Months-old Garage Sale Finds

This is a post that I've been waiting for an opportunity to do since then, that's when I stood out at a neighborhood garage sale and thumbed through stacks and stacks of cards on the unusually hot and sunny afternoon. I'm surprised that I didn't get heat stroke. Given the recent cold we've had here, I'm surprised anyone could ever get heat stroke.
Anyway, as you might guess from the cards up top, this post was triggered by the selection of Paul Blair a couple days ago. I was able to do his post on his playing days because of this neighborhood garage sale and my find of his 1977 Topps card, the first one of him as a Yankee.
The card back has him as a solid Oriole, with stats from 1964 through 1976. The cartoon is kind of interesting, but I'm not sure if it was cartoon-worthy. According to the cartoon, a player named Moses Solomon hit 49 homers at Hutchinson, Southwestern League in 1923.
I just added that stat to the Southwestern League Wikipedia page. Baseball Reference doesn't go back that far to have a listing for Solomon.
When I look through these stacks, I don't have a list of CMC players, just my vague memory. I remember seeing the Blair card and vaguely remembering he was in the set. I picked it up, just in case he was.


He was seen as one of the top pitching prospects in baseball, according to the Leaf card back. He's in the CMC set as a member of Visalia. Leaf wrote that he had a "sensational season" that year, going 20-3 between there and AA Orlando. He was the first minor leaguer in four years to amass 20 wins.

He pitched two consecutive 100-inning seasons going into 1992, Upper Deck wrote. He struck out 16 in a game and was named the Twins' Minor League Player of the Year for 1991.


These last couple players I pulled were actually team checklist cards from 1977 and 1978 with the operative players being Jim Essian and Johnny Grubb.


There were several team cards in the stacks when I was looking. I turned the cards over to see if there were any players I recognized. I thought there might be a hidden CMC player on the three team cards I picked up, but I ran the names and there weren't.
Only the Indians card was checked, by the way. Whoever originally had the card also had Larry Anderson, Cardell Camper and Dave Oliver. They were apparently missing, among others, the key player on the team, future Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley.