George Theodore 1974 O-Pee-Chee #99

This isn't a Tim Wallach card, as you may have noticed.  In fact, as far as I know, George Theodore has nothing to do with Tim Wallach.  So what's it doing here?  George indirectly led to my coming across a massive vein of O-Pee-Chee Wallach cards on Sportslots.

Where I live in San Juan County New Mexico, there are two "major" sporting events.  The biggest is the Connie Mack World Series each August (Griffey Jr., a former Midland Redskin, is coming back for the 50th anniversary this year).  The other is The San Juan Open each June. It's a local Pro-Am with golfers who are probably about what equates to "AA Baseball."  I'm no golf expert (and can't break 100), but I did read "Tales from Q School" by John Feinstein.  There's the PGA Tour, then the tour below that called the Web.Com Tour.  The guys who come play in the San Juan Open are a step below that.  A lot of them play on something called The Gateway Tour out of Scottsdale.  It's a healthy mix of young up and comers, aging PGA vets who can't let it go, and rich kids who can't play a lick but don't want to find real work.

This year it was won by Kent Jones, who previously spent the better part of a decade on the PGA Tour.  Notah Begy III, a bit of a local hero also played (poorly) in this years event.  One young kid who made the cut but finished well off the lead was Alex Theodore.  My father (a 2 handicap himself) played in a foursome with him one of the days.  I was a gallery of one following the group, and Alex mentioned in passing that his father had played for the Mets.  So I of course followed up with what any 34 year old would ask, "did he have a baseball card?"  Turns out he did, so I took to sportlots.com that same night and tracked down what I could, if Alex Theodroe comes back next year, I plan to give them to him.

The O-Pee-Chee above was the only copy available on Sportlots.com.  Since I was going to pay for shipping I took a look to see what Wallach's the seller had.  Turns out, he had a lot.  I know I've checked sportlots.com for OPC Wallach's in the past, and thought I had cleared out the sellers with large quanitites.  So these must have just been added.  But for the chance encounter with George Theodore's pro-golfer son, I may have missed out on them.  Check out the pictures below:

Updated Totals for the O-Pee-Chee cards:

1982 OPC x5: 17
1983 OPC x23: 31
1984 OPC x12: 28
1985 OPC x5: 14

In addition to picking up the George Theodore O-Pee-Chee, I also picked up five of his '74 Topps card.  Five being the most copies up for sale by any one seller, and me not being willing to pay for shipping from multiple sellers to get more than five.

And once again, I relieved the seller of all the Wallach's he had available.  This particular seller had 33 Wallach's, pictured below:

And for the one or two of you still reading, I'd like to point out that my Father won his flight in the San Juan Open for the 2nd time in three years.  So congrats to him.