#423 Bob Grim

Bob Grim made quite a splash in 1954 as he became the first rookie Yankee hurler to win 20 games since 1910. He won seven of those as a receiver. His season earned him Rookie of the Year status. And while he had some decent seasons after that and his career numbers (61-41 3.61) look fine, Grim was never able to recapture the magic of his debut year. 

He was shuttled back and forth between a starting job and the bullpen for the Yanks. Along the way he had a league leading 19 saves in New York in 1957 to go with 12 wins and an All Star selection. Arm problems (and likely his poor World Series work in '55 and '57) led to his being traded to Kansas City in 1958. Again he moved back and forth between roles while in KC and ended up moving between three different clubs in 1969 without much success. 

He spent 1961 in the minors and had an aborted comeback attempt with the A's in early 1962 before leaving the majors for good.

As luck would have it the nice corners on this card are mitigated by the fact that it's seriously mis-cut. I tend to waver in my opinion of the pink frames on these cards. I think it has to do with my mood the day I scan them. This one sucks. ;-)

#304 Chicago Cubs Team

Riddle me this, Batman... why does the Cubs team card say 'Chicago Cubs Team' when nearly all the other team card/checklist merely give the team name without the 'Team'. There are a couple like this and I plan to get to the bottom of it. That kind of detective work is a lot more interesting than researching the '59 Cubs themselves.

The '59 Cubs finished fifth in the NL with a 74-80 record by the way, better than I thought. Glen Hobbie led the staff with 16 wins. Ernie Banks won his second consecutive NL MVP. He drove in 143 runs, hit 45 homers and batted .304. Nobody else had numbers that were remotely close. Ernie must have gotten tired of carrying that club by himself.

Pale green and yellow with rounded corners. Yuck. I like that scheme on the Braves' card. Just looks wrong here. ::shrug:: At least it's unchecked on the back.

#359 Bill White

Hard to say when Bill White accomplished more, as a player or after he retired. He did pretty darn well for himself both ways.

White (every time I call him 'White' I think of Phil Rizzuto) debuted with the New York Giants in 1956, and did so with style as he homered in his first major league at bat. He stepped right into the Giants first base job but answered Uncle Sam's call and missed 1957 and most of '58. He was traded to the Cardinals prior to the 1959 season (see the little note on the back of his '59 card).

In St. Louis for the next seven years White was steady and productive with seven straight double digit homer seasons, several years of 100+ RBIs and a .300+ average. 

He continued that production after being dealt to the Phils for the 1966 season. Along the way he'd won 7 straight Gold Gloves for his fielding and made five All Star teams. His production slid in his final two years in Philly and he ended his playing days with a season of pinch hitting back in St. Louis.

White wasn't idle long. He'd been dabbling in broadcasting while in St. Louis and Philadelphia and in 1971 used that experience to land the job in the Yankees' broadcast booth alongside Rizzuto and others. He worked for the Yanks through 1988 and made the famous 'Bucky Dent' call in October of 1978.

Bill moved to the executive side of the game. From 1989 to 1994, White served as president of the National League. Just in the past few months White released his autobiography entitled Uppity: My Untold Story About the Games People Play. That dovetails nicely with the recent book review posts.

NPR recently had an informative bio of Bill White which includes an excerpt of his book.

The Bill White '59 Topps kind of grabs me. It has him in a simple batting stance pose but there are not all that many like it in the set. The yellow and red of the card works with the Giants logo and also with the Polo Grounds seating behind him. Seeing that White had spent nearly two years in the military it's easy to figure that this was a shot from 1956. If you look really (really, really) close you can make out the sadly fake SF logo that Topps applied to his cap. It's based on the old San Francisco Seals logo and we saw it previously on Jackie Brandt's card.. Topps was guessing what the Giants would wear when they moved west. I guess they could have fixed it seeing that the Giants had at this point been the 'San Francisco' Giants for a season. "But, hey, the kids will never notice, right boss?"

#361 Willard Nixon

Willard Nixon falls into the "Who's he?" group of players in the '59 set. Or at least he does for me. Even some of the more obscure guys have cards I remember from when I was a kid. Dutch Dotterer for example. But I had no idea about Willard Nixon.

But then again one of the reasons I'm doing this is to educate myself about players from an era of the game that's special to me.

Willard Nixon pitched for Boston from 1950 through 1958. So he was out of the majors by the time this card showed up.  He spent the first four years of his tenure with the Red Sox more often as not as a starter but mixing in quite a few relief appearances. In 1954 he moved into the regular rotation. He spent four years there, hovering around the .500 mark for some Sox clubs that finished in the first division but never threatened for a title.

He struggled with shoulder problems beginning in 1957 and by the end of 1959, after a year in the minors, he'd retired. He had won a reputation as a 'Yankee Killer' for his mastery over the dominant team of the era winning six straight over the Yanks in '54/55. He was also an accomplished hitter who finished with a .242 career average and hit .293 in 1957.

He led an interesting post playing career life working as, among other things, a scout and as chief of police in his Georgia hometown. He's a member of the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame.

Not sure why but from time to time Topps liked to throw in one of these 'gazing skyward' profile shots. This is the second one I've featured in three days. I guess the photographer thought he was being artistic or they were sick of the "posed in front of the Yankee Stadium third base side grandstand" shots. Just looks dopey to me. But the card itself isn't in bad shape at all. 

