The Ultimate Baseball Card Set - Card #232

Ever feel old? I recently joined a floor hockey league, and after my first session this past weekend I was sore for a couple of days. It made me realize that I'm definitely not getting any younger. I definitely am getting older. Perhaps if you can relate to this feeling, today's induction into The Ultimate Baseball Card Set will help you feel a bit better.

As is the custom though, before we get to the winning card, here are some runners-up...

Card #232 in the 2010 Topps set is a pretty nice team checklist of your World Series champion St. Louis Cardinals (as well as a guy who recently became $250 million richer)...

I have card #232 from one of my all-time favorite sets. However, despite being a high-numbered card, Mr. Kokos here is not all that exciting, and besides I already posted about this card almost four years ago now.

Card #232 in the 1960 Topps set is Jim Busby of the Boston Red Sox. This is possibly my favorite set of the entire 1960s Topps run, and that old Red Sox logo is a thing of beauty. There are a couple of other decent #232's from the 60s as well...

...I like the background of this 1966 Glenn Beckert...

...and this 1969 Topps Dave Ricketts isn't too shabby either. All of these are nice cards, but they don't make me feel any better about the fact that the years are ticking by. The winning card sure does though:

1977 Topps - #232 - Minnie Minoso Record Breaker

I really like the Record Breaker cards from the old Topps baseball sets, and this may be the one I like most out of the many in my collection. I never knew it existed until a short while back when I was working on completing the 1977 Topps set. As you can tell from the front, the card pays tribute to Minoso becoming the oldest player to record a hit in an MLB game. An impressive feat no doubt, but it's even more impressive when you see the details. If you had to guess how old Minoso was when he recorded this hit, what would you say? 47? 50? 52? If you guessed any of those you'd be too low! Check it out...

No, your eyes do not deceive you, Minnie Minoso connected for a single towards the end of the 1976 season at the age of 53! How amazing is that? I'm sure many of you were aware of this, and maybe this is one of those sports trivia facts I should have known, but I was shocked to learn about it.

Minoso's accomplishments deserve a post of their own, which I hope to get to someday, so I won't give you a full breakdown here. If there was ever a feat that was worthy of a baseball card though, I'd say this is it. Perhaps even more amazing than his 1976 single is the fact that he got two more MLB at bats four years later in 1980, at the age of 57!!! Unfortunately he wasn't able to record a hit in either, but impressive nonetheless.

When you think of sports records that may never be broken, I'd say this has to be near the top of the list for baseball. All of a sudden I don't feel so sore...

The Ultimate Baseball Card Set, which now stands at 3 cards and counting, can be seen here.