A Tribe Called Quest, BBM, SNL, /5, /50, and Alfredo Simon's Old Name

I still have quite a few more cards to post from my last COMC purchase.  Here's a hodgepodge post to get the random stuff and one-off stuff out of the way.  So let's check it out!

First up is a "rookie card" of A Tribe Called Quest, one of the greatest rap groups of all time:

Fuji posted a few of these a while back, and it was cool timing because I had just grabbed this card a few days before.  These guys are on constant rotation on my Spotify playlist, and their album Midnight Marauders is one of my favorites of all time, so it's cool to honor them in cardboard form.  Also RIP Phife Dawg - it's been a hot minute now since he passed, but Phife was a big part of Tribe and so it was a shame to see "The Five Foot Assassin" succumb this year in his battle with diabetes.

Completely changing gears (which will happen a lot in this post), we next have two cards of Jose Lopez from 2015 BBM.  One is a base card and the other is some kind of insert:

Lopez has been in Japan for a few years now, and so once a year I'll check for his BBM cards on COMC or Ebay and they usually are pretty cheap, which is great.  He's back to hitting 20-25 homeruns a year in Japan like he did at his 2009 MLB peak, so it's great to know that Jose is finding success overseas these days.

When I was buying the Tribe card, I decided to look for cards of different celebrities.  I found a bunch of Bill Murray cards in an SNL set, and decided to go all in and just buy a bunch I liked:

Murray was on SNL before my time, so two of the sketches are kind of foreign to me, but the bottom left card references his lounge singer character, who is simply amazing.  I also missed Land Shark, which is the Chevy Chase card in the middle, but my father-in-law loves it and I like Chevy's work like Fletch even if he is a dick in real life.

The four remaining cards are just a nice cross-section of 90's SNL.  Obviously Chris Farley's Chippendales sketch is the classic, but Mike Myers' Lothar of the Hill People, Rob Schneider's Makin' Copies Guy, and Jon Lovitz's Devil are all amazing too.  I used to watch SNL (and Kids in the Hall) after school every single day, so it's cool to have cardboard to put with those memories.

Just a few cards left.  The next two are just nice PC gets, with one being /5 and the other being /50:

Dantzler is the /5, it's a National stamped card (you can see the stamp to the right of his butt).  And then Shantee Orr's card is a gold parallel /50.  Both very nice.

Which leaves us with a card featuring Alfredo Simon's old name - Carlos Cabrera:

Simon had one excellent year in Cincinnati a few years ago, so excellent that he ended up getting traded to the Tigers for Eugenio Suarez.  He then was awful, so awful that he is now back in Cincinnati (though on the DL).  So he's pretty forgettable to most, but my wife and I watched him pitch a few times so I pondered getting an autograph of his.

That would've been it, but I did a little research on him first, and the guy's history is SO SKETCHY.  Here are the weird details:
- I think most people know that Simon supposedly killed a guy once in the Dominican Republic.  If you didn't know, he shot bullets into the air, and the charge was that they landed and killed one guy while wounding his brother at a New Year's Eve party in 2011.  He was charged with involuntary manslaughter, but was eventually acquitted.
- Simon was sued for $15 million dollars by a woman in April of 2014 who claimed he raped her.  Charges were never filed, but there's supposedly still a civil suit going on out there.
- Finally, Simon was signed by the Phillies in 1999 as Carlos Cabrera, 21 months younger than Alfredo Simon.  He was in the Phillies organization until 2004, when they realized who he really was, and then they traded him away with Ricky Ledee for Felix Rodriguez.  So...there's that.

Anyways, after all that weirdness I decided I didn't want an autograph.  But I did want one of his pre-name change cards, because that's kind of random.  So now I have one!

Ezzard Charles, and a Little Cincinnati History

Since moving to Cincinnati, I've always been amazed with the interesting street names and murals we have around town.  There's a street in my neighborhood called Mad Anthony, and a mural a few miles away for Camp Washington that features, among other things, George Washington in a dress.  

There's countless other examples of neat names and images like these, but one I noticed that has both a street name and a mural is Ezzard Charles, whom I had no knowledge of prior to moving to Cincinnati.  I found out he was a boxer, and that he had some cards to his name, so I decided to grab a few and tell his tale, which is both triumphant and tragic.  

(This is a postcard I grabbed off COMC)

I'll start with the triumphant.  Charles came out of Cincinnati, and was known as "The Cincinnati Cobra" for the way he fought in the ring.  He finished with a career record of 93-25-1, with 58 knockouts, and is perhaps best known for his two battles with Rocky Marciano in the 50's.  Their first match went the full 15 rounds and was decided on points, which was the only time a boxer ever brought Marciano to 15 rounds (Charles lost the match, but many think it could've gone either way).  In the rematch, Charles nearly ended things with a punch that broke Marciano's nose in half and wouldn't stop bleeding, but Charles was knocked out in the 8th, resulting in another Marciano win.  Regardless of the two losses, Charles earned a lot of respect from those matches, as well as his reigns as NBA Heavyweight Champion, World Heavyweight Champion, and wins against Joe Louis, Charley Burley, and Archie Moore.

(This is a sign off I-75 in Cincinnati)

As for the tragedy, Charles beat a man named Sam Baroudi in a fight in 1948, several years into his budding career, in 10 rounds.  Baroudi ended up dying as a result of the injuries that he suffered in the match, and Charles was so distraught that he almost gave up boxing.  He continued on, and obviously had some success with his titles and all, but many in the industry say he was never quite the same Cobra as before, as he lost a bit of his edge following the Baroudi bout.  Charles was still one of the best boxers of all time with that fight, so who's to tell what he could've been without the Baroudi fight in his mind.

(This is a regular trading card I grabbed off COMC)

Later in his carer, Charles faced financial struggles, and so he continued to fight to earn money even after he was out of his peak.  He lost 13 of his last 23 matches, as he was no longer the fighter he once was, and even later in life he ended up being diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease.  Disabled and without any funds, a fundraiser was held for Charles late in his life, where many of his former opponents came to talk about how great he had been, and Marciano called Charles the bravest man he ever fought.  In the end, Charles died in a nursing home in Chicago at the age of 53.

(This is a photo of his mural in downtown Cincinnati)

Charles' later days were marred with financial woes and sickness, but his legacy as a boxer is one that continued on long after his death.  He was elected to the Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990, and has since been named as one of the best boxers of all-time by multiple publications.  He was even named the #1 light-heavyweight boxer of all time by several sources, showing just how talented Charles truly was as a fighter.

I'm proud to have a few cards of the Cincinnati legend now in my collection, and I'm hopeful his legacy in the sport will never be forgotten.  I'm also hopeful that some day we'll find a way to combat the terrible disease that is ALS/Lou Gehrig's Disease.  RIP Ezzard Charles.