#16 Joe Pignatano

Catcher Joe Pignatano was signed off the streets of Brooklyn in 1948. Debuting for the Dodgers that very year was a guy named Roy Campanella. If Joe had only known. And he nearly didn't make a career of it according to his SABR bio. Read the part about his mother calling the Dodgers front office. Nice.

But he patiently worked his way up the Dodger system, served two military years, and made the big club in 1957. When Campy suffered his spinal injury that winter Pignatano was plugged in behind the plate along with Johnny Roseboro. He played with the Dodgers through 1960 and earned a World Series ring in '59. He was sold to the A's for the '61 season and had his best season while getting a career high of nearly 300 at bats. After a season (1962) split between the Giants and Mets Pigatano was back in the minors for a few years before he became a coach with the Senators, Mets and Braves. In those first two coaching jobs he was working under his friend and former teammate Gil Hodges.

Here is a strange but apparently true story culled from Pignatano's Bullpen page at Baseball Reference:

Playing for the Fort Worth Cats in 1955, Pignatano was listed as the number 8 batter in the lineup on May 29. In the second inning he went to the plate in the number 7 spot and hit a home run. On appeal by the opposing Shreveport Sports, the hit was nullified and the proper batter, Maury Wills, was called out. Pignatano then batted in the number 8 spot, and hit another homer.

And finally here is Vin Scully broadcasting the Dodgers game on the night of Joe Pignatano's MLB debut as a catcher. He asks anyone who knows the Pignatano family to call Joe's wife at home in Brooklyn to alert her of Joe's impending shot. This is why I love Vin Scully!

Turns out Joe did get into the game, taking over behind the plate for Roy Campanella who had been run for in the fifth as was asked to handle Sandy Koufax' fastballs. He singled in his first at bat and whiffed in his second.

The easily recognizable LA Coliseum looms behind Pignatano smiling face on this card. He sure looks different than I remember him a decade later with the Mets.

#556 Nellie Fox The Sporting News All Star

Nellie Fox has got that chaw thing going, doesn't he? This is his third card in the '59 set following his regular issue and the combo card he shared with his DP partner, Luis Aparicio. And I find it the least appealing, probably because he should be wearing the interlocking S-O-X cap. He was born to wear that so very nice cap.

He was an eleven year All Star playing in 13 games. He went 14 for 38 for a .368 average. His hits were all singles. And this card is seriously mis-cut. There is the edge of a red NL All Star card showing up on the left side.

And so it goes. And yes, I'm tired tonight and I'm mailing this one in.

#32 Don Buddin

From what I've been able to read shortstop Don Buddin took the brunt of the Boston fans' wrath during the 'down years' that were the late 50s/early 60s for the Red Sox. Those clubs were pretty terrible and, Boston being Boston, someone was going to get the blame. From a Dan Shaughnessy column published in the Boston Globe in 2011 following Buddin's passing:

If John Lackey thinks he’s got it bad now, he should have talked with Don Buddin. Buddin was the early-day Julio Lugo. And the nasty stuff from the stands sounds louder when there are only 8,000 people in the ballpark. You hear everything.

 “It was bad,’’ recalls Frank Malzone, who played third base next to Buddin for four long seasons. “He got off to a bad start and the fans gave him a hard time when he came to the ballpark. I played right next to him. Hearing all these guys hooting and hollering at him, I was thinking, ‘Better him than me.’ I would hate to walk out there and hear that every day.’’

Bill Buckner is unfairly remembered for one error. Buddin is remembered for constantly making errors. Buddin led the league in errors twice. He committed 35 errors in 1959 and 31 in 1958. In 1960, when he started only 121 games, he committed 30 errors. His nickname was “Bootsie.’’ The Globe’s inimitable Clif Keane quipped, “Buddin’s license plate is E-6.’’

Buddin was a star on the gridiron in high school and passed up some nice college offers to sign with the Sox in 1952. He showed some hitting promise (a .300 and a .293 season) as he moved up to the majors. He debuted in 1956 and held down the starters job at short while hitting .239. He spent the next season in the military and returned to Boston as the starter for four more years.

