have them...Before They Were (Future) Stars all playing for the Spokane Indians, then the AAA affiliate of the Seattle Mariners, featured here on their 1980 TCMA cards:

      Interesting how the region's teams clung to the Seattle Pilots team colors for so long....

1983 Fleer & Topps Dave Henderson...what no Donruss?

Not Hendu's 1983 Donruss card

     In 1982, Dave Henderson spent his first full season on a Major League roster, platooning in the outfield for the Seattle Mariners.  Yet despite playing in 104 games in 1982 (but a reasonably productive 104 games, hitting 14 home runs), he was somehow snubbed for a spot in the 1983 Donruss checklist.  Rick Sweet got a card and he only played in 88 games in 1982.  As did Gary Gray who played in 80 games.  Even Jim Essian, who only played in 48 games, got a card!  Al Chambers, who was a rookie in 1983, playing all of 1982 in AAA Salt Lake, actually got a card while the checklist architects at Donruss missed out on the greatness that was Dave Henderson's moustache.  

     There must have been one heck of a backlash from collectors for Donruss to so drastically cut production for the 1984 set.  I'm sure it had absolutely nothing to do with Donruss almost completely repeating their set design from 1982, or having printed far more cards than anyone was going to buy.  Yes, it had to have been fan reaction to the exclusion of Hendu.  So Dave Henderson's 1983 Donruss card is officially Missing In Action.

     Fleer, while not exactly taking the world by storm with their set design, saw fit to recognize Dave with a card.  And the inclusion of Hendu actually seems to have improved the photographic quality of the entire set, as gone were the blurry photos that plagued the 1982 set, to be replaced by the razor-sharp (by 1983 standards) photography of 1983 that gave us major league players in all their stubblacious glory.

     While not exactly blazing any trails, they were the first set of the 1980s to revive the player mugshots on the backs of their cards, something not seen since Topps last employed the feature in their 1971 set.

     Topps, having already made Dave the centerpiece to the Seattle Mariners Future Stars card in the 1982 set, not only made the obvious decision to include him in the 1983 set, they even included him in a photo using their newly discovered Sunlight Photographic Technology^TM, that allowed them to present players in something other than a cloudy, hazy, murky posed photo from spring training. (Just a slight digression here, but why, when 90% of photos from the 70s & 80s that were obviously taken before the season, in spring training camps in Florida....The Sunshine State, were they always apparently taken on overcast days or at dusk?  Players spent upwards of 8 hours in the sunshine!  Were the photographers all vampires?)

     Much like Fleer, Topps also resurrected the close-up portrait shot of every player, including it on the front of the card. In many cases this resulted in very redundant double close-up cards (see #46, Richard Dotson), but it resulted in one of the more popular sets of the 1980s.  Despite landing solidly in the checklists for Fleer and Topps, Dave didn't make it into either company's 1983 sticker sets, so these are the only two documented cards he had that year.

     Dave had a decent 1983 season, usually hitting in the #3 or #5 spot in the heart of the batting order.  He led Seattle in hits with 130 (hitting .269 on the season).  Much like this season, there were rarely any Mariners on base to be driven in, so his 24 doubles, 5 triples and 17 home runs only amounted to 55 runs batted in (good for 2nd on the team).  Dave held his own on a last place team lacking any real stars.

Dave Henderson 1981-82 Venezuelan Sticker & Hendu Want List

     As I mentioned in my previous post on Venezuelan stickers, I finally received my 1981-82 Dave Henderson. I held off on this one for awhile due to the price, but then finally came to the conclusion that if I didn't pick it up, I'd miss it forever. This is actually a different sticker/card than the one posted months ago as the former had some black staining along the bottom edge on the front and this one looks a little cleaner.
     I mentioned that these were odd to be considered stickers, or to be pasted into albums, as some sets had information on the back, like this one. And, as is apparent in the scan, this one was pasted into an album at some point. I just don't understand. But now I have one, so that's something.

     As rare as these are, I guess this wasn't Hendu's rarest piece as I've now seen two copies (from the same seller) in the past year. The cards I'm having the most trouble with are below in my comprehensive (to date) Dave Henderson want list:

1981-1984?

Seem there are at least two more Mariners postcards out there I need for the Hendu collection:


1983
 
MLB Transparency Slide A3120


1985
MLB Transparency Slide A3120


1989
1989 Collect the Stars Baseball Magnetables #65

1991
1991 A's S.F. Examiner #5

1993
1993 Topps/R&N China porcelain #473

2004
2004 UD Legends Timeless Teams Autographs Gold #243 /5
2004 UD Legends Timeless Teams Autographs Platinum #243 /1
2004 UD Legends Timeless Teams Bronze #243 /50
2004 UD Legends Timeless Teams Gold #243 /5

2013
2013 Leaf Memories 91 Buyback Red #232 /1

2014
2014 ITG Past Present Future Cut Signature #CHDHE
2014 Leaf Memories 92 Buyback Gold #232 /5
2014 Leaf Memories 92 Buyback Red #232 /1


1982 Seattle Mariners team poster
1990s Oakland Athletics 4"x6" black & white photo w/facsimile signature
2000-ish Oakland Athletics Saturn/AL Champs 4"x6" black & white photo

2000s Seattle Mariners GetWell Tour black & white photo


2010s Seattle Mariners photo card