I'd never realized it until today, but George Blanda's Topps 1976 might get my vote for best football card of all time. Blanda was approaching 49 years old when this card was released that summer, and he ended up being waived into retirement by the Raiders before the regular season. So, for starters, it has his complete, tremendous professional-football record on the back ...
Even an 8-year-old kid like me in 1976 could not have read the statistics had Topps gone to a smaller point size on the record, in order to squeeze in some cartoon and/or anecdote on the back--such as this one from his 1972 card ...
I think I actually read that autobiography. I know I read Ken Stabler's, and I think I might've also read George Blanda's--or at least most of it before mistakenly leaving it behind in the backseat of a cab riding home from a post-Natalie Merchant 10,000 Maniacs performance around Washington in the late 1990s. But, back to the card, ...
The picture is just dynamite. As a kid, of course, Blanda looked ancient, and, now, he looks so virile and defiant. (Which is how he apparently went out--"I just want to get out of here now," he's quoted as saying in the Associated Press report of his slipping out of the locker room quietly and without any sort of press conference on August 25.) I also love it that there's nothing in the picture that makes it look more like Blanda is part of a football game than he is waiting on his fillup at a self-serve Sunoco or Phillips 76 on a chilly evening.
The card also brings up a couple of questions for me about Blanda. He was from Illinois; how'd he end up playing at the University of Kentucky? (I have some ideas on this, but I've also read a book about Joe Namath, and I think I might be mashing into Blanda's story some of Namath's story about considering going to Kentucky before ending up at Alabama.) And Blanda was born in 1927 and went to college and made money by playing football; did he ever slide into self-doubts around leading a more frivolous life than the people just slightly older than him who dropped out of school to go fight in World War II and came home if they were fortunate to scrape out a living doing actual-tough-guy jobs like construction? I'm not saying that Blanda should've been embarrassed about the life he lived; I'm just saying that is very definitely a thing for some people, and I wonder where Blanda came down in those mysteries.
Anyway, lots of stuff to think about in 1976 Topps No. 355. It's quite a relic of the United States into which we were born.
Today's date, Sept. 28, was a Tuesday in 1976. In my young-man pretend from this time, I'm checking out of Dallas this morning after watching the Cowboys outlast the Colts, 30-27, a couple of days ago. We're three weeks in to the NFL season, and here are the standings ...
28 Sep 1976, Tue Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Fort Worth, Texas) Newspapers.comOn to somewhere. Haven't decided yet. Could be Rams at Dolphins, but pretend me just saw Los Angeles. Could be Raiders at Patriots, but that's a long haul up to Foxboro. Probably should be Steelers at Vikings for Monday night, but pretend me just got out of Minnesota. Should've planned better.
