1954 Orioles/American League Schedule Booklet

I don't remember where this little item came from. Someone may have gifted me with it. But it's been sitting on my desk for months waiting to be posted.

1954 was, of course, the inaugural season for the Orioles in the modern Major Leagues. So I suppose this qualifies as a 'rookie' schedule booklet. More than that, though, I love that it features a neat design with Jim Hartzell's original Oriole and some fun typography.

The booklet is 2.5"x4" and I scanned it with a standard Topps card to show how it compares. The card also gives me a chance to plug my 1960 Topps blog. I'm posting four or five times a week over there.

I only scanned the cover. The rest of this post uses phone photos with the schedule held open with clips. I hate squashing old paper items on my scanner's platen. And this piece is in very nice condition.

Most of the pages are a day-by-day American League schedule.

The center pages are specific to the Orioles, beginning with the ticket price and ordering info. NO TELEPHONE RESERVATIONS

Next is the centerfold with stadium and game facts. The opposite page list the Orioles' home night games for 1954. Night games were not the default back then so pointing them out was a necessity I guess.

Next comes a list of Sunday and holiday dates at Memorial. A few things of note include the fact that the Orioles had home games on the three major in-season holidays, Memorial Day, the 4th of July, and Labor Day. There were eight doubleheaders. We're raising a generation of fans who have no idea what it's like to watch two games with one ticket. And it's apropos that the second half of the booklet starts with the All-Star Game, played in Cleveland.

BTW...that was a wild and fun game, won by the AL 11-9. There were four AL homers, two by Indians' corner infielder Al Rosen, a pinch knock by Indians' outfielder Larry Doby, and another by former Indian, Ray Boone. Bobby Avila, yet another Indians' player, started at second for the AL and went three for three before being replaced by Nellie Fox who won the game with a two-run single in the eighth.

Back to the schedule... The whole league took off for the then-annual Cooperstown Hall of Fame Game in August. The Yanks beat the Reds 10-9 with Mickey Mantle hitting a home run.

Following the AL schedule, we get a listing of ALL the league's night games.

Inside the back cover gives us a promo for some big league films available for screening. Nowadays you can just crank up YouTube.

And the back cover had a promotional ad for the official big-league baseball. The AL used Reach branded balls while the NL had ones with the Spalding markings. But as the page points out, Spalding made them both. Spalding had acquired Reach, a rival sporting goods firm, way back in 1892 but kept the name on the AL balls for decades. 

I remember league-wide schedules back when I was a kid. We used to find them at the local car dealerships. I don't think I ever had any with team-specific covers or info, though. It might be a fun area of collecting to dig into.

1954 Bowman Vic Wertz.... Cardboard Art

Someone, I can't remember who, posted this card not long ago. I had a copy in my Orioles teams collection but I thought it was worth finding a second copy for my binder of 'favorite' cards. I just love it. Wertz is airbrushed/painted into an Orioles uniform which was pure speculation at the time since the Orioles had yet to take the field after the move from St. Louis.

Wertz was only in Baltimore until the first of June in 1954. The trade that sent him to the Indians was certainly fortuitous for both him and the Indians. He hit 14 homers for the Tribe before the season ended and the AL champs faced the Giants in the World Series. Wertz hit .500 is part of one of the most famous plays in Series history. His line shot to the far reaches of the Polo Grounds was hauled in by Willie Mays, a catch that helped shape Mays' legend.

This is from Wertz' Wikipedia page:

