Merry Superbowl, Everybody.
February 6th, 2011 by slangon
The day has finally arrived. America’s biggest holiday behind the 4th of July, but in front of Thanksgiving. It’s Superbowl. Anyone that’s familiar with this blog probably knows that I only just recently, within the last year or 2, started to enjoy football on a regular basis. Superbowl on the other hand, I’ve always loved. Not, necessarily the game itself, although I do really enjoy it now, regardless of who’s playing. What I’ve always loved is The Superbowl Party. The beer, the food, the betting, the trash talking, the beer. What’s not to enjoy? I can’t wait until the game is over later and my head is spinning from personally consuming 1,000,000 beers over the course of the day, my clothes are covered in hot wing sauce stains and my wallet is empty from joining 100 different box pools, none of which I won. It’s going to be awesome.
I figured for this most sacred of day’s post, I would show off a few random old foosball cards that have found their way into my collection over the course of this past season. First, here’s a card for the Steelers.
1978 Topps #295 Mean Joe Greene
I also absolutely loved Mean Joe when I was a kid, even if I didn’t quite understand who he was. All I cared about is that his name was Mean Joe. That little chunk of 5 year old kid logic has carried over 30 some odd years and is making me possibly root for the Steelers today. You’ve got to love nostalgia. By the way, I actually like this card design. It’s a little reminiscent of 1982 Topps Baseball, but still different enough to be pretty unique. Actually I guess I should say 1982 Topps Baseball is reminiscent of this.
1962 Post Cereal #30 Alex Webster
I was realizing that I’ve already posted about any vintage Packers cards that I own, and I didn’t want to toss up another junk wax card, so I settled on this card. It’s sort of sound reasoning, at least in my mind. If the Giants didn’t decide to lay down and die the last 2 or 2 weeks of the regular season, the Packers might not have made it, so why not show a Giants card. There’s lots of things I like about this card. I like that it’s as if you’re looking at the front and back of the card at one time. I’d actually be curious to see what this design would look like if you did break it up as a front and a back. I suspect pretty slick. I like the hand colored photo. I like that Alex Webster isn’t wearing a helmet. I like the simple but elegant type layout. I like that his home is listed as East Brunswick, NJ which is 2 towns over from where I live. I like that Webster is a native Jersey boy, born in Kearny, NJ. I also like that out of the handful of Post cards that I own, this is the only one that doesn’t look like it was cut out in the dark by a blind epileptic monkey using a spoon. It’s not perfectly trimmed, but it’s a sight better than some other ones I have.
Finally, we have just some random odd-ball card that I picked up at the local card shop. I guess you can think of it as the half-time show of this little card revue, even though it’s being shown last.
1973 APBA Pro League Football O.J. Simpson
Obviously, I picked this card up just because it was The Juice and not because it looks extra cool or is super old or is from some very desireable set. Nope. I just got it because I love The Naked Gun movies.
I had a bit of trouble trying to track down an info on this card. Apparently APBA was a company that made Strat-o-matic type games starting in the 1950’s. I’m calling this card a ’73, but that’s a bit of a stab. When I searched for “APBA O.J. Simpson” all that was coming up was eBay listings for the 1973 complete set. He might’ve been in other years sets as well, I don’t know. It seems like many of the different years cards look exactly the same, so it’s hard to tell. Regardless, it’s a kind of neat little odd ball card to add to my collection.
So there you go. Three cards for you to look at in preparation for the big game. I’m undecided who I’m going to root for this year. I kind of like the Steelers because of the afore mentioned love of Mean Joe Greene, as well as I like their uniforms. I also kind of like the Packers (even though they basically killed my Giants post season hopes) because one of my wife’s uncle, who I’m very fond of is a huge Packers fan. I don’t know. In the end, I’m sure I’ll just root for whatever numbers I end up with in the box pool.
I played a lot of APBA baseball and football back in the 70s and early 80s. That O.J. card has a lot of good results on it, so it probably is from the 1973 season. Now I play Strat-O-Matic — Strat is much more playable than APBA.