High 5 Decals and more silk than China (,TX)

      In 1992,  Original Products, Inc., issued several sets of static decals featuring random Major League superstars and team sets.  You can find more information about the set over at Rickey Henderson Collectibles.  I didn't even know what these were until a few years ago, but I've finally managed to snag the Winfield, in a lot of random oddballs, after a couple of years of not wanting to pay $12 for the whole California Angels set.

      Unfortunately, my penny pinching resulted in getting a decal with no backing.  Typically these cards were issued in panels of 6 decals on a backing of a larger photo.  To get the individual decals, backing intact, one would have to cut the backing apart, which is exactly what I did for the Williams and Henderson.  I can only guess someone wanted to keep the backing photo from the Angels set, so I just paired the Winfield up with a 2.5"x3.5" piece of copy paper to give it something for the light to reflect off of and act as a non-stick surface so I could fit it into the appropriate pocket in my Winfield album.  Sans backing, it is very difficult to get a static decal to NOT stick to a plastic sheet.  BUT, I got it and can knock one more item off the old Winfield Want List!
      Also included in this lot, along with a King-B disc, a couple of 1988 & 89 Starting Lineup cards, a badly miscut 1990 All-American card, a 1981 Permagraphics and a 1992 Fire Safety Blue Jays card were these beauties:

      I'd seen a couple of these before, and I know there was a set of Susan Rini cards for the Yankees of the 60s, but I'd not seen any individual silk cachet cards for Big Dave before. I was ecstatic to pick up this lot for less than $8 shipped and get one item I needed and two I'd never seen before. And these are, indeed, printed on silk, they're not just cardboard printed photos. If the pictures look familiar....

      So it looks like maybe I have an other project on my hands, compiling a checklist of these Z Silk promo card thingies. Have either of you that read this blog ever seen these before for any other players?

"Tickets...please." (Player photos on game tickets)

      One of the lesser known rarities that the middling player collector must pursue is the mostly uncatalogued season ticket depicting the player with whom the collector is obsessed.  While a few of these have made their way into the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards, most of them are still just floating out there, sitting in junk drawers, shoe boxes or the pockets of coats and jackets sitting in the back of closets.  The lucky stubs turn up on eBay and end up in the collection of some loving family.

       Yeah.  Even minor league teams issued season tickets featuring players.  Good luck in the hunt!

1987 ProCards Phoenix Firebirds #79 Matt Williams

"What? Yeah, sure, I'm Matt Williams. Just take the picture!"

Such was the scene shortly before the REAL Matthew Derrick Williams came storming onto the field to dive, catch the impostor bare-handed by the neck and fire him clear across the infield into the visitors dugout.

Perhaps a somewhat ignominious starting point for my Matt Williams collection, but the only one which demands that I ask, "Who is this knucklehead posing as he who would be come the best hot corner specialist in the National League for all of the 1990s?"

Said chowderhead does not appear on any other cards in the 1987 Firebirds set, nor do I see his mug in the 1988 CMC Firebirds set. So who is he? The bat boy? Anyone? Bueller?

---UPDATE---

The player in the photo Phil Ouellette, who oddly did not actually have a card of his own in 1987.

Winnie, Tuffy & the Dann

     I didn't really think I had anything to bother posting in a blog until today.  Since I've basically been blogging via my player collection posts on The Bench & SportsCardForum anyway, I've decided it's time to make it more cohesive and drag it all into one place.  No guarantees on timeliness, but I'm planning to make one post for every single card in my player collections.  So over the next 50 years, you can read my rantings, ravings and 'rithmetics about Dave Winfield, Matt Williams, Hensley "Bam Bam" Meulens, Karl "Tuffy" Rhodes, Dave Henderson, Bernardo Brito, Roberto Kelly, Dann Howitt and Steve Howard.

     Winfield has been my favorite player since about 1986, when I started collecting baseball cards.

     Matt Williams impressed me a lot over the course of the 1989 season, so after sending a few cards to him with a letter, begging for autographs (I'll get to that in its own post) I started hoarding cards of him.

     In 1988, I'd started collecting Roberto Kelly & Jay Buhner, hoping they'd someday be huge stars for the Yankees.  Naturally the Yankees promptly unloaded Buhner for some third string pitchers.  Kelly at least went on to be an All Star, and one of the very few bright spots of the early 1989-1992 stretch for the team.  I collected Buhner for a couple more years, but he didn't amount to much by 1991 (hey, who knew?), so I pretty much gave up on him in any serious capacity.

     Hensley Meulens was my only attempt at prospect speculation.  Naturally, it was only because he was a Yankee, not that my 7th grade mind had ever picked up a copy of Baseball America or knew anything whatsoever about who was doing what in the minors (outside of Huntsville, anyway).  But he was a Yankee, and no one else seemed to even notice him in the set.  As a result, by the end of 1990, I had about 40 copies of his 1989 Donruss card (all the other collectors at school just gave them to me, not even bothing to trade).  For some reason, I kept up with him for the next few years until I exited high school and eventually stopped collecting around 1994-96.

     Dave Henderson I collect because he always looked like he was having so much fun out there.  As I post his cards here, just see how many teeth he always showed!

     Bernardo Brito was one of those sad anomalies of the minor leagues.  Stuck in the farm systems of teams who had no need for an extra power-hitting outfielder; first for Cleveland who had Joe Carter, Mell Hall & Brett Butler ahead of him, along with Andre Thornton at DH and then Minnesota where he wasn't going to crack the lineup already containing Dan Gladden, Tom Brunansky, Shane Mack and that Kirby guy.  One would think he would have made a better DH than Carmelo Castillo or Gene Larkin, but one isn't being paid to think.

     Dann Howitt & Steve Howard.  Well, I got to watch them play in
Huntsville (Howitt even hit a home run in either end of a double header I went to) and while both were highly touted at some point, neither measured up to their respective hype.

     And Tuffy.  While chasing down Japanese cards of Brito & Meulens, it was inevitable that I'd run into Tuffy.  The more I read about him, the more I looked at his stats, the more I read of his "legend" from one opening day, the more interested I became.  From being a sort of Kenny Lofton Light to a sort of Japanese Ryan Howard somewhere between 1990-2000.  Now he's a power hitting legend with one or two seasons left in the tank in Orix.