1961 Golden Press Chief Bender

This Golden Press Chief Bender is what I call a 'PC tweener'. The 1961 Golden Press Hall of Fame set which was issued as a book with the cards inside and perforated. Intact books are not very common and in decent shape run over $200 for the most part. I've had some on my watch list but never pulled the trigger. If I'm going to spend that on any one item it will be a vintage Bender or a Billy Pierce '59 Bazooka.

By 'tweener' I mean it was from a set from between his career years and before Topps flooded their sets with old time guys on modern base cards. Things like the Kelloggs' Hall of Fame set falls into the same category. Bender, like many early century Hall of Fame guys has a lot of these types of cards. His include the 1950 Callahan set and 1960 Fleer to mention a few. I'm slowly adding these to my Bender PC. I have a 1940 Play Ball Bender en-route. That would qualify as a 'tweener' as well I suppose.

My scanner cleaned up the front of this card to the point that it smoothed out the perforated edges. But you can see them on the scan of the back.

The Golden Press book contained 33 cards. Sports Collector's Daily has a nice write-up and pics of the book itself.

Dollar Tree packs..Part 2

Second round of the Dollar Tree '30 for $1' packs. Like before it's a mix of stars on nice designs, nobodies on bad designs, stars on dull designs and nobodies on nice designs. You Follow?*

Hey, how cool is that? The first Oriole I pull is Cal Jr. on a really nice Donruss card! OK, so someone just sent me this card not long ago. That's fine. I have a couple of Orioles binders it fits into.

This pack didn't have many really sharp cards. But we got some stars and guys that interested me. The meteoric Tim Lincecum for example. The days of the Giants being 'my' NL team are long past. So I never had a reason to root for him but I did. He was fun to watch for those four years he was at the top of his game. I watched him pitch last year against the Astros in a game my son attended out in Anaheim. It was hard see him struggle.

And there was an '88 Donruss Canseco. I was OK with that year's Donruss design.

From that same set comes Paul Molitor. He's paired with an '87 John Kruk.The same Kruk card came in another pack.

I'd forgotten that Molitor is currently managing the Twins. After we got home from the Astros game on Sunday the weather turned lousy so I found the Royals and Twins on MLB.tv and was able to catch an incredible sequence involving a Royals dinger, a flubbed catch of that homer by a fan and epic trolling by Torii Hunter and the Twins broadcasting network.

Check it out here. I can't find a better video although I'm still trying. What that vid doesn't show is that the broadcasters (Hunter in particular) and camera guys never let up on the kid. They showed him taking a selfie and Hunter cackled something like "Hashtag it 'I suck!' The guy walked around the outfield stands after his 'error' and the broadcast followed his every step. They even sent the roaming reporter to interview him as they replayed his flub endlessly. I found it funny but at the same time you had to feel for the kid. Hunter later sent him down a signed ball and the Twins Network gave him $100 in lottery tickets.

Next up is Craig Lefferts and Dwight Evans on mid-80s Donruss and Topps. I know I had a reason to scan these but I can't recall it now.

Below on the Score card is the guy who probably gets a lot of requests to sign cards of recent Cardinals star pitcher C-H-R-I-S Carpenter. This guy was a reliever and came along just prior to the Cardinals' star and had no 'h' in his first name. I also got another card from this Donruss design that I found I liked. This one is Jimmy Rollins.

Finishing up with a couple of Reds..KGJ and Pete Rose.

So all-in-all a decent enough pack. Worth a buck for sure.

And now on to the next pack. #4 of the six I bought.....

Two nice looking cards to start off with. A Panini Classics from 2014. This Lloyd Waner is the only Panini I pulled I believe. He's paired with another card of Carlos Delgado. This from the SP set that produced the Alomar card in the first group of packs.

There were a bunch of Mets in this pack. I was never a fan of those unis with 'racing stripes' down the shoulders. That Livan Hernandez card from 2007 reminds me that the '07 cards are all mysteries to me. It's one of the few sets that I didn't even buy one pack of at Wal Mart or target as I usually did. I wasn't collecting then, or even following the game, but I was always curious as to what the cards looked like in hand.

Pet peeve of mine is cards like that Finest of Chuck Finley that have the cello across the front. His scanning partner is a Mets prospect Satoru Komiyami who went 0-2 in 25 games in 2002. That's a nice Fleer from that season though.

Mike Piazza and Alan Trammell. Piazza, of course, made the Hall of Fame in '16 in his fourth year on the ballot. Trammell missed in his last shot on the writer's ballot last year. He got 40% and will have to wait for some of the other committees to consider him. Looking at the bottom of his Baseball Reference page it says he is higher in WAR than the average HOF shortstop and is over 100 on Bill James HoF Monitor (100 meaning he's a likely Hall member). Read into that what you will.

