You can’t just look at the numbers when considering the career of David Ortiz. Sure, his numbers are great: 541 career home runs, 1,768 RBI, a 10-time All-Star and a three-time World Series champion.

It’s the intangibles that made Ortiz great. The Boston slugger was the heart and soul of the Boston Red Sox team that finally broke the Curse of the Bambino with a World Series title in 2004, and he helped them win two more times before retiring after the 2016 season. He did it with leadership and swagger, humility and example, and he never forgot his humble roots.

Those intangibles, along with his slugging ability, will land him in the Hall of Fame when he becomes eligible in a few years.

That’s why Papi: My Story (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; hardback; $28; 262 pages) is such a satisfying read. The book is short, but Ortiz packs plenty of information and insight, with the help of Boston sportswriter/columnist/radio personality Michael Holley.

Just seeing Ortiz’s big bat in the middle of the Red Sox batting order was frightening enough. And sure, he could whine and become agitated if he believed a pitcher was throwing too close to him, or that he wasn’t getting enough respect. But here was a guy, brought up in the Dominican Republic by hard-working parents in a town “where there was a shooting every day” who could stand at a Fenway Park microphone and crudely tell terrorists who exploded bombs at the Boston Marathon that Boston was “our city” (you know the exact phrase, so I don’t need to insert the profanity.

But like the headline in the San Francisco Chronicle the day after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, what Ortiz said was powerfully appropriate in the context of the moment.

Ortiz gives the reader glimpses of the personalities of those Red Sox teams, extolling the work ethic of Manny Ramirez, the steely resolve of Pedro Martinez and the vision of general manager Theo Epstein. He also speaks of trust broken with former manager Terry Francona and the abysmal 2012 season piloted by Bobby Valentine. He writes of his run-ins with David Price when the left-hander was with the Rays, but adds that he now considers him a good friend. He’s a family man who had some rough patches in his marriage but worked them out.

nd from a personal standpoint, it’s hard to dislike a guy who named his first son D’Angelo.

He writes about the transition from the Minnesota Twins, where as a player he could enjoy anonymity, to Boston, where “there were no places to hide out.” He writes about the pain of losing the 2003 American League Championship Series to the New York Yankees, particularly when the Red Sox held a 5-2 lead in the eighth inning of Game 7. After Aaron Boone’s 11th-inning homer sent the Yankees to the World Series, Ortiz was “sick.”

“Too sick to be angry. Too sick to be analytical,” he wrote.

But 2004 would be a different story, as the Red Sox overcame a 3-0 series deficit in the ALCS to sweep the Yankees. Ortiz’s homer at Fenway Park gave the Sox a victory in Game 4, and his game-winning single in Game 5 made it a series again. The Red Sox would sweep the final two games at Yankee Stadium to win their first pennant since 1986, and would sweep the St. Louis Cardinals to win their first World Series title since 1918. The Curse was over.

Ortiz also reveals the origin of his nickname, “Big Papi.” He had a terrible memory for first names, and to compensate he would call everyone papi. Babe Ruth called everyone “kid,” so Ortiz in his own way carved out a nickname for himself.

He writes about being on “the list” of players who tested positive for a banned substance in 2003, and how he had to face rumors and innuendo when the list was revealed in 2009. “I was now a name in this war. It was endless,” Ortiz writes. “Say you didn’t do it enough and you sound guilty. Say nothing and your silence proves your guilt.”

While Ortiz said he bought legal supplements and vitamins over the counter, he denied that he ever bought or used steroids.

“And after I said it, I felt some of the tension leave my body,” he writes. “All I could share was the truth.”

The truth is that Ortiz carved out a unique place in Boston sports history, and his towering home runs and larger-than-life personality is presented well in Papi.

“I’m truly blessed to have had such a gratifying life in baseball,” he writes.
Baseball fans — who rooted for and against Ortiz — surely feel the same.

What I’ve always enjoyed about Topps Inception baseball has been the painted versions of the players, set against a colorful and artsy background.

That formula works again in the 2017 edition, which hit the shelves last week. The thick stock is perfect for a higher-end brand, and the intricate drawings and the backgrounds with their big bang theory fusion-like look are both interesting and attractive.
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A hobby box contains one pack of seven cards, and Topps promises one autograph card — or better — per box. The price for a hobby box is in the $70 to $80 range, depending on the retailer.

