As hard as it is for me to believe, I started collecting baseball cards 40 years ago. (Yes, I am becoming old.) To celebrate the anniversary, along with a set that collectors now consider iconic within the hobby, I’ll be spotlighting certain Yankee players from the 1972 Topps collection here in 2012.

For some reason, Topps chose yellow as its baseline color for Yankee cards. Yellow has never been part of the team’s color scheme; it has always been Navy blue and white, with some red thrown into the old Yankee Doodle hat logo. But yellow is what Topps selected, making that the color of memory for the ‘72 Yankees.

As with all of the regular issue ‘72 cards, Yankee players appeared in photographs that were either portraits, profiles, or posed shots. Topps did issue some “In Action” cards for a few Yankees, including Thurman Munson, Johnny Ellis, and Fritz Peterson, and we’ll tackle some of those throughout the year. But our emphasis will be on the regular issue cards, which were photographed at the original Yankee Stadium, various American League ballparks, or at the Yankees’ spring training site inFt.Lauderdale.

So let our tour of 1972 cards begin, with a player who is not often remembered for being a Yankee. Felipe Alou’s card shows him wearing the Yankees’ road uniform in a ballpark that may or may not be Anaheim Stadium. The photo, which is slightly out of focus, shows Alou finishing a practicing swing while giving the cameraman a serious stare. As posed shots go, it is classic Topps.

For those who recall Alou as the manager of the Expos and Giants, it’s easy to overlook just how good a player he was throughout the sixties and early seventies. The native Dominican was one of those five-tool players we hear so often about, but rarely get to see. In his prime, he hit with legitimate power, ran well enough to steal 10 to 12 bases a year, batted in the .280 to .290 range, and possessed enough arm and range to play all three outfield positions. Alou wasn’t quite a Hall of Famer–he was a couple of notches below that–but he was a damned fine ballplayer.

The peak of his career came in 1966, when he played center field for the Atlanta Braves and led the National League in hits, runs, and total bases. With a career high 31 home runs and an OPS of .894, Alou placed fifth in the league’s MVP voting.

By the time that he joined the Yankees early in 1971, Alou was no longer that same player, no longer in his prime. But he was still serviceable, a good role player who gave the Yankees depth in the outfield and at first base. The Yankees acquired him on April 9 of that season, just four days after the opening of the season. They acquired him from the Oakland A’s, who had deemed him valuable enough to be their Opening Day starter in left field.

In truth, Alou had been the center of trade rumors from the latter days of spring training through the first week of the regular season. There had been talk that the A’s might send him to the Brewers for some infield depth, but the Yankees apparently made Charlie Finley an offer that he felt was superior to what was presented by the Brewers. The Yankees sent Finley two pitchers, right-hander Ron Klimkowski and left-hander Rob Gardner. They were two decent middle relievers, but neither was expected to play a huge role with the Yankees in 1971. In fact, Gardner had been sent out to Triple-A Syracuse just before Opening Day.

The consensus of scouts maintained that Finley had not received enough value in return for Alou. The Oakland players knew that they would miss Alou, one of the most well-liked and respected players throughout the major leagues. A’s captain Sal Bando had once offered Alou the highest of praise. “He’s one of the greatest men I’ve ever met in baseball,” Bando told Ron Bergman, the A’s’ beat writer. “You think a man who’s been around as long as he has would pace himself a little. But he embarrasses you the way he hustles.” Yankee management was simply thrilled to have acquired a veteran leader and professional hitter.

Though there had been rumors of a possible trade, the timing of the deal—just a handful of days into the regular season—caught Alou by surprise. He had just moved his wife and children into an Oakland apartment, where they were scheduled to stay for the entire ‘71 season. Those plans would have to be scrapped, but the Yankees graciously gave Alou the necessary time to move his family out of the Oakland apartment and make new accommodations in the New York metropolitan region.

When Alou finally reported to the Yankees a few days later, he found an interesting way to find something positive in being traded from Oakland to New York. It involved the simplicity of his uniform. “At least I know this is the uniform I’m going to be wearing everyday,” Felipe told the New York Times in referring to the traditional home Yankee pinstripes. “Out there, I didn’t know which [A’s] uniform to wear when. We had one uniform for the first game of a doubleheader and another for the second.  Once I put on the wrong uniform.”

