#175 Dick Farrell

When I think of 'Turk' Farrell I think of hard drinking and fast living. That was the reputation he had whether it was earned or not. But there are plenty stories around Houston baseball circles that make me think there is a lot of truth behind the myth.

Farrell spent several seasons as a starting pitcher moving up the Phils minor league ladder before his 1956 debut and then earning a full time bullpen slot in 1957. He had four solid seasons with the Phils including an All Star selection before a shaky start in '61 prompted a trade to the Dodgers. He was drafted in the expansion draft by Houston and was converted back into a starter. 

He made three All Star squads with the Colt 45s/Astros before being sold to the Phils in May of 1967 for a return engagement. The Phils turned Farrell into a reliever and he was generally effective before he pitched in the minors in 1970/71 and then he retired with a 106-111 record and 87 saves.

Ferrell moved to England and worked on offshore rigs in the North Sea before he died in a car accident in 1977 at the age of 43. 

#3 Don McMahon

Don McMahon pitched in 874 major league games over 18 seasons.He made only two starts. He made his first save in 1957 and his last in 1974. His professional career ran from 1950 when he debuted with the Owensboro Oilers, the Class D Boston Braves affiliate in the K-I-T League, until he pitched a couple of innings for the Giants against the Dodgers in June of 1974. That's 25 seasons. I think that's pretty cool. 

McMahon pitched for seven clubs over the course of his career and made the post-season with three of them. As a member of the Braves he pitched in the 1957 and '58 Series' against the Yankees. He was particularly effective in the '57 Classic, pitching 5 innings over three games and finishing all three. He never got a decision of a save in the post-season but he did come away with two rings, the second with the Tigers in 1968.

For his career McMahon was 90-68 with a 2.96 ERA and 153 saves. He led the NL with 15 saves in 1959. That speaks to how different pitching roles were back then. He had been an All Star the previous year but that was his only All Star selection. I think he deserved more.

Following his retirement as an active player McMahon served a pitching coach for the Giants, Twins and Indians for many years. He was a special assignments scout for the Dodgers after that.

McMahon died of a heart attack in 1987 at the age of only 57 while pitching batting practice at Dodger Stadium. 

#60 Bob Turley

The back of Bob Turley's card hints at the remarkable 1958 season he enjoyed prior to this card being issued early in '59. 

Turley had been a St. Louis Browns signee in 1948. He made his big league debut late in 1951 and was still with the team when they moved to Baltimore for 1954. He won 14 games for a very mediocre O's club that year including the first one ever played at Memorial Stadium. 

In November of '54 he was traded to the Yankees in one of the largest trades (numbers wise) in baseball history. It was a fortunate deal for Turley who went on to pitch for five Yankee pennant winners and earned a pair of World Series wins.

His best season came in '58 as he won a career high 21 wins and 19 complete games. That led the league in both categories. He was named to the All Star team (see the last post) and won the Cy Young award. Turley's real heroics came in the Series that year versus the Braves. But it didn't seem that Turley would be a hero after his Game Two start when he was knocked around and run off in the first inning of a Braves laugher.

But he came back in Game Five to toss a fit hit shutout. After an off day he appeared in the tenth inning of Game Six and preserved a win for Ryne Duran. Then in the deciding Game Seven Turley relieved Don Larson in the third inning and held the Braves to two hits and a run to wrap up the title for the Yanks.

Although he stayed in the majors until he retired after splitting the 1963 season between the Angels and Red Sox, Turley never again approached the success he had in 1958. In fact he averaged about five wins a year after that magical season.

He spent a year coaching then went into the financial management business and was very successful. He lives in Georgia.

The orange frame on these '59s is always nice. Turley's picture, posed in pregame I assume, along the side of the Yankee Stadium batting cage is very much like the one used in his All Star Selection card. No need for Dick Tracy to see they were taken at the same session. This one is one of the better cards I have. Not mint by any means but the colors are bright and all but one corner is sharp.

#570 Bob Turley '59 All Star Selection

"Bullet Bob" Turley was coming off his best season when 1959 dawned. His exploits explain why he was selected to appear as the right handed pitcher for the AL All Star subset. But he didn't make the All Star squad that year and, in fact, his best pitching was behind him.

