I got this jersey card of the Rajah, Rogers Hornsby at the flea market this weekend for a measly five bucks. Five bucks! For a jersey card of one of the greatest players ever in the history of base and ball! Ok, so there's a bit of a ding on the top right corner. The corners aren't the point to these cards, the mystical piece of cloth dripping with the essence of baseball is what everyone cares about. The baseball card turned into a fetishized religious relic of the Holy Church of Baseball. Even with its supernatural powers this card was still a lot cheaper than most of the fake manufactured patches floating around nowadays.[Note: A biographical paragraph on Rogers Hornsby will be here once I have time to write the thing in between all the important stuff I really have to get done. I should have it knocked out by August. In the meantime lmgtfy]
Ok, I have time for a quick bio now. Rogers Hornsby. Greatest second baseman ever. Possibly the greatest right handed hitter ever. Led the NL in batting average six times and in homers twice. Won two MVPs, got robbed of a third, and would have won more had the award existed before 1924. Hit over .400 three times. Averaged over .400 for the years 1921 to 1925. Managed for fifteen seasons, winning the World Series in 1926. Was as big a pain in the ass as Ty Cobb. Atood up to Kenesaw Mountain Landis when confronted about gambling on horse races. Was mentioned in a poem by Ogden Nash. And finally, called Jimmy Dugan a talking pile of pig shit the very day Jimmy's parents had drove down from Michigan to see him play. But Jimmy didn't cry.
There's a Cardinals logo on there, but Roger was a Brave for a season so he's a Brave forevar in my book. The only thing I'm mildly concerned about is the legalese on the back. Rich McDubya certifies that "On the front of this card is a piece of memorabilia that has been certified to us as having been used in an official major league game." Now, my first instinct would be to assume that is means that Roger himself used the aforementioned memorabilia in a game he played in, but with all the shenanigans going on with lawsuits and autopenned signatures and UD/Razor collusion my trusting nature has become a tad jaded. For all I know this is a bit of a throwback jersey that Ray King wore while he hung out in the bullpen and ate a hamburger during a spring training game he didn't appear in. Hmmm. Maybe I've just figured out why it only cost five bucks. Ah, who cares. It's a card of Rajah with a bit of old looking cloth embedded within it. I'll suspend my disbelief for the time being. I won't pay a few hundred bucks opening the tins that these cards of dubious provenance come from, but I'll take a cheapo old relic any day.
8 comments:
Nice find!
that is too sweet
H is for Hornsby;
When pitching to Rog,
The pitcher would pitch,
Then the pitcher would dodge.
Very nice.
Nice Ray King reference!
Wow! Hornsby was the man, what an amazing relic. And great post. Pretty sure the only reason Ray King ever ran out to the mound was Bobby Cox told him the rosin bag was a burrito.
I love the look and photography of these Sweet Spot Classic Mem.'s. I'm trying to collect the whole series. It's the only GU series I've ever tried to get. I've had the same suspicions about the relics, especially when some are listed as jerseys and you see some of the same guy with bat pieces too. But like you said, for $3-5 each, you can't go wrong.
One half of me says great pull....the other half of me wants to strangle the person who decided to cut up a Rogers Hornsby jersey into 1000 tiny squares.
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