1961 Fleer Autograph Project - Part 37

I am really excited.  I just won an auction for what will be my 70th signed 1961 Fleer card.  And it is one of four cards that I would consider the white whales of the project: cards of all-time great players who lived only for a short time after the set was issued.  I will probably skip over Parts 38 through 69 and post that card next.  At the rate I am posting these, it would probably be 2030 before I got to #70 otherwise. Oh, I'll loop back and start again at 38. There are some good ones in there, but #70 just can't wait its turn.

Wait a minute, you might be thinking. Isn't this set called Baseball Greats?  Why do you only consider 4 cards to be white whales? I'm glad you asked. You see, much like the Greats of the Game sets that Fleer issued between 2001 and 2006, only some of the subject players were truly great.  All were notable, to be sure. But, notable is not the same as great.  Let me give you an example: Ray Mueller

Ray Mueller was a baseball lifer.  Starting in 1932 with the Harrisburg Senators of the New York -Penn League, it spanned over 40 years ending in 1973 as a scout for the Philadelphia Phillies. His career included turns as a minor league player-manager and major league coach and scout.  He was a teammate of Babe Ruth for the 1935 Boston Braves and coached Willie Mays with the 1956 NY Giants.  Notable, but his time in the majors was mainly as a backup catcher.  He only played more than 100 games in a major league season twice, as the starting backstop for the Cincinnati Redlegs.

Anyways, here are few interesting tidbits abour Mueller.

1. In 1944 he was an All-Star and received two first-place votes for NL MVP. 
2. On July 21, he hit a walk-off grand slam in the 11th inning of a 5-1 win over the Cardinals. On his trip around the diamond, he passed his cousin Don Gutteridge, who was manning third base for St. Louis.
3. During Mueller’s time with Boston, he was friends with Donald Davidson, who stood just 4’0”. Mueller helped him become the team bat boy, which he parlayed into a role with the team’s publicity department. When the franchise moved to Milwaukee in 1953, Davidson became the public relations director. Davidson is credited with giving Henry Aaron the nickname “Hammerin’ Hank.”  Davidson was another baseball lifer, though never as a player.

That's all for now. Keep your eyes out for that next post.  I'm so stinking excited.

What I am listening to: Smooth Sailin' by Leon Bridges

Another One Bites the Dust

 I am the worst.  

I have this blog. I have an interesting collecting project. One that gives me the opportunity to research baseball players that have been mostly lost to time and I can't even manage one dang post a month.  I intend to correct that.

Just not now and not with this post.

This will be a throwaway post.  So, let's get to it so we can just put it behind us.

This, my friends, is the last card I needed to complete my 1955 Topps set. It will be oldest set I will build. The second to last card I needed was Jackie Robinson.  Why am I not showing that off? Well...it is kinda ugly and it is already in the binder.  So, chalk it up to laziness.  

Anyways, about every set older than this has at least one card that is ungodly expensive and I am just not about that.  If I am going to splash out, it isn't going to be on a set build. Frankly,  I am still undecided about whether I should have opened my wallet wide enough to get that Clemente rookie card for this set. Don't get me wrong. I love that card. But, I still think about the opportunity cost.

Anyways, I'm done with 1955 Topps.

What I am listening to: "Loan Me a Dime" by Boz Scaggs

NB: The original studio version of this song featured Duane Allman on guitar, but I am partial to live versions.  There are several youtube videos with the original version.  Go listen to them.

NB2: I am guessing only two of my readers will immediately get "NB"

1961 Fleer Autograph Project - Part 36

I keep saying I need to get more active here and I never do. I just received my 65th signed 1961 Fleer card and I am working with a friend on a deal to add three more to that total.  At a minimum, I need to be posting faster than I am acquiring them. Surely, I can manage that? The answer is yes because I expect this project will grind to a virtual halt as I am getting down to the very rare or very expensive cards yet to go. Okay, next up in the signed 1961 Fleer project is Hall of Famer Lou Boudreau.