Victor Woodrow Wertz (February 9, 1925 – July 7, 1983) was a Major League Baseball first baseman and outfielder. He had a seventeen-year career from 1947 to 1963. He was signed as a free agent by the Detroit Tigers in 1942 and played for the Tigers, St. Louis Browns, Baltimore Orioles, Cleveland Indians, Boston Red Sox and Minnesota Twins, all of the American League.
Wertz finished in the Top 15 in MVP voting five times: 1949 (10th), 1950 (10th), 1956 (9th), 1957 (6th), and 1960 (14th).
Wertz was among the Top 10 in the American League in home runs in 1949 (20), 1950 (27), 1951 (27), 1952 (23), 1953 (19), 1956 (32), and 1957 (28). His 1956 total of 32 home runs was 2nd best in the AL. For his career, he hit 266 home runs and 1,178 RBIs with a .469 career slugging average and a .364 career on-base percentage. He hit for the cycle on September 14, 1947 while in his rookie season with Detroit.
He was elected to the American League All-Star team four times (1949, 1951, 1952 and 1957). He missed part of the 1955 season when stricken with a nonparalytic form of polio but returned in 1956.
Wertz hit the long fly ball that Willie Mays caught in the 1954 World Series (see The Catch). It went over 450 feet to dead center of the Polo Grounds in New York, and a sportswriter said, "It would have been a home run in any other park, including Yellowstone."
He was a World War II veteran, worked in the Detroit area beer distribution business during and after his baseball career, was known for his baldness, and was very well liked by fans because of his winning personality.

Hot off the wire

Once upon a time I worked at the now defunct Houston Post. I started there in about 1972 while I was still in college and worked off and on, part-time and full-time through about 1991. I got a journalism degree and held other jobs along the way and in the end I totaled about 13 or 14 years of service over that nearly two decade stretch.

There were times that I worked late nights/early mornings when the place was pretty quiet. I liked to visit the sports department when it was deserted. I would sometimes stand mesmerized by the rhythmic sounds of the teletype machine as it pumped out stories, stats, schedules, game recaps and features long into the wee hours. If you don't know what a teletype machine is I have found a few pics. Technically these are 'teletype printers' but they were just called 'the wire' at the Post.

Those two above probably pre-date my time at the Post but ours were pretty much the same thing, just a bit sleeker. One of them I recall was a large stand-up model. I can still hear the sound of them in my head, like a typewriter (look it up, kids) but not as harsh. They pumped out a continuous roll of yellow paper as they clattered away. The paper would build up into a huge pile overnight. The picture below shows exactly what it looked like.

And this one made me grin. The kid is doing just what I did for seemingly hours on end, reading the copy as it poured out of the wire.

The pictures that ran in the paper came in on a different machine that was way in the back of the Editorial Department of the Post. Unlike the sports guys I didn't know many folks over there so I didn't venture into that area much. But sometimes if a sports editor was working I'd go look through the wire photos with him. The Post probably used 10% of the photos that came in on the wire printer. The rest were either filed for future use (or tossed in a box to be discarded. I was always tempted to ask if I could take some but I don't think I ever did. I remember some cool pics of Secretariat and some '83 World Series photos I saw and would have loved to have had.

All that is a roundabout way of getting to the posted item, a wire service photo from 1954 showing White Sox manager Paul Richards, owner Charles Comiskey and pitcher Billy Pierce. They are supposedly discussing Pierce's upcoming start against the Orioles but in a posed shot like this they were probably just shooting the bull while waiting for the United Press photographer to finish.

I picked this one up off eBay just to add it to my Billy Pierce collection as an oddball item. The game referenced in the caption was played on April 23 of '54 in Chicago and the Orioles beat Pierce 3-1 in 10 innings. Catcher Ray Murray drove in the winning run in the top of the tenth with a double. Pitcher Joe Coleman, who had already gone nine for the Orioles, then came up to hit and drove in an insurance run. Hard to imagine a starter getting a chance to hit in the 10th inning in these days of closers and set-up man. That game by the way, was just the eighth game in the history of the modern Orioles franchise. And it was the last time they were at .500 for the year. They lost the next three in Chicago, 8 of their next 9 overall and finished the '54 season at 54-100 in seventh place 57 1/2 games back of the league champ Indians.

And they lost to Billy Pierce 11-0 on the last day of the season.

Thankful for Cards!!!

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I love most everything about it. I mean how can one not love turkey, family, football and maybe a trip to the movies. And I'm thankful for a lot of stuff not the least of which are the friendships I've made since I got into this silly world of blogging.