Indeed, the A’s led both leagues in the number of uniform combinations. On some days, the A’s wore Kelly green uniforms with gold undershirts. Then there were games when they donned white jerseys (wedding gown white, as Finley called it) and pants with green sleeves. On other days, they wore Fort Knox gold uniforms with green undershirts. Life would be much simpler with the Yankees: pinstripes at home and standard gray on the road.

Five days after the trade, on April 14, Alou made his Yankee debut wearing the pinstripes. He started in right field at The Stadium against Tigers left-hander Mickey Lolich. Alou went just 1-for-5 that day, but he made the one hit memorable–a solo home run that was part of an 8-4 victory over Detroit.

Alou’s arrival in New York also created confusion for us young Yankee fans. We assumed that his name was pronounced “feh-leep ah-lew.” We didn’t realize that you had to pronounce the final “e” in his first name, making it “feh-leep-ay.” For some reason “feh-leep ah-lew” sounded right. But we were wrong, as we often were with the pronunciations of Latino ballplayers.

Alou would become a semi-regular for the Yankees in ‘71, at first playing right field, then moving to first base. He played 56 games in right field, 42 games at first base, and even filled in 20 times in center field. At 36 years of age, he was hardly a force–he powered only eight home runs and slugged a mere .410–but he did hit .289 with an on-base percentage of .334. Under ideal circumstances, he would have been a platoon player for a strong contender, but at 82-80, the Yankees needed him to take on a more prominent role.

With his speed diminishing, the Yankees reduced his outfield role, making him a platoon first baseman with Ron Blomberg. They hoped that Alou could produce at his 1971 level, but one year older, his play continued to fall off. He played only 120 games, his lowest output since his 1969 season with the Braves. He hit only six home runs as his slugging percentage fell below .400. By now it was obvious that Alou could no longer play every day, and might not even be able to help in much of a bench role, but the Yankees brought him back for 1973.

Though Alou’s skills were waning, the Yankees appreciated his demeanor and attitude. When a reporter asked manager Ralph Houk whom he considered the team leader, the skipper thought for a moment before responding, “I’d say Felipe.” In terms of fundamental and professionalism, no one on the Yankees matched Alou. “Felipe plays every day like a pro,” Houk told Yankee beat writer Jim Ogle in 1973. “Have you ever seen him make a mistake? I’m talking about judgment, not [physical] errors. Everyone makes errors, but Felipe doesn’t do the wrong thing very often. Have you ever watched Felipe go down the line, then take the turn at first base on a hit to the outfield? If there is even the slightest bobble, he’s on his way to second.”

Alou’s 1973 season with the Yankees would provide an intriguing twist. The Yankees had made a wintertime deal, sending journeyman Rob Gardner (who had since rejoined the team) and Rich McKinney to the A’s for right fielder Matty Alou. For the first time since 1964, the Alou brothers would play as teammates, just as they had done with the Giants. In fact, withSan Francisco, all three of the Alous—Felipe, Matty, and Jesus—had played together in the same outfield. (The three would have a reunion of sorts in 1973. When the A’s, featuring Jesus Alou, came to Yankee Stadium for a series in 1973, photographers made sure to snap shots of the three brothers together. One of these photographs would become the basis for an SSPC baseball card in 1978.)

Three specific memories stand out for me from the Yankees’ 1973 season. That was the year that George Steinbrenner assumed control of the franchise. That was the spring that Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson announced the trade of their wives, children, and family pets. And that was the year that the Alous, reunited after a nine-year absence, became two of the notable faces of the Yankee franchise.

The Yankees made Matty their starting right fielder. They put Felipe back at first base. Facially, they looked somewhat alike, which created confusion for some Yankee fans. But for me, it was easy to tell them apart. Felipe wore glasses; Matty did not. Felipe was tall and batted right-handed. Matty was short and batted from the left side.

