Mantle & Maris Magazine from 1961

I came across this on eBay and remembered having it as a kid. There used to be a lot of 'pulp' mags on the shelves at Lee's Candy Store/Newsstand in Nutley N.J. when I was growing up. I bid and won and probably paid too much but as someone once said.....'Nostalgia is a helluva drug' (or something like that). I remember also having a similar Mantle/Mays issue but I've never seen it come up on eBay and I'm beginning to think it exists only in my imagination.

Anyway, the mag was published in the summer of 1961 as Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris were chasing the single-season homer record. I was living right in the middle of all the hype. I can't imagine what it would be like today with the 'net because it was out of control then.

The copy I bought is in pretty good shape. The spine is about perfect but the pages have browned as the cheap paper they used for these things tends to do. But there are no rips, tears or stains. I was very happy with the condition as I've been burned before on other old paper items.

I don't like scanning an item like this because I have to open it to place the pages on the platen and I've broken spines doing that before. So I've scanned a few easy to do pages and photographed a few others.

The content page lists over a dozen 'articles' but mostly the mag consists of black and white pictures. Lots of them. The text just serves to flesh out each group of pictures.

The center pages contain a full-page portrait of both Mantle and Maris. I thought I had scanned them both but apparently not. Here is the Mantle photo page.

The 'records section' is near the back.

They publishers dug up a lot of 'homey' shots for bios of the M&M Boys.

I'm sure it wasn't hard to find action shots of them either.

The text references the ongoing home run duel. I get the impression that the publishing date was mid- to late- summer of 1961.

Stuff like this is right up my alley collecting-wise. I can kill off a couple of evenings flipping through the pages and remembering the fun I had with my friends hanging out at Lee's and watching baseball with my father. I just wish I had hung on to all my old magazines. It would have saved me quite a bit of money nowadays.

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.

Time Magazine w/Hank Bauer Cover 1964

I wish I had kept more of my magazines through the years. But they take up so much room that over time I'd pared them down to the point I only had a handful left. I have a few Sports and Sports Illustrated with Orioles/Colts/Rangers covers. A couple of others with Billy Pierce covers as well.

One mag I don't think I ever owned was this Time from September of 1964 with the Oriole and manager Hank Bauer on the cover. I remember it from when my parents subscribed. I knew that one day I'd pick it but doing so took awhile. I'd seen a bunch of them on eBay, and pretty cheap, too. But they all had mailing labels. I'm fine with that for a mag in my collection but I had always thought I'd like to put the Bauer/Bird Time cover on display. 

This one was available a couple of weeks ago. On the plus side it was label-free and it was even signed by Hank Bauer which is a bit of a bonus. On the other hand it has a significant crease and it cost more than I thought it was worth.  

But I went ahead and bid on it and I won. In the scan the 'crease' looks more like a scratch. It's certainly visible in person but not nearly as distracting as it appears here. I haven't scanned much of the mag because frankly Time isn't very colorful. It's meant as a news and information source unlike the popular picture mags of the day, Look and Life. 

Since there isn't much in the way of eye candy here I figured I'd put up a few 1964 Topps cards, just for grins. 

#LGR

Look, I used a pound sign a tic-tac-toe board a hashtag! What a cool dude I am!*

This Sports Illustrated came from Mark Hoyle. I remember having it back when it was new. I've mentioned in the past that I was a Sport Magazine guy growing up. Sports Illustrated was weekly of course and I figured it was published for libraries and barber shops. I bought only the issues that featured my teams on the cover. I had a nice stack of those from the 60s and 70s but somewhere along the way I lost them. I big tip of the cap goes out to Mark for sending this my way. He included another one which I'm saving for another post. The cover is one of those fold out dealies and the other part looks like so:

This issue is from early March of 1970. That spring was a giddy time for Ranger fans. It wasn't long after this issue that the Rangers made a miracle entry into the Stanley Cup playoffs on the last day of the season. My buddy and I cut school that Monday to go to the Garden and buy tickets. We got them for Games Three and Four. Game Three was an unforgettable night and it's outlined in the Wikipedia entry below.

