What was/is this idea? To collect a card (or some other form of ephemera) of every player to ever suit up for the Portland Beavers. Oh, and other those guidelines, it would be virtually impossible to ever complete. I think it's time to try though!
I've had to adjust my expectations a little since deciding to finally take on this project. The biggest being that since quite a few players, especially those from the turn of the last century, never appeared on any sort of "card", I've had to change the collecting parameters to just those that have been featured on a card-like item at some point in the last century or so. This number will still reach into the thousands, and given that a lot of guys only ever had one item produced with their image on it (most of which are crazy rare), I don't ever see myself actually completing this project -- but I'm at the point now in my life, where I think it'll be fun just to see how close I can get. Kind of one those "It's about the journey, not the destination" things.
I should probably explain here in this introductory post why I decided to finally give this idea a go, but it isn't really much of a story. Me taking this on was sort of inspired by a single card that I saw on another blog a few months ago. I plan to feature said card in the first project related post on this blog, aka the next post, so I think I'll just wait until then to try and explain why it stoked the proverbial collecting fire. "Try" being the keyword in that last sentence.
While the idea for the collection is old, the idea of starting a blog to document is rather recent. Maybe a month-old at best. The original plan for the blog was just to feature items from the collection, but after a few weeks of attempting, and sometimes failing, to do research on some of the players of yore, I've decided to expand on the original plan for this blog. Cards of players making their way into the collection will still be the main focus of the blog, but a series on players who never appeared on cards is in the works as well. It's amazing how little exists on the internet about some of the past Beavers (some of whom did do other notable things). After realizing this, I sort of feel obligated to try and get what I can out there about these players. I consider it a sad state of affairs when it's left to someone like myself to give these forgotten guys a voice. But the SABR people don't seem to care about them, and no one else to date does either, so apparently all they've got is me -- like I said, sad state of affairs.
I'll also be doing some posts on past games of note, most of of which will be of the exhibition variety. The team played had some interesting matchups during their prime pre-war years, most of which haven't been covered anywhere online yet.
Some may be wondering at this point, what's the deal with the Portland Beavers? Well, I was born in Portland, grew up in Portland (though I thankfully now live on the other side of the country), and despite not going to as many games as I would've liked before the final incarnation of the team left town in 2010, I've been interested in the team's history for a good portion of my life. Had I not been distracted by so many other things, I probably would've at least started a blog to talk about the team's history much sooner than now. And good or bad, history will make up a large portion of this blog, as I'm much more interested in the players of yore than I am guys who were playing for the team in it's last decade of existence. Ironically, with newspapers covering the Pacific Coast League much more in depth before the MLB expanded to the west coast, with some searching, one can usually find more information about guys from the 1930's, than one could from say, the 1990's.
I fully realize that this blog is going to be of little interest to even the the most hardcore of baseball fans, and card collectors, but that's okay, unlike my normal blog, this will be a labor of love. If no one reads it, I'll still be writing it. Speaking of my normal blog, if you know of me from there, then you already know I'm not much of a writer, but will be putting a little more effort into the posts over here. I'm hoping it'll show. Despite that, I fully expect the pieces to vary in quality from post to post, and that's only because I may not have a lot of information to work with depending on the player. Speaking of which, I don't plan to cover a lot of stuff that can already be found elsewhere, so if a guy played for the Beavers before or after a lengthy career in the majors, and has been the subject of multiple online biographies, then I'm gonna just try and focus on his time with Portland -- and possibly throw in a few other fun facts that haven't already been written about ad nauseam.
I think that covers just about everything (though I'm sure I'll think of something I forgot later), so in conclusion, if you're interested in what will often be somewhat obscure baseball history, then you might find some things of interest around here from time to time. If you don't, this blog probably won't be for you, and that's okay. You'll be just fine without it, and I'll be cool with you being fine without it :)
Looking ahead to the next post: We'll be going to 1962 for the card, but the focus will be on the player's time spent in Portland seven years earlier.
