Card of the Moment #50

Card of the Moment #50
September 22nd, 2010 by slangon

Wow. I can’t believe I’ve done 50 Cards of the Moment already. It doesn’t seem like all that long ago that I started this blog, and even less long ago that I did that first Card of the Moment. Oddly enough, and this was not at all planned, that first Card o’ the Moment was also a ’66, albeit a slightly more well know player.

1966 Topps #351 Fred Valentine

Today’s card of the moment is of Washington Senator’s outfielder Fred “Squeakey” Valentine. No, not those Washington Senators. These Washington Senators.

Fred was drafted out of Tennessee State by the Orioles in 1956, along with classmate George Altman. He was also quarterback at TSU, and was an All-American. He had offers from 4 professional baseball teams and 3 professional football teams. Ultimately he went with the Orioles because their manager at the time, Paul Richards, greatly impressed Valentine with his baseball mind. I also wonder if that offer was the most lucrative.

He made his debut in Baltimore in 1959, oddly enough against Washington, which of course at that time was this Washington, not this Washington. He really just had a cup of coffee with them, being called up on September 7. He did pretty well, hitting .316 in 12 games with 1 RBI.

He did not see the inside of a Major League club house again until 1963 though. That year he spent a lot of time traveling between Baltimore and Rochester, NY where he was playing with the Red Wings, the Orioles AAA farm team. He managed to get into 26 games this time, and he did all right, hitting .268 again driving in 1 run. At least he was consistent in the production department.

After the ’63 season, Washington bought his contract from the Orioles, and he got his chance to spend an entire year as a big leaguer. He was still relegated to 4th outfielder status however as the Senators already had Don Lock, Chuck Hinton and Jim King, who hit a fairly respectable 57 homer between the 3 of them and drove in a combined 189 runs. Somehow, I don’t think Fred’s 2 RBI’s were going to be much competition for them. To complicate matters for Fred, the Senators had a young outfielder in the minors by the name of Lou Piniella. Fred managed to work his way into 102 games that year, spelling all 3 regular outfielders and occasionally coming in as a pinch hitter or late inning replacement. It probably didn’t help his chances at landing a starting role that he only hit .226 that season. He did manage to boost his RBI output tenfold, though, driving in 20 that year.

1965 proved to be even worse for poor Fred as the Senators acquired outfielder Willie Kirkland and The Capital Punisher during the off season. That meant that Fred played all but 12 games in the minors that year. At least the minor league team he played for was the Hawaii Islanders. I guess being relegated to a minor league team on a tropical paradise agreed with him though because he ended up hitting .324 with 25 dingers and 69 runs driven in. He also stole 58 bases.

That leads us to the year this card was made, 1966. Fred’s Hawaiian exploits must’ve put him back in the good graces of the big club because he spent all of that year with them. He was still in the role of 4th outfielder, but this year he ended up starting 127 games and seeing some action in 146. THis also turned out to be Fred’s best year in the Major Leagues. He hit a respectable .276 with 16 homers and 59 RBI. He did well enough to end up in 21st place in MVP voting that year. 21st place might sound pretty funny, but how many times to even hear about a backup outfielder being talked about in the MVP discussion?

The rest of Fred’s career was a bit of a slide. He spent another year and a half with Washington, never hitting more than .234. The Senators finally sent him back to Baltimore in exchange for Bruce Howard, a pitcher who started 7 games for Washington, going 1-4. Fred banged around the minors for another year or two before ending up where many washed-up, has-been or never-were Major Leaguers end up, Japan. He played the 1970 season for the Hanshin Tigers, who placed second that year behind the Youmiuri Giants.

Probably the biggest thing that I love about this card is Fred’s face. I mean when you read through the condensed version of his career, you’ve got to feel bad for the dude. But then you see how happy he is just to be on a baseball card and be playing the game he loves. It’s pretty awesome. Of course for all I know he could’ve just been smiling for the camera and otherwise was a grouchy, pissed off S.O.B. I kind of like my version though.

As you can see by the cartoon on the back of his card, apparently when he signed with the Orioles, he was a white dude. I wonder how Fred felt about that one.

By the way, I know that pretty much anybody can add to or write a Wikipedia page, but I just wanted to point out the last 2 sentences of Fred’s page: