Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about a jersey gifted to a 5-year-old boy by Victory Wembanyama that the child's father put on the auction block. The jersey sold for $73,200, but now the dad wants the jersey back:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/sale-of-wembanyama-jersey-swapped-with-youth-wound-up-in-different-court/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily, looking back at the 1985 Topps baseball set. It's 40 years old this year!

​https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/1985-topps-baseball-here-are-5-key-cards-and-one-famous-oddity/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about a framed home run collage of Babe Ruth's 60 home run season in 1927, personalized to former teammate Jimmie Reese in 1931:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/1927-babe-ruth-hr-display-owned-by-jimmy-reese-part-of-heritage-auctions-sale/​

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about 84-year-old Mayo Gilbert McNeil, who pleaded guilty to counts of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, and wire fraud. Both are felonies. McNeil sold cards that he claimed were high grade, high ticket items supposedly encapsuled in PSA slabs. But the cards were swapped out.

​www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/84-year-old-colorado-man-pleads-guilty-to-selling-trading-phony-high-grade-sports-cards/

​The title of the new biography of Hall of Fame pitcher Don Drysdale is right on the money.

“Don Drysdale: Up and In: The Life of a Dodgers Legend” (Triumph Books; hardback; $30; 272 pages) is Mark Whicker’s look at the life and baseball career of an intimidating pitcher who was not afraid to go inside on hitters.

“Big D” stood 6-foot-5 and seemed even taller on the high mound at Dodger Stadium.

“When Drysdale walked to the top of a mound, it seemed to grow and rise,” Whicker writes. “He represented a gargoyle,” especially to right-handed hitters.

And when Drysdale delivered a sidearm pitch, watch out. He was one of the two most intimidating pitchers in baseball during the 1960s — Bob Gibson was the other — and did not allow opposing batters to dig in against him.
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The difference, Whicker writes, is that Drysdale “would spin a batter at 8 p.m. and drink Scotch with him at 11 p.m.” Gibson was not that convivial.

​Drysdale won 209 games and led the National League in strikeouts three times during his career in Brooklyn and Los Angeles (1956-1969). The big right-hander threw 167 complete games, led the league in starts from 1962 through 1966, and won the Cy Young Award in ’62 when he fashioned a 25-9 record. He retired during the 1969 season and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1984.

In the 1963 World Series, Drysdale pitched a three-hit shutout in Game 3 as the Dodgers won 1-0 en route to a four-game streak.

The pitcher also set a major league record when he threw six consecutive shutouts in 1968 and put together 58 2/3 innings of shutout ball to break a record set by Walter Johnson in 1913. That was one of the shining moments of the “Year of the Pitcher.”

The “up and in” part?

Drysdale hit 154 batters during his career and led the majors in hit batsmen five times. He was also suspected of doctoring the baseball to throw a spitter, which gave him an additional psychological edge.

“The pitcher has to find out if the hitter is timid, and if he is timid, he has to remind the hitter he's timid,” Drysdale told The New York Times in a 1979 interview.

Drysdale, who died in 1993, would team with Sandy Koufax to give the Dodgers a potent one-two pitching punch that led to three pennants and two World Series titles between 1963 and 1966.

Whicker retired in February 2022 after 49 years as a sportswriter and columnist, including his last 34 with The Orange County Register. He dutifully provides the nuts and bolts of Drysdale’s career but also provides context and rich detail.

Whicker writes that the pitcher-turned-broadcaster was passionate about the game, knowing it from every angle.

“If you didn’t represent the game, if you didn’t play the way he thought you should play, he didn’t have time for you,” Harrelson told Whicker, calling his broadcasting relationship with Drysdale “turbulent” at times. “We’d go out and argue about players, and he’d hit the sauce pretty good.

“But he was also more knowledgeable than anybody I was ever around.”

