Baseball cards. A lost tradition. I’m not sure exactly when or why I started collecting them. I mean, sure, I played little league, starting in 3rd grade, so 1972, and sure enough, with the exception of a few I have purchased on eBay, that’s when my collection started. My purchases were limited to whenever we would stop at 7-11, and I would grab a pack and bug my mom and dad to buy it for me. In 1973, though, nothing. Hmm. Well, actually I have two from 1973, obtained in a trade consummated in middle school, but then starting in 1974, through the rest of the decade, well past little league, I was a nerd about my cards. And on Saturdays, watching the NBC Game of the Week with Tony Kubek and Joe Garagiola, I would spread out my cards and watch the game. I obviously didn’t save them hoping I could one day sell them. If you look closely at my Willie Mays card, it is dog eared and has a hole in it where I had it pinned up on my bulletin board! Likewise, the noticeable crease in Yaz’s card.

It’s funny though. For every 1976 Hank Aarons or Pete Roses, you end up with five Dave Lemanczyks. But the strange thing is I still have those five Dave Lemanczyk cards from his stint with the Tigers, as well as one from his time in Toronto. My friend Dave asked me the other day what was my most valuable card. At first I somewhat joked that it was my Ed Kranepool 1963 rookie card! I got to thinking, though. To me, they are all my favorites. Even the Dave Lemanczycks!

That said, I pulled my boxes of cards out and wanted to know how many hall of famers I had. I was pleasantly surprised to find I have 57 hall of famers, including multiple years for a handful of them. Fifty eight if I count a card from 1964 with the old pefessor Casey Stengel teaching Ed Kranepool. But that was a special purchase. Not to mention many other famous but not in the hall players. My next project might be how many MVP winners do I have. In any case, I thought I would share my hall of famers through my card collection. Some of them I have multiple cards from multiple teams. Randomly I saved the multiples for this photo collection, like Seaver and Jackson. Others, like Yount, for some reason I didn’t pull their multiple cards. And I should note that for the most recent classes of inductees, I pulled their cards from mint boxes that I purchased for my son starting in 1992 when he was born, thinking he might want to collect them some day. Sadly they didn’t come with bubble gum! Now, on to the collection, including the year(s) of the card(s), the year they were inducted, and the percent of vote they garnered. Unless otherwise mentioned, they were inducted on their first ballot. I should also note that with the exception of Sutton and Fingers, the “autographs” on the cards aren’t real, they were printed that way. The autographs obtained on my Fingers and Sutton cards were obtained at a Potomac Nationals and Washington Nationals game, respectively.

It may be strange that an almost 51 year old (omg, that’s tomorrow!) still has baseball cards, but like the theme of this blog, they remind me of the innocent days of growing up playing baseball and chewing stale gum!

Hank Aaron
1982
97.83%
Roberto Alomar
2001
90.0% (second ballot)

Sparky Anderson
2000
Veterans Committee
Johnny Bench
1989
96.42%
Wade Boggs
2005
91.9%
Bert Blyleven
2011
79.7% (14th ballot)
(side note: under current rules, players drop off after 10 years)
George Brett
1999
98.2% (fifth highest ever)
Rod Carew
1991
90.5%
Steve Carlton
1994
95.8%
Gary Carter
2003
78.02% (sixth ballot)
Bobby Cox
2014
100.0% (Expansion Era Committee)
Andre Dawson
2010
77.9% (ninth ballot)
Dennis Eckesley
2004
83.2%
Rollie Fingers
1992
81.16% (second ballot)
Carlton Fisk
2000
79.6% (second ballot)
Tom Glavine
2014
91.9%
Rich “Goose” Gossage
2008
85.8% (ninth ballot)
Tony Gwynn
2007
97.6%
Rickey Henderson
2009
94.8%
Jim “Catfish” Hunter
1987
76.27% (third ballot)
Reggie Jackson
1993
93.6%
Ferguson Jenkins
1991
75.4% (third ballot)
Randy Johnson
2015
97.3%
Barry Larkin
2012
86.4% (third ballot)
Tony La Russa
2014
100% (Expansion Era Committee)
Greg Maddux
2014
97.2%
Juan Marichal
1983
83.7% (third ballot)
Pedro Martinez
2015
91.1%

Willie Mays
1979
94.7%
Willie “Stretch” McCovey
1986
81.4%
Paul Molitor
2004
85.2%
    Joe Morgan
1990
81.8%
Eddie Murray
2003
85.3%
Phil Niekro
1997
80.34% (fifth ballot)
Jim Palmer
1990
92.6%
Tony Perez
2000
77.15% (ninth ballot)
Gaylord Perry
1991
77.2% (third ballot)
Kirby Puckett
2001
82.14%
Jim Rice
2009
76.4% (15th and final ballot)
(side note: under current rules, players drop off after 10 years)
Cal Ripken, Jr.
2007
98.53% (third highest ever)
Brooks Robinson
1983
91.98%
Frank Robinson
1982
89.16%
Nolan Ryan
1999
98.79% (second highest ever)
Ryne Sandburg
2005
76.2% (third ballot)
Mike Schmidt
1995
96.5%
Red Schoendienst
1989
Veterans Committee
Tom Seaver
1992
98.84% (HIGHEST PERCENTAGE EVER)
Ozzie Smith
2002
91.7%
John Smoltz
2015
82.9%
Charles Dillon “Casey” Stengel
1966
Veterans Committee
Bruce Sutter
2006
76.9% (13th ballot)
(side note: under current rules, players drop off after 10 years)
Don Sutton
1998
81.6% (fifth ballot)
Frank Thomas
2014
83.7%
Joe Torre
2014
100% (Expansion Era Committee)
Dick Williams
2008
Veterans Committee
Dave Winfield
2001
84.5%
Carl Yastzremski
1989
94.63%
Robin Yount
1999
77.5%