#100 Bob Cerv

God willing on the morning this entry is posted my family will be in Lincoln, Nebraska watching my son graduate from the University of Nebraska. This will be the third time I've had the pleasure of watching one of my children walk and I feel like I've done what I vowed to do when we started a family, get my kids a good education and out into the world.

Nebraska native and UNL alum Bob Cerv was signed in 1950 by the Yankees after a standout career in baseball and basketball for the Cornhuskers. He debuted in 1951 and split that season as well as the next two shuttling back and forth between New York and the Yanks top farm club in Kansas City. From 1954 through 1956 Cerv put up solid numbers in a limited role as he was unable to crack the solid Bombers starting lineup. He did get to play in both the '55 and '56 World Series and homered as a pinch hitter in Game Five of the '55 Classic. He was traded to Kansas City (now a big league franchise, the A's) after the '56 season and for the first time in the bigs he held down a starting job.

Cerv’s most productive year in the majors was in 1958. He belted 38 homers, a mark that still stands as the record by a professional player in Kansas City. He was the first Husker to participate in an All-Star Game. He started the 1958 All-Star Game in left field for the American League. His accomplishments that year are made more memorable by the fact that he played for six weeks with his jaw wired shut and on a liquid diet following a collision at home plate in a May game against the Tigers. The Athletics traded Cerv back to the Yanks early in 1960 and he went 5 for 14 in the Series against the Pirates that year.

He was drafted by the Angels in the 1960 expansion draft but after a month in LA he was traded back to the Yankees (again!!) in May of 1961. Again a role player he generally spelled his two roommates, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris. He didn't appear in the 1961 Series.

Cerv finished out his career with a one month whirl in Houston after the Yanks sold him to the Colt 45s in June of 1962. After his big league career he coached college baseball at Southeast Missouri State College and John F. Kennedy College in Wahoo, Nebraska where he also coached the men's basketball team.

Cerv occupies the well worn spot in front of the visitors dugout at Yankee Stadium to pose for this shot. He looks like a guy who is happily remembering his World Series days in this park and in knowing he's going to play here again one day..

#274 Jerry Kindall

Here is another card of a Chicago Cub. Seems they have come up a lot lately. Jerry Kindall signed as a 'bonus baby' with the Cubs in 1956 fresh off a College World Series championship with the U of Minnesota. He spent the minimum mandated by rule two seasons on the big league roster playing sparingly, mostly as a pinch runner and defensive replacement although he did get nearly 200 at bats in 1957.

He spent the next two season mostly in the minors before returning to the Cubs as a platoon infielder in 1960. He was traded to Cleveland and in 1962 and he was the Indians regular second baseman. That must have soothed the pain of thinking he was about to get the Cubs regular shortstop job as Ernie Banks was being moved to first. That year in Cleveland was his only year as a full time player. He hit .232 but managed 13 homers for the Tribe. He also led the league in assists and 'total zone runs'. I have no idea what that latter stat means but it sounds like something Adrian Peterson might excel in.

A three way deal sent Kindall to the Twins for 1964 and he had again captured a starting slot in '65 until getting hurt late in June. Healthy by World Series time Kindall had to sit and watch as Frank Quillici, who had taken his spot and done well, played every inning of the Series against the Dodgers. He was released at the end of spring training the next spring and went to work coaching at his alma mater.

He went on to coach at the University of Arizona from 1973 through 1996 winning 860 games and three NCAA crowns. 209 of his players signed big league contracts, 34 received All American honors and 32 went on to play in the majors. Among those are Trevor Hoffman, Kenny Lofton and Terry Francona. Kindall is also a well respected author of baseball instructional books.

His long, successful and influential coaching career led to many awards, some of which are written about in this interview. Even better is the comprehensive article on him found on the SABR site. More on his coaching days here.

I found very little on Marcelino Solis on the net but the opposite is true on his major and minor league  teammate Jerry Kindall. And a lot of it was very interesting stuff. But even more interesting, to me at least, is the uniform that Kindall wears in this card. Somewhat hidden but definitely there is the C-U-B-S included on the front of the clubs road jersey. Using both city and nickname on a uniform is pretty unique, at least in the modern history of the game. Even better is the cap featuring red piping. This uni/cap combo marks this photo as being from 1957. The only other club that used cap piping that I recall seeing was the Senators of the mid-60's.