Whicker did not know Drysdale during his playing days but interacted with him when the former pitcher was broadcasting games for the Dodgers. For Up and In, Whicker interviewed 39 different people, including his widow, Ann Meyers Drysdale; former Dodgers owner Peter O’Malley; family members; fellow broadcasters Ken Harrelson, Al Michaels and the late Vin Scully; teammates including Koufax, the late Jeff Torborg, Wes Parker, the late Carl Erskine, the late Stan Williams, Joe Moeller and Jim Lefebvre.
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Whicker, who also referenced 14 newspapers and four books — including Drysdale’s 1990 autobiography, Once a Bum, Always a Dodger — began his original project in 2013 but it fell through the following year. Whicker returned to writing the biography in late 2022.

​Whicker writes about the Dodgers’ exodus from Brooklyn — Drysdale enjoyed pitching at Ebbets Field — to Los Angeles, where the pitcher hated the quirky dimensions of the Los Angeles Coliseum. California’s explosive growth after 1950 meant that more people flocked to the state, and more people could crowd into Dodger Stadium, which replaced the Coliseum in 1962.

They were treated to excellent pitching and small ball that epitomized the Dodgers’ brand of baseball.

After losing a three-game playoff to the San Francisco Giants in 1962, the Dodgers would win pennants in 1963, ’65 and ’66.

“The first five years of Dodger Stadium made up the most successful chunk of time in franchise history,” Whicker writes.

Not only could Drysdale pitch. He could also hit.

In 1965 he hit seven home runs and was the only Dodger with more than 15 plate appearances who batted .300. Drysdale would hit 29 homers during his career.

As a pitcher, Drysdale was comfortable playing second fiddle to Koufax, who won 111 games between 1962 and 1966. Drysdale won 98.

“All I know is that when Don was pitching, the other team would have problems all of a sudden,” Lefebvre told Whicker. “I’d hear guys say, ‘You know, my back doesn’t feel good today. My arm is sore all of a sudden.’ Amazing.”

Whicker gives a blow-by-blow description of the famous holdout that Drysdale and Koufax staged before the 1966 season. Koufax had won 26 games and Drysdale had 23, so their bargaining power as a duo was never stronger — and in baseball, unheard of — as they asked for a combined $1 million over three years.
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Drysdale stayed in shape by pitching hay and grooming his horses. That enabled Whicker to bounce off one of his best lines in the book.
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“Presumably, he wasn’t brushing back the horses with 90 mph bales,” he quipped.

The two pitchers ended their 32-day holdout when Drysdale signed for $105,000 and Koufax inked a deal for $130,000.

Whicker prefaces Drysdale’s greatest pitching effort with Johnson’s 56-inning scoreless streak. The Dodgers right-hander overcame the Big Train's longstanding record during a 20-day span in 1968 that saw him defeat fellow future Hall of Famers Gibson, Ferguson Jenkins and Jim Bunning.

The streak seemed to end at 44 innings in a May 31 game at Dodger Stadium when Drysdale grazed Giants catcher Dick Dietz with the bases loaded in the ninth inning. However, umpire Harry Wendlestedt ruled that Dietz did not try to get out of the way.

​The catcher returned to the batter’s box and Drysdale retired him on a fly ball. Drysdale got the next two batters out to earn a 3-0 win and preserve his streak.

Pinch-hitter Howie Bedell would finally break Drysdale’s string of goose eggs on June 8 with a fifth-inning sacrifice fly — his only RBI of the 1968 season and the last of 3 RBI in his career.

“How important was the streak? His successful bid to reach the Hall of Fame depended on it,” Whicker writes. “The streak was the badge that he wore for the rest of his life.”
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Another Dodger, Orel Hershiser, would break Drysdale’s mark in 1988, hurling 59 scoreless innings.

Off the field, Drysdale showed he was just as comfortable as an actor as he was on the mound. In 1960, he played the role of  Roy Grant in one episode of the Western series, “Lawman.” Drysdale would also appear in four episodes of “The Donna Reed Show” and had guest roles in “The Brady Bunch,” “The Flying Nun,” “Leave it to Beaver” and “The Rifleman.”

There are some flaws in Drysdale’s character, which Whicker documents. He was an “all-star drinker” who also made suggested marrying his eventual second wife, basketball star Ann Meyers, while he was still married to his first. Drysdale’s first wife also filed for divorce, alleging domestic violence.

