Introduction

A friend of mine has this pretty sweet baseball card-related blog, where he is going through an entire set of cards, and giving nifty little tidbits on the cards and the players. Through him, and his 1980 Topps blog , I found others were doing the same thing with different sets. Now I cannot even pretend to think that I will be able to go through a 700 card set like that, especially when so many others are so proficient at it.

But I am going to contribute. This blog is going to look at an odd set, the Grand Slam set.

Brought to you by the same people who brought you the 1977 Touchdown set, which was a 50-card collection of past football players, the Grand Slam set was a 200-card set of cards, in pixilated black-and-white photos, printed in 1978. Only 2000 sets were printed, and the cards are a rudimentary design. The cards featured 200 prominent retired baseball players - all living - and the set came with an address list so you could get the entire set signed. As the set went to press, former White Sox outfielder Carl Reynolds died. His card was replaced with Sal Maglie, but only 500 Maglie cards were printed, as 1500 Reynolds were already done.

I first discovered the cards in 1981, and with Jack Smalling's Address book, I set about the task of getting them signed. Slowly. In fact, it wasn't until later that I bought a set of unsigned cards that contained the address list. With frequent breaks from the hobby, I slowly amassed signed cards, and after 28 years, I have accumulated 199 of the 200 cards signed (excluding Reynolds). Hopefully, I will find the ultra-rare card I need by the time I get to it in this blog, but I am not holding my breath.

There are a lot of ways to go with this blog, and most of the players are well-known. I am not going to throw out a bunch of statistics, but will try to find interesting nuggets and morsels of information about the players.

I do not know how often I will update. Hopefully not too far in between, but I am shooting for at least twice a week.