Category: 1989 topps senior league

My Year in Hobbies 2019: March!

March 2019:

Cover of The Green Lantern Volume 1 trade paperback. Green Lantern Hal Jordan, center, a white man with brown hair, wearing a green mask that covers his eyes and nose, in a green and black bodysuit with white gloves, holding a green lantern, pointing a glowing green ring at "The Green Lantern" logo, stands in front of an outerspace background, with various yellow stars and planets in the distance. Artwork by Liam Sharp.
Cover of The Green Lantern Volume 1 trade paperback. Green Lantern Hal Jordan, center, a white man with brown hair, wearing a green mask that covers his eyes and nose, in a green and black bodysuit with white gloves, holding a green lantern, pointing a glowing green ring at “The Green Lantern” logo, stands in front of an outerspace background, with various yellow stars and planets in the distance. Artwork by Liam Sharp.

I was a little late to this party, and had to track down some back issues in a hurry, but The Green Lantern (I linked to DC’s site, but c’mon, go buy it at your local comic shop) is both the best Green Lantern comic book and the best Grant Morrison comic book in ages. Liam Sharp’s art, kinda intense ideas about human anatomy aside, is terrific, as well. It’s basically like Judge Dredd in outer space with Hal Jordan instead of Judge Dredd. I got in on it in February of this year. The first 12 issue, 1 annual “season” is done, and is collected in 2 trade paperbacks if you can’t find the individual issues, and they’re finishing up a three issue interlude series, Green Lantern: Blackstars this coming month, before going into Season Two #1 in February.

A selection of TSR Marvel Super-Heroes role-playing game handbooks, fanned out to the left, and a white legal pad with a pen and a large array of 10-sided dice to the right, on a brown table.
A selection of TSR Marvel Super-Heroes role-playing game handbooks, fanned out to the left, and a white legal pad with a pen and a large array of 10-sided dice to the right, on a brown table.

I actually got out the TSR Marvel RPG stuff in March, and rolled up 4 characters (creating them near-entirely from cues my dice rolls gave me, and taking few if any mulligans) that I have done nothing with since. I should go back and look to see if there’s anything good there. I also need to find people to play Marvel with me, as it’s still my favorite RPG system of all time. Is anyone here interested in trying to navigate an online Marvel game on Roll20, assuming their data breach didn’t scare you off?

A ceramic sculpture of a neon green duck wearing a neon pink cowboy hat, with a neon pink cowboy riding it, his fist raised triumphantly.
A ceramic sculpture of a neon green duck wearing a neon pink cowboy hat, with a neon pink cowboy riding it, his fist raised triumphantly.

I got some art in 2019. This is one of the earliest pieces from the current iteration of Zimot Industries, though I own a few other pieces of theirs. As fantastic as this sculpture is (and it is truly one of my favorite things that I own), it was just the beginning for Zimot. Just go look, and buy some stuff.

1989-1990 Topps Senior League baseball card of Dock Ellis, pictured in the center of the card, a man with brown skin and a black beard, wearing a red St. Petersburg Pelicans hat and warm-up jacket. Card has a woodgrain border, and logos from Senior League Baseball at top left, Topps at top right, and the St. Petersburg Pelicans at bottom left, with Docks name and abbreviation for his position, P for pitcher, at bottom right.
1989-1990 Topps Senior League baseball card of Dock Ellis, pictured in the center of the card, a man with brown skin and a black beard, wearing a red St. Petersburg Pelicans hat and warm-up jacket. Card has a woodgrain border, and logos from Senior League Baseball at top left, Topps at top right, and the St. Petersburg Pelicans at bottom left, with Docks name and abbreviation for his position, P for pitcher, at bottom right.

I posted about the 1989-1990 Topps Senior League Baseball set back when I got it in March, but it was one of the highlights of my card collecting year, so here’s the Dock Ellis card again.

