Card Collectors Finally Can Get the Reel Deal

There will be no more waiting with bated breath. Big League Bass trading cards are here.

Big League Cards Co. of Canyon Lake, Calif., has published the full 60-card, 1990 set, including 56 bass tournament fishermen, two hall-of-fame cards, a checklist and a special “Catch and Release” card, picturing a hooked largemouth on the front and listing “Do’s and Don’ts for Healthy Bass” on the back.

Do: “Avoid touching the gills!”

Don’t: “ . . . let bass touch clothing, seats or boat carpeting.”

And don’t be fooled by counterfeiters. There is no hall of fame card for Ernest Hemingway or Ted Williams, and the rare Izaak Walton error card, with “The Compleat Angler” misspelled on the reverse side, hasn’t been seen for centuries.

Add bass cards: Each Big League Bass fisherman’s card contains biographical information, recent tournament performances, career highlights, sponsors and, in many cases, a “Pro Tip.”

For example, angler Rich Tauber of Woodland Hills, card No. 49, suggests: “Gain confidence by experimenting with different colors.”

And although Don Iovino of Burbank, card No. 35, shares no tip, his card does say: “Inventor of the ‘doodling’ method, Don has been a driving force in the finesse fishing movement.”

Trivia time: In what sport does the ball travel the fastest?

Cubs win . . . don’t they?: Too bad you’ll miss tonight’s closing performance of “The Last Pennant Before Armageddon” at Chicago’s City Lit Theater, three blocks from Wrigley Field.

The play, based on a short story by W.P. Kinsella, whose novel “Shoeless Joe” was adapted for the movie “Field of Dreams,” is a comedy about a potential Cub victory in a fictional seventh playoff game between the Cubs and Dodgers.

Dramatic tension fills the theater as fictional Cub Manager Al Tiller dreams that his team’s losing tradition is God’s fail-safe mechanism for preventing the world’s end.

Add comedy: There are flashbacks to Manager Tiller’s losing past, and God’s deliberations before a court that includes Al Capone, the late Mayor Richard J. Daley and the Marx Brothers.

Eventually, Tiller must choose, saying: “I don’t know what I want to do now--throw the game, lose the pennant, save the world?”

Another opening, another show: For everyone who couldn’t make it to Chicago, there’s always the Los Angeles Premiere of “Yankee Wives” at Two Roads Theatre in Studio City Nov. 15.

Written by David Rimmer and directed by Mark York, the play is billed as “a hilarious, behind-the-dugout peek into the hits and misses of six women married to major league baseball players.”

Yankee fans need more than a good laugh, but it’s a start.

Clouding the issue: Big doings up and down the state this week, as the annual Great American Smokeout rolls around:

In the Bay Area, debate continues to smolder over outdoor smoking at the Oakland Coliseum. And today, the CigArrest Stop Smoking car goes to the line at the Del Mar Grand Prix in California.

Pete Stapleton, driver of the CigArrest car, said: “The main message I have for racing fans is that they watch my smoke, because I am going all out to win.”

The race is sponsored by Camel cigarettes.

Trivia answer: Golf.

Quotebook: Buffalo Sabre goalie Clint Malarchuk, who nearly died when a player’s skate flew loose and cut his throat in a game two seasons ago: “It’s sometimes frustrating, because this is my 10th year as a pro and I’m remembered for that, not for a great glove save. I’m remembered as Scarneck.”