Wilhelm Wednesday (It's Getting Hoyt In Herre!)

I'm happy to announce that I was able to talk my boss into keeping me around a bit longer. My final day had been penciled in for 11/7, and I was not looking forward to entering the depressing world of job searching again. I drunkenly put out a plea to card companies to hire me a little while ago. I even posted it on Twitter and @'d some of them. Didn't hear anything from Topps or Panini, but COMC tweeted back saying feel free to send in my resumé and "you never know," and Upper Deck favorited my tweet and followed me. Pretty cool.

But it doesn't look like my dreamjob of working in baseball cards will happen anytime soon. But that's cool. I really like my current job. It doesn't pay amazingly, but it's enough. And it provides some downtime that I usually spend reading or writing about baseball cards (I worry my blogging and blog-reading will decline sharply when I eventually get another job). And I don't start till 10am, so I've got time to ease into my day. Not having to wake up to an alarm is the best! I always look at the clock when I wake up and am very thankful that I'm able to be in bed at that moment rather than have to be at work.

Plus it's just a mile and a half from my house, so I can ride my bike to work. Everyday, I ride over a freeway overpass and look down on the often bumper-to-bumper traffic and feel very thankful that I don't have to deal with that.

Then further down my route, through a quiet neighborhood, I turn onto Hoyt Street, and that makes me smile thinking about Hoyt Wilhelm.

Here at Baseball Card Breakdown, not only is November No-eBay-vember, but it's also Hoytember?,, er,, Wilhelmber?.. Nowihelmber? I'm giving thanks for Hoyt Wilhelm this month, is what I'm trying to say.

Most of the old school players I collect are guys I've been into since my early days of card collecting. But Hoyt Wilhelm is an old-timer new-comer to my hallowed halls, just starting to gather his cards within the past year or so. He's sort of under-the-radar as far as HOFers from his era go, but he's super cool.

I'm going to show off a few of my Hoyt Wilhelm cards each Wednesday of this month (that's the plan, anyways), starting with a couple oddballs.

The card up top is 1977 Galasso Glossy Greats #23. It cost me just 20 cents in a recent Sportlots order, but it may be one of my favorite cards ever.

Great "grip" photo, simple design. Love it. (You might be saying to yourself, "Wow, the image quality of Baseball Card Breakdown is really incredible today!" Well, yes, you are correct: I bought a new scanner and these are the very first things it's ever scanned, so they should be nice n' crisp. No smudges 'er nuthin'! Though, yes, I often scan/photograph cards in their penny sleeves and/or top loaders. I know the image quality would be better with the cards "in the raw" but I've dropped/dinged too many cards to take any chances. And so the majority of cards you see on my blog have a thin layer of plastic over them. Hopefully that doesn't bug anybody too much.)

Never heard of Renata Galasso. Wonder if he's/it's still around? [Gavin consults Google/Wikipedia] Oh wow, it's actually a she! Kind of a neat story.

Next here's a card from an all-time Orioles set from 1991.

I kept the penny sleeve in the scan so you can tell this card is a little oddly sized (short). This was a huge set that tried to cover every player who ever suited up for the Orioles in a regular season game. They came in perforated sheets of 9 cards, grouped alphabetically in 4 different series as stadium giveaways or something along those lines, I assume similar to the Dodgers set gcrl posts about every Sunday.. probably from same company that whipped them up. I bought the whole 4th series (end of the alphabet) specifically because it includes an obscure guy I collect who doesn't have any mainstream cards out there (post coming very soon), but it was a nice bonus to have a new Hoyt to add to my collection, too.

That's it for today, but check back for more Wilhelm next Wednesday.