Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about Shohei Ohtani petitioning to recover cards bought by his former interpreter with the star's money:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/ohtani-petitions-to-recover-cards-bought-by-former-interpreter-with-stars-money/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the top-rated World Wide Gum graded set from 1934, which is heading to auction:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/top-rated-1934-world-wide-gum-set-featured-in-heritage-auctions-sale/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the memorabilia collection of the late CEO of the Red Sox, Larry Lucchino, which will be sold during a Bonhams Skinner Auction later in November.

​www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/curse-breaker-collection-of-former-red-sox-ceo-larry-lucchino-headed-to-auction/

​If you collected baseball cards during the 1960s and ’70s, there always seemed to be a card that showed up in packs. Repeatedly. And it wasn’t Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays.

For me, it was Don LeJohn from the 1966 Topps set (Card No. 41) and Gene Brabender from the 1968 Topps set (Card No. 163).
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As a kid, I never knew much about either player, although I later discovered that LeJohn’s nickname was Ducky and that the infielder spent 12 years in the minors before he was finally called up by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1965.

​As a 31-year-old rookie he had two hits in his first two at-bats and even appeared in the World Series that season where he struck out as a pinch hitter. He later made his mark as a minor-league manager.

Brabender, meanwhile, was a pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles and Seattle Pilots, the latter team morphing into the Milwaukee Brewers in 1970. He was a big guy at 6-foot-5 and would lead the Pilots in wins with 13 in 1969, the team’s only season in Seattle. He also gained some notoriety by being a recurring character in Jim Bouton’s seminal book, Ball Four.

“When Gene Brabender is serious, everybody is serious,” Bouton wrote about the right-hander, who admonished the knuckleball pitcher and catcher Jim Pagliaroni for starting to sing “The Lord’s Prayer” during an airplane flight that ran into turbulence.

As far as recurring baseball cards in wax packs, author Steve Wiegand feels your pain. As a youth, he seemed to always pull a 1960 Topps card of Danny O’Connell, an infielder who played 10 seasons in the majors with four different teams.

“I did not like Danny O’Connell,” Wiegand writes in his latest book. “It took six decades, but I eventually changed my mind.”

Wiegand said he had “probably 42” O’Connell cards that year and none of Mays.

While other collectors groused, Wiegand decided years later to find out more about O’Connell. The result is The Uncommon Life of Danny O’Connell: A Tale of Baseball Cards, “Average” Players, and the True Value of America’s Game (Bancroft Press; hardback; $33; 342 pages), a well-written, well-researched and entertaining work.

Wiegand has written or collaborated on 10 books and was a political reporter and columnist over a 35-year stretch with the San Diego Evening Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Sacramento Bee. During his career, he has interviewed four presidents and six California governors.

Wiegand found it fascinating to dig into the life and times of O’Connell, who played from 1950 through 1969 and died from a heart attack in 1969. What results is an uncommon look at a player whose baseball card was considered a “common” throughout his career.
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“He was by no means average,” Wiegand said in a recent podcast.

It is important to note that any player who reaches the major leagues has to be in the top 1% of all who aspire to reach the bigs. From that standpoint, O’Connell was definitely a success. That said, his baseball cards are easy to find and can be purchased without denting one’s bank account too severely.

A look at PSA’s compilation of O’Connell items shows 25 different types of cards, coins and stamps. O’Connell appears in the mainstream Bowman and Topps sets from 1951 through 1961, He also can be found in Hires Root Beer cards, Dixie Lids, Salada Coins, Johnston Cookies, San Francisco Call-Bulletin Giants, Golden Stamps, Dixie Lids, Topps Bucks (folded and unfolded), Spic and Span Braves, Shirriff Coins and Venezuelan issues.

There have been 4,442 O’Connell items submitted to PSA for grading. Of those cards, only 10 have earned a gem-mint grade and 160 were graded PSA 9s. Undoubtedly, O’Connell’s items suffered the same abuse that many of my LeJohn and Brabender cards received.

Weigand writes that in 1958, O’Connell was the first player to score a run in an official major league game played on the West Coast. He also shares the record of hitting three triples in a game, achieved most recently by Miami Marlins shortstop Xavier Edwards, who went 4-for-6 with four RBI in a 15-5 victory at Toronto on Sept. 27, 2024.
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This book is more than a look at common baseball cards. Wiegand blends card facts with the highlights of O’Connell’s life and career in baseball. The reader learns about Paterson, New Jersey, where O’Connell was born, and how his family came to the United States from Ireland during the mid-19th century.

