If you could travel back in time...

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Posted By: barrysloate

Hal- that is exactly why the time machine wasn't invented. Did you see the episode of the Simpsons where Homer goes back to prehistoric times, squashes a mosquito, comes back to the present and the whole world has changed? It's just too complicated to mess with time. And Matt, I'm not sure it matters if you keep or sell the card.
P.S. Hal- I have been trying to figure out for the longest time what MILF means. I don't think you can post it here so please email me at bsloate@att.net. I think we need to take that one off the board.

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

Barry:

It is a quote from the movie "American Pie"...

so I'm sure you could do a Google search and get the answer... but I agree that you should NOT post it on the board when you do.

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Posted By: Matt Goebel

I guess my question was out of context as I had not read the entire thread yet. I never felt that the prospect of not being able to sell your time-traveling booty would have any impact on the time space continuum, but rather it might impact the decision of which year to go back to. Your choice of 1869, for example, would yield many examples of the same card. If you could not sell any of them would your choice be the same? BTW, my favorite time travelling movie moment that messes with your mind is in "Bill & Ted's Excellent Advanture" when they can't find their keys.

Also, I forgot to make my choice - which is 1910. Not for the obvious T-cards, E-cards, etc. But I would try to find passage down to Cuba and acquire as many Punch and Cabanas cards as I could find.

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Posted By: barrysloate

Matt- Of course you run the risk of flooding the market, so you would bring things back judiciously.
And Hal- I got three responses from board members and I thank them. I sort of knew what it was but I was missing a word or two. I got the key word though.

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Posted By: will watson

MILF:
Mother
I'd
Like to
FourLetterWord

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Posted By: barrysloate

Thanks Will- as off topic as we could possibly get.

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Posted By: Space Cowboy

It's why I listen to "Devil music" and watch old B&W's on Turner Classic Movies. It's why I love lurking Net54 to hear the latest gossip about Matty and Wagner and Cobb and the rest. It is why I collect baseball cards in the first place; it's the next best thing to time travel. I would deal with the Devil to go back in time to watch Matty pitch and hear Bix play and and lust after Rita Hayworth. I'd trade a body part or two to see Prince Oana fire stikes to home plate from centerfield at Seals Stadium or hear Coleman Hawkins play "Hello Lola" with the Mound City Blue Blowers. [Check it out; you won't be sorry: http://www.redhotjazz.com/mound.html ]
Rather than loot the past for fresh out of the box cards to make my fortune back in the present, and risk serious negative warping of the underlying fabric of the fragile time/space continuum (God forbid!), I would just stay in the past. I could live comfortably off gambling and market earnings with my "insider information." I'd be an old man ready to buy the farm by the time I was due to be born in 1950. Existential conundrum? No problem-o.
Remember how Superman could travel through time by spinning really fast? Clockwise to go to the future; counterclockwise to go to the past. I tried this a couple of times back in 1958. Didn't work for me. It was still 1958 and I was nauseous. But now I got me a Boxster that will turn tight on a dime; maybe it's time for another try.

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Posted By: Al Crisafulli

I was driving home from work tonight, and I was thinking about this thread, and something occurred to me.

If we all had the opportunity to go back in time to any year we wanted to, to buy baseball cards, it wouldn't matter. None of us would buy modern cards.

Could you see any one of us in 1933?

"Jeez, this hobby is a nightmare. Used to be just one company, making beautiful baseball cards. Now, look at all these companies, making these ugly modern cards. Goudey, Tattoo Orbit, George C Miller, all these others. If you're a kid today, trying to collect baseball cards, where do you start? What set do you collect?

And GOUDEY, what a ripoff! What a marketing scam! They actually put FOUR Babe Ruths in the set, just to get us to have to keep buying packs, over and over again. And the Lajoie? I'm convinced it doesn't even EXIST. I've gone through cases of the stuff, and haven't gotten ONE.

And you can't possibly tell me that it's worth it to pay all that money for this Ruth guy anyway. Talk to me in fifty years, when Babe Ruth is forgotten with all these other modern players. Cap Anson, now HE was a PLAYER.

All this modern garbage is killing the hobby."

