[MCoxon]

I realize I didn't tell my 'coolest' pickup. It's pretty pedestrian on the surface - a recent acquisition of the 1972 Topps Clemente In Action #310.

This was the first vintage card I ever got, at about 10 years old, as a birthday gift from my father. Clemente was already my favorite player, but I was actually disappointed when I first got the card. It shows Clemente with a bat in hand, rolling his neck at the plate, but it wasn't a very cool "in action" shot compared to, say, Mays sliding into base in his '72 IA card. I wondered why this was the photo that Topps chose. Surely there were better Clementes, I thought. In fact, that initial card is long gone.

But after reading a Clemente biography recently, I realized that Clemente often rolled his neck at the plate to stretch out, because of neck and lower back injuries. Then while re--watching the Ken Burns Baseball documentary, I saw a commentator describing how kids playing baseball on playgrounds in the '60s would actually imitate that neck roll by Clemente when they went to the plate.

So, now I am guessing that Topps chose that pose because it was actually an iconic Clemente in action shot after all!

I recently picked up another '72 IA. It's a PSA 8, very crisp and clean -- cheap by Clemente standards -- but definitely one of my favorites as it represents my very first leap into vintage collecting over 30 years ago!