As a broadcaster, Drysdale was opinionated and emotional, but could also let the crowd tell the story. Many recall Scully’s iconic call of Kirk Gibson’s walk-off homer in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series, but Drysdale also excelled in his local radio call of the blast.

"A drive into right field! Way back! This ball … is gone!” Drysdale shouted, then went silent for nearly two minutes before resuming.

“This crowd will not stop! They can't believe the ending. And this time, Mighty Casey did not strike out!”

Drysdale struck out a lot of batters during his career, fanning 2,486 and throwing 49 shutouts. His career ERA over 518 games was 2.95.

Up and In does “Big D” justice, putting him in the context of his time and revealing his competitive spirit. Pitching rules today might have curtailed the knockdowns that made Drysdale notorious, and the righty might have chuckled at how today's players are “armored up” when they approach the plate.
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But one thing is certain. Any player who tried to crowd the plate got a message from Drysdale — loud and clear. “Up and in” demonstrates that perfectly.

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily as I interview Phil Imbriano, who designed the base set for the 2025 Topps Series One baseball set. Fanatics SVP Clay Luraschi also chimes in as we talk about the set:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/birth-of-a-baseball-card-set-2025-topps-series-one-designer-talks-flagship-product/​

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about some of the football cards of former Miami Dolphins quarterback Bob Griese, who turned 80 on Feb. 3: 

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/bob-griese-turns-80-here-are-8-cards-that-spanned-his-career/​

​Willie McCovey was the Theodore Roosevelt of major league baseball.
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“Stretch” spoke softly but carried a big stick. The 6-foot-4 McCovey had one of the hardest swings in baseball, and when he retired in 1980 his 521 home runs were the most by a National League left-handed hitter.

Between 1965 and 1970, McCovey averaged 37.6 home runs and led the league in homers and RBI twice. He also was the N.L.’s MVP in 1969, when he had career highs in home runs (45) and RBI (126).

That’s a big stick. But it was McCovey’s ability to speak softly that carried more weight. When the future first-ballot Hall of Famer spoke, his teammates listened.

That is one of the recurring themes in Chris Haft’s biography of McCovey, A Giant Among Giants: The Baseball Life of Willie McCovey (University of Nebraska Press; hardback; $37.95; 240 pages). Haft is familiar with baseball in the San Francisco area, having covered the Giants for the San Jose Mercury News in 2005 and ’06, and with MLB.com from 2007 to 2018. He also grew up as an “incorrigible” Giants fan.

Haft began actively working on the book in 2021, three years after McCovey’s death at the age of 80 and after receiving approval from Allison McCovey, the slugger’s daughter from his first marriage.

The Giants have had megastars like Willie Mays, Juan Marichal, Orlando Cepeda and Barry Bonds, but McCovey was the one “who people wanted to hug the most,” Haft writes.

He was a beloved figure in San Francisco. And players — teammates and opponents — respected him.
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“He rarely said much, hardly ever cussed unless provoked, but when Willie spoke, you listened, and you did as you were told,” former pitcher John D’Acquisto told SB Nation in 2018. “Every March when I walked by him in the clubhouse for the first time at spring training, he would grab my arm and gently say, ‘If you ever have a question, don’t ask these guys, they’re just gonna pull your chain. You come and ask me and I’ll give you a straight answer. Understand? I’ll take care of you. You come talk to me.’”

​McCovey and Mays combined for 801 home runs during their 13 seasons as teammates, according to the Society for American Baseball Research. Only Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews (863) and Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig (859) hit more. The pair won an N.L. pennant in 1962, a division title in 1971 and finished in second place in five consecutive seasons.

But the Giants had a problem during McCovey’s first seasons with the team. He and Cepeda were natural first basemen, so managers either had to platoon them or put one of them in a different spot. There was no designated hitter, which would have solved that problem. From 1961 through 1964, McCovey split time between first base and the outfield. Cepeda would rotate between those two positions and even spent time at third base before becoming a full-time first baseman when he was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals in 1966. McCovey also was anchored at first base to stay in 1966.

“The Giants squandered the opportunity to field an otherworldly lineup with McCovey and Cepeda in it,” Haft writes.

They started only 430 games together out of a possible 900.