#74 Directing The Power

How did Jim Lemon hit homers with those sadly underdeveloped guns? How did Roy Sievers even play with chunks of his head missing. How did Cookie Lavagetto keep that Senators' beret on his head?

And most pressing in my mind... how did Topps' photo editor keep his job with shoddy work like this? It's a puzzle.

Two tone blue frame=win. Natty Nats uni top with the 'shadowed' "W"=win. Crappy cropping on a beaten up mis cut card=tragic.

#417 Virgil Trucks

Wow, look at the stats on the back of Virgil Trucks' card. They so back to 1941 and leave just enough room for the info block and a line reflecting the release of the 40 year old vet by the Yankees that spring. 

Ol' Fire's career began in 1938 in the minors and he debuts with the '41 Tigers. Through the next 14 seasons (with a military service stint along the way) he won the majority of his 177 career wins as a starter for Detroit, the Browns and White Sox. Moving to the A's in '57 he finished his career in the bullpen for a couple of seasons. His stint with the Yanks in 1958 was his final whirl around the bigs for this American League 'lifer'.

Despite 17 seasons in the majors he only made one trip to the World Series, that with the winning 1945 Tigers. He got a special pass to pitch in the postseason despite not having been on the roster on the usual September 1 cut off date. Trucks had been serving his country in the Marines most of that year. He won Game Two with a nifty seven hitter.

Trucks is one of only five men to pitch two no-hitters in the same season. He pulled that off in 1952 with near identical 1-0 wins over the Senators on May 15 and the Yankees on August 25. He made 29 starts in 1952 and only won five games but TWO of them were the no-hitters. How amazing is that?

Trucks is pictured here in a Yankees' cap but it's a pretty bad airbrush job. My card is rounded off and miscut but I have a strange and unexplained affinity for red framed Yankee cards. So it's pretty fine to me.

Here's an interesting (sort of) side note. Trucks' 1958 stat line doesn't indicate that he split the season between  the A's and Yanks. the numbers are complete but they 'credit' them to the Athletics. Maybe Topps  figured that at that point they were bound to run out of space or ink or both.

Colavito Catch Mystery Solved!!!

Back in May I featured this card and I tried to figure out what game that Rocky Colavito's catch occurred in.  I set out wandering the 'Net looking for the original picture hoping to get the info from a caption or from a site itself. I found the original b/w shot but it wasn't accompanied by any info. Using the clues that Topps included I tried to track down the box score on Retrosheet or Baseball Reference.

Here is that card again:

I wasted a lot of time. And I came up empty. I'd googled the picture every way I thought possible. I double and triple checked every likely box score of Indian games at Yankee Stadium during Colavito's time with the Tribe. I had some games I thought to be possibilities but they never completely matched up with the scenario the cardback provided. I was able to narrow the range because of the uniform Colavito had on.

Then, today, I hit paydirt while I wasn't even really digging. I was searching for a picture (a sequence actually) of a Duke Snider catch that's shown on another of the Baseball Thrill subset cards. A link to Corbis turned up dozens of Snider shots from the mid to late 50s's. Then it hit me. Try searching 'Colavito' within Corbis. Bingo. I found the picture again, and this time it had a caption:

 Portrait of Rocky Colavito  Original caption: Despite the efforts of a youngster wearing a baseball glove and trying to make the catch himself (right), Cleveland outfielder Rocky Colavito dashes along the right field, stands to make a one-hand catch and rob Gil McDougald of a home run in the 6th inning of the Yankee-Cleveland game here May 10th. Behind the strong hurling of veteran pitcher Bob Lemon, the Indians topped the Yanks, 7-2, and moved into second place in the league standings.

© Bettmann/CORBIS

Photographer: Unknown Creator: Unknown Date Photographed: May 10, 1956 Location Information: New York, New York, USA

Whoopee! I had the game nailed now: May 10, 1956.

But how had I missed it before? Let's go back to the card itself, look at the back and see what 'clues' Topps gave me:

What the card claims:

a) It was late in the game.....
b) the Cleveland starter was tiring fast and....
c) he had already given up two hits..
d) the Indians led by one run.

What the facts actually were according to the original caption and the boxscore:

a) It was the 6th inning, I wouldn't consider the sixth to be 'late' but I'll concede that point to Topps....
b) Bob Lemon had allowed two singles and two walks. Thats four runners total at this point (one out in the sixth) and he went on to pitch a complete game. It was only his fifth start of the year and he was on four days rest. He was one of the most durable pitchers of his era and he led the league in complete games five time including 1956! How tired could he have been at this point?
c) he'd given up two hits alright, 2 hits total. Topps makes it sound as if they were in that inning when in fact McDougald was the second hitter of the inning after Bauer led it off with a ground out, and...
d) the Indians led 4-0, not by a single run. In fact, the only one run lead came in the middle of the Indians three run third inning. They were never even challenged after that.

It's no wonder I couldn't find it. Hell, Topps damn near made it up! Actually, as I noted in the original May post, the previous day's game, a 6-5 Indian win seemed more likely since Colavito had made the final out in rightfield in the last inning of a one run game.

I realize that nobody in the world cares about any of this except me, but I'm going to go celebrate!

Another Update

I don't normally do this but I wanted to point out a nice interview that was posted on Dinged Corners a few years back with two of Moe Drabowsky's daughters. I just found it the other day while hunting for other stuff and thought I'd link to it given the Drabowsky post of a few days back.