SI.com's "Things We Miss in Baseball."

I'm going to recruit you when oop, simon and I start flinging shit at each other again.

 

This probably marked the beginning of the trading card industry jumping the shark, but I loved these cards...it's the set that got me back into card collecting and into building sets. I also blame it for destroying my academic standing, b/c my grades went straight to shit after I started my hard-core collecting:

 

50 cents a pack? How about a nickel?

Oh, I'm old.

 

were those the topps minis? those were great.

 

I bought boxes of 1985 Topps for $9 when they came out. Paid something like 25 cents for 1977 Topps when I started. Stuck all the doubles in Velveeta boxes. Those were the days. Anyone else play Strat-o-Matic?

 

Jericho: Yup, Topps mini league leaders. Not to be confused with the Fleer minis, in which 120 cards from the real set were shrunk.

 

I remember when this was gonna put me through college.

 

Strat-o-Matic is great. i mostly played Statis Pro and i'm pretty sure my buddy still has a
notebook with some of the recaps of our games.

 

Dammit, Mattingly, shave those sideburns!

 

Anyone working at a newspaper shouldn't be complaining about baseball owners who aren't willing to shell out to finish outside of the playoffs. And it isn't like Steinbrenner or the Red Sox are losing money each year just so they can be competitive.
Baseball teams, like newspapers, are businesses first, last and foremost. Their product isn't victories or championships, but profits.

oh and one other thing I miss. Real regulation Louisville Sluggers given away at Bat Day. I got a green Reggie Jackson bat when I was a kid. Also got a black H&B Willie McCovey bat at a Giants bat day. Really cool.

 

BYH you might have taken that picture in my mom's living room. somewhere in her house
i still have a lot of those cards.

my buddy sent me this link the other day. like the old baseball digest quizzes i said
how the f did i miss some of those. i got 10 of 15 but mostly missed the non topps
ones. i am for the free market but i was pissed when fleer and donruss came out
because the money from my paper route and asking my parents wasn't going
to be enough to collect 3 different sets.

http://www.mentalfloss.com/quiz/quiz.php?q=715&p=1

 

When I was 12, I made up a Strat-O-Matic-type game with dice, and me and my friends spent all summer drafting teams, making lineup cards and keeping stats off all our players for the "season."