A Top of the Order Tailor-Made for Today

These baseball "birthday cards" are hobby classics from the commons bin

Sometimes, having too many choices can derail your best plans for profundity. So instead of an endless decision struggle and then relentless self-second-guessing after the fact, I’ve decided to give in to the overwhelm of options that today brings.

Here, then, is a quick tour of some monumental baseball birthdays for January 23, with the obligatory celebratory baseball birthday cards.

1976 Topps Kurt Bevacqua Bubble Champ (#564)

By the time I found this card in the mid-1980s, I was already well acquainted with Kurt Bevacqua through my baseball cards.

But as far as I could tell, Bevacqua was a light-hitting Padres fill-in who had some pretty decent cards but no discernible star quality. I also knew Joe Garagiola as a sportscaster.

All that changed, of course, the moment I laid my eyes on this beauty. Instantly, Bevacqua became a bubble-blowing, cardboard-crashing legend, and Garagiola was revealed as the grand marshal of confectionery fun.

I can only imagine how exciting it must have been to pull this card “live” from a pack back in 1976.

Bevacqua was born in 1947.

1975 Topps Charlie Spikes (#135)

Any number of players or cards could be tagged as standard-bearing exemplars of baseball and the hobby during the 1970s. You wouldn’t get many arguments if you tabbed the 1976 Topps Traded Oscar Gamble classic, for example.

But not many guys could top Charlie Spikes when it came to his combination of a stellar baseball name, amazing 70s sideburns/mutton chops, posed batting shots, period-piece Indians uniforms and patches, and overall funky baseball cards.

Heck, you could pick just about any Spikes card from the 1970s and have a winner, but I’m going with this one here because of the colors, man, and because of his perturbed glare at an unseen pitcher.

Spikes was born in 1951.

1982 Donruss Garry Hancock (#608)

Garry Hancock was one of those guys who seemed to clutter up every pack of cards I opened back in 1981 and 1982, along with Matt Keough, Joe Pettini, and Mike LaCoss.

I could have sworn Hancock was in my 1983 cards, too, but I was wrong about that. After just 11 games with the Red Sox in 1982, Hancock apparently failed to stoke the imagination of the big three for the following season.

But he landed in Oakland that summer (1983) and made enough of a showing (101) games to squeeze back into the 1984 sets as an A.

That makes Hancock’s 1982 cards the last to show him with Boston, where he spent the first four (partial) seasons of his major league career after coming over from the Indians in exchange for Jack Baker in 1977.

I’m going with this Donruss number for its Spring Training themes — I don’t know about you, but I’m about ready for Spring, with a capital “S”!

Hancock was born in 1954 and passed away in October of 2015.

1985 Topps Benny Distefano (#162)

I’m convinced that if the 1985 Royals had been also-rans and the 1985 Pittsburgh Pirates had been contenders, it would have been Benny Distefano who climbed into the national spotlight instead of Buddy Biancalana.

After all, both have quirky, memorable names.

Both played for smaller-market teams.

Both had “classic” 1985 Topps rookie cards.

And both had about as much chance of topping Pete Rose’s all-time hit record as Rose has of getting reinstated.

But it was Biancalana, playing for the defending American League West champion Royals, who caught David Letterman’s attention and was the subject of Dave’s facetious countdown to Rose.

That’s OK, though. In the end, Biancalana collected a few more hits while Distefano played a while longer and hit with a bit more power. It was pretty much a wash, career-wise, though Biancalana did get that World Series ring in 1985.

Today, though, we celebrate Distefano, who was born on this date in 1962.

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Hope you enjoyed hanging with our birthday boys today. There are plenty of other major leaguers who were born on January 23, but these are the ones who mattered most to me from a hobby perspective.

They may not have been a formidable lineup on the field, but these four men still carry plenty of hobby clout for those of us who were there.

Thanks for reading.

—Adam