“I would have found room for both of them somehow,” teammate Hal Lanier told Haft.

The managers at the time — Bill Rigney, Tom Sheehan and Alvin Dark — did not.

As the book’s title implies, Haft focuses on McCovey’s career in the game. However, he does touch on McCovey’s formative years in Mobile, Alabama, the same city where his early hero, Henry Aaron, grew up. McCovey would honor Aaron by wearing No. 44 when he was promoted to the majors.

Haft also briefly mentions some of the indignities McCovey and his brothers endured in Mobile because of segregationist Jim Crow laws.

But this is a mostly a book that focuses on McCovey’s achievements on the field, and Haft dutifully reports the highs and lows of his career. McCovey is more than a name given to the body of water beyond the right-field wall at Oracle Park.

He was the N.L.’s Rookie of the Year in 1959 despite playing only 52 games. He hit safely in his first seven games, connecting for three home runs and batting .467 over an eight-day stretch. McCovey would finish the season with 13 homers and 38 RBI while batting .354.

Haft explores the relationship between McCovey and Ted Williams. McCovey said the Splendid Splinter taught him valuable lessons about hitting, including waiting for a good pitch to hit, swinging a weighted bat in the on-deck circle and selecting the right bat for hitting.

“I learned from Ted Williams about getting a good pitch to hit,” McCovey said. “He was really my mentor as far as hitting. I talked to Ted a lot.”

McCovey never worried about living in the shadow of Mays, Haft writes. In fact, he welcomed it.

“It afforded McCovey a cool, calm place from where he could operate,” Haft writes.

Haft has previously co-written books about the Giants, including If These Walls Could Talk: Stories From the San Francisco Giants Dugout, Locker Room, and Press Box (2017); From the Stick to the Cove: My Six Decades With the San Francisco Giants (2020); and This Is Our Time (2011).

In A Giant Among Giants, Haft devotes a chapter to a signature moment in McCovey’s career, albeit one the slugger preferred to forget. In Game 7 of the 1962 World Series, the New York Yankees were leading 1-0 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth at Candlestick Park but the Giants had runners at second and third and McCovey at the plate.

McCovey had tripled in the seventh inning but was stranded at third. This time, first base was open and Cepeda was on deck — should the Yankees walk McCovey to load the bases or pitch to him?

Starter Ralph Terry convinced manager Ralph Houk that he should pitch to the slugger.

After McCovey hit a line drive down the right field line that hooked foul, second baseman Bobby Richardson repositioned himself to handle anything that McCovey might pull.

The strategy paid off, as McCovey hit a line drive at Richardson on the next pitch to end the game and the World Series.

“The result came as quickly as a match being blown out at Candlestick,” Haft writes.

McCovey, meanwhile, would refer to the game as “the day I hit the line drive.”
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His career was much more than that one plate appearance, however, and McCovey would be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on the first ballot in 1986.

​The Giants would honor him by establishing the Willie Mac Award in 1980. Haft provides a thumbnail summary of every winner of the award from its first winner, Jack Clark, to 2023 recipient Thairo Estrada. He also includes a transcript of McCovey’s induction speech at Cooperstown. Charts in the back of the book provide McCovey’s career statistics (including minor league figures), his 18 grand slams and 10 memorable home runs.

McCovey played 22 seasons in the majors, competing in parts of four different decades. He was with the Giants for 19 seasons, and played two-plus years with the San Diego Padres and 11 games with Oakland before returning to San Francisco in 1977 to finish his career.

“He was deeply woven into San Francisco’s fabric,” Haft writes.

A Giant Among Giants is a quick, easy read. The reader benefits from Haft’s research and interviews with key people in McCovey’s life.

McCovey was a hitter whose long, high home runs awed fans and terrified pitchers, even those as tough as Bob Gibson, who called the Giants’ star “the scariest hitter in baseball.”

But Haft reveals a gentle side to McCovey that only players and people close to him could appreciate.
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 “Willie McCovey made everything and everyone he touched in baseball better,” D’Acquisto wrote in 2018. “He was a great leader, a great teammate and an even better friend.”
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And that is no stretch.