22 December 2010

happy birthday nl iron man!

it's hard for me to believe that the anchor of the infield of my youth, steve garvey, is 62 years old today.  or that i am now older (just barely) than he was when he took his final major league swing in 1987.  still, time does march on, and today i celebrate the garv and his p-e-r-f-e-c-t 1974 topps card. 
this beat up old version of it is the one i carried in my wallet for a few years after reading about bob costas and his mickey mantle card he carried around.  i have no originality.  whether it is abstract expressionism or post modernism, it is indeed art.  i love love love that card.

i recently received a couple of fulfilled ttm requests from the birthday boy (including one that was over a year old).  these were the third and fourth successes i have had which also blows my mind.  here's his 1980 topps card
and a 1981 fleer card celebrating the fact that he led the league in hits in 1980.
next up we have a couple of cards from the 2004 upper deck legends 'timeless teams' set - 1974
and 1980.
gotta love the dual-eared helmet on the 1974 card.  on the 1980 card, popeye added a line after the '6'.  i have a lot of garvey autos with a lot of notation variations, but i am not sure what this is all about.  maury wills does the same thing sometimes.

the garv also included a note - it's a copy, not an original handwritten note - thanking me and asking if i would like to make a donation to his foundation.
you know what?  i think i will, and i'll ask him to sign my tattered 1974 topps card too. 

happy birthday number 6!

1 comment:

MrMopar said...

Even though it is a copy, someone on a trade site got one and sent it my way. Another unique oddball for the Garvey collection.

Did you happen to catch the grammatical error on the card? I know that nobody is perfect, but c'mon man..if you are going to send these out, have someone proof it! Yikes! He might be a gold glover in the field for not making errors, but not on paper. Someone said it makes him more human...to each their own? He is a college grad. He should know better!