Boudreau was certainly one of the better players in the 1940s.  But what made him special is that for 8 of those years he was also the manager of the Cleveland Indians.  He became a player manager in 1942 at the tender age of 24 and continued through the 1950 season, when he was released by the Indians and signed as a free agent by the Boston Red Sox. He is listed as a player-manager for the Bosox in 1952, but only appeared in 4 mid season games as a pinch hitter, so it is something of a questionable designation,

That said, I was curious how he stacked up against other player-managers.  Through the course of MLB history (note: Negro League baseball wasn't accounted for in the list, although there were undoubtedly numerous examples) there have been 222 player managers. Most, (170)   were in the deadball era, with another 32 in the time between the world wars.  There were only 20 player managers in the post war era and most of them only appeared as such in a single season.  Only Phil Cavarretta and Pete Rose acted as player managers for more than two seasons in the post-war era. So, it is probably fair to say that Lou was the last of a dying breed

His roles as a star player and team manager peaked in 1948 when he was the runaway winner of the AL MVP and led his Indians team to the 1948 World Series where they prevailed in 6 games over the Boston Braves.

Other fun facts about Lou Boudreau:

• He isn't so much credited with inventing the infield shift as he was of bringing it to more popular attention.  He did this on July 14, 1946 against Ted Williams during the second game of a doubleheader.  Williams laughed when Cleveland deployed the shift, but then promptly grounded out to none other than Lou Boudreau.
• Despite not ever being confused as a speed demon (one of his nicknames was "Old Shufflefoot," he was an excellent fielding shortstop.
• In 1990, the Cleveland Indians established The Lou Boudreau Award, which is given every year to the organization's Minor League Player of the Year.
• Boudreau is only one of three Illinois Fighting Illini athletes to have their number retired; the other two athletes being Illinois Fighting Illini football players Red Grange and Dick Butkus.
• He was Denny McClain's father-in-law.

What I am listening to:  El Dorado by Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway

1961 Fleer Autograph Project - Part 35

 I really need to get my rear in gear here. Previously, I had mentioned that I had a bit of a curve thrown at me by life late last year. That situation is now coming to close.  As a celebration, I have bought another signed 1961 Fleer card to my collection. That one will be, once I receive it, the 63rd such card. So, I really need to get this party going. Hopefully, I can actually make regular entries in this series as there is a long way between 35 and 63.

Fred "Firpo" Marberry is often considered the first relief specialist.  To be sure, there were relief pitchers before Marberry's time, but it was never really a specialty.  Indeed in the 1910's, the decade before Firpo started his professional career, over 62% of the games ended in complete games.  Over the space of his major league career that level decreased but was still substantially around half of all games.

I would have researched this further, but I really didn't want to pay for more detailed access to Baseball Reference, so I tried another approach.  Using the free part of B-R, I looked at the progressive career leaders for games finished and looked to see which of the various leaders had more than half of their career appearances in relief.  Only one name stuck out: Doc Crandall.  Over a 10 year career, Crandall made 302 appearances, 168 of which were in relief.  In contrast, Marberry made 365 relief appearances in the 551 games he appeared in.

Here are some random facts about Marberry (mostly stolen) from his SABR biography:

1. A big man, Marberry stormed around, throwing and kicking dirt, glaring angrily at the batter. He and catcher Muddy Ruel would put on an act during warm ups intended to psych out opposing batteers.He was Al Hrabosky a couple decades before Al Hrabosky was even born.
2. Marberry acquired the nickname Firpo because of his size and facial resemblance to Argentine boxer Luis Firpo. 
3. At the time, games at Griffith Stadium typically started at 4:00. In the faster-paced games of the time, this meant that “Marberry Time,” as it was soon called, would arrive at about 5:30 or 6:00, with the shadows rolling across the diamond. For a fastball pitcher like Marberry, this was an ideal environment.
4. He had a short stint as an American League umpire in 1935, but found the job too lonely.
5. Even after his major league career was over at the age of 37 in 1936, he continued pitching in the minors, mostly the Texas League, for 5 more seasons.
6. He owned a 600-acre farm near Marberry ‘s boyhood home in Mexia and, at various times, he operated a wholesale gas distributorship and ran a recreation center in Waco.

What I am listening to: Honeysuckle Blue by Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit

Happy New Year!

 

What I am listening to:  Auld Lang Syne by The Choral Scholars of University College Dublin

Night Owl Delivers

 It's been nearly 3 months since my last post.  A lot has happened since then n my life, though not on the hobby front.  You're hear for the cards, so I won't waste time on life events other than to say I've been thrown a curve, but all is generally well for me.  And it is the holiday season!