Boston Bruins vs. New York RangersThe Boston Bruins and New York Rangers were paired in the East Division playoffs. The Bruins clobbered the Rangers 8–2 in game one and Ranger coach Emile Francis yanked Ed Giacomin when the score reached 7–1. Terry Sawchuk took over in goal. Sawchuk replaced Giacomin in game two, but a new goalie was not the answer as Boston won 5–3. Game three featured a hostile welcome for the Bruins when they skated out on Madison Square Garden ice. The fans booed and shouted obscenities at the Bruins players, shook their fists at them and made obscene gestures at them. Two Bruins players made obscene gestures at the fans. Gerry Cheevers, the Bruins goaltender, was the target of eggs, coins and rubber balls. The Bruins won the opening face-off and Giacomin made the save on Phil Esposito. The line of Derek Sanderson, Don Marcotte and Ed Westfall replaced the Esposito line to the boos of the crowd. Just before the face-off, Giacomin skated to Sanderson and reportedly said "We're being paid to get you tonight." On the face-off, the puck went behind the Ranger net and Sanderson went after it. He was immediately smashed into the boards by Walt Tkaczuk and Arnie Brown. Then he collided with Dave Balon. Sanderson dropped his stick and gloves and went at Balon, which brought Brad Park and Bill Fairbairn into the fight. Don Marcotte joined in. Then the game erupted into a series of fights. The fans, turned on by the mayhem, threw eggs, apple cores, an aerosol shave cream container, oranges and other debris. When Sanderson was ejected from the game, he screamed at referee John Ashley. Police grappled with fans trying to attack the Bruins players at the Bruins players bench. The game erupted into more fights and brawls on the ice and fans threw eggs, nails, coins and other garbage. It took 19 minutes to play the first 91 seconds of the game. When the most violent, penalty-ridden game in playoff history [to this time] was over, the teams had set a record 38 penalties for 174 minutes. Almost forgotten was that the Rangers won 4–3. Game four had Rod Gilbert score two goals in a 4–2 Ranger win. Giacomin was brilliant in goal for the Rangers and one of the highlights was stopping Derek Sanderson on a shorthanded breakaway. Game five was won by Boston 3–2 as Esposito scored two goals. Bobby Orr set up the winner when he stole a pass at center ice when the Rangers were foolishly caught on a line change. Game six was won easily by the Bruins and featured another disgraceful exhibition of fan abuse. Bobby Orr scored two goals, including the winner. Fans threw eggs, and ball bearings on the ice, and when the outcome was no longer in doubt, they set fires in the mezzanine of Madison Square Garden. Sadly, Terry Sawchuk died a few weeks after the playoffs ended. His career ended with 447 wins and 103 shutouts, records that would not be broken for the next 4 decades.

I tried to get Game Six tickets with my girlfriend later that week but we got there too late for the SRO tix. We got d-hall for cutting school. It was my second offense in a weeks time. LOL

I've scanned a few pages from the mag. Flipping through it I am amazed that I can recall the articles for the most part. The last one on the contents page was 'written' by Bill Freehan of the Tigers and is a pretty open account of life in the clubhouse with Denny McLain.

For The Record was a good way to catch up on little news blurbs your local papers might have buried.

About as much fun as the old stories are the ads. Take a gander at these:

Anyone else join one of those record 'clubs'? I was a member for awhile of the Columbia record Club. I got a new LP every month.

This is the second part of the double truck ad and it's got a picture of a record player. I wanted to make sure the younger readers got a look at it.

Mustangs!!!! I wish I had a nice 1970 'Stang. Love that one option was an AM/FM stereo radio system!

But this is the sweetest ad of all. I remember those posters as if I had them on my walls right now. I had the Giacomin, Howe, Elvin Hayes and Havlicek. The only one of that group that doesn't ring a bell is the Earl Monroe. I've seen that Bill Bradley shot a million times but I don't remember it as a poster.

Thanks again, Mark. The mags brought back some great memories.


*=LGR means Let's Go Rangers

Pulp Fiction

I used to read a lot of sports related publications back in the day. Most notably Sport Magazine and The Sporting News. Every spring I had a copy of Street and Smith's Baseball, too. But my friends and I would also pick up the occasional cheap baseball rag. I have been looking to pick up one on eBay for awhile now. I wanted any of the ones that I remembered having when it was published.

I finally found one, Baseball in Action from 1965.

I had cut out that cover picture of Brooks Robinson and pinned it to the cork-board over my desk. And I cut out and saved the Wally Bunker feature. He was a real favorite of mine. Finding a copy of it on eBay was pretty neat.

You know you had a cheap baseball mag when you saw the cover story teasers that sounded like the stories your mom read on the mags in line at the checkout stand. Sandy Koufax: As good as new? Whatever. And the paper stock would already be turning yellow by the time your dad borrowed it to read on the train (or in the bathroom).

They were entertaining though. Lots of black and white pics to take up space and stories that promised controversy but delivered platitudes.

And one of the best parts was reading the ads. Here is a blowup of the ads on the page above.

The one touting a way to hear 'whispered secret conversations ... though solid walls' is a classic that seemed to run in every cheap baseball mag. The ad soliciting 'New Story Ideas' is one I don't remember. I wonder how many ideas Leslie Goodwins got?

These Strat-O-Matic ads were everywhere in the mid-to-late 60s. There was a smaller version in every single issue of The Sporting News back then. I was always fascinated by a friend's APBA board game but the Strat ads just made it sound better. I finally saved enough to buy the game in 1967.

Charles Atlas usually advertised his muscle building methods in these mags. If he wasn't there you could count on his less famous competitor, Mike Marvel.

"Yes! The girls laugh at you now when you take off your shirt--they'll be breaking down the doors...blah blah blah." Just $1.98!! And a Free! 'Secrets Of Attracting Girls'!  

Oh wow. classic stuff. Sadly the mag, which came in nice condition other than being yellowed, fell apart in the process of scanning. No matter, I got my moneys worth in nostalgia.