#151 Bob Malkmus

Infielder Bob Malkmus came out of New Jersey (not far from where I grew up, btw) and played in 268 major league games spread over parts of six seasons in the majors. Oddly his very best season, the only one in which he was a regular, was his last full year, 1961 with the Phillies. That season accounted for nearly half his appearances and well over half his big league at bats.

Malkmus originally signed with the Braves in 1951 and took the long six year tour of their farm systen before he got into a handful of 1957 games with the big club. He was traded to the Nats prior to the '58 campaign and got into about 40 games. He had a solid season in Denver with the Nats' AAA club in 1959 hitting .300 and earned his way back to the majors via the Rule V draft courtesy of the Phils.

But he was back in the minors in 1962 despite that previously mentioned 1961 season and he finished out his career with five more seasons in the Phillies' chain. That 1961 year, in which he hit .231, garnered him 22nd place in the League MVP voting. Here is an article from the Spokane newspaper of 1965 that mentions some of his minor league exploits.

After he retired as an active player he managed for nine seasons in the minors and then went into private business. He returned to baseball as a scout for the Indians and Giants. He is a shot of him from 2011. He's the guy in the red and white Phillies cap.

Malkmus is wearing pinstripes on this card and his hat is tilted so as to hide the logo. My conclusion is that he is wearing his Senators uni in Griffith Stadium. It's one of those times that Topps used the 'hide the logos he might get dealt' photo when the player was actually on the correct team.

#96 Lou Berberet

Lou Berberet was a two sport athlete at Santa Clara University for two years before he accepted an offer from the New York Yankees in 1950. After  productive 1951 season in the minors he spent two years in the military and then returned to pro ball. The Yankees had Yogi Berra behind the plate in those days and Casey Stengel favorite Charlie Silvera backing him up, so Berberet's chances of getting much playing time with the Yanks were slim to none.

He did get a couple of looks though. He got ten at bats spread out over 1954 and '55 and picked up 4 hits giving him a career .400 average in pinstripes. According to his son Tom, Lou Berberet was playfully proud of that accomplishment.

Traded to the Senators (the Athletics must have had a bunch of Yankee reject catchers already) for 1956 Berberet played as more or less the Nats regular catcher for a couple of seasons. He had some notable defensive accomplishments as a catcher. He made just one error in 460+ innings behind the plate in 1956. Just to prove that was no fluke he bettered that mark the next season by having a flawless year in over 600 inning over 70 games. In '56 and '59 he led the AL in caught stealing percentage.

He was traded to Boston in May of '58 and then spent the final two years of his career with the Tigers. After retirement he worked for many years managing liquor distributorships in California and Nevada. His Baseball Reference Bullpen page chips in with a couple of humorous stories from his playing days:

Longtime Washington Senators announcer Bob Wolff tells of the time Berberet, the team's catcher, settled under a pop fly, threw away the glove and attempted to make the catch with his mask but never touched the ball.In another instance, he was catching and chewing a chaw of tobacco when a player came down the line and collided with him. Berberet swallowed the tobacco and almost choked. He had to be revived on the field.

Looks to be an altered cap logo on this card. Could be that a Red Sox logo was finagled to resemble the Tigers' "D" or a Senators logo was wiped out and the "D" drawn form scratch. Ahhh. life's little mysteries.

btw... this is the last card from the '59 Topps checklist numbered below 100 to be featured. That's if I haven't screwed up someplace.

#105 Lee Walls

Lee Walls was a high school phenom as a pitcher in California and he caught the eye of Pittsburgh GM Branch Rickey. Walls was also an outfielder with hitting skills and that is what interested Rickey. After signing with the Pirates in 1951 as an 18 year old Lee Walls spent a productive year in the lower minors and opened the 1952 season as a major league outfielder. But a slow start sent Walls back for more seasoning and it wasn't until 1956 that he returned to the bigs.

And when he did come back it was with a nice season hitting .274 with 11 homers and 54 RBI. About a month into the '57 season he was dealt to the Cubs. His '57 numbers were below the previous season but he peaked in 1958 and represented the Cubs on the NL All Star squad and got into the games as a pinch hitter and played left field. His season of 18 doubles, 24 homers, 72 RBI, and .304 average were all career highs.

Walls never again approached his 1958 totals but he did remain a regular for a year or so and than as a part time outfielder and pinch hitter for the Reds, Phils and Dodgers. He was gone from the majors after 1964 but he played a season in Japan before returning stateside to manager in the minor leagues.

One note of interest is that Walls was the 22nd and final player selected by the Mets in the expansion draft of 1961 but he was traded to the Dodgers (along with $100,000) for Charlie Neal two month later.

Topps had a handful of capless Walls pictures and used them for several years.

1961 Topps, Walls in Pirates gear(?) on a Reds card. Hard to say if the piping is Cubs' red and blue or Pirates gold and black.

Above and below are his two issued 1962 Topps cards. The photo above seems to have been taken at Connie Mack Stadium and the pinstripes on Walls' jersey colored gray to hide the Phillies' red ones.

This second '62 uses the same picture as the '61 and I'm leaning towards Cubs' colors on his color.

Third time is a charm for this shot as it appears on his '63 cards. Now I'm pretty certain the picture is one that was taken during his days in Chicago.

#123 Don Dillard The Sporting News Rookie Stars

This is the first of three consecutive 'rookie star' cards that Topps put out for Don Dillard. Dillard was a Cleveland Indians signee in 1955 and the outfielder spent six seasons banding around in their system with more good seasons than bad. He got a taste of the majors in both 1959 and 1960 before he earned a job as a fourth outfielder and pinch hitter in 1961.