His hitting numbers were not 'Mendoza- like' as he twice had double digit homers and hit between .237 and .263. The Sox traded him to the Colt .45s for 1962 and they in turn sold him on to Detroit that summer. The '62 season was his last in the bigs. He bounced around the minors after that for three years. 

He returned to his native South Carolina after his playing days and was involved in Special Olympics and he made appearances in Major League Old Timers games.  Apparently he never did return to Fenway Park. that's OK though, he looked better at Yankee Stadium anyway. 

Pretty sharp if unremarkable card up there. Green frames have not been seem much here lately. The photographer got the Yankee Stadium facade into the shot nicely I think.

Lastly I was struck by the first line of Buddin's back of the card text... "Don is a speedy fielder who gives every ball the old college try". Are they trying to tell us that they think he sucked, too? But in a nice way? 

#90 Bill Skowron

A Chicago native Bill "Moose" Skowron went to Purdue on a football scholarship. But he also played baseball and when he hit .500 in his second season for the Boilermakers (a Big Ten record that held up for a decade) he was headed for a career on the diamond. He signed with the New York Yankees in 1950 and after three very impressive minor league seasons he debuted with the Bombers in 1954. 

After initially platooning with Joe Collins he won won the first base job and in the nine seasons he was there the Yankees won seven league pennants and four World Series championships. He made five All Star squads during his Yankee tenure. He almost always seemed to come up big in the postseason. In eight Series (including the 1963 Series when he was a Dodger) Skowron batted .293 with eight homers and 29 BRIs. 

He hit a grand slam in the 1957 Series and in the 1958 World Series he homered in Game One, drove in the winning run in Game Six, and hit a three-run home run in Game Seven.

In 1963, Skowron was traded to the Dodgers and he won a fifth World Series championship as the Dodgers pulled off the sweep over the Yanks. An interesting insight into Moose comes from his NY Times obit:

Notwithstanding his menacing presence, Skowron was a gentle person, and he harbored no feelings of revenge after hammering his former Yankee teammates in the 1963 World Series.“I was miserable,” he recalled in [Richard Lally's book] “Bombers.”“Twelve years I was with New York, three in the minors, nine in the majors. I loved those guys and it killed me to beat them. My uniform might have said Los Angeles, but in my heart I was always a Yankee.”

 That was his only season in Los Angeles but he went on to play for the Senators and White Sox before retiring after the 1967 season. In 14 seasons Skowron had a .282 batting average, hit 211 home runs and batted in 888 runs in 1,658 games.

After his playing days he worked in community relations for the White Sox. He died in April of last year. His All Star card form this set was featured in the summer of 2011.

Two final things... his 'Moose' moniker came from his childhood post-haircut resemblance to Benito Mussolini. It stuck. And I found a cool picture of Skowron and Roy Campanella taken at Ebbetts Field at a 1957 exhibition game.

#282 R.C. Stevens

Hmmm, I need to upgrade this card. I thought I had grabbed upgrades for all the less than presentable '59s in my binder. Not sure how R.C. Stevens got past me. This one isn't damaged but it is stained and combining that with it being so far off center and some soft corners (scan makes them look better than they are) and it's now jumped up to #1 on my upgrade target list. There is a big TriStar show at the end of the month. Now I have a reason to go.

Anyway, the Georgia-born first baseman R.C. Stevens' given name is, well, R. C. Stevens. At least as far as I can tell. I see no other references to anything that those initials might stand for. Some places, Baseball Reference for example, list him as RC, no periods. Kind of like Harry S (with no period) Truman. Whatever.

Stevens signed with the Pirates in 1952 and began a long journey through six and a half years of minor league ball before hitting the big time in 1958 in Pittsburgh. Then again three of those seasons were with the Hollywood Stars so it couldn't have been too burdensome to hack it out on the West Coast.

