For those of you who like old baseball cards like I do, check out this Youtube video.

Thanks to Joe Favorito’s Twitter feed for pointing it out.

In honor of the Bears retiring Mike Ditka’s 89 Monday, here’s a look at Iron Mike as a player.

The stats only tell part of the story. He was the rookie of the year in 1961 with 1,076 receiving yards and 12 touchdowns. He played in five Pro Bowls and scored a touchdown for Dallas in the Super Bowl.

But there was much more to Ditka the player than stats. Dan Pompei gets to the essence of Ditka in his column at Sports on Earth.

Ditka takes us back to a better time, before there were substance abuse suspensions, concussion lawsuits, free agent mercenaries, indoor games or Jaguars. With a crewcut and a single-bar facemask, he played when men were men, when Colts were from Baltimore, and when training camp practices were more taxing than Fred Astaire ballroom dancing classes.

His intensity would have stood out in any era. “He was one of the first offensive intimidators,” said Johnny Morris, Ditka’s teammate for six years. “He would go after people like Ray Nitschke. He was the aggressor. There were so many times I’d see him throw a block, then immediately roll over and go for a second block. Most players, even great ones, are satisfied after they do their job. Not him. He was never satisfied.”

You talk about love of the game? He might have invented it. “Those 60 minutes when I played, man those were special,” Ditka said, his eyes still glinting after all these years. “I enjoyed the heck out of that. Wrigley Field, I enjoyed the mud, the slop, whatever, even people throwing beer on us when we lost going into the locker room. It was all good stuff. You turn around, give them a piece of your mind.”

With the Kansas City Chiefs resurgence, it is appropriate to remember Otis Taylor. When I looked up his records, I was stunned to learn that he isn’t in the Hall of Fame.

I just assumed it was a done deal, considering he was an elite receiver in his day. His signature touchdown in Super Bowl IV definitely is Hall of Fame worthy.

“Otis made my job easy,” former Chiefs quarterback and Hall of Famer Len Dawson said. “If you got the pass to Otis, you knew he’d catch it.”

Taylor deserves to be in the Hall with Dawson.

Pittsburgh Steelers fans probably could use a blast from the past after watching their team give up 55 points to New England Sunday. There were stretches where Jack Lambert’s Steelers didn’t yield 55 points in 5 games.

The Hall of Famer was mean, nasty, and immensely talented.

John Elway on facing Lambert in his pro debut at Denver:

“He had no teeth, and he was slobbering all over himself. I’m thinking, ‘You can have your money back, just get me out of here. Let me go be an accountant.” I can’t tell you how badly I wanted out of there.”

It doesn’t seem fair that Ted Williams only got to play in one World Series. And he hardly made the most of it, hitting only .200 with 1 RBI in the 7-game loss to St. Louis in 1946.

With Boston winning its third title since 2004, I still wanted to honor the all-time Red Sox hero, whose feats transcended the game.

The numbers are staggering. A .344 career batting average with a .482 OBP. Wow.

In honor of Tim McCarver calling his last World Series, it should be noted that he was a pretty good player in his day. He was one of those rare four-decade players. He made his Major League debut with St. Louis in 1959 at the age of 17. He retired as a Phillie in 1980.

McCarver’s best year was 1967, when he hit .295 with 14 homers and 69 RBIs. He also only struck out 32 times in 540 plate appearances. And he handled that great Cardinals pitching staff that featured Bob Gibson and a young Steve Carlton.

The showing placed McCarver second in the MVP voting behind Orlando Cepeda. The great year then was capped off when the Cardinals and Gibson beat the Red Sox in Game 7 to win the World Series.

With Boston on the verge of going to another World Series, it seems appropriate to recall one of my favorite Red Sox: Rico Petrocelli.

Rico played his entire 13-year career in Boston, hitting 210 homers. His best year was in 1969 when he took advantage of the Green Monster to hit 40 homers. Not bad for a shortstop.

Rico was cool. Hard to think of that face sporting one of those ugly beards.

Now 70, Rico still is going strong. He and Ed Randall host “Remember When…” on Saturdays at 8 p.m. ET on SiriusXM’s MLB Radio.

When we were kids and there was a rain delay during a Cubs game, Jack Brickhouse always seemed to say, “Well, this gives us a chance to chat with our old friend, ‘Handy’ Andy Pafko.”

The former Cubs star, who died this week at the age of 92, went on to play with Brooklyn and Milwaukee. While he had a standout 17-year career, he also had a bit role in baseball history.

From the obit in the New York Times:

The first-place Dodgers led the New York Giants by 13 1/2 games in mid-August 1951, but the Giants caught them. On Oct. 3, in the finale of a three-game pennant playoff, Pafko was playing left field at the Polo Grounds when the Giants’ Bobby Thomson connected off the Dodgers reliever Ralph Branca in the ninth inning for a three-run, pennant-winning home run into the left-field stands.

Captured in a long-remembered photograph, Pafko was a helpless figure pressed against the wall and looking up as “the shot heard round the world” landed a few rows above him.

In Roger Kahn’s book “The Boys of Summer,” Pafko recalled Branca’s stroll from the bullpen to relieve the Dodgers starter Don Newcombe:

“Branca walked by me in left field. I hit him in the back. ‘Go get ’em, Ralph.’ But I was doubting. Branca threw a ball. Then came this shot. I started back. In Ebbets Field I might have gotten it. In the Polo Grounds it was gone.” (The Polo Grounds’ left-field fence was only 315 feet from home plate.)

The moment was “my biggest letdown ever,” Pafko said.