Sometimes, in the dead of winter, weird stuff happens…

A Mego Tootie action figure from The Facts of Life series, a teenaged looking female doll with black hair and brown skin in a maroon and white private school uniform, drinking a mug of beer.
A Mego Tootie action figure from The Facts of Life series, a teenaged looking female doll with black hair and brown skin in a maroon and white private school uniform, drinking a mug of beer.
A Mego Jo action figure from The Facts of Life series, a teenaged looking female action figure with white skin and brown hair in a maroon and white private school uniform, drinking a mug of beer.
A Mego Jo action figure from The Facts of Life series, a teenaged looking female action figure with white skin and brown hair in a maroon and white private school uniform, drinking a mug of beer.

First-run movies watched in March 2019 (1): Captain Marvel (I enjoyed it, and am looking forward to more.)

Television seasons binge-watched in March 2019 (1): Punisher Season 2 (I also enjoyed this, but I’m sad that it’s over. Hopefully, Disney rethinks the cancellation of the Marvel Netflix stuff and puts it on Hulu or something.)

SENIORS!!!!!!!!111111111

OK, so…

There’s an indoor flea market near me that I visit sometimes. Not a huge amount of vendor or merch turnover, but they get stuff here and there, so I end up there from time to time. I went on Sunday, and I got some stuff. As people have been making mention of how long my posts have been recently, I’ll break it up into short pieces, and hopefully I’ll remember to make them all.

Before I get into the other stuff, this was the undisputed highlight…

It’s not a tough thing to get, I don’t think, nor is it an expensive one, but it never seemed to be in the same place as my disposable income and I. I’m so happy that I’ve finally got it.

I mean…when I opened the box in the car, and looked at the first card in it, this is who greeted me…

Look at that beautiful bastard. Look at him! Also: woodgrain! Uniforms I haven’t seen much of! But seriously, oh my god it’s a Pete LaCock card I didn’t have.

It continues…

!

(And that’s COMMISSIONER Curt Flood to you!)

!!!!!

ALSO !!!!!

This set is so good, y’all. I have some other Senior League stuff (I think from Pacific’s line, gotta look at/checklist those soon), but it’s not as amazing as this stuff. I’ll go on…

Somebody card Hal McRae, he looks way too young to be there!

My eyes just played tricks on me with this Dennis Leonard card, because of the placement of the league logo. It looks like he’s throwing the baseball in the logo! Also: I still want someone to do a TV series on the ’70s-’80s Royals, told through  what I’d imagine Dennis Leonard’s perspective to be.

WALT!!!!!!!

This card of Easler is straight-up gorgeous.

The Mad Hungarian!

LeFlore!

Vida Blue, workin’ for the Juice!

George Foster in pinstripes!

Jose Cruz, looking as utterly badass as Jose Cruz always looked on cards.

Fergie!

Figueroa!

Fingers! (For those wondering, total HOF count in the set is 4; along with Rollie here and Fergie, Dick Williams and Earl Weaver both have manager cards in the set, too…)

Aikens, before it got really weird. Glad he made it back from it all.

Otis! (Yeah, this is definitely a set to have if you liked the ’70s-’80s Royals teams…)

Spaceman! (He’s still pitching, isn’t he?)

And, saving the best for last on the card fronts…I present to you the 1989 Topps Senior League Tim Stoddard card, without further comment.

The backs are pretty nice for late ’80s Topps (the stock’s Traded Set-ish), with a decent overview of MLB career stuff, and their stats from the Senior League. I used Dock’s stats because 1. he’s Dock 2. knowing what I know of him, I think he’d be happy to have clean and sober pitching stats highlighted for a change, and I’m pretty sure he was doing good on that front by then 3. it was a very Dock Ellis set of stats (struck out a bunch of guys, walked a bunch of guys, the W-L didn’t do him justice, and no one could hit him) and 4. from flipping through the other cards, his ERA beat most of the league’s by 2-3 full runs.

I showed you all a nice sample size of the set, but there’s a ton of goodness in these 132 cards that I didn’t get to. I paid a little less for it than everyone else was paying for single retail packs of Heritage this past weekend. Seek out this set if you don’t have one yet, and enjoy the hell out of it, especially if you have a bunch of love for the guys I highlighted here, and the era they played in.