The base set contains 100 cards, and the pack I opened had four of them — Carlos Correia, Luis Severino, Josh Donaldson and Willson Contreras. The design was vertical for the cards I pulled, which I always believe is a plus.
The key cards were a pair of parallels and an Autographed Relics card. Severino makes an encore appearance in a green parallel, while Joc Pederson is featured on a purple parallel, numbered to 150. The purple background really looks nice on this card, especially when combined with the splashes of blue and red. Very attractive.

The Autographed Relics card featured pitcher Carson Fulmer, who saw some brief action last season with the Chicago White Sox but is currently in the minor leagues. The card is a red parallel, numbered to 25, and features a generous swatch of red and black. The autograph is distinctive, but is on a sticker, which I consider a negative. Love those hard-signed cards. The old style uniforms from the 1980s (the White Sox won the American League West in 1983) are a nice touch, too. The nice thing about this particular card is that there are only four per case, so its scarcity is a nice thing.

There is a lot of young talent in the Autographed Relics card subset, and a collector could pull Aaron Judge, Kyle Schwarber, Mike Trout, Manny Machado and others.
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Inception is a nice-looking set. The card stock is thick, the design is different and attractive, and the hit cards are nice. I would have preferred on-card autographs, but you can’t have everything.

Here is a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the November release of the 2017 Topps High Tek baseball set:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/74738-2/​

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about a find of  1950s cards, including a bunch of Hall of Famers.
www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/1950s-baseball-card-find-high-grade/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the 2016-17 Panini Grand Reserve basketball set, which will be released in late June:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/panini-adds-grand-reserve-to-high-end-lineup/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the 1967 Philadelphia Gum Co. football set:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/1967-philadelphia-football-card-set/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about an RMY Auctions sale of a 1904 Jim Delahanty cabinet photo:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/photo-of-the-day-1904-jim-delahanty-cabinet-picture/

Here is a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about a 1919 World Series press pin that will be auctioned in late May by SCP Auctions:
www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/scp-auctions-offering-1919-world-series-pin-for-sale/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the sale of original vintage sports photos by Heritage Auctions: 

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/baseball-news-photos-highlight-heritage-auctions-vintage-catalog/

It’s an unfortunate part of baseball lore. A player’s career can be defined by one game, one play, even one pitch.

Bill Buckner collected 2,715 hits during a 22-year major-league career, but is remembered for a grounder that rolled under his legs during Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. Rookie Fred Merkle was only doing what other players did when he peeled off between first and second base after Al Bridwell’s apparent two-out, game-winning hit for the New York Giants against the Chicago Cubs in 1908. An alert Johnny Evers called for the ball, stepped on second for a force play that negated the winning run, and the game remained a tie and eventually had to be replayed. The Cubs won and went on to win the National League pennant thanks to what became known as “Merkle’s Boner.”

And then there is the case of teammates Hugh Casey and Mickey Owen. With the Brooklyn Dodgers on the verge of winning Game 4 of the 1941 World Series to even the Fall Classic, Casey struck out New York Yankees hitter Tommy Henrich for the game’s final out — but, not so fast. The ball got past Owen, Henrich reached first base safely, and the Yankees went on to win the game and eventually the Series.

Both players were maligned for the gaffe, and for years there was a question whether Casey had crossed up his catcher by throwing a spitball. Casey, out of the majors within a decade and embroiled in a paternity suit, would commit suicide in 1951 at the age of 37.

Casey’s life was more than one misguided pitch and a sad ending. Baseball author and historian Lyle Spatz presents a deeper portrait of the pitcher and the man in his latest biography, Hugh Casey: The Triumph and Tragedies of a Brooklyn Dodger (Rowman & Littlefield; hardback; 320 pages). Certainly, Casey was a colorful character, a man who redefined the role of relief pitcher during the 1940s. Unofficially, he led the National League in saves twice (saves did not become an official statistic until 1969), and was part of a raucous, swaggering, brawling Dodgers team that was led by their equally cantankerous manager, Leo Durocher.

Casey also was a complicated man who had trouble controlling his weight, enjoyed a drink more often than not, endured several separations from his wife, ran a restaurant in Brooklyn, and had a memorable impromptu boxing match in 1942 with author Ernest Hemingway during spring training in Havana.
“He was a big, boisterous guy with a cigar in one hand and a scotch in the other,” announcer Ernie Harwell recalled.

