1991 Padres Desert Shield Cards

My most humblest apologies for not writing sooner, but two weeks of annual training and a busted computer took its toll on me. However AT is now over and I actually fixed the busted screen myself, so all is well again.

Recently, I received some cards in the mail I had originally been looking for more than 20 years. Thanks to a handy E-Bay purchase, I was able to find nine of these 27 cards.

But first, a little background - In 1991, Topps took its 1991 base set, added a gold, Desert Shield logo to the upper right-hand corner  and sent them overseas to American troops during Operation Desert Shield in 1991. This set was then distributed in 15-card packs.

When I was called up for Desert Shield/Storm, I was sent to Daharan, Saudi Arabia, to serve with the 593^rd Area Support Group. One of the first things I did was search out those Soldiers who had been there the longest, to see if they had any packs of Desert Shield cards.

 “No luck,” many of them told me. Either they weren’t interested in them, they didn’t want to carry them around in the field, they traded them away for better MRE items, or threw them into the burn barrels. One guy told me of a friend who had to burn two cases of them at the base he was stationed at because the commander didn’t want them “sitting around in the supply room.”

Well, at least now, I have a nice start on finally collecting these cards. Some, like the Gwynn card, are going to be hard to come by, but we'll see. I've waited more  than 20 years so far.

Finally, if I may, let us have a brief moment of silence for Storm Thorgerson, 69, the British graphic artist best known for designing the surreal album art for Pink Floyd, who recently passed away. Thorgerson attended school with Pink Floyd's Roger Waters and Syd Barrett, was a teenage friend of David Gilmour and, later, became the band's main designer.

His iconic covers include the inflatable pig flying over London for “Animals” and the rainbow of light emerging from a prism on “The Dark Side of the Moon,” considered among the greatest album covers of all time. I must have gone through three albums of the “Dark Side” alone,  during the days of my mis-spent youth.

R.I.P. Storm Thorgerson. R.I.P