1953 Baltimore Orioles Program

It's just a bit the worse for wear but here is another Baltimore Orioles game program from their days prior to re-entering the major leagues. This time the publication comes from the 1953 season as a farm club of the Philadelphia Phillies.

The program had been folded and the lines are easy to see. The cover has a big ol' chunk torn off as well. But the cover artwork is in tact so that makes it still collectible to me. The program is from one of the three series' the O's played against Buffalo in '53.

The management page shows Jack Dunn III who was the third in a long line of Jack Dunns that played prominent roles in the franchise history. His grandfather's T206 card was featured in a post awhile back on this blog. Manager Don Heffner spent forty years in the game and was managing the Reds when his GM, Bill DeWitt, made the infamous Frank Robinson-to-the-Orioles deal.

As always it's fun to see some of the old ads that ran in these publications. "Fresh Up with 7 Up. It likes You." What the hell does that mean? There are several bios of Oriole players scattered through the program. This club had a number of guys who had or would play in the majors but none is a household name. This page shows Marvin E. Rackley.

The program is unscored.

That was followed by a stat page which was half taken up by an ad for a lounge inside LaGuardia Airport. Apparently it's the place where celebrities meet. I once saw Tony Bennett in LaGuardia, but it wasn't in a lounge.

General info on the team, the stadium, tickets, etc.

More ads and another bio. John B. Graham.

                  

The back page. The two Orioles broadcasters are wearing airbrushed caps. They look better than a lot of the caps Topps messed up in their card sets through the years. BTW... Baxter Ward left the Baltimore market for the greener pastures (and faster life) of Los Angeles where he did news anchoring before becoming a semi-successful politician. John MacLean later did radio games for the Senators and red Sox as well as working Mutual's Game of the Day in the later 1950s.