Jim Grant started his career pitching for the Cleveland Indians, where he was roommates with his boyhood idol Larry Doby. Doby thought Grant was “”ugly as a Mississippi mudcat”. One thing led to another and all of a sudden Jim Grant becomes “Mudcat” Grant. Nothing is cooler than being given your nickname by your boyhood idol.
In an effort to get my readers to learn a little something about something other than baseball cards, which is after all, a little children’s pursuit and a colossal waste of time, I present to you this Bonus Fact of the Week.
1922 W.D. & H.O. Wills Do You Know, A Series of 50 #40
Tonight the Mets will play the 8,000th game of franchise history. In the 7,999 games prior to tonight, the Mets have won 3,829 and lost 4,162, which is good for a .479 winning percentage. They’ve won 4 pennants and 2 World Series. There’s been a total of 928 players that have worn a Mets uniform, 11 of which have eventually gone on to the Hall of Fame (although only 1 was wearing a Mets uniform then). They’ve scored 32,621 runs, gotten 67,960 hits and smacked 6,267 home runs. Collectively, they’ve posted a .251 batting average. Mets pitching has posted a 3.77 ERA and struck out 49,027 batters.
Today’s post will be short and sweet. One card. That’s it. But it’s a sort of cool one.
It’s a John McGraw card from the 1961 Golden Press set. It was a 33 card set that was released as a book. All the cards were perforated, much like a Dover reprint book. You can pretty clearly see the perforations along the edges on this card. All 33 subjects were members of the Hall of Fame at the time that the book was put out. The cards are standard size and the backs contain a biographical write up as well as they player’s lifetime stats.
Interestingly, the Golden Press in question is the same Golden Press that put out the famous Little Golden Books. I’m sure everyone remembers titles such as The Pokey Little Puppy or The Little Engine That Could. Before they released the baseball card book, they had some success with other punch-out card books covering such subjects as U.S Presidents, animals, Disney characters and paper dolls. They utilized their large stable of children’s book illustrators to colorize the black and white photos.
You might be happy learn, by the way, that we’re almost done with this batch of cards.
Today, we’re getting into some of the less mainstream cards that I got in my last batch of cheapies, namely cards that weren’t issued by Topps. I was able to pick up a couple of cards from a set that I’ve long admired – the 1961 Fleer All-Time Greats set.
According to the Holy Book (aka The Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards):
In 1961, Fleer Issued another set utilizing the Baseball Greats theme. The 154-card set was issued in two series and features a color (or colorized) player portrait against a colored background. The player’s name is located in a pennant at bottom. Card backs feature orange and black on white stock and contain player biographical and statistical information. The cards measure 2-1/2″ x 3-1/2″ in size. Five-cent wax packs included five cards plus a team logo decal and sticker.
From what I can gather, once Fleer decided to stick their toe in the baseball card pool, they needed to find a way to work around the virtual monopoly that Topps created through their aggressive signing of players to exclusive contracts. They took a novel approach in 1959 by creating an entire set based around one player. Even though that one player happened to be Teddy Ballgame, it didn’t seem like the cards were much of a hit outside of Boston perhaps. In 1960, they came up with the idea of creating a set dedicated to great players of the past, thus avoiding the need to get contracts from current (or current as of 1960) players. The design was pretty sparse, but to me the idea was pretty awesome. I love me some baseball history and old-timey players. It seems that the children of 1960 would disagree however, since by all accounts the set didn’t sell so well.
Not to be discouraged, Fleer continued with the Baseball Greats theme in 1961, this time employing a better art director and a bigger set size. Although this set is usually referred to as a 1961 issue, there is speculation that the release of the set ran into 1962 as well, which would explain why there is no 1962 Fleer issue. The set was split into 2 series: cards 1-88, and cards 89-176. Perhaps the first series was actually issued in 1961 and the second series was 1962. The second series is considered more scarce.
This was their last stab at trying to circumvent modern players. In an attempt to break into the baseball card market, they packaged their cards with a terrible tasting cookie rather than gum. Predictably, Topps cried foul, won their lawsuit and outside of the occasional oddball issue, knocked Fleer out of the baseball card business until 1981, when an antitrust suit against Topps was finally settled. This granted Fleer (and other companies) the right to produce baseball cards. Oddly enough, Fleer also won $1 in damages. Like most lawsuits, we haven’t heard the last of Topps and their lawyers. After the initial ruling, Topps got the judge to at least let them keep the distinction of being the only card company to sell their cards with gum. That’s why both Fleer and Donruss were sold with gum in 1981, but after that Fleer packaged their cards with stickers and Donruss was stuck with puzzle pieces.
Okay. Enough with the history lesson already. Let’s see some cardboard.
Nowadays, when you mention stolen bases, most people probably think of Rickey Henderson. Maybe Lou Brock if you’re an old timer. Maybe Jose Reyes or Michael Bourn or Jacoby Ellsbury if you have a particularly short memory. Maybe even Tyrus R. Cobb if you’re a student of history. Well, let me tell you about Max Carey. He led the National League in steals 10 times in his career. Only Rickey Henderson has led the league more times. He stole home 33 times. Only Ty Cobb pulled it off more times. In 1922, he stole 51 bases in 53 tries, which is good for a 96% rate. Which would put him about 14th or 15th on the all-time list. That might not sound so impressive until you notice that all the guys in front of him have 20-30 something steals. The list on Baseball-Reference only includes stats from 1954 on, so he’s not on that list. I guess things like that are what get you in the Hall of Fame with a .285/.361/.386 slash line.