This Eric Munson 2001 Stadium Club combines a player I don't know with a set I've never seen. It's a terrific card though. The Vince Coleman Diamond King is one of Dick Perez' better efforts i think. To me he's either very good or outright awful on his DKs. Then again I am far from an art expert.

I decided to peel the cello from the Finley card. I was able to do it without dinging the card with my Exacto blade. MUCH better! It's a real beauty in hand. The scan doesn't do it justice.

So four packs in I'm happy with what I got for my money. Two packs left. I'll hold off on those for a few days. I have some other posts I'm working on that are overdue for publishing.

*Tip of the cap to Robert Shaw as Doyle Lonnegan.

Coach Guy V. Lewis 1922-2015

Rest In Peace, Coach. I owe you much more than I can say.

1963 Babe Ruth H-O-F bust

Some things just hide in plain sight. I've been looking for this little item in my boxes for a week. Found it on my bobble head shelf over my desk.

It's part of a 20 piece series of Hall of Fame busts that were produced around 1963. This is the only one I have and when I picked it up it was the cheapest example around. Probably because the box was pretty beat up and the 'plaque' on the front is scarred.

These were put out by a New York company for the Hall of Fame to be sold in their shop and at big league ballparks. They did these in two series and the second series is scarcer, at least according to what I've read. The Babe is among the cheaper ones. 

It's kind of a neat oddball item. And oddball items fit right in to my collection. I took a picture of it with a regular card to give you a perspective on the size in case you've never seen one.

I doubt I'll try to find any more of these as my display space is pretty crowded already. So much so that I've taken to rotating bobble heads was the sports seasons change.

Here's the checklist. Its comprised of twenty early Hall inductees. If I do go after another one it would probably be the Joe D. (my dad's favorite player) or the Christy Mathewson. 

Here is the checklists:

1st Series:
Ty Cobb
Bill Dickey
Joe DiMaggio
Lou Gehrig
Rogers Hornsby
Walter Johnson
Christy Mathewson
Babe Ruth
Pie Traynor
Honus Wagner

2nd Series:
Mickey Cochrane
Joe Cronin
Bob Feller
Jimmie Foxx
Hank Greenberg
John McGraw
Jackie Robinson
George Sisler
Tris Speaker
Paul Waner

Two Killer B's

In a few weeks the Hall of Fame (or the BBWA I suppose) will announce the 2015 Hall inductees. It'll be amazing to me if there are none as was the case last year. With all the politics that are involved in balloting like this I generally tend to not pay a lot of attention. The Football Hall kept John Mackey out for many, many years due to his activity as leader of the Players Union. Guy Lewis was victimized by mis-conceptions and prejudice and only last year was inducted into the Basketball Hall, many years after coaches with inferior records were accepted (I'm looking at you, John Chaney).

But putting that aside there are a couple of former Astros who have a shot and who I'd like to see elected, if for no other reason than to ease the pain of my sons, both frustrated Astros fans.

Craig Biggio barely missed last tear and everything I read says he'll get in this year.

Jeff Bagwell is another story. He has the numbers. By almost any measure he belongs. Not to disparage Hall of Famer (deservedly so) Tony Perez but Bagwell has better career stats. But Bagwell has that PED cloud although as far as I know it's just speculation.

My belief is that you can't exclude someone on mere rumors. I think Bagwell belongs.

A few more of my '64 Topps Giants Hall of Famers

Here are four more out of this under appreciated set. 

Joe Torre is among the most recent H-O-F class and will be inducted this summer. He never got a ton of voting support when he was being considered for his playing career and I think that's a shame because he has excellent numbers, especially when you consider his position. He was a nine time All Star, the NL MVP in 1971 when he hit .363 and led the league in total bases as well as hits and RBI while winning the batting title. But it was his tenure as manager, particularly as Yankee manager, that got him elected by the Veterans Committee.

This shot was taken in the Polo Grounds. 

The great Al Kaline. He's a Baltimore native who went to Southern High School which is in the same Federal Hill area of Charm City in which I was born. And, just like me, he never played in the minor leagues (the fact that I never played in the majors is besides the point, isn't it?). I've never heard or read a single negative thing about Kaline. He was called 'Mr. Tiger' and a nickname like that pretty much reflects how much you mean to an organization.

Orlando Cepeda with Shea Stadium behind him. At least I think it's Shea, sure looks like it to me. The placed opened in 1964 so this shot was taken not long before the card was produced.

