Dec 6, 2021
What happens when you have two
super-knowledgeable sports super-fans on one show? Magic! This
episode of the K.P. Wee Podcast features the host and his guest
swapping stories and stats at a fast and furious rate. Michael
Unger, best known to baseball card collectors through the social
media handles udeck1990@Twitter or upperdeck1990@Insta, shares the story of how he turned a set of
1990 Upper Deck baseball cards that were gathering dust into a
subject of daily fascination for collectors everywhere. Early in
2020, he started posting a daily meditation on each of the cards
contained in the collection just for the fun of it, but quickly
found a universe of followers eager to join the conversation.
Michael’s daily social media posts quickly evolved into a community
and it was through this online sports ecosystem that K.P. and
Michael connected. It turned out that, in addition to sharing a
passion for sports and interest in players like John Cangelosi,
they were also fellow Canadians enjoying life in
Vancouver.
The show features some context
for Michael’s #UpperDeck1990 project, including his personal
motivation and some of the characteristics that distinguished these
cards from Topps or any other brand in circulation. Known to many
as the go-to company for hockey cards, Upper Deck was granted a
license in 1989 by Major League Baseball and quickly set a new
standard for premium cards with improved photography, design, card
stock quality. The company’s
1990 set also included the industry's first randomly inserted
personally autographed and numbered cards of sports
superstars.
There has been a real
renaissance of interest in collecting and trading, which Michael
attributes to a mix of interest in pandemic pastimes, new marketing
initiatives that have generated fresh new designs and the fact that
a generation of 1990s kids have now reached an age where they have
a little disposable income to invest in sentimental collectibles.
K.P. also elicits a great story about how Upper Deck rode a big
wave on the back of Ken Griffey Jr.
Towards the end of the episode,
K.P. yields the mic so that Michael can ask a few questions of his
own. Their fun conversation reveals not only a little of K.P.’s
life story but also what it was about sports that captured his
imagination as a somewhat shy young immigrant from Singapore. He
never could have imagined that his interest in following players
and teams would one day result in personally coming to know and
write about some of his favorites. Enjoy this upbeat conversation
between two men who share a lot in common. They are both educators,
Vancouverites, sports and stats enthusiasts, and members of the
#UpperDeck1990 community that Michael has built to the delight of
so many fellow baseball card collectors!
To learn more about two of the
online reference sites Michael likes to consult, visit the
Society
for American Baseball Research or the Baseball Reference website.
You can hear previous episodes
of the K.P. Wee Podcast here.
If you’re a fan of this
podcast’s intro music, please follow Roger Chong:
Twitter @chongroger and Instagram @chongroger
KEY TOPICS:
- (3:15): K.P. introduces Michael, aka #udeck1990
or upperdeck1990, a fellow sports fan-turned-friend via social
media and a shared passion for all things baseball.
- (5:59): Why baseball cards and why the Upper
Deck brand in particular? In January 2020, Michael was feeling down
and looking for a way to get out of his own head.
- (11:05): The physical cards themselves, in
addition to a limited number of Twitter characters, have formed the
scaffolding for Michael to do a deep dive on one player, one card,
one day at a time. He has been working his way through the entire
set of some 800, finding endless stories behind the
stats.
- (13:38): Baseball cards have reignited for
Michael, who has started collecting/trading them again. He has
found not only a meaningful, engrossing pastime but also
camaraderie within the online community that has grown up around
his Upper Deck project.
- (14:55): Many kids of Michael’s era were
excited by the monetary value in baseball cards, but at this point
the bigger draw is a simple love for the community on Facebook,
Insta and Twitter. There’s a real buzz these days around collecting
cards -- perhaps because of confluence of generational stage of
life, pandemic and some exciting new initiatives like the Topps
Project70 remix of new designs by well-known
artists.
- (16:38): Exactly how big is the universe of
card enthusiasts? Michael says it’s hard to quantify because of the
multiple audience streams, some on social media and others not.
Just one group on Facebook has 11,000 members, for
example.
- (19:15): Michael returns to what it was that
drew him to Upper Deck. Where production values had historically
been pretty basic, they were among the early adopters of
full-color, high-quality photographs. He gravitates to the clean
design and quality.
- (21:06): Upper Deck caught a big break with
their first release -- putting all their stock into a rookie by the
name of Ken Griffey Jr. Many believe that one card was revolutionary.
Upper Deck cards were a little bit more expensive and a little
rarer to find and everyone wanted that 1989 Griffey. It’s still one
of the iconic cards in the industry.