Spatz, the former chairman of the Society of American Baseball Research’s Baseball Records Committee, is no stranger to the Dodgers of the 1940s. He wrote a biography of outfielder Dixie Walker in 2011 and edited a collection of biographies for SABR called The Team That Forever Changed Baseball and America: The 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers in 2012. He also wrote biographies of Bill Dahlen and Willie Keeler, and collaborated with Steve Steinberg on a pair of books about the Yankees of the 1920s — 1921: The Yankees, the Giants and the Battle for Baseball Supremacy in New York (2010); and The Colonel and Hug: The Partnership that Transformed the New York Yankees (2015).

Spatz’s talent as a researcher shines through in an extensive bibliography that includes books and articles from journals, magazines and newspapers. He taps into the baseball knowledge of historians and writers like John Thorn, Jules Tygiel, Charles Alexander, Jonathan Eig, Steven Gietschier, Peter Golenbock, Bill James, Roger Kahn and Lawrence Ritter, to name a few.

Spatz writes about Casey’s youth and minor-league career, noting that “the blood of the Old South and the Confederacy did indeed run deep” in his veins. After signing with the Detroit Tigers and playing for their minor-league clubs, Casey hooked up with his hometown Atlanta Crackers and caught the eye of manager Wilbert Robinson. It was uncertain whether “Uncle Robbie” liked Casey because of his pitching ability, Spatz writes, or because he “always knew where the fish were biting, was a Deadeye-Dick with a shotgun, and had a way with bird dogs.”

Casey would debut in the majors with the Chicago Cubs in 1935, but the team was unimpressed and shipped him back to the minors. He would emerge with Brooklyn in 1939 and would establish himself as a dependable starter and later as a lockdown reliever. But that bad pitch in the 1941 World Series turned the postseason around. Spatz writes that Durocher second-guessed himself for not going to the mound to settle his pitcher down. Owen also second-guessed himself.

“It was like a punch in the chin. You’re stunned. You don’t react,” Owen said years later. “I should have gone out to the mound and stalled around a little.

“It was more my fault than Leo’s.”

As a southerner, Casey was uncomfortable when Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers in 1947. Allegedly part of the ring of Dodgers who drafted a protest letter, Casey nevertheless worked to help Robinson field his position better; Spatz quotes historian Jules Tygiel, who wrote that Casey would hit grounders to Robinson at first base, “gently chiding” him about his fielding. But when Casey was drinking, his darker side would emerge, like the time he rubbed Robinson’s head for good luck during a card game. Robinson, miffed, continued to play cards without incident.

After a memorable performance in the 1947 World Series, Casey’s career began to go downhill the following year due to injuries and ineffectiveness. In 1949, he split his final major-league season between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Yankees, and then wound up his career in the minors.

Casey’s paternity suit is covered in detail by Spatz, who also writes about the pitcher’s tax woes with the IRS in 1951. Top that off with a separation from his wife that year, and the reasons for Casey’s suicide on July 3, 1951, seems more plausible.

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about a Heritage Auctions offering of a Thurman Munson uniform jersey and pants.

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/from-yard-sale-to-auction-heritage-selling-munson-jersey-pants/

​Lefty O’Doul may never enter the National Baseball Hall of Fame as a player. Although he had gaudy statistics over an 11-year major-league career — he had a lifetime .349 average and was a two-time National League batting champion — only four of his seasons were truly remarkable.

Short bursts of greatness have landed players in Cooperstown — Sandy Koufax’s five-year stretch of dominance from 1962 to 1966, or Dizzy Dean's short but brilliant career come to mind — but O’Doul has faded from the consciousness of the veterans committee.

However, if one factors in what a man has done for the game of baseball, Frank “Lefty” O’Doul should receive more consideration. O’Doul was a baseball ambassador who organized trips to Japan before and after World War II. It was his 1949 trip that was such a morale boost for fans in the Far East, and O’Doul remains a revered figure among Japanese baseball fans.

That trip and a long, colorful career are the main themes in Dennis Snelling’s jaunty, interesting biography, Lefty O’Doul: Baseball’s Forgotten Ambassador (University of Nebraska Press; hardback; $27.95; 356 pages).

O’Doul played 11 seasons in the major leagues, from 1919 to 1934. In between, he played and managed in the Pacific Coast League, mostly with the team of his hometown, the San Francisco Seals.

