Baseball Card Tournament: Sweet Sixteen - East Regional

I've accepted the fact that this tournament will last into May most likely. Since I still haven't written up the second round for two of the brackets, I'm going to be lazy in the Sweet Sixteen round and do Videos instead.
Here's the East region, Make sure you vote!


#16 1972 Topps Checklist
Whoever filled out this checklist was very similar to myself - meticulously filling in the squares completely, messing up on a couple and putting a little scribble next to the name to note the goof and having mostly lousy cards. The guy even had the Chris Chambliss rookie card.
Seriously guys, you're killing me. The reason this was a #16 seed was that I had nothing to say about it and I thought it would get beat by the Jeter card. Of course I'm the one who went on a rant condemning Moments and Milestones, so I guess I made this bed. I do know one thing from looking at this checklist, if you ever get a chance to open a 1972 Topps second series pack, don't bother. There's nothin' good on this checklist. Orlando Cepeda is the big star in the series, the rookies include Charlie Hough, Darrell Porter, Dave Kingman and the aforementioned Chambliss and the best card by far is a World Series subset card with Clemente. Trust me, I know we all love to rip wax, but stay away from '72 second series.

Can ya believe the best video I've found so far is the one for the Checklist?


vs.
#4 1978 Topps Carl Yastrzemski
Yaz? Yaz. Yaz?? Yaz... Yaz!
YAZ.
Battle for Boston right here... Who wins, Bird or Yaz? Bird has the rings, but baseball seems to be king around these parts. I really like the '78 set for a lot of reasons. The simple design, the game on the back, a pretty good player selection, it's a pretty kick-ass set. This card here was traded for a spare Bob Horner rookie card back when Bob was still slugging homers in Fulton County. Considering I can get Horner rookies for a song nowadays, I think I did pretty well.

Here's Yaz from Ken Burns' Baseball.





#6 2005 Upper Deck Origins Travis Hafner Old Judge
It amazes me how Pronk always manages to look Pronky on his cards. One of these days I am going to find a cheap set of UD Origins on eBay, pull out a sharp pair of scissors, and cut off all those ugly green borders so the set can be enjoyed the way it was supposed to be.
This set was the catalyst for my anti-Upper Deck feelings a couple of years ago. I've never been a huge fan of the company, the cards were too expensive and we now know in retrospect horribly overproduced. I still collected 'em though but in the mid-nineties, my card buying habits had to change. There were more and more super premium products out (more products period, actually) and it was getting harder and harder to keep up with it all. I started focusing in the stuff I really liked, which was mostly base brands and retro crap. I went nuts over the first Play Ball set, even though it was a bit pricey. The art cards looked great, the mini reprints were cool and I liked the DiMaggio and Williams hero worship cards. The next years set was a nightmare and the less said about it the better. I heard about Origins in 2005 and really looked forward to it. Playball (actual Play Ball, not that psychedelic junk from 2004) and Old Judge designs in the same set? Sign me up! Then the tins came out. $90 a pop. Yeah, I was a little pissed about that.

Gotta go Major League for Pronk here. Yes, someone actually videotaped their TV. It was either this or a Spanish clip.


vs.
#7 1976 Topps Marvel Howard The Duck sticker
Ok, ok. HEAR ME OUT. I know what you're thinking, but Howard the Duck is GOOD. No, seriously. It's that idiot Lucas who screwed him up so badly. The moron should have stuck to Star Wars. The actual comic from the 70's is pure genius. Here's a cool interview from his creator, Steve Gerber, who recently passed away. Somebody please back me up on this... Thorzul? Anyone?
I'm so glad Howard made it. I picked up this card at the Braves Fan Fest this winter. There was a couple rows of memorabilia dealers there including this one guy who specialized in non-sports cards. I'm not sure how much he sold during the fan fest, he didn't seem to thrilled when I talked to him though. He had a bunch of neat old stuff from the 30's to the 80's including a bunch of Beatles and Elvis cards. I looked through his binders hoping for a stray Allen and Ginter card, but no luck. There was a card from the 30's that swiped the A&G Quadruped art (Peccary too, the one I was looking for) but I ended up passing on it. There were a few cards that sorely tempted me, but I didn't want to drop all my cash of oddball non-sports stuff and I only bought this one card. I saw Howard in the middle of a page full of second-tier Marvel superheroes and rescued him from the page of comic mediocrity. He has a good home now among my handful of original issues and my Essential reprint paperback now. I do wish now that I had bought the 1972 Topps Presidential Candidate Shirley Chisholm card now though.

I couldn't find the clip of Lea Thomson's hiney on YouTube (which is really the whole point of that movie) so you'll have to settle for the opening scene where you see the duckie bewbies. (not safe for work if you work with ducks)