My First Cards

Epic.

"Epic", just says it all. I've never seen another card that just makes me want to drop everything and go play baseball the way this one does. It always had that effect. How can it not? It has to be my favorite baseball card of all time, featuring one of the best action moments ever by a future Hall of Famer, and it's not some glossy overproduced lookin' thing, but a classic rustic sort of feel.

Carlton Fisk, as you probably know, was also part of another epic shot, when he smacked one of the most memorable walk-off home runs ever, forcing a game 7 in the 1975 World Series.

I was too young to have seen that when it happened, so to me, this card shaped how I viewed him—a hard playing catcher who just did whatever he had to, to make the play. When I was 8 and 9, whenever I'd wear my plastic White Sox batting helmet and swing my whiffle ball bat, I was Carlton Fisk. I would turn the hat backwards, toss a ball up in the air and dive to catch it. I was Carlton Fisk.

This was probably the first card that made me wonder "when did this happen?". I specifically remember standing in my backyard sandbox one day, wondering that, and with the help of the internet, I was finally able to narrow it down to two very possible games—April 3rd and April 7th, 1981, both against the Pirates in Bradenton, Florida, at (pre-renovated) McKechnie Field. How?

First, Carlton's wearing Chicago's '81 road uniform. Second, the players in the dugout are wearing yellow or orange colored caps (possibly pillbox style), white uniforms, and black jackets. That rules out every American League team, so this had to be a spring training game against the Astros or Pirates, which would also explain Fisk wearing long sleeves.

Turns out, the White Sox played as the road team against the Pirates on April 3 & April 7, 1981. They didn't play the Astros after Carlton joined the team in late March. The Pirates usually wore black caps with their white uniforms back then, but thanks to Jason Thompson's '81 Topps traded card, we can see the Pirates wore the exact combination we see in the dugout on this card, at least once during that year.

Unfortunately I couldn't find boxscores or play-by-play descriptions in any newspaper articles that said much about those two games. This is a crucial point, 'cause White Sox apparently played two different teams on Friday April 3 (Cardinals & Pirates), so it's possible Fisk didn't play the Pirates that day but only on April 7th.

All this, makes the card all the more amazing, because it shows that Carlton Fisk was giving his best effort in a game that wouldn't even matter in the season standings. He was playin' his hardest even when he wasn't trying to earn a roster spot or trying to earn a big money contract. He was just playin' hard for all the right reasons ....for the love of the game.