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Albuquerque Baseball Club shares memories of sports collecting adventures
I can’t argue that Albuquerque, N.M. has a rich sports past. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t passionate sports fans, hobby shops and card collectors in this Southwest city.
Tell someone you hail from Albuquerque and you get a couple responses: “Oh, the home of ‘Breaking Bad.’” Or, “Isn’t that where they have the big balloon fiesta?” Or, from real sports fans, “That’s where North Carolina State and Jim Valvano upset Phi Slamma Jamma in the 1983 Final Four!”
Others may recognize it as the place where NFL Hall of Famer Brian Urlacher played at the University of New Mexico, or the home of the Triple-A baseball team that got its nickname from “The Simpsons” — the Isotopes.
There’s no place I’d rather live and as a local sportswriter for more than four decades, I have had the opportunity to cover some memorable events and interesting stories.
As a baseball hobbyist since 1978, I’m always looking for guys who have great sports collections. Some of my latest “finds” led to monthly meetings of what I call the Old Farts Baseball Club.
I met the first guy I featured when I saw an online post of him trying to dispose of some 2021 Topps Baseball cards. He visited me at my newspaper office, and after we made a deal, I saw he had a cool Mickey Mantle license plate on the front of his truck.
One thing led to another and soon I was at his home, ogling his great collection, which took up two rooms and included an enviable stash of Mantle items, plus his new faves, Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani.
Thanks to a short article in SCD, I came across another local fellow who met Mantle in 1962 in Kansas City. They were both Okies and The Mick came over to chat with this then-14-year-old kid. Mickey brought over his teammates, too, and that evening’s starting pitcher, Jim Bouton, tossed this grateful kid a baseball he’d been warming up with.
While attending a local card show, I bumped into a guy who had a big Yankees collection, and he was soon featured in the newspaper I’ve been working at for 22 years.
With the idea of getting these guys together to talk baseball and the hobby, I included another longtime buddy who had a nice collection of thousands of autographed baseball cards and Milwaukee Braves memorabilia.
The original trio each has the first name of Joe, and they became Old Joe, New Joe and Other Joe. After we met for the first time, I thought of other local seniors who are passionate about baseball, and the group grew. We had 10 “members” at our third meeting last September at local sports card shop Cardboard Collectors.
Among the group are several with great stories:
“Other Joe,” who met Mantle in 1962, ran into him again and The Mick still remembered him eight years later. He was the first kid to ask Mantle to hit a homer for him, and No. 7 actually did it!
“New Joe,” who has since boxed his collection and turned his home into a photo gallery of his best shots, was on the field at Shea Stadium when the Mets won the 1986 World Series. He also has a great story about driving a limo and kicking Mick Jagger and his party out of it.
“Old Joe” insists the hobby is all about the memories, and he’s never sold any of his treasured cards. He has good stories about Bruce Tanner and JR Phillips, and a not-so-nice one about LaTroy Hawkins.
Another guy was a college teammate of “Bull Durham” director Ron Shelton. Another came up with Henry Aaron’s 755th home run baseball — the last one Hammerin’ Hank ever hit on July 20, 1976.
Ed has many of his baseball cards he collected 60 years ago, plus some cool autographed items. As a youngster, he mailed such requests to team offices. Among his priceless autographs is one of Wilt Chamberlain.
Another member took a trip back east to visit 97-year-old Bobby Shantz, the 1952 AL MVP. He knocked on Shantz’s door and was invited in, and Shantz signed numerous copies of baseball books.
Shantz, who played for the Yankees from 1957-60, told him that Mantle received large bags of autograph requests weekly and legendary Yankees equipment man Pete Sheehy got so good at duplicating the Mick’s signature that many collectors don’t really have a true Mantle autograph.
Our group even had a guest — the man who probably holds the record for most Tommy John surgeries. Dan Opperman, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ No.1 draft pick in 1987, went to the same Las Vegas high school as Greg Maddux and had three TJ surgeries. Opperman, who played at Triple-A Albuquerque and remained here to raise his family there, talked for an hour about pitching.
We’ve had great meetings so far, and I can’t wait to get together to talk about other sports.
— Gary Herron has been contributing articles to SCD since the 1990s. Baseball is his life: He has been an official scorer for more than 1,600 Triple-A baseball games since 1983.
