Baseball Cards

It was 1:30 p.m. Saturday, and a deal was going down at the Willow Grove George Washington Motor Lodge between a short, bearded dealer from North Jersey and an old man in baggy pants. The old man chomped on his stogie and made his pitch. He had three thick binders of merchandise and was looking for top dollar. For the tanned and tweedy North Jersey resident, the price was right. He pulled out a wad of 50s and 100s from a seemingly bottomless pit of cash in his briefcase. As Alan Rosen peeled off the old man's $7,500 asking price faster than a bank teller on payday, an audience of fathers, sons and entrepreneurs gathered for his conspicuous display of wealth.

It's the late 1950s and you're pitching baseball cards against your brick grammar-school building during recess. Maybe you're playing "topsies" - a game you win if your card lands on top of another card. Maybe you're playing "leaners" - trying to knock down the card that is leaning against the wall. Maybe you're playing "farsies" - with the card closest to the wall the winner. Whatever the game, the purpose is the same: to win as many baseball cards as you can before the school bell rings.

It's the first week in December and already the 1995 Donruss and Score baseball cards are out. The strike still isn't settled, but at least we have new cards. All indications are the manufacturers will keep production down, knowing if the strike continues, it has a direct effect on card sales. If baseball does play a full season, this could be a good year for new cards. Starting Lineup figures have been selling very well in almost every sport. The second shipment of hockey has not shown up in any quantity.

In what could hardly be a more timely event, Hunt Auctions Inc. of Wayne will offer a major collection of baseball memorabilia next Saturday. "I've had a lot of comments about bad timing," Dave Hunt said yesterday, the first day of the Major League Baseball strike. "But for people who need their baseball fix, it will be a nice day. " More than 570 lots will be offered at the sale, beginning at 1:30 p.m. at the Holiday Inn in Exton. What makes the auction even more timely, Hunt notes, is that the items to be offered reflect baseball history, be it labor disputes or other travails.

Investors will soon be given another opportunity to get in on the baseball card craze without having to worry about such things as how to value a Mickey Mantle rookie card. Philadelphia-based Fleer Corp., which describes itself as third-ranked among six national marketers of sports cards, plans to offer its initial 1.7 million common shares one day this week, according to Dow Jones News Service. In one sign of investor interest, lead underwriter Smith Barney Harris Upham has raised the "price talk" on the issue to $13 to $15 a share from the original $11 to $13. If it comes in its expected range, the issue "is fairly priced," said Al Hadhazy, senior analyst for the financial newsletter, New Issues.

Perhaps it is just coincidence, but now that baseball spring training is underway, interest in baseball cards seems to be warming up. There are two major sales, one this weekend and another next Saturday. At 11 a.m. today at the Lionville Fire Company at Routes 1001 and 113 in Chester County, Hunt Auctions Inc. will offer thousands of baseball cards as well as other memorabilia of the game. The sale is part of a three-day session that began yesterday with football, baseball and hockey cards and will wind up tomorrow with more baseball cards.

Eight-year-old Howard Langenstein 3d asked his father for $50 to buy an old baseball card of Willie Mays. He didn't even wait for an answer, he knew his father wouldn't fork over that kind of money for a baseball card. The youngster's request didn't even get an answer. "I don't mind spending $15 for a card, but $50 is a lot of money," said the older Langenstein. When asked what his son would do with a $50 Mays card, his father said, "I think he'd guard it with his life.

Robert C. Innis Jr., a 50-year-old securities analyst from Levittown, faces a dilemma. When he went home to the Midwest last summer, he came across his childhood baseball-card collection. "Should I hold on to it? Should I add to it? Or should I sell it?" he asks. His collection consists of 125 Bowman's Bubble Gum cards from the 1951 and 1952 seasons. Dealers tell him these forgotten relics of his youth are worth about $1,500. "When I found out that they were worth real money, I thought I'd better educate myself to the potential of baseball-card collecting," he said.

Bob Lemke has been involved in the hobby for more years than he'd like to remember. He was a pioneer in sports publishing and helped make Sports Collectors Digest the hobby's leading publication. A few years ago, Lemke moved from the front lines to a spot that he really coveted as editor of the annual "Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards. " Since Lemke has devoted full-time to the publication, it has grown to be the size of the Manhattan phone book and now lists more than 7,500 sets - 375,000 individual cards - issued from 1869 to 1998.

BASEBALL CARDS are awesome - and not just because of the sound they make when flapping against bicycle spokes. They have all sorts of information. The player's height, weight, batting average from 5 years ago - tons of fun stuff. But the jocularity ends when Pete Rose's name comes up. Rob Harris, a Chicago-based writer, noticed the omission of any mention of Rose on the back of Topps' cards from this year. You see, every card has a line indicating how far a player is from a career record.

New York Yankees second baseman Robinson Cano went 1 for 2 in the All Star Game on Tuesday, fouling out to third in the first inning and singling in the fourth - and setting a record for consecutive days, and volume, of being booed. Seems the fans in Kansas City were unhappy with Cano leaving hometown hero Billy Butler of the Royals off the American League team for the home-run derby, and didn't think it was enough to let him know, often, how displeased they were during the slugging display on Monday.

On the surface of it, with both Chase Utley and now Ryan Howard back on the field and Roy Halladay working steadily toward rejoining the rotation, the all-star break should find the Phillies feeling optimistic about their chances for almost the first time this season. The problem is that the Phillies are not on the surface of the National League East, but far beneath it, swimming slowly amid the seaweed like the bottom-feeders they have been. Nothing is more daunting in baseball than its arithmetic, and the reality of being double-digit games out of first place midway through the season, needing a periscope to see one's distant rivals, is hard to ignore.

If the uniform made the player, instead of vice versa, Aaron Cox could pull on that blue jersey and head straight to the South Jersey baseball Hall of Fame. After all, the last guy before Cox to wear No. 1 for Millville set a South Jersey record with 18 home runs, was a first-round draft choice by the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, and is widely regarded as one of the best prospects in baseball. But despite his close connection with Mike Trout - the gifted 20-year-old who has spent his first week in triple-A reminding the Angels that he belongs in their big-league outfield - Cox knows he has to wear his friend's old shirt in his own way. On Tuesday, Cox made that locally legendary laundry look as good as ever.

ST. LOUIS - A Game 6 that ranked among baseball's greatest thrillers. A three-homer performance by Albert Pujols that was one of the best hitting shows in postseason history. Ron Washington running in place, Tony La Russa reacting in dismay at a ball that got away. Everyone learning how to chant "Nap-Oh-Lee!" Oh, and a Rally Squirrel on the scoreboard and a telephone mix-up in the bullpen. "I told you it was going to be a great Series - and it was," Texas slugger Josh Hamilton said.

By Drew Faust Hope springs eternal, and spring brings hope eternal - for renewal and rebirth, but also for pennants and championships. "Next year" has come at last, with its sense of infinite possibility. No wonder we love baseball. It's so congruent with the seasons, rhythms, and aspirations that shape our lives. My particular path to baseball fandom had some other influences as well. I was first attracted to the game as a child growing up in rural Virginia, 60 miles west of Washington and its legendary - for their unrivaled losing record - Washington Senators.

This will get him in trouble Boston manager Terry Francona must not have gotten the memo about taking concussions more seriously. Red Sox righthander Josh Beckett showed mild concussion symptoms, according to the team, after he was hit in the back of the head on Monday during batting practice. "I think it hit him in the temple," Francona said. "I bet you it felt like a bolt of lightning. That's not really what you're expecting. It's just a fluke thing. Fortunately, it hit Beckett in the head.

Guilt's half-life is longer than plutonium's. I know this because 50 years after I tricked my mother into letting me miss school to watch Game 7 of the 1960 World Series, I still feel a need to be punished. The long-suppressed remorse resurfaced recently when film of that memorable game was discovered, and the MLB Network decided it would air the historic game. That telecast, by the way, with Mel Allen and Bob Prince behind the mikes, will be on Wednesday at 8 p.m. While every baseball fan probably has seen footage of a gleeful Bill Mazeroski leaping around the bases after hitting the ultimate dramatic walk-off homer, no one had seen the game in its entirety since the day it was played, Thursday, Oct. 13, 1960.

There came a point in the career of Phillies player Paul Muller that he'd be "pulling muscles or doing this or doing that," and that's when he became a manager. Never heard of Paul Muller? Well, he wears a Phillies uniform and still takes batting practice when he likes at the Phillies' Carpenter Complex in Clearwater, Fla., hangs out with some of the Phillies Legends, works with the clubhouse staff and trainers, and manages 10 players - for five days each January. Muller, 61, the owner of two Toyota dealerships in the Philadelphia area, is one of 10 baseball fans who is also a camper with the Phillies - in the General Manager division of Phillies Phantasy Camp.

TATTLE IS SO sick of the Jesse James-Sandra Bullock scandal, which gets more twisted than a pretzel every day, we'd like to take a moment out from our regularly scheduled sleaze for some good news: Jerome Allen has officially been named the head basketball coach at Penn. (See Dick Jerardi's story on Page 54.) Now to the smut. Call the exterminator, the cockroaches are continuing to come out of the woodwork. Tattoo artist Eric McDougall, owner of Ocean Beach Tattoo and Piercing in San Diego, and his receptionist, Skittles Valentine, have decided to tell Life & Style magazine all about the foursome they had with Jesse James and Michelle "Bombshell" McGee last June.