The narrative that Wiegand weaves includes the “most pivotal year in the history of baseball,” the 1946 season. That was the year the Mexican League attempted to lure players south of the border, and Al Niemiec sued baseball in an effort to win his job back under the G.I. Bill, which required employers to give war veterans their jobs back. Baseball players were moving closer toward labor organization, and Jackie Robinson was one step closer to reaching the major leagues and breaking the modern-day color barrier.​

Wiegand also traces the evolution of modern-day baseball cards, which evolved from pieces of cardboard included in packs of cigarettes to big business and a fight-to-the-death battle between Bowman and Topps during the 1950s. O’Connell’s first card would be part of the 1951 Bowman set (No. 93). Brief histories of Fleer, Leaf and Goudey are also provided.

O’Connell played in 79 games as a 21-year-old rookie with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1950, but he missed the next two seasons due to military service. Returning in 1953, O’Connell batted a career-high .294, missing the coveted .300 plateau when he went 2-for-23 in his final seven games, Wiegand writes.
O’Connell was a versatile fielder who was adept at playing second base, third base and shortstop.

“He mirrored what was called the Golden Age of baseball,” Wiegand said.

He received praise from the always positive Milton Richman in a Sport magazine article and kudos from the always critical Rogers Hornsby, who called O’Connell “a throwback to the Old Timers.”

As Wiegand writes, O’Connell never lacked confidence.
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“I don’t have a glaring weakness that a guy is going to get me out on,” O’Connell said. “The way I figure it, anybody can field. To be a big leaguer, you got to hit.”

Like many players of his era, O’Connell worked during the offseason. Even though baseball players made more money than the average worker (and still do), many worked second jobs to supplement their income. During the offseason, O’Connell worked delivering the mail and was employed by a beer company.

For example, he signed a contract worth more than $13,000 in 1954. Wiegand notes that it was five times more than the average American worker would earn that year.

O’Connell may have been a slick fielder, but at times his verbal errors caused headaches for himself and his teammates, Wiegand writes.

Once, he criticized Braves manager Charlie Grimm for being too easygoing and compounded the mistake by observing that the team’s pitchers were not knocking down enough opposing players after Milwaukee’s players were being dusted.

There are a few glitches in this book. Weigand references a 1946 story by Dan Hall of the St. Petersburg Times but calls the publication by its current name, the Tampa Bay Times. One does not refer to the New York Giants of 1946 as the San Francisco Giants, for example.

In his introduction, Wiegand refers to Mantle as “Micky.”
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But kudos to Wiegand for mentioning “Foul Ball Paul” Jones, an Idaho resident who has assembled a private baseball card collection that Wiegand writes has topped 4 million.

​O’Connell never collected baseball cards but enjoyed seeing his images on them, his sister Alice told Wiegand during a 2022 interview.

“I think it was like proof to himself that he really was a big leaguer like all those fellows on the cards,” she said.

Wiegand artfully meshes O’Connell’s year-by-year story with the baseball cards of each season. It’s an effective device and brings the focus back to the cards. Wiegand provides plenty of detail about the brands of cards O’Connell graced through the years, along with his own opinions.

While doing his research on O’Connell, Wiegand said assembling information on the player was like “a first date or a blind date because I knew nothing about him.” But after interviewing O’Connell’s children and siblings, he had “nothing but admiration for the guy.”
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“I think he’s a true American  hero,” Wiegand said during another podcast that aired in August. “An everyday guy who provided for his family, did a job he loved, was well-loved by his colleagues and was just all-around a great guy.”

Most of us never got to meet O’Connell, including Wiegand. But this book provides an in-depth look at a player whose life was much more than common. And Wiegand does it through a fun description of baseball cards and an insightful look at O’Connell’s life.

He suggests that perhaps baseball cards are “mirrors as well as pictures.”

“Maybe we see our efforts to achieve our own aspirations in the faces of the players, or reflect on how we can achieve them,” Wiegand writes. “And maybe it’s easier to see that in the cards of ‘commons’ than ‘stars.’”
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Much easier, in fact. Like Danny O’Connell, Don LeJohn and Gene Brabender — along with thousands of men — realized their dreams and were uncommonly good.

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily previewing the 2024-25 Panini NBA Hoops product:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/paninis-2024-25-nba-hoops-tips-off-basketball-cards-for-2025/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the 1964 Kahn's football set:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/kahns-final-football-set-in-1964-was-colorful-and-loaded-with-stars/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the rookie cards of six of the eight nominees for the Hall of Fame from the Classic Baseball Era committee:
www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/rookie-cards-of-the-classic-baseball-era-2024-hall-of-fame-nominees/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the 1957 Topps football cards of the Detroit Lions, who won the NFL title that year:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/detroit-lions-last-championship-squad-ably-represented-in-1957-topps-football-set/​