The '58 All Star game in Baltimore was his third and last. He was KO'd in the second inning having given up three hits, two walks and three runs in an inning and two thirds. But better things were in store for him in 1958. Those will be discussed in the next post.

The '59 card was his second straight appearance on one of these specials. He showed up as an All Star selection in the '58 Topps set. Defying almost all logic I prefer the '58 All Star cards. My '59 is about par for the course condition-wise., decent corners and somewhat mis-cut.

National League by Color.... and random things

This is third installment of my breakdown of the '59 Topps set. This one looks at the National League cards. First up is a summary of the base one player cards. (The AL and a whole set summary were in my previous posts.)

NL Observations: .......No one team had a single color dominate as thoroughly as the Tigers were covered with red to the tune of 84%...... Milwaukee's 19 of 26 in yellow led the way (that's 73% if you are scoring at home)..... The NL got 32 of the 33 total black framed cards in the set..... The NL has just 4 of the 95 red cards. The Phils, Cards and Reds each had seven different colors...... The Braves, Giants and Pirates had five...... Dodgers and Cubs had six different colors...... The Braves coming off two consecutive World Series appearances had the fewest base cards while the fifth place Cubs had the most.

And this chart breaks down the ancillary NL cards. Again 'High Lites' refers to the Baseball Thrills subset.

NL Observations: .......the Braves get a boost in their total card count with the All Star Selection subset but unlike the Yanks their total still ranks behind several other NL clubs.... every team card in the Senior circuit has yellow as one of its elements... the NL has only six 'one team' multi-player specials but they have the Ashburn/Mays special and Robin Roberts appears one the Ace Hurlers card so that narrows the gap... the Pirates, second place finishers in 1958, were given three multi-player specials, all were red and yellow in one combo or another.... the Ashburn/Mays card is green and white which makes it the only NL special without a yellow element.

Final Thoughts.... Topps liked yellow in 1959, they used it on 14 of 17 multi-player specials, 14 of 16 team cards, and more than a quarter of all the base player cards.... I also noticed that the Cubs and Tigers team cards include the designation "Team" following the name i.e. "Detroit Tigers Team" as opposed to just "Detroit Tigers".. can't think of why that would be.... my preferred frame colors are black and dark blue which explains why I have so many favorite cards among the Phils' and Reds' cards.

That's it. I enjoyed doing the research. I know it all adds up to nothing but it does satisfy some of my curiosity about this great set. I would like to find a series breakdown by card number as that would give me another view of the color distribution. I just haven't googled deep enough to find it. And I'd bet someone out there has the set on uncut sheets. How cool would it be to lay them out end to end to see the color patern. Maybe spread out like that we'd see the yellow cards spell out 'TOPPS" or the name of Sy Berger's dog. Who knows.

It's back to regular card posting now. Thanks for reading. Comments always appreciated.

Categories and American League by Color

There are 572 cards in the '59 Topps baseball set. That doesn't take into account the card back variations like the included or not included 'optioned' or 'traded' line and the three different versions of the Spahn card back. Here we are interested only in the colors of the card fronts, especially the base card frames.

First, here is the total set by color of the base cards and the complete set listed by category:

Yellow and red frames dominate the set. And by a wide margin obviously. Yellow is far ahead of second place red. And the 95 red cards are more than double the number of any other color. Between the two they represent about 48% of all the single player base cards.

And here is the American League broken down by color of the base one player cards: 

Interestingly, among the AL cards red is the dominant color and 91 of the 95 red cards in the whole set  are of AL players. Four clubs clearly have red as their dominant color. The Tigers, in fact, have only five of their 31 cards in a color other than red. Yet, of the remaining four clubs, two don't have a single red card and the A's have only one. Of those other four only the Red Sox are not primarily represented by yellow framed cards. The Bosox have no color that they can call their signature color in the '59 set. 

AL observations.... Kansas City has the AL's only black frame and are the only team here that is represented by eight different colors. They lack a dark green card (ironically I think given their later history). They also are noteable in that there are six colors which appear on one or two of their players' cards.... the Yankees have the fewest total base cards (28). I'd have lost a bet on that one..... the White Sox have cards in only three different colors while the Orioles, Tigers and Yankees are seen with four....

