Sports Cards Ate My Brain

Welcome back everybody! A friend of mine who asked me why I didn't restart SCAMB so I decided to take the suggestion since he is a professional writer.  I'm not saying this is great literature though. I've been looking for topics for the relaunch and have a few in mind, but to start I wanted to highlight my number one player collection. I've been a George Brett fan since I saw him play at Tiger Stadium in 1980.  He hit a home run and got into a brawl in the game.  I was hooked. Like many collector's I've been going through my cards and other things during all of the extra time I've had at home and came upon two card albums.  I think they came with Topps Attax kits that I bought randomly.  They each have 26 pages so I decided to put my Brett cards in them and discuss each page in an installment. This will be a long term series that will be interspersed with other topics as I find cards I didn't know I had or want to highlight my favorit...

I've decided to highlight one card a year from George Brett's career plus a few from after he retired.  I've posted before that I saw him hit a home run and then, later in the game, start a brawl with the pitcher during a game at Tiger Stadium in 1980.  This made him my favorite player and I have actively collected his card over the years.  I have many more cards of him but, as part of my efforts to pare down my collection, I'm only keeping some of them. One can only start off a George Brett collection with his 1975 Topps Rookie Card: 1975 is not my favorite Topps set.  After many years of wavering about spending the money I bought this card off of E-bay.  Not sure why I waited so long. George was a solid but unspectacular hitter in the minor leagues as evidenced by the lack of .300 seasons shown here.  The red and green backs are not the easiest to read. George's second mainstream card, 1975 Topps highlights his first .300 season: My fi...

To recap:  These are the cards I would take with me if I could take ten 9-card pages with me to Mars. I decided that each part of my collection cannot have more than one page.  The cards must fit into a regulation page as far as height and width but I am taking liberties with how thick some of the cards are. Page 2 is all about my favorite player, George Brett.  I got to see George play exactly once.  The game was on August 5, 1980 in Detroit.  We were in Michigan visiting family and my dad took me to see the Tigers.  George hit a 3-run bomb in the first inning and then was knocked down twice by inside pitches in the 6th by Detroit starter Milt Wilcox.  George flew out and, as soon as the outfielder caught the ball, George charged the mound and started a brawl.  It was sublime. 1975 Topps #228 For those of you who don't know, this is George's rookie card.  It has to be included here just because of that. 1979 Kellogg's #50 ...

Here's the rest of what I got at the December card show. 1971 Topps 62 Rico Carty was a great hitter but was limited by injuries throughout his career.  Joe Torre's hat seems to be barely in his head. 1972 Topps 172 Topps occasionally put In Action or similar cards in sets to fill out their planned card count.  I'm not a fan.  Evans appears to be levitating to catch a pop fly. 1973 Topps 1 Forget the crease, this is a perfect card. 1973 Topps 266 Mike looks very intense but someone probably should have told him that he is not in the batter's box.... 1975 Topps 154 And again..... 1975 Topps 499 Marty started for the Braves for 5 years and was the epitome of a light hitting middle infielder.  His career slugging percentage was .347.  He did manage to drive in 57 runs in 1973 but didn't manage even 40 in any other season. 1975 Topps 589 We end our card show posts with the 1975 Braves team.  Clyde King managed during...