Blogger Secret Santa 2016 = Vintage!

It's Christmas Eve today, hope everyone has an excellent day tomorrow and the rest of today.
My Secret Santa gift arrived several weeks ago from Peter K. Steinberg of Baseball Every Night, and I held off on opening it until today. Upon opening it, it elicited an actual WOW from me!

The package was a Christmas Card with two wrapped Toploaders inside. I hung the Christmas card on the wall (as we do with all that we get) but I did take a picture of the cards wrapped.

Bright paper!

I opened up the first package and what a surprise it was! Al Bianchi was staring back at me, fromm 1957-58 Topps! The second package showed Don Adams from 1972-73 Topps, a great card from a set that's fairly rare in my collection!

Both are people who were missing from my collection! Adams was alphabetically the first missing, Bianchi is a One-Hit-Wonder, this is the only card he ever got! (I think)

This is the first card I've gotten from 1957-58 Topps in over a decade, think the last time I got any was in 2005. Don Adams wears the San Diego Rockets jersey, even though he played part of 1971-72 with the Hawks.
After his playing career Bianchi became the first ever coach in Seattle SuperSonics history, he stayed active in the game until 2009, pretty good considering he'll be 85 in March!
Don Adams got three cards during his playing career and was included on the 2005-06 Topps 1952 Style All-Time Fan Favorites Autographs checklist, but sadly he passed away on Christmas day 2013 at age 66. The Database is showing that I have all of his cards issued during his playing career, but that doesn't match with my chart of missing people. It's probable I made the mistake, as I've found a couple people who I left off the list totally by mistake, so it's not infallible. Either way I am sure that this card is new and I'm thrilled to have it! It's almost like Topps designed this set specifically to cover the Rockets logo on his jersey.

Thank you again Peter- you chose some excellent cards for me! Both are equally excellent! And thank you to Matt of Bob Walk the Plank for putting this all together! Make sure you read both of their blogs, too!

Earl Lloyd has passed away

Saw the news this morning that Earl Lloyd had passed away yesterday, at the age of 86. Many NBA fans may not have heard of them, and that's a shame. He was the man who broke the color barrier in the NBA- the first Black man to play in a league that is now roughly composed 90% of Black men. He did this in 1950, playing for the short lived Washington Capitols, and, after a brief stint in the US Armed Forces in Korea, he returned to the NBA and was starter on the 1954-55 Championship winning Syracuse Nationals. I can't fathom some of the stuff he and others went through. Reading about it makes me sick.

Here's a great article about him on Yahoo- Article
Here are his career stats: Earl Lloyd Career Stats on Basketball-Reference
Here are his cards: Earl Lloyd on the Trading Card Database

He was, in short, my favorite kind of player- the kind who cares more about winning the game than making the highlight reels.

He only has 25 issued cards, and I have only one of them, which happens to be the only card issued during his playing career. There was only one set issued in the 1950s, and it came late in his career, the 1957-58 Topps set. He retired the season before the next set issued, 1961-62 Fleer. He was a coach in 1971-72 and the start of 1972-73 but while Topps was producing excellent sets at that time, the concept of coach cards was still 18 years in the future.

I have been pushing Panini to include more pioneer era players, but so far no success. They only include players from the 80s and 90s with one or two people who came before then- usually Wilt Chamberlain and George Mikan.

Chuck Conners has ZERO cards, not a single one. Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton only has a handful of cards, and most are from his Harlem Globetrotter years. Both of them played in the NBA less than a week after Mr. Lloyd did.

The Pioneer era is being forgotten, and that needs to change.

But today, this post is meant to honor the life and contributions of Earl Lloyd, and I will close with my scan of his first card, and the only one in my collection.