Sunday, March 13, 2011

#288 Dutch Dotterer





Henry John "Dutch" Dotterer Jr. packed a lot of career into just pieces of 5 seasons and less than 300 at-bats in the majors. He's the son of Henry John "Dutch" Dotterer Sr. who was a minor league player and long-time major league scout. 

Dutch the Younger was a Syracuse native and attended SU. He's an inductee of the Syracuse Hall of Fame and his bio on that site mentions that he held a Masters in International Relations from that school. I guess that came in handy during his foreign travels to play winter ball.

Dutch pulled off a couple of unique accomplishments in his abbreviated stay in the bigs... he is the only player to hit a grand slam off Sandy Koufax and the only player to twice beat Warren Spahn with extra-inning pinch hits. His blast off Koufax was hit on June 10, 1960, in the mammoth L.A. Coliseum and provided all the Reds' (errr, I mean Redlegs') runs in a 4-3 win!

My copy of Dotterer's card is not very strong but that doesn't distract much from the 'cool' factor of the black frame and the superb "Redlegs" logo. This looks a lot like a companion to the Whammy Douglas card already profiled. 

On a personal note...this was probably my favorite card in the set when I began collecting them back in '59. I loved this one, loved everything about it.  Seeing it today brings back a lot of memories of those emerging collecting days.

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