#192 Charley Beamon

This card is seemingly the only place you'll see pitcher Charlie Beamon's name spelled as "Charley". Why Topps used a "Y" is a mystery to me. Anyway, Beamon came out of Oakland's McClymonds High School as did several other major leaguers including two Hall of Famers, Ernie Lombardi and Frank Robinson. In addition to Robinson three players with 1959 cards already featured here came from McClymonds: Vada Pinson, fellow Oriole Willie Tasby, and Curt Flood.

Beamon began his pro career on the West Coast in 1953 and found his way to the Oriole system by the end of 1955. In '56 he pitched for the Os' Vancouver club and earned a September call up. He debuted in fairly spectacular fashion with a four hit shutout of the New York Yankees. Beamon and the Birds beat Whitey Ford 1-0 on September 26 and prevented him reaching 20 wins for the season. How cool is that?

He actually picked up another win in his only other 1956 game with a victory in a four inning relief stint over the Senators. Unfortunately that five day span was to be the highlight of Beamon's brief career. In 1957 he pitched in four games while spending most of the season in the minors and then in 1958 he spent most of the year in the majors, made a handful of starts mid-season and ended up with a 1-3 record in 21 games. He never returned to the majors after that and retired in 1961.

Beamon's son, Charlie Beamon, Jr. spent parts of three seasons with the Jays and Mariners between 1978 and 1981. He was listed as a DH, pinch hitter and pinch runner by Baseball Reference.

Behind Beamon in the Yankee Stadium shot we see what I believe is a member of New York's Finest. He could very well be and usher but I seem to recall the Yankee Stadium ushers wearing hats with and orange or red stripe around the crown. I could very well be wrong on that. I'll try to find other Yankee Stadium backgrounds within the set and dig something up. I love '59 card-based mysteries!

BTW... Charlie Beamon has set an unofficial record for the number of 'open tabs' in my browser during a post write-up. Between Beamon's stat page and bio page, his game logs and two boxscores, tabs for fellow McClymonds grads, two for Charlie Jr, and some odds and ends like Wikipedia and such, there are 24 tabs open. All that for a guy who won three major league games. Nearly one for every appearance. Crazy!

EDIT: I've come up with one picture of what could be late 50s era YS ushers:

And although I think of NYC cops decked out in navy blue I find pics of them in white on a google search. Still inconclusive. And nobody cares except me.