Matty hit well and fielded well, but it was strange that the Yankees used him, a singles hitter with virtually no power, to bat third instead of leadoff. Felipe struggled, his play falling off even further after the decline of 1972, and he lost the first base job. Interestingly, the Yankees replaced Felipe with Matty, who moved to first base despite being only five feet, nine inches tall. Felipe eventually made some starts in right field, mostly against left-handed pitching, as he platooned with Johnny Callison. But Felipe just couldn’t hit anymore. At age 38, he had lost most of his batting skills.

When the Yankees fell out of contention that summer, the front office felt it was time to move out some of their past-their-prime veterans. So they released Callison. A few weeks later, they decided it was time to cut ties with the aging Alous. On September 4, the Yankees announced two separate but related transactions. They sold Matty to the Padres. They also sold Felipe on waivers to the Expos. It was only fitting that the brothers would depart New York on the exact same day.

Felipe Alou batted .208 in 20 games for the Expos, who sold him to the Brewers after the season. Alou batted three times with Milwaukee, without a hit, and then drew his release. And thus came to an end a 17-year career in the big leagues.

Alou would never return to the Yankee organization. But he and the Yankees nearly enjoyed a reunion of sorts in 1994. Alou, by now the manager of the Expos, was leading his team to the best record (74-40) in the National League. In the meantime, the Yankees led the American League East. Then came the strike. If not for the labor/management conflict canceling the rest of the season and the World Series, it’s quite possible that Alou would have met the Yankees in the Fall Classic.

Like so many possibilities in baseball, it just never did come to pass.

[Photo Credit: Attic Insulation]

Check out this fun gallery of sports posters from the 1980s over at SI.com.

Kenny Easley was my man.

Hey sports nyerds, The Classical is up and running. Head on over and give ’em a look. And while you are there, drop by the Free Darko Store where you can buy some of these fantastic prints or even a hip t-shirt or three. The images are by Jacob Weinstein. He is most talented.

Here’s Bill Simmons at his best:

Remember what pissed us off most about LeBron picking Miami over New York? It wasn’t just that he tried to stack the decks with a superteam; it’s that he walked away from New York, the city with the most basketball fans, the city with the biggest spotlight, the city that would have either made him immortal or broken him in two. He didn’t want it. He copped out. He could have picked loyalty (Cleveland) or immortality (New York); instead, he chose help (Miami). That killed us. We hated him for it. What was telling about Chris Paul’s choice was that he eschewed the Clippers (a safer basketball situation for him; he would have been able to grow with Eric Gordon, DeAndre Jordan and Blake Griffin) for the Lakers (a much more volatile basketball situation with Kobe’s miles and Bynum’s knees) for the simple reason that he wanted to be a Laker.

For the right players, it’s not about cities as much as teams, uniforms, histories, owners, fans, titles … and Chris Paul cares about the right things. He’s the best teammate in the league. As much as it killed me that my least favorite team landed him, the “basketball fan” side of me loved it. Chris Paul and Kobe Bryant … together? Playing across the street from my office? How cool was that? I remember when KG landed on the Celtics, one of my Lakers-fan buddies told me, “I hate KG and I hate the Celtics, but this is going to be cool.”

That’s how I felt about Chris Paul and the Lakers. If you love basketball — if you truly love it — you appreciated what was happening. And it had nothing to do with the Washington Generals. Believe me.

Of course, that’s not how December 8, 2011 will be remembered. Years from now, I won’t remember anything about that day except for David Stern losing control of his own league. Once upon a time, it was reassuring to look there and expect to see him, and darn, he was there. It was kind of neat. Those days are long gone. The National Basketball Association has lost its way. I feel like crying.

Ian Thomsen has more over at SI.com.

Tonight at the Varsity Letters speaking series, Harvey Araton will talk about his new book about the great Knicks teams from the 1970s, and Scott Raab will discuss his latest, “The Whore of Akron: One Man’s Search for the Soul of Lebron James.” They will be joined by True Hoop blogger, Henry Abbott.

Promises to be a fun evening.

