1966 Baseball 'Rag'...True's Baseball Yearbook

I love love love old baseball mags. This one was a virtual 'throw-in' to an eBay purchase I made recently. I would usually buy one of these type of magazines every spring. I always bout the Street and Smith annual, and I got the Sporting News but I'd grab one of these 'junk' mags, too. This one is typical with superstar photos and breathless article teasers on the cover. I'm kind of surprised that none of them announce a player being 'at the crossroads'. There always seemed to be an article about some player in that situation..."Johnny Callison...at the crossroads!" or some such foolishness.

This is the index page. There are some two page 'feature' articles (see below), a 'Gallery of Stars'..i.e. one picture/one paragraph stories on several players. Note that the cover calls them 'Exciting" articles. Ooookaaay.

I'll give True credit for having some big name writers as contributors. Bill Libby, George Vecsey, Maury Allen and Leonard Koppett are familiar names to those of us old enough to have followed the game back then.


Here is Libby's Koufax story. Note the first paragraph swipe at Cassius Clay!

No mag worth it's salt could skip a story on the Yankees, even in down times.

I love this shot of Yogi Berra getting the heave-ho. Norm Siebern of the O's looks rather bemused by it all.

This is the one page feature on Juan Marichal.

Most teams got a two page spread previewing their '66 season. This is the orioles' entry:

For my Yankee fan friends. I knew this team very well.

Oh baby, True did NOT like the Red Sox. And they only got one page.

No self-respecting 60's baseball magazine would be complete without some classic ads. Here's one I don't recall ever seeing. It's for a product call the 'Dippy Disk'. It's not real clear from the ad but I assume it's some sort of 'flat' baseball that is made to curve when thrown. Sort of like a Frisbee I suppose. When I read this I was instantly reminded of Eddie Murray's story of how he and his brothers learned to hit by swinging at plastic coffee can lids.

And of course I think it was a government regulation that every magazine carry a Joe Weider advertisement. This was True's back cover. Back then, and even today, I find this mildly disturbing.

If these old mags weren't such a pain to scan I'd post a bunch more.

EDIT....For Joe Shlabotnik....

Kenny Boyer? Who the heck thinks of him as a Met? I don't and I saw him play there. Went back to look at his stats and I was reminded that he also played for the White Sox and Dodgers. I'm losing memory, fast.