Return From Vacation Mailbox Goodies Posts: Sampler Album Adds

I made some nice additions to my Sampler Album this week.  It was a pretty random group of cards, but that's what I love about my Sampler Album.  I can be extremely random and all over the place with it and it works for me.  It works for me I say.


My 1968 page is full, but it's pretty weak.  I upgraded it with these two additions:

Yeah, I know we all enjoy making fun of Tim McCarver.  He wrote a book called "Baseball for Brain Surgeons."  The title is a little obnoxious, but nevertheless, I bought it many years ago.  And I liked it. 

I also added this Mike Cuellar because he fits in the Sampler Album wheelhouse of being a notable player, but still not expensive to add.  Cuellar, who had the awesome nickname "Crazy Horse" was a 4x all star, 2x World Series Champion and shared a Cy Young award in 1969.  None of those things happened to him in 1968, which would have been nice, but oh well.

I'll tell you honestly, I bought this Gates Brown card simply because I read that he once was unexpectedly called upon to pinch hit in a game right after he had prepared himself a couple of hot dogs from the clubhouse.  He hid the hot dogs in his jersey so his manager wouldn't see.  Then he wound up hitting a double and sliding into second base, smashing the hot dogs all over his body.  That is awesome, and more than enough reason to have a Gates Brown card in my album.  It looks like in this picture he is still regretting losing those hot dogs.

Fianlly, I added this 1954 Walt Dropo. 

The little anectode on the back of the card is great enough, but I got this because of his overall story.

Dropo was a 3 star standout in college at UConn (baseball, basketball and football).  He was drafted by NFL and the NBA (or the BAA as it was called in 1947) but chose to sign with the Red Sox as a free agent.

It looked like a great move.  During his rookie year, Dropo was among the lead leaders in every major offensive category and won the Rookie of the Year award and came in 6th in the MVP vote.  That sort of season would have sent collectors in a tizzy these days.

Unfortunately, the next season he broke his wrist and was never the same, although he did wind up with respectable career.  I'm sure there is a moral to this story, but I'm to dumb and lazy to articulate it to you.