Here’s Charlie Pierce on the end of the NBA lockout:

The NBA lockout was as exclusively about money as it was exclusively about astrophysics. One way you know this is that the settlement that finally was reached was one that could have been reached last June. Like Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho in 1972, the league and its players struck a deal they could have had much earlier, and without the extended bloodletting in the meantime. The players took a reduction in the amount of basketball-related income — and can we find a rocket and fire that little bit of business-school jargon off to Pluto, please? — while winning some concessions as regards the league’s salary structure and in the rules regarding free agency. And that was pretty much it after five or six months of loud public wrangling — a brief outburst of authentic MBA gibberish and (poof!) back to work, gentlemen.

Another way you know that it wasn’t really about economics is that the league’s economic public case for its position became more and more preposterous as the weeks went by, and even the public began to notice that it was being taken for a fool. The hilarity hit high tide for me when David Stern started going around explaining that 22 of his 30 franchises were losing money. Tell me, do you suppose that when Stern sat down and chatted with the Nike corporation, or with the People’s Republic of China, to name only two of the wildly successful authoritarian operations with which the league does its business, the first thing he explained while pitching the NBA to them was that 73 percent of his league was in the red? Did you, at any time, expect to see Herb Simon, the shopping-mall billionaire who owns the “small-market” Indiana Pacers — a team that he bought for $11 million and which is now estimated to be worth $269 million — swiping the leftover bourbon chicken off abandoned plates in his various food courts unless the players surrendered to him a chunk of their dough? Of course you didn’t, because your mother didn’t raise a fool when she raised you.

…Stern’s concern for his league’s fans was as transparently phony as was Carnegie’s concern for his workers. (Hearing the commissioner’s unctuous solicitude for the paying customers must have occasioned rueful chuckling, and projectile vomiting, in Seattle.) His primary constituency is a group of 29 men who don’t have to deal much with unions in their principal occupations anymore and who, therefore, are not accustomed to reacting well when the help gets, well, uppity. The lockout was THE perfect oligarch’s answer.

They got most of what they wanted, which means that most of them are probably very unhappy. The league suffered a public-relations debacle that very nearly became a public-relations catastrophe. But David Stern showed himself to be the tinhorn-in-charge once again, and there will be games on Christmas Day. God bless us all, every one.

[Photo Credit: Craig Brewer]

Winter just got better.

[Light painting by Natalie Jean, basketball player painting by Ernie Barnes]

The Big East fell apart this year. I have a lot wrapped up in that conference, since I went to a Big East basketball school and grew up watching Thompson and Boeheim take on the Roman Catholic Coaches Association (Carnesecca, Massimino, Carlesimo, Pitino). Watching the disintegration, led by Syracuse of all places, made me realize my experience with college sports was done.

Over at Grantland, Charlie Pierce thinks the NCAA is coming down.

Every few years, some angry, stick-waving prophet would come wandering into the cozy system of unpaid (or barely paid) labor and start bellowing about how the essential corruption in the system wasn’t that some players got money under the table, but that none of them were allowed to get any over it. Sooner or later, these people said, the system would collapse from its own internal contradictions — yes, some of these people summoned up enough Marx through the bong resin in their brains from their college days to make a point — and the people running college sports had best figure out how to control the chaos before it overwhelmed them. Nobody listened. Very little changed, except that college sports became bigger and more lucrative, an enterprise of sports spectacle balanced precariously on the fragile principle that everybody should get to make money except the people doing the actual work.

What comes after that? Someone is going to have to stuff steroids down these teenagers’ throats to get them big enough for the NFL, right? If athletes were employees of their universities, would anybody want to watch? And if we removed colleges from the equation entirely, would anybody tune into watch whatever intermediary staging area develops?

The best example of what would happen to the NCAA is probably the current baseball model. There is scant interest in NCAA baseball and Minor League baseball. All anybody cares about are the Major Leagues, because the best talent in the world, from all ages is on display there and only there.

Compare the incredible amount of revenue surrounding the NCAA title games in basketball in football to whatever will be available after the NCAA cracks like an egg and you can see how ugly this is going to get.

Over at Esquire, you’ll find an excerpt from Scott Raab’s new book about Lebron James:

It turns out the Heat have printed three covers of tonight’s program — one with Wade, one with Bosh, one with James. I take one of each.