-Al

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Posted By: barrysloate

But Al, you would only feel that way about Goudeys if 1933 was the present and you were thinking about the good old days of the 1880's. If you time travel, you would go to 1933 with a 2005 sensibility, and the world would look great to you. And imagine buying penny packs of Goudeys and Delongs by the hundreds and opening them up and pulling a mint card out of each one- you would be the literal kid at the candy shop.

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Posted By: john/z28jd

Kevin wanted me to respond to his post about me so id definitely go back to the year before Kevin was born,watch the Black Sox scandal unfold right before my eyes then go to the Cummings residence dressed as a door to door salesman giving away free 100 count trial boxes of condoms and warning them of a possible market crash in the near future and the worry they would go thru possibly having a son or daughter go away to war in the 40's which will be inevitable.My job would then be done and all of those cards Kevin went back to accumulate will be all for not.


In reality i dont have the money now to buy dated currency so when i go back in time i better be a thug.Luckily people were smaller back then

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Posted By: Kevin Cummings

John:

You realize, I'm sure, that in so doing, you'd never get that N172 Corcoran London, Ontario version from me in 2004!

Kevin

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Posted By: john/z28jd

Did you want a well thought out answer or just something spiteful? You shouldve been more specific in the email.

I would now reconsider and go back to 1889 and buy all of the Taylor Shaffer OJ cards and destroy all but one of each pose which i would then keep and put on display at my lemonade stand outside of Kevins house(Im assuming thats where the money for a time machine came from)

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

HAL

I am honored that you and Dave V. would join me as a
9 year old in Hillside, NJ. Forget for the moment BB
cards.....think "Stick Ball". Hopefully, you and Dave
have your favorite stick bats. If not, then we just
find some neighbor's brooms or rakes and we saw them
down for you. You better be in shape to play stickball
from day break till our Mom calls us home for dinner.

Conveniently, we had a Country Club near us, so we al-
ways had a fresh supply of tennis balls to play with.
The "Pink Spaldings" were cheap, but did not compare
with the performance of a "free" new tennis ball.

After dinner we might walk two blocks and visit with
"the Scooter, Phil Rizzuto. He was always very nice to
us kids, who peppered him with an endless number of
questions after that afternoon's ballgame.

Unfortunately, where we lived only the 1st series of
1949 Leaf BB cards were available. Of course, after
some time we realized there were only 49 cards for
our sets. But, Leaf's skip-numbering scheme certainly
did work. Mizell Platt was #159 and we kept spending
our pennies thinking we needed 110 more Leaf cards in
order to complete the set.

Subsequently, the 1949 Bowmans were available, they did
not appeal to us kids at first. The Leafs were bigger and
made of heavier cardboard; therefore, really great for
flipping.

Finally, to answer your question....YES....I did trade a
Satchell Paige for a Luke Appling. But, they were Bowmans;
Appling (#175) was a much tougher card in the Hi# series
than Paige (#224) that year.

And Hal, we did indeed know of Paige. He had a short but
impressive year on the mound in 1948. But, even more im-
portant was that we tried to emulate his patented "double-
loop" wind-up in his pitching motion.

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

Boy that sounds fun!

I grew up 30 years too late!!

We had all-day whiffle ball games in the vacant lot next door...

but stick ball in the streets and talking to the Scooter sounds like the perfect life!

I will be sure to pack a few "corked broomsticks" in the time machine before I make the trip.

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

HAL

No need to bring "corked" bats. If we couldn't do a
"midnite requistion" of some neighbor's heavy duty
rake or shovel; then, we go to Jake's hardware store
and buy one for you. You say....how can we afford it?
We go around the neighborhood and collect as many soda
pop bottles as we can find to turn in at the grocery
store for $$.

With one of those "Babe Ruth" type stick ball bats you
would be the Home Run king. Believe or not we used to
get on the public buses with these "weapons" to go to
the other side of the town for some serious stickball
games. And, I would give away a Mickey Mantle card (or
two) to once again see the expressions and listen to
the whispers of the passengers and the bus driver when
they saw us kids getting on the bus.

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Posted By: identify7

It ain't stick ball if you don't use a Spauldeen.