Kiki Cuyler also made it into the Hall, but with a bit more Hall-worthy .321/.386/.474 slash line. He also won a World Series with the Pirates and played in 2 others with the Cubbies. He’s also apparently Ward Cleaver’s favorite baseball player.
Jesse Haines is a Hall of Famer who played his entire career with the Cardinals, with the exception of 5 innings played during his rookie year with the Reds. He was part of the Cardinals famed “Gashouse Gang” and played in 4 World Series’ with the team, winning 2 of them. According to Yahoo! Sports, he is apparently the “worst player in the Hall of Fame”.
Art Nehf is the only non-HOF-er in this group. He is also one of 58 guys in this set that aren’t in the Hall of Fame. Bonus fact: Art is the only Major Leaguer whose middle name is Neukom. That’s his mommy’s maiden name.
Lastly, we have “Gorgeous George” Sisler, who some said was “the nearest thing to a perfect ballplayer.” And by some I mean Ty Cobb.
There we have it. Five cards from one of the cooler looking non-Topps sets ever. And for those of you out there counting, that’s 3 posts in 3 days. Let’s see how long I can keep up that pace.
Willie Mays celebrates his 81st birthday today. Happy birthday to you, Willie, and here’s to hoping for many more.
In an effort to get my readers to learn a little something about something other than baseball cards, which is after all, a little children’s pursuit and a colossal waste of time, I present to you this Bonus Fact of the Week.
Also, happy Cinco de Mayo, everyone. Don’t drink too much tequila.
1922 W.D. & H.O. Wills Do You Know, A Series of 50 #29
On we trudge with my attempt to post some cards that I recently picked up. Or at least when I started these posts it was recent. Now not so much. Anyway, here’s some more 60′s Topps cards.
I don’t know what it is, but Cardinals cards from the 1967 set look really awesome to me. I mentioned that with a ’67 Bob Gibson I got forever ago but I’m not sure why it is. My guess is the vivid red, but I can’t be sure.
The next group of cards come from a set that kind of snuck up on me as far as how much I like it – the 1964 set.
I have a couple of Walt Bond’s cards from the 1960′s and they all seem to have this exact same, super excited look. Yippee. I’m on a baseball card. Even though I’m sort of pissed at the Astro’s at the moment for having swept the Mets, I always enjoy picking up a Houston Colt .45 card. Ah, I guess I shouldn’t be mad at the Astros.
Normally, on the other hand, I’m not too excited to get Yankee’s cards. Older Yankee’s cards, though, I don’t mind so much. And this one comes complete with a bonus Clete Boyer.
I’ve stated many, many times on this blog in the past that I prefer action over headshots on my cardboard. This, although it doesn’t quite qualify as a headshot per se, is a perfect example of posed shots that I can get behind. Classic posed pitcher follow through? Check. Lots of pre-game action going on in the background? Check.
You’ve got to love vintage World Series cards. This particular one is of the Dodgers celebrating after their 4 game sweep of the Yankees. It seems to be manager Walt Alston, Marv Breeding, Lee Walls, possible coach Joe Becker and a couple of other unidentified Dodgers swarming Sandy Koufax after he pitched the final out of his complete game, 6 hit, 1 run gem in the final game. I’m not sure if that’s Hector Lopez, who grounded out for the last out, walking back to the dugout behind the mob. I’m also curious as to what that light blue blob is in the background. A tarp? A lake made of the tears of the Yankees? Either way, cool card.
Sometimes I like to think of baseball cards like I would a baseball glove. I was able to pick up this well-broken in example of the 1963 A.L. Home Run Leaders for the crazy price of 18¢. And yes, that is HArmon Killebrew on there.
And speaking of league leader cards and the Dodgers…
Considering that I’m not a huge fan of the ’61 Topps set, I actually do like the the league leader cards from this issue. Although I do question the cropping and positioning of the heads. First off, why isn’t the bottom of Mike McCormick lined up with the bottom of the blue square like it is on the others? There’s also some weird stuff going on with the way the guys in the bottom row line up with each other. Big Donnie Drysdale looks like he’s coming out of Ernie Broglio’s shoulder and Stan Williams looks like he had Bob Friend growing out of his back.
That does it for the regular issue Topps cards from this particular batch of cards. Sometime in the next year or two, I’ll get around to showing the remaining cards. I promise.
(I just found out today that Moose Skowron passed away last Friday. By coincidence I had been planning this post for about a week or two. What better way to pay tribute to a great old ball player than to share how he got his nickname.)
One of my favorite things about the history of baseball, is how awesome some of the nicknames players have sported throughout the years are. Some nicknames are pretty self explanatory, like when a southpaw is named “Lefty” or a guy from Texas is called “Tex”. I’ve always been intrigued by nicknames that are a little harder to comprehend, so I tried to go out and find why those guys are called what they’re called.
Initially, I assumed that Bill Skowron was nicknamed Moose because he hit with some good power, so he was powerful like a moose. Apparently I was wrong. When Bill was seven years old, his grandfather gave him a haircut that resembled that of Benito Mussolini. As is often the case with kids, Bill’s friends jumped on the chance to ridicule his new hairdo and started to call him “Mussolini” and the nickname stuck. Eventually, it became shortened to “Moose”.
R.I.P., Moose.
In an effort to get my readers to learn a little something about something other than baseball cards, which is after all, a little children’s pursuit and a colossal waste of time, I present to you this Bonus Fact of the Week.
1924 W.D. & H.O. Wills Do You Know, 2nd Series of 50 #2
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