On his cover, LeBron glares into the camera, head lowered, eyes hooded, tight-lipped, his thick white headband riding ever higher on his forehead as his hairline approaches oblivion. He stands with his hands on his hips, with his shoulders thrust forward, the visual embodiment of his summertime tweet:

“Don’t think for one min that I haven’t been taking mental notes of everyone taking shots at me this summer. And I mean everyone!”

He’s ready to wreak havoc upon the NBA. No prisoners. Blood on the hardwood. Mano a mano. If your name’s on Bron-Bron’s list, you’re going down hard as a motherfucker.

That’s the pose. I think back to a game his rookie season, against the Indiana Pacers, when NBA tough guy Ron Artest was mugging James as he fought for position to take an inbounds pass. Artest had an arm across LeBron’s upper chest and neck and a leg planted between James’s knees bowing him forward. Paul Silas was coaching the Cavs, and Silas came up off the bench screaming — first at the nearest referee for not calling a foul on Artest, and then at LeBron for letting Artest unman him.

James has grown stronger and smarter over his seven seasons in the league, but he still tries to finesse defenders like Artest. His game has never hungered for a battle, much less marked him as the cruel-eyed enforcer who glares out from the program’s cover.

You can pre-order “The Whore of Akron,” here.

In case you missed it, check out Taylor Branch’s story about the same of college sports over at The Atlantic:

“I’m not hiding,” Sonny Vaccaro told a closed hearing at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., in 2001. “We want to put our materials on the bodies of your athletes, and the best way to do that is buy your school. Or buy your coach.”

Vaccaro’s audience, the members of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, bristled. These were eminent reformers—among them the president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, two former heads of the U.S. Olympic Committee, and several university presidents and chancellors. The Knight Foundation, a nonprofit that takes an interest in college athletics as part of its concern with civic life, had tasked them with saving college sports from runaway commercialism as embodied by the likes of Vaccaro, who, since signing his pioneering shoe contract with Michael Jordan in 1984, had built sponsorship empires successively at Nike, Adidas, and Reebok. Not all the members could hide their scorn for the “sneaker pimp” of schoolyard hustle, who boasted of writing checks for millions to everybody in higher education.

“Why,” asked Bryce Jordan, the president emeritus of Penn State, “should a university be an advertising medium for your industry?”

Vaccaro did not blink. “They shouldn’t, sir,” he replied. “You sold your souls, and you’re going to continue selling them. You can be very moral and righteous in asking me that question, sir,” Vaccaro added with irrepressible good cheer, “but there’s not one of you in this room that’s going to turn down any of our money. You’re going to take it. I can only offer it.”

The piece is long but terrific.

Yeah, I know it’s the off-season, but still, great is great:

When I finished reading “Blindsided: The Jerry Joseph Basketball Scandal” by Michael J. Mooney my first thought was how nice it will be to see the piece in the next edition of “The Best American Sports Writing.” The story features good reporting and is well-constructed. It is also written in the kind of clean, succinct prose that I love. Best of all, it took me somewhere unexpected, all without drawing attention to writing style. It is top-notch storytelling. I am a newcomer to Mooney’s work but he’s been around and is accomplished. Check out his website for more, and do yourself a favor: read this story.

[Photo Credit: AP]

Over at ESPN, Howard Bryant has a strong piece on Dirk Nowitzki and being a star player in the age of social media:

The truth, given time to breathe and be analyzed, is this: Nowitzki will go down as one of the greatest players in the history of the game, the greatest player of his franchise, the best (NBA) player Germany has ever produced. He has proved it this year — especially during these playoffs, when the Mavericks have transformed themselves from a team not tough enough to win into a formidable out — and in previous years that he can carry a team early or late. The outcome of the 2011 NBA Finals will do nothing to change that.

The concept of the “instant legacy” has permeated sport and lowered the level of intelligent discussion regarding how the game is played and the players who play it. TV commentators assess a player’s entire career based on two minutes at the end of each game. Meanwhile, the second-by-second instant analysis on social media doesn’t stop when the buzzer sounds. James has been in the playoffs for seven years, carrying a nondescript Cleveland team that without him is once again invisible after six straight postseasons — and his critics are legion. Peyton Manning was once a weak playoff performer, but that changed when he won the Super Bowl against Chicago. Then he lost to the Saints and was somehow relegated back to being subpar in the clutch. Before last year’s seventh and deciding game between the Lakers and Celtics, the ESPN pregame roundtable asked aloud if Kobe Bryant — already the greatest player of his generation — needed to win that night to “cement his legacy.”