This next chart tracks the colors of the team card (the frame is listed first, inner circle color next). It also shows the number of players each team has in the various subsets, All Star Selection, the Rookie Stars, Baseball Thrills (called High Lites in the chart's header), The center column gives the colors of the 'special multi-player cards (if they feature players from one specific team, called one team specials here). The same naming convention as the team card applies.

More AL observations... counting the specials the Yankees now have the most cards in the set of any AL club.... the White Sox total does not include the #156 Billy Pierce/Robin Roberts "Ace Hurlers". Counting that card would also give the ChiSox 38.... while it isn't too surprising that the Yanks had two multi-player special cards the fact that the Red Sox and Senators also have a pair of them probably is. Neither was a threat in the previous season, Boston was third, 13 games out and the Senators finished in last in '58, 31 games behind the Yanks.... every AL team card and all but one of the AL multi-player specials includes either yellow or red...

Next up: The National League

Colors of 1959, an Overview

Among the reasons I have enjoyed putting together the 1959 Topps baseball set is the aesthetic appeal. The combination of posed photos and portraits and the circular frames made it stand out from the other sets I considered. I'm a fan of the '58 set because those cards are the first I actually remember being aware of. The 1960 set was the first I actively collected. But the '59 just kept stood out.

When I jumped into putting the set together I already owned the Orioles and a group of stars and commons, maybe 20 or so. I noticed that the Orioles' team 'set' was mostly of the yellow 'frame' variety with some blue and red cards mixed in.

As I picked up more and more cards it was apparent that some teams seemed to have one predominant colored frame. I knew that at some point I'd like to sit down and track the set's colors. I started the project a few times and finally had the time recently to sit down with my binder and catalog them one by one.

I made a simple spreadsheet to tally the colors as I flipped the binder pages. I made a few notes as I went along as well. Before giving the breakdown in the next post there should be some discussion of the colors themselves.The base, one player cards come in nine different color frames. Those colors are red, yellow, black, pink, orange, light blue, dark blue, light green and dark green. Each of the colors has a consistent pattern of frame/player name/team name/position. All except one. When cataloging colors I began with ten colors. I had looked at the orange cards and seen at least two differing shades. But the more I looked the more convinced I became that the variations are simply due to the vagrancy of color printing in the late 50s. Even laying out the red cards side-by-side revealed some variations.

A look at each color in turn:

RED:
Red cards vary slightly in shade but it's seems obvious that the differences are just variations in the printed sheets. Red cards are where we see the difference in complimentary colors. Most have player names in white, team name in yellow and the player's position in white. But some have team names in white as well. Easy to see here:

There doesn't seem to be any correlation between the team lettering and color of the backs (different color combos and different cardboard colors were used), the team involved or the series in which the card was issued. 

EDITED to add: With Topps' history of yellow/white letter variation I thought that I should check closer into this. I've looked at a lot of the red cards online thinking there might be some sort of 'variation' involved with the player name color but every card I see online jives with the one in my binder. And given that I've never seen any mention of a lettering variation involving the '59s I am chalking the red card player name differences to 'just a Topps thing'. 

Dark Blue:
As opposed to the light blue also used. These have player names and positions in white, yellow team names.

Light Blue:
Black/black/white is the lettering combo.

Dark Green:
White/yellow/white is the lettering combo.

Yellow:
Red/red/black is the lettering combo.

Pink:
All lettering is black.

Black:

Yellow/yellow/white is the lettering combo.

Light Green:

And here I see enough variation in the card frames to make note of it. But given the color combo is consistent across all shade variations I believe the differences are due to the printing process. Black/yellow/black  is the lettering combo.

And finally, Orange:

I went back and forth in deciding whether of not Topps intended to print both 'orange' and 'red-orange' cards. The differences are easy to see:

Because the color of the lettering is consistent, white/black/white, and the fact that there are some cards that fall between the darkest and lightest examples, I think that the cards were intended to be 'orange' and the variations are again, due to the printing process used. And I'm going to list them as being in the same category. I wish I had more insight into all this. There might be more info on the net.

In the next post I'll break the set down into card 'type' and list the American League breakdown by frame color.