Snelling is certainly qualified to write about O’Doul, who was a hanky-waving, gregarious figure in the PCL. In 2011 Snelling wrote The Greatest Minor League: A History of the Pacific Coast League, 1903-1957, which was a Casey Awards finalist for best baseball book that year.

O’Doul was a two-time batting champion, hitting .398 in 1929 and collecting a National League record 254 hits (which was tied the following year by New York Giants first baseman Bill Terry). He also hit a career-high 32 home runs in 1929 while striking out just 19 times. O’Doul followed that landmark season by batting .383 in 1930, but Terry batted .401, becoming the last National League player to reach that hitting plateau.

While O’Doul gained an advantage by hitting in tiny Baker Bowl, he also was at a disadvantage because he wasn’t able to hit against the Phillies’ pitching staff, which had collective ERAs of 6.13 in 1929 and 6.71 in 1930.

Interestingly, O’Doul also is one of 12 players who played for the New York Yankees, New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers during his career.

Snelling uses a compelling literary device to open each chapter, relating an anecdote that concerned baseball in Japan. Much of the opening passages have to do with the baseball tour to Japan that O’Doul organized in 1949 as a morale-booster for the people of the defeated empire.

As a young player, O’Doul cut an impressive figure as a pitcher and then as a hitter. He was “ramrod straight, clear of eye, and fleet of foot,” Snelling writes. He had a strong arm and a beautiful batting stroke.

O’Doul “had an ingratiating personality,” Snelling writes, but his quest to have a good time and his lack of fear at authority figures did not sit well with his first manager, Yankees skipper Miller Huggins.

Snelling digs out interesting facts about O’Doul in this biography. For example, the left-handed hitter struck out in his major-league debut in 1919, and he would only fan 122 times in his career. In his second at-bat, O’Doul pinch hit for a young outfielder named George Halas, who flopped with the Yankees but found his niche in the National Football League as the owner of the Chicago Bears.

Originally a pitcher, O’Doul finally was shifted to the outfield. While that enabled managers to use his potent bat, O’Doul was never a great outfielder. He never mastered the art of getting a jump on the ball, and his arm, ruined by pitching, did not scare base runners. But he was popular in the clubhouse and kept his teammates loose with his outgoing personality.

It was O’Doul who convinced Babe Ruth to participate in the Japan barnstorming tour in 1934. Snelling’s narrative of the tour is excellent, and his correspondence with author and Japanese baseball authority Rob Fitts (who wrote the ground-breaking book of the 1934 tour, Banzai Babe Ruth, in 2012) was essential in putting the trip into the proper context of the political and social atmosphere that prevailed in the 1930s.

The tour was so successful that the O’Doul arranged for the Tokyo Giants to tour the United States in 1935 and 1936. But the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 broke O’Doul’s heart — and angered him, too. “He considered it a personal betrayal,” Snelling writes. But O’Doul still had a soft spot for the Japanese people, and his 1949 tour of the country was evidence of that.

Snelling documents O’Doul’s 23-year managerial career in the PCL, with San Francisco (17 years), and for six with other squads in the league (San Diego, Oakland, Seattle and Vancouver). He also points out how O’Doul gave batting tips and advice to two up-and-coming hitters who would blossom into the game’s best —Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams.

His best pupil might have been actor Gary Cooper, who had to learn how to bat properly in the movie Pride of the Yankees, the film biography of Lou Gehrig. “The actor swung a bat until he ached all over,” Snelling writes.

O’Doul was uniquely a San Francisco man, and his many years managing the Seals and running a restaurant in town made him a beloved figure. While he never made it to the majors as a manager — despite rumors through the years that he would take over a squad — O’Doul had a simple credo. That was to empathize with a player when he was down.

It certainly worked. O’Doul went 2,094-1,970 as a minor-league manager.

O’Doul was a talented scratch golfer and played in the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am Tournament from 1948-1954, winning the pro-am portion of the event in 1949 and 1954. He had a soft spot for children, even though his two marriages were childless. And O’Doul never turned down a request for help from a hitter who needed his swing critiqued.
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In 2002, O’Doul finally made it to the Hall of Fame — but not the one in Cooperstown. He was the first American elected to the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame. “The Man in the Green Suit” may not get a plaque in Cooperstown, but Snelling’s richly detailed, well-written biography offers compelling evidence that O’Doul’s contributions to the game should be taken into consideration.