I have no idea how to create pages but I'll figure it out eventually godammit

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Book from TribeCards = COTW

Here's another oddball from David at TribeCards. Remember Collect-a-Books? Little card-sized booklets of a player that were sold in 8-card boxes for about 3 bucks? You don't? Well, neither did I, at least not the baseball version. I had all of the basketball and football sets and was irritated that there wasn't a baseball set. Yep, David found something I'd never heard of before... Good Job David. This particular set came out in 1991 and was published under the Line Drive brand which also did minor league cards if I'm not mistaken. This booklet of Dave Justice is #33 out of 36 books.

Here's the front, looks like a plain ol' card doesn't it? Ah but wait...

Witchcraft!!! It opens up! Page two is another full photo of Dave and would make a decent looking card in its own right. Page three has another large photo and some personal highlights. Highlights for Dave include being born, gaining weight and going to college.

Ah here's the good stuff... A little story about Dave's rise through the minors, getting a chance when Nick Esasky went all goofy and subsequent rise to phenom. the Line Drive logo signifies the end of the narrative.

Ahh, stats. Gotta have stats. These are full career stats too. Remember, Dave was in his 3rd year in 1991. Page 7 has a photo of him checking out a girl in the stands while some kids look on cluelessly, a quote from Dave and a Did You Know question. Dave talks about how he was happy to win the Rookie of the Year award. Then the card asks if you knew that Dave won the Rookie of the Year award. Of course we did, you dummy! Dave just told us!

Last pake, or page 8 or the back of the card. Take your pick. Here we have a cartoon of Dave in full headdress leading the Supreme Court and some career highlights. Oddly enough, winning the Rookie of the Year wasn't a career highlight for Dave. Getting drafted? Yep. Going to the Appalachian League All Star Game? Yep. Hitting 12 homers in Triple-A? Yep. Having a phenomenal rookie season and running the face of the franchise out of town? Nope.

There you have it, another oddball from Dave. And there's more to come! SPECIAL BONUS! Since I've been wrapped up in Card Show posts all week I'm promoting this card to Card of the Week since otherwise I won't get to it until next week. Hooray! I've got that out of the way!

4 comments:

night owl said...

I got a couple of those Collect-a-Books from Tribe cards as well. Don Drysdale and Ramon Martinez. I had never heard of them either. I know some other blogger got some from Dave as well. I'm convinced Dave makes them in his basement.

Motherscratcher said...

I'm not sure but I think that these collect-a-books are the brainchild of Jim Bouton. I think I remember reading about them (and Big League Chew) in one of the updated versions of Ball Four.

Can anyone else confirm this?

I suppose I could look it up myself, but that would involve moving.

madding said...

I have a handful of those things, both baseball and basketball. I used to buy them at card shows when I saw them for a quarter or so back when I was a teen.

--David said...

Curses! Foiled again! I've been ratted out, see... But it's a sham, a scram, the old flip-flam, see? Wait. I live in Arkansas. I don't even HAVE a basement.. :-) I can't believe I got COTW!! Awesome! I'm glad you enjoyed the card, er, book! I love finding things that folks didn't know about or had long forgotten about.