Archive for the ‘Hal McRae’ Tag
Custom card of the day: Hal McRae – Royals greats card Leave a comment
1985 Champions: Kansas City Royals signed Sports Illustrated 2 comments
This is the jewel of my collection. As a Royals fan it is hard to image one single item being much more cool than this. I’m up to 17 autographs by the championship team on this cover from when they won it all in 1985. The most recent additions were Danny Jackson and Darryl Motley. Before that it was Frank White and Hal McRae that got added to the mix.
I struck gold when I picked this up at an estate sale a couple years ago already having several of the really hard to find Royals players on it… like George Brett, Bret Saberhagen and Steve Balboni. Sadly the one signature it will never have is Dan Quisenberry. The two most notable names missing now are Mark Gubicza and Jim Sundberg. I guess I really need the Angels and Rangers to come to KC to pick those up. Enjoy!
Autographed 1985 Royals championship Sports Illustrated: Here is a rough guide from left to right, top to bottom of signatures: Willie Wilson, Greg Pryor, Steve Balboni, George Brett, Jamie Quirk, John Wathan, Dick Howser, Buddy Biancalana, Darryl Motley, Charlie Leibrandt, Dennis Leonard, Bud Black, Bret Saberhagen, Hal McRae, Danny Jackson, Mike Jones, Frank White
Kansas City Star Royals All-Time Team Leave a comment
Kansas City Star All-Time Royals team card set
Here is a nice little Royals collectable; it is a card set of the all-time Royals team presented by the Kansas City Star. This was compiled in 1993 on the 25th anniversary of the team. I don’t know where this was available but I’m guessing it was given away in the paper.
If you can’t tell here is the rollcall for the card set starting in the top left: Dick Howser, Hal McRae, Darrell Porter, Dan Quisenberry, Dennis Leonard, Bret Saberhagen, Paul Splittorff, Steve Busby, John Mayberry, Frank White, Fred Patek, George Brett, Amos Otis, Willie Wilson and Al Cowens.
The Royals have logged another 19 years since this time but I don’t think many of the slots would change. I know Whitey Herzog should be the manager instead of Dick Howser but that hasn’t changed in the last 19 years. I would say the most likely change would be Mike Sweeney edging out Big John Mayberry at first but I’m not sure. Johnny Damon and Carlos Beltran could make a run at pushing out Al Cowens as well.
This is a nice Royals item and is worth picking up if you can ever find one… they aren’t very common, plus it looks nice as an uncut sheet matted with powder blue in a picture frame on the wall.
36 Greatest Royals of All-Time: Hal McRae 1 comment
This is the list of the 36 Greatest Royals so far in no particular order:
- Hal McRae
- Zack Greinke
- Willie Wilson
- Paul Splittorff
- Jeff Montgomery
- Mike Sweeney
- Dennis Leonard
- David Dejesus
- Cookie Rojas
- Amos Otis
Several more are to come, stay tuned…
Kansas City Royals placemats parts 7 and 8 Leave a comment
Kansas City Royals placemats; left to right; Hal McRae, Paul Splittorff, Ed Rodriguez, Steve Braun, Darrell Porter, Pete LaCock, George Thorp
Kansas City Royals placemats; left to right; Steve Busby, George Brett, Jerry Terrell, Tom Poquette, Willie Wilson, Larry Gura, Marty Pattin
Kansas City Royals History: Royals Pizza Hut Placemats 4 comments
So as a huge Kansas City Royals fan and an enormous nerd I collect most Royals memorabilia. This includes the obvious, baseball cards but goes far beyond to magazines, programs, bats, autographs, posters and so on. One of the absolute coolest things I have stumbled across are dinner placemats from the late 1970’s.
These were the golden years of the Royals franchise, yeah there was 1985 but the late 70’s were the golden age. They featured usually 7 Royals players per placemat and they were given away once a week at Pizza Hut restaurants in 1978 and 1979. They had a plain ornate design on the back like you would normally see on a dinner placemat and the Royals players on the other side. Each year featured a set of 4 placemats, making a total of 8 placemats. The pictures of the Royals were drawings. They were done by acclaimed portrait artist John Boyd Martin. Martin has also done all of the Royals hall of fame plaques I believe. The hall of fame plaques are oil paintings, these Royals are more line drawings in full color and they are simply striking. They are extremely good. You can view Martin’s other artwork at his website here.
I have labored through garage sales, auctions and the halls of countless antique malls to put together a collection of these placemats. I am happy to say on October 14th I completed a full set of 8 of them for my brother. Now to work on my own set… but that is another subject. These were released before I was even born, so any information on them has been passed on to me. I have dug into the history of the Royals to seek these out and provide information on them.
The bottom line is that there is barely a sniff of these things on the entire internet. No pictures, no mentions, none available on ebay auctions, they are just damn hard to find. My goal is to rectify this. I am attempting to write a thorough article on them to provide a background on these endlessly cool pieces. I will post a good picture of each of the eight here on my site, the first of which is below. I will detail them providing any information that I can. I strongly encourage anybody with additional information to provide it to me so it will be publicly available.
Here is the first of the eight:
Kansas City Royals placemat: left to right: Frank White, Darrell Porter, Hal McRae, Al Hrabosky, Fred Patek, Whitey Herzog. All drawings by John Boyd Martin.
A Hair Off Square 