No, not that Milton Bradley. This one.

I recently scored a lot of 1969 Milton Bradley baseball cards. For those unfamiliar with these, according to the old Standard Card Catalog:

The first of three sets issued by Milton Bradley over a four year period, these cards measure 2″x3″ and have a white border surrounding a black-and-white player photo. The player’s name appears above the photo in capital letters. There are no team designations and the photos are airbrushed to eliminate team logos. Backs display biographical data along the top followed by a list of various game situations used in the playing the board game. The cards have square corners.

The lot that I got was 9 cards and included some guys who were a little more prominent than Roy White up there.

I was particularly happy about the Buddy Harrelson card, for obvious reasons. There was also a couple of guys even more prominent than those three.

As cool as all of those cards are, one has to stand out as the best of the bunch. That one is:

Milton Bradley also issued a baseball game complete with cards in 1970 and 1972. The ’70 version was quite a bit different as it had the player’s name and biographical data on the front underneath the photo as well as rounded corners. The 1972 edition, however was virtually identical to the 1969 version, with one slight difference that I’d be willing to bet has led to many ’72 cards being passed off as ’69 cards, whether intentionally or not. Again, we go to the SCC:

The 1969 and 1972 game cards are virtually identical in format. They can be differentiated by looking on the back at any numeral “1” in a line of red type. If the “1” does not have a base, it is a 1969 card; if there is a base, the card is a 1972.

Let’s take a look at the back of Buddy Harrelson’s card.

If you look at the 5th line, “Single”, you see that the “1” in “RA1” has no line at the bottom (that’s a serif, if anyone cares). If you look a little further down at the 7th line, “Bunt Out”, you see that the “1” in “RA1” does have a line. I guess if this were a 1972 card, both would have lines. I wonder why they mixed the fonts on the 1969 version in the first place.

The game itself was pretty interesting. Apparently it was Milton Bradley’s version of Strat-O-Matic or APBA.

The game consisted of a playing field, a couple of dice, some wooden markers and 296 cards, plus a few other pieces and papers and whatnot.

Apparently, you and your buddy would begin the game by picking teams of 12 players, consisting of a catcher, a pitcher, 4 infielders, 3 outfielders and some combination of pinch hitters and relief pitchers. You could play by team, as in I’m being the Mets, you can be the Cubs. Oddly enough, the directions clearly call for 12 players, but according to the checklist, not all teams have 12 players represented, so I’m not sure what happens if you were to pick say the Expos, who only had 7 players in the set. You could also play by League, as in I’m going to be the National League and you can be the American League. I assume in this case you just pick basically an All-Star team for each league. The final way the directions suggest is to just pick sides like you would in gym class.

After picking your team, you place their cards in slots on either side of the field to represent your batting order. After rolling a die to determine who the home team is, the game begins. You put the screen (the red and white thingie with what looks to be Tom Seaver on it) standing up in the center of the yellow section of the board with Tom facing the pitching teams side. Apparently, on the other side of the screen is a picture of a batter. Anyway, once the screen is in place, each player turns the dial to put the black dot in either the left, right or center hole. I guess that represents the pitch location and where the batter is looking for a pitch.

Once both players are ready, the screen is removed and depending on how the dots line up is what the result of the pitch was. If they’re connected by a blue band (as seen on the yellow section above) it’s a ball and if they’re connected by red, it’s a strike. If both dots are directly across, it means the batter hit the ball. If that happens, the manager of the batting team rolls 2 dice and refers to back of the players card to determine the outcome. For example, if we look at the Bud Harrelson card back above and I ended up rolling double sixes, then Buddy just hit one out of the park. Apparently, the numbers and letters on the right of the card tell you what happens to any runners who happen to be on at the time, which don’t matter in this case since all the runners advance back to the dugout because they all scored.

By no means would I ever even think about trying to collect this set (or really even go out of my way to acquire any more of them) but all in all it’s a bunch of pretty cool looking cards of some pretty great players. I’m always glad to pick up some odd ball vintage so I at least have one example in my collection.

Tags: 1969 Milton Bradley, 2009 Topps Heritage, Bud Harrelson, Catfish Hunter, Eddie Mathews, Hank Aaron, Harmon Killebrew, Juan Marichal, Milton Bradley, Richie Allen, Roy White, Tony Oliva
Filed Under: It Came from the 'Bay by slangon
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