Magazine Cards: Volume 1

A few months back I discovered a long lost 3-ring binder that I had been looking for essentially since I began this blog almost a year ago. The binder contains an assortment of random things don't conform to the size of standard sports cards: everything from 1989 Bowman cards and Topps Big Baseball to panels of box bottom cards and 8x10 photos. A good portion of the binder also contains uncut panels of magazine cards, from Topps Magazine, the ever-popular SI For Kids and some freebies from crummy Krause Publications issues like Baseball Cards Magazine.

This six-card panel is obviously based on the 1959 Topps set and was inserted into the first issue of Baseball Cards Magazine in 1989. I feel like I subconciously reached back to 1989 when I became so infatuated with the 2008 Topps Heritage set. For whatever the reason is, I guess the design is my all-time (old-time) favorite. I've never really known what to do with uncut baseball cards, no matter how worthless or unlicensed they may be. I know there's no reason for me to ever decide to cut them up now, because my hands are even more unreliable than they were when I was a kid and they were pretty messy then. I could color, more or less, inside the lines but I was never great with scissors.

This series depicts the best first basemen of the game according to the magazine it represents. I was a big fan of Don Mattingly at the time and can't really argue with Keith Hernandez, even though I got to hear lots of supposedly silly banter about his 20-year old divorce today during the Mets/Braves broadcast. I do have a bone to pick with Galarraga, mostly because he was horrible in his brief time with the Cardinals and then went onto pull a Terry Pendleton and be very productive with Atlanta and Colorado.
One of my friends from high school and I used to have an ongoing Giants/Cardinals rivalry, and his favorite player was William Nuschler Clark. I used to like to call him Nuschler and "The Nusch" and pretty much constantly make fun of his awkard middle name. The guy actually went out on a high note in a brief stint with the Cardinals, which is somewhat amusing now. There's also a really oddly cropped head shot of Mark McGwire. Each 6-card panel included one rookie in the rookie card design, and this time Ricky Jordan got the nod. Ricky Jordan's career was pretty unremarkable as he only logged more than 500 plate appearances once in his 8 year major league career.

Here's what the backs look like. BCM didn't bother with statistics or licensing or anything like that, but they did give a little bio and a photo credit along with the requisite cartoon. On the back of McGwire's card, we are forewarned of the imminent NFL suckfest that was his brother Dan. That's not to say I can blame Dan McGwire, though, because it was hard to be a Seattle Seahawk in the 1990s!