Collecting Yaz - 1967 Topps

All I've been interested in lately is vintage. It's been over two months since I've purchased anything newer than 25 years old, and I don't see that changing for a long time, if ever. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if it weren't for vintage I'd probably quit collecting altogether, or at least take a very long break.

As much as I love the 1953 Topps set though, I need to mix things up a bit from time to time in order to keep myself entertained. So, as part of refocusing my collection I've decided on 4 players to start collecting, and will be featuring their cards here from time to time as I acquire them. The first of the 4 is Carl Yastrzemski. This was a no-brainer. I'm a lifelong Red Sox fan, and he is the most successful and well known Red Sox player from the period I intend to collect, plus his cards are reasonably priced given that he's a Hall-of-Famer and Boston sports legend. In fact, I'm ashamed that I've been running this blog for over two years and have yet to feature a Yaz card. Well, I'm going to correct that starting with this beauty:

I don't have many 1967 Topps cards, in fact I think this one, which I won a few weeks back is only my second. I've recently been watching a ton of the "Baseball Seasons" series on MLB Network. If you haven't seen this show, and you appreciate the history of the game like I do, you have no idea what you are missing. Each hour long episode details one baseball season. You get statistical breakdowns, season highlights, great interviews and vintage video footage, etc. I've seen them profile seasons as early as the 1950's and as recent as 1995 so far. I'm absolutely hooked on the show.

A few weeks back I caught the episode on the 1967 season. I've known about the amazing 1967 "Impossible Dream" Red Sox season, and moreover Yaz's amazing individual 1967 season since reading about it in baseball books as a kid many years ago. In fact, most people agree that 1967 was the absolute pinnacle of Yastrzemski's career. He won the AL MVP and led the league in many statistical categories, including batting average, home runs and RBI. This gave him the famed triple crown, a feat that no other player has accomplished since. Seeing the season play out on my TV screen and viewing some of the actual video footage for the first time made me realize that a 1967 Topps Yastrzemski was an absolutely essential card for a vintage baseball collection, especially one belonging to a Red Sox fan.

So there you have it, the first of hopefully many vintage Yastrzemski cards to come!