Here is the teams' 1957 uni set from Dressed to the Nines on the Baseball Hall of Fame site.

Lastly the card back bears a cartoon reflecting the fact that Kindall signed a 'handsome' bonus. But the team cited is the Cards. Nope, as we've seen, it was the Cubs. Uncorrected error.

#39 Ed Bouchee

After an impressive 1952 debut in the minors Ed Bouchee spent a couple of years serving in the military during the Korea conflict. He returned in 1955 and as a Phillies farm hand he continued his fine hitting. He got his chance in the majors as the regular first baseman for the Phils in 1957 and didn't disappoint. In fact he was second in Rookie of the Year balloting and picked up some significant MVP votes. He had lots of promise.

But that all changed following that '57 season when he was arrested on a morals charge in his native Seattle. No need to re-tell the story here but it's easy enough to find it. The incident cost Bouchee the first half of the '58 season and Topps dropped his card from the 1958 set. Returning in July Bouchee just couldn't match the spark of his rookie year and in fact he never did.

He was dealt to the Cubs for the 1960 season and was taken by the Mets in the '61 expansion draft. The woeful '62 Mets proved to be Bouchee's final stop in the big leagues although he spent 1963 with their AA club. He finished with a .262 lifetime average and 61 homers.

This pink framed card marked Bouchee's return to the Topps card world. And note how Topps handles his 1958 season. They state he 'got a late start.' That's Connie Mack Stadium that he's posing in. I guess it wasn't too much of a hike for the Topps photographers to get down to Philly. I never did get there despite not living all that far away for many years as a kid.

BTW.... indispensable blogger Bob Lemke has produced a nice '58 Topps 'card that never was' for Bouchee.

#214 Marcelino Solis

Marcelino Solis, a native of Mexico, spent 13 seasons playing professional baseball. nearly all of that time came in the Mexican League and in the Cubs farm system. A lefty starter, he was drafted and signed  by the Cubs in December of 1957 as a 26 year old with a very uneven record at several levels of Mexican baseball.

He spent the 1958 season with the Cubs' AA club in Fort Worth and went 15-2, a mark that had to surprise Cub officials given that he had never shown anything approaching that skill level. That led to a half season in Chicago in 1958 where he went 3-3 in 15 games including four starts. With a ERA over 6.00 it's not particularly surprising that he never again pitched in the big league.

He pitched in the Cubs' (and briefly the Giants') system and in Mexico until 1963. He died in 2001.

A couple of thing that struck me. 'Marcelino' isn't all that common a name. I've been at a heavily Hispanic school for 25 years and can't recall a single 'Marcelino'. But I do know of one other in baseball. Marcelino Lopez was one of my favorite players from the Orioles 'glory days' of three straight World Series trips. He was a Cuban-born middle reliever and spot starter who had a small but boisterous fan club that invaded Yankee Stadium when the O's were in town. The little group carried a banner all around the stadium, seemingly never sitting down in their seats.

And check out the write-up on the back of this card. Topps calls him "the amazing Mr. Solis". Yes he had a nice '58 season but I think the copywriter was just filling space.

And finally... there is even less info on Solis on the web than I thought. Just page after page of the usual junk links to stat sites that mooch off Baseball Reference and link to eBay listing of this card. But I did find a pretty neat picture of him in his Ft. Worth Cats gear and bearing a serious resemblance to the uber creepy Henry Silva from the original Manchurian Candidate.  Enjoy.

                              

#502 Al Dark

Alvin Dark played for 14 seasons in the majors beginning in 1946 and ending with his retirement as a player in 1960. His whole playing career was a a National Leaguer. Along the way he played every spot on the diamond except behind the plate. He even pitched a inning in 1953.

Coming up with the Boston Braves he was the NL's Rookie of the year in 1948 and finished third in the MVP balloting. That season he batted .322 and was 4th in the league in that category. He played for the Braves in the Series that year. Heady stuff for a rookie. After his average slipped to the .270s in 1949 the Braves dealt him to the Giants where he continued his outstanding play in the field and at the plate. He made three All Star games with the Giants.