- (24:05): The One: K.P. asks Michael to describe
his absolute favorite card ever and gets a reflection on why it is
that fans gravitate to particular players (in Michael’s case,
Darryl Strawberry, a fellow tall/thin guy). Like old friends, our
life ups and downs can correspond or sometimes intersect with the
fortunes of the players we follow. Today Michael has nearly 200
unique Darryl Strawberry cards, but is still looking for the Holy
Grail: 1983 Topps trading card.
- (30:15): The beauty of sports as a diversion
from the workaday world – something that both Michael and K.P.
appreciate at the end of a long day. Going onto Twitter helped
Michael step away from science education and engage in other
universes of interest, including baseball cards and beyond. Social
media enables all kinds of conversation and cross-cultural learning
that he finds exciting and educational.
- (33:33): John Cangelosi became the unlikely
connector between Michael and K.P., who has written a book about
the player,
"John Cangelosi: The Improbable Baseball Journey of the Undersized
Kid from Nowhere to World Series Champion." The two found each other through Twitter
and learned that they were neighbors.
- (34:35): Michael turns the microphone on K.P.,
throwing out some interview questions of his own. The two discuss
K.P.’s roots in Singapore and how his experience as a shy kid
assimilating into a new Canadian life in part fostered a
fascination with sports.
- (38:55): K.P. shares memories of the year
baseball became his passion (even if he got started mainly because
it was fun to root for the contrarian, glass-half-empty teams). It
was through sports that a young K.P. cemented schoolyard
friendships.
- (42:21): Michael asks K.P. how it was that he
made the leap from ardent fan to author. As a kid, he felt most
comfortable inside his mind, so writing down thoughts came
naturally as a forum for exploring his interest. From there, K.P.
developed into an author through initiative and hard work.
(Click here to learn more about KP's
books.)
- (43:44): K.P. shares the story of how he became
preoccupied with Tom Candiotti, whom he perceived as a scapegoat
who nonetheless kept showing up and getting the job done. Inspired
by his indefatigability, K.P. reached out to Candiotti as a fan and
ultimately in 2010 wrote "Tom Candiotti: A Life of
Knuckleballs."
- (53:41): One for a trivia buff! Michael asks
what’s the name of the one pro baseball player who comes
alphabetically between Cangelosi and Candiotti? K.P. is officially
stumped. The answer? John Caneira. (Learn more about Caneira and
all things baseball at Baseball Reference
website.)
- (55:43): K.P. and Michael wrap up with a
promise to team up again and share more stats, stories, fun – and
their shared passion for all things sports and life!
KEY QUOTES:
- (11:34):
“I can go on the internet and find out any information I want now,
but back in the 80s and 90s you couldn’t. Baseball cards were
really these nuggets of information to learn about all the
players.”
- (13:05): “Lo and behold, I’ve developed
friendships online because of this and that’s really something
surprising. I didn’t think that was going to happen. And I’ve also
gotten into collecting cards again!”
- (20:30): “(Upper Deck) put a lot of production
into the quality of the cards and a lot of thought into the quality
of the photographs.”
- (25:27): “When I started going to high school
life started to change. It wasn’t cool to collect cards anymore.
There were other factors at play and life started to change a lot.
All of a sudden baseball cards were just for kids; not for me
anymore.”
- (32:26): “We forget sometimes that we’re so
close to the United States, which is such a big country with so
many different pockets and little areas. It’s hard to clump people
together and put labels on them, so I find it fun to have (online
community) conversations.”
- (42:31): “When I was younger I was shy and
didn’t like to talk. I probably could communicate better by writing
down my thoughts … And sports is not a topic where you’re going to
convince somebody by just telling them something.”
(K.P.)
Michael Unger’s Bio:
In addition to his
#upperdeck1990 and #udeck1990 social media following, Michael is
also a fan favorite at the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre in
Vancouver, where he organizes programs across cultural and
scientific disciplines. He’s a fixture at Nerd Nite Vancouver, a
bar lecture series that offers an alternative to traditional
learning environments, and he manages SCI-CATs (a team of science
communicators that have created open source teaching modules that
span a range of science communication topics). Michael is most
passionate about finding new ways to connect with audiences,
sharing the diversity of humanity looking into the cosmos with a
sense of wonder and curiosity about the universe and our place
in it.
Follow Michael Unger @Twitter or @Insta
About K.P. Wee:
K.P. Wee is the author of
multiple books and a regular contributor to sports radio programs
and websites. In addition to hosting The K.P. Wee Podcast, he also
enjoys writing sports and psychological fiction with a twist of
romance. He spent a decade working as a program developer and
instructor for a private school before joining the
Vancouver Canadians baseball club’s
media relations department.
You can find out more about books by K.P. Wee
here.
Follow K.P. Wee:
K.P. @Twitter
Additional episodes of the K.P.
Wee Podcast: https://kpwee.libsyn.com