The 30-Day Baseball Card Challenge: Day #12

Tony, the wonderful writer of the “Off Hiatus Baseball” blog, started a fun activity based off the “30-Day Music Challenge” that Twitter users were taking. The list of challenges looks like this:

Today, we’ll continue with Challenge #12: One of your favorite cards from the 1980’s.

I figured this would be a fun topic when I got to it. Like many of us, the 1980's hit the wheelhouse of my collecting. It was when i really started to make card collecting something more than just buying a pack or two a year. They started being a pack or two a trip. I knew that two 35 cent packs totaled 70 cents, we did it so often. I started collecting sets. I started selling doubles to my local card shop. I bought pages. I traded with friends. I became a collector.

Which is why I was a little surprised I picked a card from earlier in the decade. 

But, this card reminds me not only of my time as a card collector, but as a Red Sox fan. I may have mentioned before, i just missed the Yastrzemski era. By the time I was actually watching games, he was "that old looking guy" on the team. I knew nothing of the Impossible Dream. I knew nothing of the 3000 hits, or games. He was the old guy who had that retirement ceremony when he ran around the field.

So this card always stuck out to me. Here was a card celebrating that old guy. Along with a couple other old guys. It was a card that harkened back to days long gone. Back when people knew who these guys were.

Of course, I know who Carl Yastrzemski is today. (He's the old guy who keeps showing up at ceremonies in Fenway and won't wear a hat.) I know all about the 1967 team. I know about his Hall of Fame career. I even have a nice little collection of his cards.

So it's nice to be reminded of a time when I didn't.

When he was just another old guy on that card.