1960 Union Oil Patti Waggin's Husband

Sidebar......We here in the Houston area got very lucky when Hurricane Laura moved east before landfall. It came in just below Cat 5. Bad news. But here on the far east side of the county we had hardly a hint of wind all night. Wish I could say the same for the folks nearer the state line and in Louisiana. I have several college friends living in Lake Charles and I believe they all got out of harm's way yesterday.

---

Ok, so it's a Don Rudolph card. But you wouldn't have even clicked in your reading list had I used that as the post's title, right?

A little background is in order.

Sorry, not THAT sort of background.

This is what I meant....

When I came across Don Rufolph's card for my 1959 blog I flipped it over and saw that this was the cartoon.

THAT got my attention. I dug around and found that Don had married burlesque star Patti Waggin. That's her that is referenced as a 'professional dancer' in the cartoon. Down the rabbit hole I went and found that Miss Waggin (born Patricia Artae Hardwick) was a Baltimore star and, by all accounts, a peach of a lady.

Here's a bio I dug up on IMDB:

Patti was born in 1926 and was married three times. A second marriage to championship motorcycle racer Bill Brownell took place in Chico, California. She attended Chico State majoring in dance and acting. She was athletically gifted and played sports in college.

After her divorce in 1950, she took the stage name of Patti Waggin, given to her by then manager Lillian Hunt. She continued performing until 1960. She married baseball pitcher Don Rudolph in 1955 and stayed with him until his death in a truck accident in 1968. They had one child, a girl.

Patti incorporated athleticism into her act and was considered one of the friendliest girls on the burlesque circuit. She was alternately billed as The Educated Torso, The Sex Oomph Girl, and the Fresh Faced Girl Next Door. She answered all of her own fan mail and kept the letters. These were incorporated into a book, "Fan Letters To A Stripper: A Patti Waggin Tale."

She died in 1992 from an intestinal disorder.

As noted in that bio she had previously been married to a motorcycle racer and I just found this bike site that has an article and some photos (some locked except for members apparently) of Patti in her riding days.

But back to the reason for this post. As I got more familiar with Don Rudolph I picked up the rest of his Topps cards. He had cards in '58 and '59 as well as '62 through '64. The first three issued all used the same photo.

He also had several food/retail cards from his days with the Seattle Rainiers of the PCL in '59/'60. Some are quite pricey so they are off the table for me but this Union Oil issue, from a 1960 set of nine, had a small pinhole and came cheap.

Neat little reference to Don's marriage on the reverse as well. Look below for a bigger image.

 Just for reference, here is the Union Oil card scanned with his '59 Topps.

All his cards are here on the Trading Card Database site. And there is more info and plenty of pics in my post of that '59 Topps card.

Five Cool Commons

Twitter friend Mark Del Franco tossed up a tweet the other evening asking to see collector's favorite commons. I tossed up my '61 Wes Covington as it's one of my favorite cards, common or otherwise. And I thought that idea would make a good post. I know I really need some motivation to post and I appreciate neat commons from vintage sets, so here we are.

I'm sure I've posted each of these five cards in one form or fashion before, either on this blog or one of my set build blogs. These five are here for different reasons but all are among my favorites.

This '57 Charlie Neal card challenges the '61 Covington for artistic appeal. I just love the Ebbets Field background with the Schaefer Beer ad atop the scoreboard, the fencing above the Gem Blades ad, etc. And don't forget that "Schaefer is the one beer to have when you're having more than one."

Don Rudolph's 1959 Topps card looks very ordinary, yes?

But here's the cartoon on the back...

You really do want to read about Don Rudolph's 'dancer' wife. Trust me on this. She's the reason this common is so high on my list.


And Wes Covington appears...

That, my friends, is art. The pose, the bat rack, the uniform (those stirrups!!). The perfect baseball card? It has to be in the running.

I was always a fan of the late Elrod Hendricks. He played and lived with joy and a smile on his face. He never turned down an autograph request and loved talking to fans, especially after his playing days when he was on the Orioles' staff.

This card from the 1975 SSPC set captures him perfectly. Seeing his smile makes me smile. I have a signed copy of this card in my Hendricks binder pages but I like the unsigned one just as much. Hard to beat Ellie's zest for baseball.

The best day I've ever spent in a ballpark came in late June 1970. The Yankees-Indians mid-week, afternoon doubleheader was more fun than one could ever hope for. Tony Horton crawling back to the dugout after whiffing on a Steve Hamilton 'Folly Floater', four dingers by Bobby Murcer, a firecracker tossed from the upper deck that landed at home plate and probably shaved a few years off Ray Fosse's life. And the best baseball brawl I've ever witnessed in person. I did a blog post a few years ago centered on this remarkable day which you can see here.

This card of Vada Pinson from Topps' wonderful 1971 set uses a photo taken during the first game of that doubleheader (with a cameo by Thurman Munson). Every time I see this card I'm reminded of the day my best friend and I spent at Yankee Stadium just weeks before my family made our second, and permanent, move to Houston.

So there they are, five commons I love. I'm sure there are many more I could include in a list of commons I treasure but it would take something remarkable to bounce one of these off my list.

I'd love to see other bloggers' lists.