Newspapers and magazines have always engaged in the same type of hero construction and deconstruction. The difference now is the speed of the technology and its volume.

I still think Miami will win the series, and I assume that LeBron James will have a great game tonight but man, I’d like to see Dirk match him and have Dallas win their final home game of the season.

Over at ESPN, there is a terrific profile of Chris Bosh by Elizabeth Merrilll:

He has always moved to a different beat, a cross between easy listening and hard-thumping rap. He plays with a hint of vulnerability and fear. He says things James and Wade wouldn’t say. Like when he was humbled in a second-round loss last month in Boston. Bosh told reporters that nerves played a part in one of his worst games of the season.

“When you talk to LeBron or Dwyane, you feel like you’re talking to a basketball player,” Miami Herald columnist Greg Cote said. “When you talk to Chris Bosh, you get the feeling you’re talking to a pretty interesting guy who just happens to play basketball. He admits things you don’t often hear major athletes admit. He’ll tell you that sometimes he feels anxiety in late games.

“He almost reminds me, in a way, of Ricky Williams with the Dolphins. He just has that sensitive side to him that’s interesting to explore.”

I’m not rooting for the Heat but I like Bosh. Again, great job by Merrill.

And that’s word to:

And now we take a moment from last night’s thrilling Game 2 win by the Mavericks to address the Knicks:

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!

That is all.

[Picture by Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images]

Heat v Bulls, Game 5. The Heat are one win away from a date with Dirk and company in the Finals.

Over at ESPN, Tom Friend has a nice takeout piece on Kevin Durant.

The Thunder–thanks in large part to Durant’s 39 pernts yesterday–will face the Mavericks in the Western Conference Finals.

Meanwhile, check out this piece on the demise of the L.A. Lakers from George Kimball.

Will the Heat finish off the Celtics tonight? I’d like to see it but I think the Celtics will win.

Can the Thunder beat the Grizzles tonight in Oklahoma City to go up, 3-2. Sure, they can, but I’m picking the Grizzles. Hope I’m wrong but I’ll believe the Grizzles (and Celtics) are done when I see it.

[Picture by Patrick Joust]

Sweet SI cover this week…

We love sports because there is no telling what will happen. Yes, we are cynical and jaded but the element of surprise is what keeps us riveted.

Last night I went to bed with the Oklahoma City Thunder trailing by 15 points early in the first half of Game 4 against the Memphis Grizzles. The young Thunder team blew Game 3 on Saturday night and I didn’t know if they’d be able to regroup. Russell Westbrook, their wonderful point guard, seems to have trouble recognizing that he’s the second-best player on the team, next to Kevin Durant. Now losing by double digits against a tough Memphis team, well, it was time to go to bed.

I was delighted when I woke up this morning and learned that the Thunder won the game in triple overtime. Triple OT?!

Here’s John Hollinger at ESPN:

You know it’s a classic when fans of the losing team give a standing ovation at the end of it.

Few people who were in FedEx Forum on Monday will forget it anytime soon. One can safely say Game 4 of the Grizzlies-Thunder series will become a staple of future NBA TV daytime programming, after the two sides slogged through three overtimes, two miraculous game-tying 3-pointers, and three missed buzzer-beaters for the win before Oklahoma City finally won the war of attrition 133-123.

We can also safely call this series “evenly matched.” Through four games and four overtimes, we’re tied at two games apiece with a composite score of 440-438. Each side has stolen a win on the other’s home court, and each has stormed back from a huge deficit to win — with Oklahoma City’s rally from 18 down Monday offsetting Memphis’ comeback from a 16-point deficit two days earlier.

The sun is out this morning, the leaves of the trees now pea green, cool in the morning, and a gentle breeze in the evening. It’s a precious time of year. And the day started with a smile. Triple OT win, and the series is even at two.

[Photo Credit: Melisaki]