Just For Fun: Check out the Pittsburgh Pirates' reading habits

This new occasional department is as its title says -- it's just for fun ... a super-quick look at something found that could be new or could be old. It could be comical, it could be serious. It could be cards, it could be something else. It's perhaps collectable -- to somebody -- but there still might be a quick story in there somewhere, too.

Read all about it?

Buzz recently did some deep dives for odd stuff in the autograph realm and a trio of signed late-1970s Pittsburgh Pirates expense checks caught my attention. Why? Just some goofy similarities between them made me wonder what the deal was -- and, well, this isn't even all of them. Again, why? To add some weird but simple items to my autograph collection on the super-duper cheap.

The checks are from 1978 and are signed by former Pirates Treasurer Douglas McCormick -- not a big deal and really, really not as cool as a player's absolute first payday I wrote about here -- so this trio isn't about the ink. This time, it's about who's getting paid.

In the case of the Oct. 25, 1978, check above for $10.20? That's The Sporting News. The weekly sports newspaper was $1 an issue back then, so I suppose it could be for a discounted subscription based on 52 weeks a year but that still seems low. Was this for a subscription for somebody up high? Maybe one for a waiting room? Maybe it was for a bundle of copies of Dave Parker's cover a month earlier? We'll never know ...

One clearly for the front office: Well, The Wall Street Journal likely wasn't one for the scouts at team headquarters -- maybe the accountant ... or the big boss. (We could really use an expense memo line here, guys.) The price seems a little more uptown, though it was (and still is) a daily newspaper that's all about the numbers that can relate to a different kind of stat sheet beyond baseball. The cover price was a mere 25 cents in 1978, so ... maybe this was a deal for sub or two? Or maybe this one got mailed and that upped the price? Again, we'll never know ...

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One for the staff? The proximity and price here suggest this might not be for a newspaper subscription -- though the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette was less than a quarter per issue and this one wouldn't have needed mailing ... just the old-fashioned cliche of a kid chucking issues toward a door every day. Maybe it was for some modest newspaper ad placement or some other simple project/item? Again, we'll never know ...

What do I know? I do know I didn't need these ... but they were too odd not to grab for something weird in my stash of MLB signed checks.

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