5 Baseball Cards to Be Thankful For

Beautiful cardboard memories to wash down your turkey

To state the obvious, Thanksgiving is on Thursday in the U.S. and, while this has been another funky year in a lot of ways, there’s still plenty to be thankful for.

Here in our little cardboard corner of the world, those gratitude-grabbers include the baseball cards that make us smile, for whatever reason — beauty, memories, silliness, etc.

Here are just a few of the baseball cards I’m thankful for…

1957 Topps Jim Gilliam

This was one of the very first “old” baseball cards I ever owned, having picked up a beat-up copy for a song at some flea market in the 1980s. I was instantly in love: the tight-crop photo of Gilliam’s hopeful/amused expression, the old ballpark whispering from the shadows in the background, and all the nuanced shades of blue that were accentuated by the flash of red for Gilliam’s name.

Pure joy.

1975 Topps Herb Washington

The 1975 Topps set was my first-ever “favorite” issue, and it’s still right up there.

Anytime a stack of cards can pull off a credible colored Chiclets impression, you have a winner in my book.

And this Herb Washington card is 1975 Topps at its colorful best, with the pink and purple borders complementing the white, green, and gold of the A’s uniform and the blue stadium seats to yield a near-complete spectrum.

And then there’s this — this is the only real card of the game’s only-ever only-pinch-runner to ever lace up his rocket spikes.

If you’re not thankful for this card, you may need a new hobby.

1983 Donruss Cesar Cedeno

If you’ve read me ramble nostalgic about baseball cards for very long, it’s no surprise this one makes my list — it always will.

Though I’d opened several packs of baseball cards during 1981 and 1982, they left me cold and felt drab, unappealing. I didn’t care much for baseball, and those issues did little to help the situation.

And then, in the spring of 1983, I popped open a pack of the new Donruss cards and sunny, happy Cesar Cedeno was beaming out at me in his blazing white-and-red Reds uniform. It was a transformational moment, and I was hooked on the hobby forever.

1984 Topps Bobby Meacham

This is one of those unexplainable “clicks” for me, like a piece of artwork that doesn’t fit any of the criteria you’d usually look for in visual splendor but that you are nevertheless powerless to take your eyes off of.

When I first saw this Bobby Meacham rookie card, I didn’t know who Bobby Meacham was. I also wasn’t much of a Yankees fan. And I was a tad disappointed in the new 1984 Topps cards, viewing them as a step back from the 1983 blazers.

But there was something about this card that set my baseball senses abuzz — the action, the quarterback arm motion I’d never seen on a card, the newness of Meacham (to me), the Pinstripes, for goodness sake.

It was, and is, an amazing baseball card.

1985 Fleer Eric Davis

This was a Reds fan’s cardboard dream come true.

Here we had the rookie card of the most exciting player many of us had ever seen, certainly in a Reds uniform (the Big Red Machine ran out of gas several years before I started following the team).

Davis was Hank Aaron with more speed, Rickey Henderson with more power. And he was all ours.

And then Fleer went out and hit their color-coding like Dave Parker turning on an inside fastball. Oh yeah … this card still makes my blood boil for all the right reasons.

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Which baseball cards are YOU most thankful for?

I’d love to hear your picks.

Happy Thanksgiving, and thank you — THANK you — for reading my babbles week after week.

—Adam