2024 Card-vent Calendar: December 15

December 15, 2024:

1990 Topps Woolworth Baseball Highlights #1 Robin Yount

Usually when I pull Yount cards out of this calendar, it's something really unique, a newer card I couldn't have foreseen existing back when I was a young collector.  I'm talking like a card embedded with a fabric swatch from Robin's favorite childhood pajamas, a cut relic card containing a piece of his 4th grade report card, or something so shiny that the name for the color hasn't been invented yet.  This year it looks like we're going back to basics.  There weren't any Woolworth stores in Milwaukee in 1990, at least on my side of town, but I can imagine getting a set of these would have made an otherwise awful afternoon of trying on shoes and school pants worth it.

Can we talk about Yount's mullet?  Doesn't it sort of... transcend the mullet in this photo? It's so unbelievably well maintained.  It's not wispy, nor is it ratty.  It serves a purpose.  It speaks with authority.  It has voting rights.  When your job requires you to wear a hat, this style lets everyone know what's going on up top, delivering just a hint of majesty.  If Yount was one of those guys who was part of a road crew and he was the one who held the sign when they're working on a half-mile-long single-lane road, and traffic can go in only one direction at once, and they stretch of road they're working on is like 3/4 of a mile long so they have to radio from one end to the other that they're switching the traffic direction... you know, those guys?  Yeah, even if you're Robin Yount, you have to wear a hardhat, and this haircut would be perfect for that.

It's why he won MVP in 1989.