And finally we have Billy Williams. Like Al Kaline he did everything on the field well and yet never was much for the spotlight.

Some '64 Topps Giants Hall of Famers

Sorted and scanned a bunch of my '64 Topps Giants cards. I'm still 10 short of completing it but I plan to knock it off this summer when I'll have more time.

I'd love to know where the Bob Gibson shot was taken. That looks like a hotel in the background. Maybe Spring Training. I loved watching Gibson but I've told my Gibson stories a few times already so I'll spare you a repeat.

I'l post one card-back. Here is the Gibson.

Ron Santo was elected by the Veteran's Committee a few years ago. He had a real 'cult' backing his bid for election. I'm glad he made it.

Juan Marichal. This linked SI story about the epic Marichal-Spahn duel in July of 1963 is a great read!

Frank Robinson. I have so much 'Robby as an Oriole' stuff that sometimes seeing him in Reds gear makes me blink once or twice. Gorgeous uniform though, isn't it?

Panini Golden Age Joe Garagiola

I've always been a fan of Joe Garagiola. I remember reading Baseball is a Funny Game, the book he 'wrote' in 1960. When I was a kid I loved his stories of baseball's weird situations and strange plays. The only times I enjoyed the Today Show was the period when he was a co-host. He did Yankee games in the mid-1960s and did NBC's Game of the Week for many years.

This summer he will be awarded the Buck O'Neil Lifetime Achievement Award in Cooperstown at the annual awards presentation on July 26. It's a long deserved honor as far as I'm concerned. Joe has spent his life in the game after being drafted by the Cardinals at the age of 16. He received the Ford Frick Award in 1996 at the Hall for his broadcasting career many years ago. But this Buck O'Neill Award honors his dedication to the game.

This week on his Baseball by the Letters blog Tom Owens had a post concerning Joe which noted that he is no longer fulfilling autograph requests due to his recent health issues. I hated to hear that. I sure hope that Joe will be able to attend the Hall weekend this summer to bask in some baseball glory one more time.

This card really reflects Garagiola pretty well. Great smile and wearing the catching gear he loved to joke about. The set as a whole I can take or leave but some of the cards are pretty sweet and this is one of them.

Billy Pierce PC

I recently posted the regular 1959 card of Billy Pierce, one of my favorite players, over on my set blog. I thought I'd show some of the other Pierce cards in my collection.

Above is the '52 Bowman, Pierce's second year card from that company. He pitched for the Tigers in 1945 and 1948 before he was traded to the White Sox where he found his stride.

Next up is the 1953 Bowman Color card. '53 was a good year for the still young lefty. He won 15 games for the second year in a row and led the league in strikeouts, The card lists his weight as 115. Now Billy Pierce was a small guy but not THAT small. Given that the '54 Pierce lists him at 155 I'd guess that was what they intended to put on this one.

'54 Bowman. Pierce was coming off an 18 win season in which he posted a 2.72 ERA. He pitched 19 complete games and had 7 shutouts. My, times have changed.

And finally the '58 Topps. This set doesn't get a lot of love but I like how colorful it is and I the logos are cool. I have a soft spot for them because they were the first cards I remember seeing. We were living on Long Island and a girl down the block had a stack of them.

BTW... this is a list of Hall of Fame pitchers with a career WAR lower than Billy Pierce:

Al Spalding
Early Wynn
Hoyt Wilhelm
Burleigh Grimes
Addie Joss
Herb Pennock
Chief Bender
Lefty Gomez
Dizzy Dean
Rich Gossage
Jack Chesbro
Candy Cummings
Bob Lemon
Catfish Hunter
Jesse Haines
Rube Marquard
Monte Ward
Rollie Fingers
Bruce Sutter
Satchel Paige

Frank Robinson program

I've mentioned (ad nauseum I guess) that publications, particularly team issued ones, are a big part of my hobby enjoyment. Here's an example of the type of thing I collect. Obviously it's a Frank Robinson Hall of Fame Day 'program' from 1982. Frank had been enshrined earlier that summer. The program is 30 some-odd pages long with a gatefold ad for United Airlines in the center. The other 30 or so pages are comprised of photos, color and sepia-toned, representing different eras of Frank's life. 

There is a brief write-up that accompanies each group of pictures. The scan below is of two pages. I posted it sideways intentionally for perspective. 

I like that they included baseball cards as part of the tribute.

 Notice anything about the page below?

Yup, the portrait picture is reversed. The Bird is backwards. Too bad because the pic of Frank in the vest uniform is pretty sweet.