Friday, January 16, 2009

1984 Topps, Ralph Houk



#381 Ralph Houk

I don't know what it is about me. But when I find addresses for guys that were before my time, I try to send them a card to sign. For instance, this Ralph Houk card here. I found his address on the internet and with the name of Ralph, he sounded like an old-timer. So, I looked up his stats and everything and figured that I should go ahead and write him. Luckily, I had this card of him. It took about a month to get the card back. That's not bad considering it was around the holidays.

The first thing that I noticed about him was that he was a Yankee manager. He took them to the Series the first three years that he managed and won it the first two years. He went on to manage about 17 more seasons, but his clubs never won another pennant.

I am currently reading Jim Bouton's "Ball Four" and there are many references to Houk in it since he was Bouton's manager while with the Yankees. I just started to read this about a week ago, so it was kind of neat to learn a lot about a guy that I had barely heard of.

I have an '86 Fleer card scheduled to be posted tomorrow and then it is on to 1992.

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