The Can Stash (Mother's Cookies Edition)

As a kid ,my local card shop dealer knew me by name.The Hot Stove League was a quaint little card shop ,20 minutes walking distance from where I lived at the time, ran by the sweetest little elderly couple.The owner,slightly balding with a white handle bar mustache ,always had a stack of Canseco cards ready for me to sort through.Most were oddballs that I would  pass up In favor of the encased,more mainstream Canseco cards.The oddballs consisted mostly of All Star inserts,sticker cards and Mother's Cookies.I remember me and my friends chuckling at the name brand "Mother's Cookies" ,lol! WTF?Of all  the generic looking  oddball cards of our favorite players,Mother's Cookies was always the laughing stock.They were the butt of all jokes,the cards in our spokes and frankly,the name  "Mother's Cookies" was just a l-i-t-t-l-e  creepy.Very Norman Bates-esque.Well, It's taken me nearly 30 years to realize how attractive these cards really are.Maybe It's the "no frills" adult In me that can appreciate the simplicity, now, much more than I could have as a kid.



You can't tell from the pictures but these are glossy cards.In fact ,they don't even feel like cards at all.They are more like personal pictures someone took and had developed.Something you'd find In a photo album.The more I gaze at them,the more I like them.Let's face It ,today's cards   bamboozle and perplex us  with the amount of flash and flamboyancy put Into them.With this product,you get a more personal look at your favorite baseball player.The pictures really make It seem as If you were down on the field with the players during the photo shoot.The player names and teams are discreetly placed at the corners ,letting the pictures do all the talking.

1987 Mother's Cookies

This Is my first card of  Jose and Reggie .Strangely, this may be the only card featuring the both of them together.I could be wrong,though.

You would think more of them existed.

1988 Mother's Cookies

1989 Mother's Cookies

1990 Mother's Cookies

1991 Mother's Cookies

The backs are very plain Jane with a designated space for the players autograph. 

The following four Mother's Cookies cards were part of a 1989 set . 

Is It Obvious That I'm Still A Canseco Fan?

Every now and then a new Canseco related item will make an appearance here at my  Sport's Pub as he was my Idol growing up.As a kid,I hit with an open stance like him,swung ferociously hard like him,and even imitated his nervous twitch whenever I'd step up to the plate. Canseco was "THE SHIT" from  mid to late 80's ,and those who didn't love em',hated em'.There was no in between really.He was either crushing the ball for your favorite team or hitting a granny against them.I was an Oakland fan,and made  it a point to catch as many Oakland A's games and Canseco AB's as someone living on the east coast could.There was a time where I thought that I could never forgive Jose for what transpired during the infamous steroid trial,writing a tell-all  book and throwing certain ball players under the bus.Then I came to a realization.Everything he said was true!Baseball was throwing him under the bus for something everybody in the game had been guilty of doing also.And he didn't really snitch on anyone as MLB already knew what was going on,but,whatever.Anyways,regardless of the facts,I've learned to forgive and forget and I feel MLB should do the same by letting these guys back into game(Pete Rose, Canseco etc.) Yeah,yeah,yeah they did things they weren't supposed to but the contributions  to the game are indisputable and far outweigh the penalty imo.The long end short of it Is If MLB wants to ban players on the basis of moralities and poor decision making,then someone in the upper echelons of Major League Baseball should also be banned for turning a blind eye to it all.The people who run MLB are beginning to take on this enlightened,Illuminati-esque complex and It's really starting to piss me off. Wheeew,Holy rant!O.K. now that I've got that off my chest we can proceed to the initial purpose of this post and that is to showcase any and  every new Canseco item to make It's way into the Pub.Yesterday I got two items in the mail - 1988 Jose Canseco Kenner Starting Lineup figure and  a 2001 Topps Chrome reprint of  Canseco's 1986 Topps Traded rookie card!Both are tremendously awesome items and ones I would have loved to own as a kid.1988 marked the debut of Kenner Starting Lineups so essentially this would be Canseco's rookie SL figure.

I never gave much thought to the fact that none of these SL figures had batting gloves.No batting helmets either.A few years later, Kenner would add those batting gloves and batting helmets to certain figures in the line. Here's my 1998 Canseco next to the '88 version.

Now on to the reprint!I would have killed to have a chromed out Canseco RC as a kid!It really Is a beauty.I had no clue this card even existed until recently coming across it on Ebay.Comparison shots below :)

I had to take this baby out of the loader and enjoy It's raw- someness! 

Stay tuned for new additions to the Can-Stash!