Cardboard Immortals: Sports Cards Hidden Treasures

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Cardboard Immortals: Sports Cards Hidden Treasures

by Mark R. Leffler

It's a kid thing, you wouldn't understand. Or maybe you would.

The next time your kid's obsession with Pokemon collecting or wallpapering

a bedroom with photos of Justin Timberlake is about to drive you crazier

than a rat in a tin can, just remember the hundreds of hours you spent with

your own 'collections' in your wonder years.

Collecting is a rite of passage.

Cavekids probably cluttered up the cave with assortments of really cool

rocks and shells even before they had a language to say "cool" or "whussup."

Sports card collecting had it's golden and silver age during the Boomer

years, but as long as there have been sports cards of professional

athletes, there has been a special thrill to collecting and trading cards

featuring local athletes who went pro.

Hometown heroes may only play a season or two in the pros before settling

down to coach Little League or run the local Kessel's pharmacy, but their

Topps or Upper Deck cards assure them a sort of cardboard immortality.

There are dozens of athletes from the Mid-Michigan area who are featured on

baseball, football, hockey or basketball cards, not to mention more offbeat

spin-off's like NASCAR and minor league sets. A ten-part series of articles

might be able to include them all, but for starters take a glance at Vern

Ruhle's 1980 Houston Astros' card.

Vern Ruhle © 1980 Topps Chewing Gum Inc

Ruhle was born in Midland and played baseball in high school before breaking into the pros with the Detroit Tigers. Eventually he ended up with the Astros and his 1980 card features a small cartoon on the back noting that "Vern attended Olivet College, Olivet, Michigan and graduated with a degree in Business Administration. So we already know he was a bright lad.

Most cards carry a batch of vital statistics, so we also learn that Ruhle lived in Coleman, Michigan at the time, was drafted by the Tigers in June of 1972, and was born January 25, 1951. He batted right, threw right, stood 6'1" and weighed a trim 180 lbs.

During research for this article I ran across Ruhle's rookie card, a

composite of rookie pitchers from 1975. Is it valuable? Not especially. But

show it to anyone who was a collector or Tigers fan in the mid-70's and

some amusing anecdotes are likely to follow.

Like the one Tim Speaker, a teacher at Saginaw County's Nouvel Catholic

High School, related recently. Tim's father, Tris Speaker (named for his

grandfather a legendary Hall of Famer) played against Vern Ruhle in a local

Connie Mack league. The elder Speaker hit for the cycle, tagging the future

pro pitcher for a single, double, triple and home run in a single game. Tim

recalls his father's story that Ruhle congratulated him after the game.

"Nobody ever done that," Ruhle told him.

Tris Speaker managed Top Shelf, a sporting cards and memorabilia shop in

Shields (no longer in business, sadly enough) where Tim worked growing up.

Weekends father and son would travel to out-of-town sports card shows. Tim

remembers they would pull cards of players from the area they would be

visiting. A card that would sell for 15 cents in Shields might fetch $15 in

the athlete's hometown.

"We drove to Pennsylvania for a card show and there was this huge sign

"Home of Tom Brookens." We'd always take cards to sell of local players.

Just being on a card automatically put them into legendary status," Speaker

says.

"You could be a gas station attendant now, but still they were on a card."

Another great thing about these cards is that they are available and

affordable. Not many of us have the disposable income, or the inclination,

to shell out $500 for a Michael Jordan North Carolina basketball card. But

the cards you see here were all picked up for ten cents each at Rock 'n'

Sports, in Saginaw, MI, by the Meier's on Tittabawasee Road.

Even cards from all-stars like Saginaw's Terry McDaniel are usually easy to find. McDaniel played football for Saginaw High, graduating in 1983. He

was an all-Southeastern Conference cornerback and academic all-conference at the University of Tennessee before being drafted in the first round by the Oakland Raiders in the 1988 NFL draft.

McDaniel's 1990 NFL Pro Set card features a nice action photo, always a refreshing change of pace from the posed, high school graduation-style photos that were the norm. The stats on the back reveal he had been playing three years in the NFL, was born in Saginaw on February 8, 1965, and was 5'10" and 175 pounds.

The accompanying text boasts that McDaniel was the first Raiders rookie

since "The Assassin" Jack Tatum in 1971 to start his opening NFL game in

the secondary. And there's also the nifty trivia tidbit that he was an

"excellent sprinter who twice was a member of an S.E.C.-champion 1600 meter

relay team."

But McDaniel wasn't just athletically and academically honored. Turns out

he's a hell of a nice guy and a terrific dad, being named "Responsible

Father of the Year" by the California Department of Social Services in

1997.

And you know, I love Dennis Rodman, but there is a world of difference

between being a bad mother and a good father. Somehow, I suspect The Worm

is never going to pick up an award like the one conferred on McDaniel. God

bless you, Terry.

Steve Schrage, owner and operator of The Comics Experience, 932 Gratiot in

Saginaw, used to display Mark Macon cards when the Buena Vista High School

graduate was playing in the NBA for the Denver Nuggets and later for the

Pistons.

"Lots of kids wanted to buy Mark Macon cards. There was a real boom in

sports cards up to 1993. That was the boom and then the market for sports

cards busted after that."

Macon, of course, owns a slew of local school and county scoring records. He was named MVP at the McDonald's All-American game in April of 1987.

The 1994 Fleer card features action shots on front and back. In the stats portion it mentions he was born in Saginaw on April 14, 1969 and attended Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was (and probably still is) 6'5," and weighed 185 pounds. He was the eighth pick in the first round. After two seasons he was averaging 48 minutes a game and

16.2 points.

Another local legend who went pro is Curt Young, who is pictured on his 1992 Fleer card when he was pitching for the Oakland Athletics. (Hmmmm,
wonder if he and Terry McDaniel's ever got together out there in the Bay Area to hang out and swap old hometown memories of high school rivalries or
talk about how much they missed Michigan winters.)

By the 1992 season, Curt had been in The Show (i.e., the majors) off and on for about ten years. Glancing at the record on the back of the card, it's shown that he moved back and forth between the A's and their minor league team in Tacoma, possibly a reason why his home is listed as Scottsdale, Arizona. He was born in Saginaw also, April 16, 1960. He

was a lefty (pitching, not in his political beliefs necessarily) who batted right. Young weighed in at 175 pounds and stood 6'1."

In his years at Arthur Hill Young collected six letters in football,

basketball and baseball for the Lumberjacks. He had offers from several

colleges and universities, but decided to attend Central Michigan

University where he could play both football and baseball.

He pitched in the 1988 and 1990 World Series with the Athletics, and played

for the Kansas City Royals and New York Yankees in 1992, then returned to

the A's in 1993 before retiring. He was elected into Arthur Hill's Athletic

Hall of Fame in 1986.

(Next spring, Review plans to feature vintage cards from the 1950s and

1960s of athletes from that era such as Bob Buhl, Al Luplow, Jerry Lynch,

and Kiki Kuyler. If you want to suggest a player for future articles e-mail

Mark Leffler at MRLeff78@aol.com or Review Magazine at acidpen@cris.com. Or

write Review Magazine, 318 S. Hamilton St. Saginaw, MI 48602. Thanks to The

Comics Experience, Rock 'n' Sports for assistance in researching this

article. Much of the information in this feature was found in "Glory: The

History of Saginaw County Sports" by Jack Tany.)

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