Yeah uh huh. You know what it is. Black and yellow. Black and yellow.
After browsing the interwebs today, I see that Wiz Khalifa
is being sued for plagiarism of his song Black and Yellow which was "stolen in concept" from rapper Maxamillion's Pink and Yellow song copyrighted in 2007. While I don't really care for Wiz Khalifa, I am a fan of the song Black and Yellow because it gets me amped up to root for some Pittsburgh sports teams.
But what gets me more excited is some pieces of cardboard featuring clothing with black and yellow on it. Yesterday I went to my local mall after work and saw that they were having a baseball card show. Since I live in NJ, there's not a whole lot of Pittsburgh love. For baseball there's the Phillies, Yankees, and Mets. For hockey, it's the Devils, Rangers, and Flyers. Football has the Eagles, Giants, and Jets. No one likes the Pirates or Penguins around here, but there are quite a few Steeler fans. I had low hopes of finding anything of interest since that's what normally happens at these types of shows. Boy was I surprised to see a vendor there with boxes upon boxes full of vintage Pirates cards. I already have every base 1976-present Topps Pirates card, but I was able to get a good chunk of pre 1971 Topps for about $3 or less a card including some rag copies of 1952 Topps for $5. My girlfriend even picked up an original Piedmont 350 tobacco card which I will post sometime next week. In addition to the vintage cards, all of which will get their own post also next week, I picked up 2 sweet jersey cards of 2 of Pittsburgh most recognized sports heroes.
Up first is Hall of Famer and 2 time World Series Champion Willie Stargell. I was looking at an extremely nice copy of Stargell's rookie card, but it was waaaaayyyyy out of my price range when the guy said "I just bought a Stargell jersey card last week. Do you want to see it?" I said sure, thinking it would be a standard white relic or something. He dug around some of his boxes he hadn't opened up or priced yet and said here it is. I asked how much and $15 less in my wallet it was now in my possession. I'm such a sucker for those black and yellow jerseys.
At the next table over, I was rummaging through some .10 bins and came across a lot of Penguins. The cards weren't in any order, not even by sport. I grabbed them all which you can see below. But the real highlight of this table was the card you see above. Mario Lemieux!!!! Are you kidding me? $15? Um yes please. Mario is one of the greatest hockey players of all time and is currently the owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins. He's the first person in hockey history to win a Stanley Cup as a player and an owner. I know the Pens aren't looking too hot the past couple weeks, but once some of their star players come back from injuries, Super Mario might win his 4th Stanley Cups this year. Below are the cards I bought for .10 a piece. I have already put them in pages and at less than $1 to fill a page, I couldn't pass it up.
At my last and final stop I noticed a table with jersey relics for $3 or 2 for $4. I looked and looked and looked for Pirates players, but found nothing until the very last handful when I came across these two gems.
Dave Parker and Willie Stargell Fleer Fall Classic Post Season Glory bat relic of The Cobra. This card is numbered 71/150. The Cobra and Pops were part of the 1979 World Series Champions Pittsburgh Pirates. My only regret with this card is that I wish the photo of Willie Stargell was from the 79 series with those funky uniforms.
The very next card was this 2005 MLB Game Used Apparel Upperdeck Artifact jersey relic of Andy Van Slyke. The card is numbered 40/325. Andy is still my favorite center fielder that ever put on a Pirates uniform. It just seemed like if the ball got past the infield, Andy would be able to track it down in the outfield and catch it. He wasn't a speedster like Andrew McCutchen is, but he had some of the best baseball instincts of an outfielder. There's an interview where he says that he tried to get Barry Bonds to move more to the right in that famous "Sid Bream slide" 1992 Playoff game and Barry gave him the finger. Sure enough, if Barry had moved over a couple steps, the Pirates probably would have gone to the World Series that year as Bonds would have thrown Bream out at home. No matter how true that story is, the reality is that AVS stayed sitting in the outfield for an hour after the game just contemplating what had just happened.
Stay tuned tomorrow for some old vintage Topps that I will post.
Oh and Let's Go Steelers!!!!