He wasn't  with the Pirates the whole season in 1958 but the time he was there was well spent. He went two-for-two on Opening Day while driving in the winning run. He followed that with a pair of homers in the first week of the season. He lasted 90 at bats before being sent back down.

The next two seasons saw him get just into a few major league games with the Bucs while spending most of those years in the minors. A trade sent him to the expansion Washington Senators for 1961 and he hit that franchise's first pinch hit dinger. He again played sparingly, went back to the minors and retired after the '63 season.

He lived in Iowa and worked an assortment of jobs after retiring and he died in 2010. He is listed by Baseball Reference as the only major leaguer from Moultrie School for Negro Youth. But a little digging found one more player, John Glenn, a contemporary of Stevens, played with the Cards in 1960 and was at one time a Dodger prospect. His story is found here on a Moultrie school  reunion site. Stevens has a bio there as well and interestingly it lists his nickname as 'Seaboat'. That's kind of cool I'd say.

Hey, look what I found! It's the 1955 Hollywood Stars. R. C is there on the second row seated over on the right. A little to his left is Bill Hall a catcher also from Moultrie. The story of the the two of them meeting with the Stars is included in R.C.'s school bio linked above. Several other former and future big leagues are in the picture as well.

UPGRADE:

I was able to pick up a very nice copy of this card for $1.50. Much nicer and better than the scan shows. I'm not sure why my scanner insists on cutting the top border off some of my cards. A little digging into the settings and options may be in order.

#95 Carl Willey

Carl Willey (I always heard him referred to as 'Carlton') was a Maine resident when he was signed by the Braves in 1951. Some nice minor league seasons (25 wins in '51-'52) were interrupted by a two year hitch in the service. When he returned he had a pair of mediocre season before blossoming in 1957 when he won 21 games.

In early 1958 he made the Milwaukee roster, was sent back to the minors for a stretch and then returned to the Braves where he went 9-7 in 19 starts and had a league leading four shutouts. He pitched an inning in the World Series' Game Five that year and whiffed two of the three Yankees he faced. He pitched four more seasons with the Braves but never could match his first season.

Sold to the Mets for the '63 season Willey won nine games in a career high 30 starts. An injury plagued 1964 (broken jaw, arm miseries) kept him sidelined quite a bit. He opened the '65 season with the Mets, spent some time with their AAA club, returned to the bigs to end the year but retired that winter.

Willey spent nearly a decade as a scout for the Phillies after retirement and then worked an assortment of jobs in his home state of Maine. He died in 2009.

His SABR bio is here but it's not as colorful as Sal Maglie's. How could it be? He's got a nicer card than The Barber, though....the oddly attractive pink frame and of course the mighty fine Braves uni. The cap alone makes it a winner.

#263 Buddy Daley

Bud Daley pitched ten big league seasons (or parts thereof) made the AL All Star squad twice, went to two World Series with the Yankees (pitching a total of eight shutout innings), won a World Series game and two championship rings. Not too shabby.

Born with a right arm partially disabled by a problem at birth Daley pitched well enough in the Pacific Coast League to draw the attention of several big league clubs and he signed with the Indians in 1951. He worked his way up the Indians' system and got a late look at the bigs in September of 1955. The following season he got another look and then he established himself in 1957 getting 10 starts in 24 appearances.

He was traded to the Orioles at the beginning of April of 1958 and then, without having appeared for the Birds, to the Athletics just two days after the season opened on April 15.

It was with the A's that Daley had his best seasons winning 32 games in 1959/60 and made those two All Star teams. He appeared in two of the four All Star Games held in those years (two each season, benefiting the players' pension fund) and allowed only a walk in an inning and a third while whiffing Ernie Banks, Vada Pinson and Orlando Cepeda.

Arm issues limited Daley's workload after 1962 and he was dealt to the Indians for the 1965 season but he was released as the season opened and retired.

Two things... I never heard him referred to as 'Buddy', always just 'Bud'... and that's a nice pic with the classic Yankee Stadium facade and grandstands behind him.