I got back into the hobby just about 12 years ago, attending my first show and getting my first cards in December of 2010.  I began trading cards online shortly thereafter, though as a marginal blogging personality (at best) it was always a small part of my collecting experience.  I went back and looked to see who those early trading partners were.  The first person I traded with after re-entering the hobby was Chris over at Nachos Grande.  The second was Night Owl.  Fast forward to today and I do some sporadic trading over Twitter (though I intend to leave there soon) and at Net54.  But, for the most part, my only consistent partner now is Night Owl, with whom I trade with a couple/three times each year.

Anywho, I mentioned previously that I'm shifting my collecting focus somewhat.  Specifically, I won't be building any sets from 1954 or prior due to the cost and will start building some of the sets from the 1980s.  Sometime back I bought a huge box of junk wax for $10 and it included a substantial amount of 1989 Topps.  A few weeks ago, I got an email from Greg asking incredulously "Are you really building 1989?"  When I confirmed that I was, Greg was generous enough to knock off my entire want list for the set. And here is a sample of what he sent.  Knowing his feelings for the man, I am most surprised that he parted with a Jack Clark card.

Or, perhaps more accurately, I am surprised he allowed a Jack Clark card to take up space in his house for any length of time. Either way, I'm glad to have it and glad to have 1989 in the books.

Greg didn't stop there, though.  See for yourself:

A 1966 Roger Maris.  Damn.  I mean, damn!

This is probably a good launching off point to talk about my 2022 and plans for 2023. It seems like an awkward segue but bear with me.

2022 was generally a sedate year, hobby wise, as I was preparing for a job search.  But, at the same time it was very productive, as I managed to finish 3 sets (starting in December 2021): 1960, 1965, and 1968.  I also made substantial progress on my 1969 set.

So, what is in store for 2023?  My goals will be simple:

1. I'd like to finish my 1955 Topps set, because I only need 5 more cards.  Those 5 are Jackie Robinson, Harmon Killebrew (RC) and three high number commons.
2. Finish my 1969 set.  I am 15 cards from completion, with the biggest names being Clemente, Bench, and Nolan Ryan.
3. To the extent, I finish at least one of the two above mentioned sets, I'd like to start a new set.  1966 has vaulted into the lead now that I have Maris.  Logically, 1967 would be the choice since I have completed 1968 through 1979, but I have heard too many horror stories about the high numbers in '67.  So, '66 it is.
4. Start one set from the 1980s, with '82 and '85 being the leading candidates.

So, not only has Night Owl sent me a really nice, valuable card, but he has helped clarify my goals for next year.  Thank you, Greg!

What I am listening to: Colors by Black Pumas

1961 Fleer Autograph Project - Part 34

It has been a bit over a year since I last posted about my autographed 1960 and 1961 Fleer project.  In that post, I shared that I won a lot of 47 signed 1961s, of which I needed 18.  The other 29 were shipped off to an auction house and I netted back about half of my original lot cost. I've added a few more over the last year and, as of today, I am sitting at 61 signed cards from this set. So, we have some catching up to do.

Hall of Famer Lefty Gomez (1972 Veterans Committee) pitched in 368 games across all or part of 14 seasons. All but one of those games were with the NY Yankees between 1930 and 1942.  The sole game where he didn't where the pinstripes was an ineffective 4 2/3 inning start for the Washington Senators in the first game of a twin bill on May 30, 1943.  His finest season was probably 1934, when he went 26-5 with a 2.33 ERA and finished 3rd in the MVP voting behind only Mickey Cochrane and fellow hurler Charlie Gehringer. Oddly enough, he finished ahead of teammate Lou Gehrig, who was 5th in voting despite hitting for the Triple Crown (the only time he ever did so.)

His best game may have come on May 24, 1932 against the Philadelphia Athletics. Lefty pitched a complete game while allowing only 3 hits and 1 walk against 13 strikeouts. One of the hits was a ground ball single by Jimmie Foxx, who was hitting .441 at the time and was well on his way to the first of his three MVP seasons.

Gomez was known as one of the funniest men in baseball, though much of his humor was self-deprecating. An example was when Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon in 1969, and he and NASA scientists were puzzled by an unidentified white object. Upon hearing of it, Lefty said, “I knew immediately what it was. It was a home run ball hit off me in 1937 by Jimmie Foxx.”

What I am listening to:  Down by the Water by The Decemberists