He held that job for two seasons. In '61 he had seven dingers to go with a .272 average in almost 150 at bats. He was somewhat busier in 1962 but not as effective and the Tribe shipped him off to Milwaukee as part of the deal that brought them Joe Adcock in November of that year.

You'll note that the cardback mentions that Dillard has 'good speed'. But in his career he was 0-fer-3 in steal attempts. In his defense he had lots of doubles and triples in his minor league career so maybe he just never got the green light in Cleveland and Milwaukee. Base stealing was confined to a relative few players back then.

His one full season with the Braves didn't do anything to revive his numbers and he spent most of 1964/65 in the minors with a second half call up by the Braves in '65. After two more minor league seasons he was out of the game and starting his 'second life' as a businessman owning a marina and a sporting goods business. He later was co-owner of a baseball camp.

Dillard currently resides in his native South Carolina. His other two rookie star cards were issued in '60 and '61. The 1960 version used the same photo as this one. Here they are fresh from the 'net:

That 1960 rookie card design is one I like very much but the 1961 Dillard has a cool Colavito-esgue vibe don't you think? 

#110 George Witt

George 'Red' Witt took seven minor league seasons and a year in the service after signing with the Dodgers in 1950 to make it to the big leagues. When he got there on September 21 of 1957 with the Pirates he was treated pretty harshly. That day he got a start against the New York Giants at Forbes Field and he didn't make it past the second inning. He was shelled for six earned runs in an inning and a third.

But in the spring of 1958 he was ready and that season he went 9-2 with a sterling 1.82 ERA and he had three shutouts among his five complete games in 15 starts. He had two wins over the Champion Milwaukee Braves one was a two hitter and the other a ten inning shutout. His 1959 season sadly saw a reversal in his fortunes as he went 0-7 due in large part to elbow issues. In fact Witt won only two more games over the course of the next three partial seasons he spent in the majors in Pittsburgh as well as stops with the Angels and Colt 45s.

But Witt did win a ring with the 1960 Pirates. In fact he was the only one of the ten pitchers used by the Bucs who did not give up an earned run in the World Series. He was out of baseball after a 1963 season spent in the minors and he went on to earn a Masters of Education at Cal State-Long Beach and had a long teaching and coaching career at Tustin High School in California. After he retired from that noble profession he pursued an amateur singing career with various Christian groups.

George Witt died earlier this year at the age of 81. Certainly for him a life well led.

Here is a tribute to him played at his services I found on YouTube:

#449 Tom Gorman

Tom Gorman began his professional career was a Yankees prospect who they drafted in 1946 after he had been in the Navy serving in the Pacific in WWII. He was more or less a local kid having been born and raised in Valley Stream on Long Island.

He pitched erratically in the Yankees' chain but got a call mid season in 1952. He made six starts with an equal number of bullpen outings and went 6-2. He made an appearance in the World Series that year against the Dodgers getting into the Game Three in the ninth inning after Eddie Lopat had allowed the deciding runs in the loss.

The next season he pitched in 40 games for the Bombers, all but one in relief and posted six saves which was good for ninth best in the A.L. He made another World Series appearance and earned his second ring. In that Series he pitched three innings in relief of White Ford in Game Four and struck out the first batter he faces, Brooklyn's Billy Cox. Gorman allowed a run in that outing and even came up to hit once and whiffed.

He pitched for the Yanks up until July of the '54 season when he was farmed out despite decent numbers. I can't find out anything more but I suspect he was blocking the progression of a younger arm. Tom Morgan perhaps?

Either way the Yanks traded him to Kansas City in the off season (Another deal with K.C.? Shocking!). Gorman pitched for the Athletics for four full seasons and part of a fifth. 1955 was his busiest and best year. He collected a career high 18 saves which translated to second among AL bullpen guys. He was a spot starter for the A's in '56 and '57, went back to the pen full time in 1958 and was washed out of the big leagues early the next season.

Gorman died in Valley Stream in 1992. He is not related to umpire Tom Gorman who worked in the NL for nearly three decades or to the Tom Gorman who pitched for several NL clubs in the 1980s.

I've always liked his 1953 Bowman. Anyone out there collect these? I'd love to swap for some of your dupes.

#373 Herb Plews

Herb Plews is one of 181 players who have gone from the University of Illinois-Champaign/Urbana to the ranks of pro baseball. One of them is a Hall of Famer, Lou Boudreau.

Plews was signed by the Yankees out of UI in 1950. He took spent four seasons as a pretty good hitting infielder and a couple of years in the service before he debuted with the Washington Senators in 1956. He had been traded by the Yanks to the Nats that winter. With Washington Plews spent three years as a semi-regular at second base and filling it at third and short.

His numbers were actually pretty good for a middle infielder as he hit .264 with 82 RBI for Washington. He was traded to the Red Sox early in the 1959 season. But after only 12 at bats in 13 games he was shipped to the minors when the Red Sox finally integrated their club by bringing up Pumpsie Green.

Beginning in 1960 Plews was an everyday infielder in AAA for five different organization over six seasons. He retired in 1965 and currently resides in Denver.

There sure is a lot of Herb Plews material available to read. Here is a Denver Post article about Plews in his days as a Yankee farmhand in Denver. He was part of one of the best minor league teams ever assembled. Hobby blogger Tom Owens recounts his interactions with Plews in this entry. Here is another lengthy but worthwhile interview done in 2010. And of course SABR has perhaps the definitive Plews bio.

Herb Plews' smiling visage in Yankee Stadium on his '59 card seems to reflect his overall personality and character. These traits come through in all those articles. For a guy I'd never really been aware of he seems to have acquired quite a fan base among writers.