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Posted By: barrysloate

I grew up playing stickball pitching against my friend's garage and Strat-o-Matic. Those were fun memories. I remember getting a below average report card and my mom took away my Strat-o-Matic until I got better grades. True story.

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Posted By: identify7

That sounds like stickball with ball and strike pitching, Barry. You had a rectangular strike zone drawn on the garage door too, I bet.

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Posted By: Scot

For me it would be 1927. Me, my son and brother eating York Caramels in Yankee stadium, watching that fantastic Yankee lineup murder the competition. Where do we board this machine, I'm ready to go now!

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Posted By: barrysloate

It wasn't actually the garage door, but the brick post between the two doors. You got a nice rebound off the brick; the garage door created a loud thud. But in the nearby schoolyard someone did paint a box for the strike zone. You never forget those childhood memories.

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Posted By: Keith O'Leary

Yep, we played as kids. I lived in a housing development where baseball fields were at a premium.

We used the outside wall of a neighborhood shed. An old white wooden wall with a masking tape "strike box" full of dirty marks from previous meetings. We used broom stick handles for bats and when one of them broke and another wasn't available, one of the kids parents had a pile of tobacco lathe we'd take from. Used the tennis balls till they were hit around so hard they punctured. The wall was just firm enough to cushion the impact of the ball (we threw as hard as we could of course) that they just about trickled back to the pitcher. If he was accurate enough, he barely had to take 3 steps to field the catcher's throw back .....(the pitcher was also responsible for calling balls and strikes). Flies had to be caught in the air (where they landed determined how many bases were achieved) and grounders had to be gloved or bare handed before they stopped for an out (we never had enough gloves).

 

Fun times .

 

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Posted By: identify7

We mainly played in the street with manhole covers as home and second base, and car fenders as 1st + 3rd. Made for a narrow field. No balls and strikes (unless you missed the ball) and often no pitcher ----> just throw it up and hit it like a fungo.

It seemed that we were always trying to fish the ball out of a sewer. But often enuff there were other balls in the sewer, so since you were there, might as well build up an inventory of smelly, slimy spauldeens, tennis balls, sponge balls, etc.

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Posted By: Pennsylvania Ted

Gil

That last sentence of yours cracked me up. We made
an "art" out of retrieving balls from the open gutter
type street sewers.

But, just about the time we got be real "pro's" at
it, we moved the games off the street. Our neighbor-
hood Catholic School paved over their school grounds.
We thought it couldn't get any better for stick ball
playing.

But, it did.....hoping to keep us off their school
grounds, they put up a cyclone fence. Of course we
were good climbers, so now our playing field had a
fenced wall to shoot for. We even put up distance
markers.

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Posted By: identify7

When I reread that sewer statement I was about to delete it (because it is soo disgusting - I could have never actually done it); but I was interrupted by work - you know - gainful employment type stuff - and I didn't get to erase it in time.

But when I think back about the sponge balls which never dry out completely, and continue to spray sewer juice over everything when you hit them (no, some stories are better not told).

But Old Lady Lipencott who always yelled "don't hit my car, don't hit my ...

no, thats another story better not told.

But that Catholic School field is a dream come true. I bet they didn't even put barbed wire on their fence.

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

Gil

It even gets better than I said in previous post.

By the time we were 13 the Catholic School tore
down their old wooden school bldg. and built a
modern "L - shaped" brick bldg. It was great
for playing baseball as the "inside" of the "L"
layout formed a perfect BB diamond. And, it was
landscaped with green, green grass. So, we neatly
layed out a regulation size infield diamond with
portable bases. And, put portable foul poles in the
outfield. The distance down the RF line to the
nearby woods was 250 Ft. And, down the LF line
to a housing development was 220 Ft.
So, when we could organize 14 (or more) kids from
the neighborhood we would play HARDBALL on this
field on a W/E. This was a real treat for us, as it
did not occur but once or twice a month.

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Posted By: identify7

Ted, it sure was good - waay back when men were men. Back when we knew that females were a waste of time. Why did we ever choose to rethink that? We were right then.

(Shhh, don't tell my wife I said that).