After six seasons with the Giants, and having helped them win a World Series title in 1954, Dark was traded to the Cardinals early in the 1956 season and he stayed there for a year and a half before being moved on to the Cubs during the '58 season. He split the 1960 season between the Phils and Braves and it was the first year in 13 seasons that he wasn't a full time player.

After retirement as a player he began a long and largely successful career as a manager starting with the Giants with whom he went to the Series in 1962. After stints with the Kansas City A's and Indians he managed the Oakland A's to the 1974 World Championship.

Dark had been a highly successful three sport college athlete at LSU and had served in the Marines in WWII. His SABR entry contains some interesting stories of his days prior to MLB fame.

Dark appears in Cubs' road gear on this pink framed '59 card. He joined the Cubs during the previous season. It appears to have been taken in Seals Stadium in San Francisco as were several other Cub cards I've shown. A little research shows that the photo was taken on one of the three trips the Cubs took out west after the trade was made.

#321 Bob Giallombardo

Quick quiz: Name a player who was a hard throwing lefthanded pitcher out of Brooklyn's Lafayette High School who was signed by the Dodgers in the mid 1950s. If you said "Sandy Koufax" you'd be right. If you said "Bob Giallombardo" you'd also be right (and you'd be looked at strangely).

Giallombardo was indeed a schoolmate of Koufax at Lafayette. But the two were never on the same staff due to what the coaches considered Giallombardo 'not being ready'. The story, and a whole lot more about this interesting player, can be found in this examiner.com article.

In that article Giallombardo discusses the shoulder injury he incurred in winter ball following the '58 season that cost him a lot of his arm strength and essentially finished his chances as a major leaguer. His big league career consisted of five starts and a relief appearance in a months time in the middle of the '58 season. The highlight was his only big league win in the second game of a doubleheader in the L.A. Coliseum on July 13th against the Reds. Giallombardo pitched into the ninth and yielded to Clem Labine for the final two outs in a 3-2 win.

Giallombardo had an interesting life after baseball managing the Gil Hodges Bowling Lanes in Brooklyn, selling insurance, and as a supervisor of roofers for the New York Housing Authority for twenty years. He then retired to Waxhaw, a small village some 20 miles south of Charlotte, NC to be near his daughter and her family.

The yellow framed cards of Dodgers taken in the Coliseum combining the sharp home duds and Dodger logo to produce some sweet visuals. This one is no different. The 'optioned' notation on the reverse is a variation. It's more common than the #321s without it. I have both but the other one, the one without the 'optioned' line is in poor condition.

#272 Jerry Lumpe

Jerry Lumpe (one of the better names in the set, no doubt) signed as a Yankee prospect in 1951 and put together some good numbers as he progressed up the ladder before his 1956 debut. He saw part-time duty at third and short for their pennant winning clubs in 1957 & 1958. Not so surprisingly he was traded to the A's early in 1959 in a deal that brought Hector Lopez and Ralph Terry to New York. Just another in the seemingly endless string of NY/KC deals.

The A's installed Lumpe as their starting second-baseman and in 1962 he hit .301 with ten homers and 83 RBI. He got a few MVP votes that season. Unsung though he was, Lumpe nonetheless established himself as a fine fielder and a decent hitter for a half dozen seasons. He held down 2nd base (and hit pretty well) until a trade to the Tigers in 1964. In '64 he made his only All Star squad in a year that saw him put up his lowest batting average in six seasons.

After a couple more years in Detroit he career wound down and in 1967 the Tigers moved Dick McAullife over to second and Lumpe saw little time. He retired after being released in October of that year.

Lumpe coached for the A's for a bit after his playing days. His native Warsaw, Missouri has a Lumpe Field named in his honor. He is the subject of one of Casey Stengel's more memorable quotes:  "There's Lumpe. He's a great hitter until I play him." 

Lumpe poses next to the batting cage in Yankee Stadium for this shot which ended up on my seriously mis-cut copy of his card.