Are You Ready for Some Vintage (Football)?
December 5th, 2010 by slangon

You know, it’s funny. A few seasons ago, I started to follow football because I felt that I needed a something to distract me from the horror that was the Mets 2009 season. Now, here it is and it seems like every week I’m suffering through one must-win, nail biting game after another with these New York Giants. Once again, they must win if they want to retain a slice of the first place pie since Philly already won on Thursday. On top of pretty much having to win, they’ll be trying to do it without Domenik Hixon, Mathias Kiwanuka, Ramses Barden, Madison Hedgecock, probably Steve Smith and David Diehl, and Justin Tuck, Osi Umenyiora and Aaron Ross are banged up. Plus they have to do it against Donovan McNabb, who always seems to kill them. I think I’m going to need to go out and get some more beer for this game.

Anyway, on to the card.

1958 Topps #77 Frank Varrichione

The 1958 Topps Football set is pretty clear the inspiration for the 1959 Topps Baseball set. The circle containing the photo of the player is a bit more elongated than it is on the baseball set and the type layout is a bit different, but I don’t think that anyone would argue that the Topps design team had the ’58 football set in mind when they came up with the following years baseball set.

Like lots of the other vintage football cards that I’ve been discussing, even though the front design can be traced to elements from some specific baseball card design, the back is pretty unique. That’s a pretty awesome write up Topps gave to Frank. “Bruising”, “miserable”, “punishment”, “agressive”, “”toughness”. Some pretty desirable words for a tackle. Frank was a 5 time Pro-Bowler, 4 times with the Steelers (including the year of this card) and once with the Rams.

Frank is pictured on the front of this card without a helmet, although he did wear one when he was playing. He had some interesting recollections on the use of face guards though.

“When I was at Notre Dame, we didn’t use face masks. Frank Leahy and his staff stressed to the offensive linemen that you hold your head up when you’re blocking someone. You hold your head up and put your face into his chest and keep moving your feet and that was the best way to block. But it was difficult for you to keep your head up, because your instinct said you were going to catch a blow in the face. So the Notre Dame coaches actually tied the back of your helmet to the back of your shoulder pads. That would force the player to keep his head up, until you perfected the technique. When I learned to block with my head up, I became pretty effective at it. That is part of the reason I excelled as a blocker. But I never used a facemask all though college.”

Once he joined the Steelers in 1955, Pittsburgh coach Walt Kiesling told Varrichione to wear a face bar. “While I was at Notre Dame, I had my nose broken maybe half a dozen times, but I never lost a tooth, for some reason. But after I put that facemask on, we were playing Detroit. A guy by the name of Darris McCord hit me with an elbow and broke two of my teeth, right through the bar!”

One Response to “Are You Ready for Some Vintage (Football)?”

  1. Cool card. I love the green color in the circle border.

    Good luck with the game.

Leave a Reply