One such friend, Fuji who's The Chronicles of Fuji is among the best blogs on the net, sent me a totally unexpected manila envelope which arrived yesterday. As I told him last night when you go to the mailbox expecting a shipment of thyroid meds and you get instead a shipment including vintage Orioles and Baltimore Colts cards, well that's a hell of a day.

And it was an fantastic and wide ranging group of cards that emerged rom the package. These were the first things I saw.

These are Topps Archives representing some of the '54 Topps Orioles cards and each of them is autographed! Pretty astounding I'd say. Hard to pick a favorite but I'd say mine is the Bullet Bob Turley card above. The autograph really jumps off the card at you and that posed B & W action shot is classic 50's baseball photography.

Of course all of them have the wonderful Bird On A Ball logo. that has a lot of nostalgic value to me.

Next up, BALTIMORE Colts. That blue colored font is not a tribute to Fuji who loves to highlight his blogs with a rainbow of hues, but it's how I always try to reference the team I grew up worshiping from the one that was stolen in the night plays in Indy.

David Lee punted for the Colts for more than a decade.

It's The Rabbit, Billy Ray Smith on his '68 Topps card. He played for the Colts through the decade of the 70s and was a defensive captain. His son Billy Ray Jr. is a College Football Hall of Famer who played at Arkansas like his father.

Don McCauley is a College Football Hall of Famer who played for North Carolina and went on to become a Colt for the decade of the 70's. He was a starter for just a couple of seasons but stuck around because of his work ethic and willingness to do anything that was aksed of him.

It's David Lee again! Do punters get cards these days? 

The Rustin Rifle, Bert Jones. Here is how old I am... Bert is 62 years old but I actually had him on my first fantasy football team. That was in 1980. 

here is a smaple of the backs of the football cards Fuji sent. I chose these three because they have great cartoons.

Now for some vintage Orioles. All of these cards are in nice shape, btw. These two '61s will replace those I have in my Orioles team set from that season. Kevin at Orioles Card O' The Day just had a post that featured a card with the pitcher Mark Williamson displaying this pose. That was the first thing I thought of when I pulled this Gene Stephens out of the envelope. I hate to sound like an old 'Get off my lawn' grump but those Orioles caps sure look good, don't they? They are among the better ones worn in Baltimore.

Old Blue Eyes, Steve Barber. I saw him beat the Yanks in Yankee Stadium on the first day I ever saw the Orioles play in person.  He won the second game of a doubleheader. Whitey Ford, who by law I believe HAD to pitch every Sunday I went to the Stadium, beat my Orioles in the first game that day.
Roger Maris homered in that game.

Mike Cuellar, what a guy! Posing at the batting cage.  Great card.

Don Baylor, a Texas kid, played as hard as anyone in the game. I even rooted for him after he left the O's. Roric Harrison and the late Johnny Oates.

The eEarl of Baltimore and....

Pat Kelly who's card isn't as off center as my lousy scan makes it appear. I can't see a Pat Kelly reference without remembering the great story Kelly tells of the time he, a 'born again' carouser turned clubhouse evangelist, tried to 'save' Earl.

Kelly told him  "Earl, it's great to walk with the Lord, it's great to walk with Jesus." To which Weaver responded "Pat, I'd rather have you walk with the bases loaded."

A 1970 Bobby Floyd. He didn't hit enough to justify that batting glove. And I just noticed that his bat looks brand new and un-scarred. I bet it still looked just like that at the end of the season.

Ken Singleton. He was 'class' personified. A damn good hitter, too.

Here are a pair of shiny Albert Belle cards. This Topps subset sort of card has Hank Aaron featured more prominently than Belle.

This is one of those cards with a protective film. I wasn't collecting when this tecnique was first used by Topps and I never have figured out if it's better to take the film off or not. I'm going to pull this one because the card should shine more without it, Plus, it's pretty annoying.

Two card from this year. A mini Adam Jones flashing his Gold Glove skills and...

Chris Davis. he's a fun guy to watch when he's in a groove. This reddish border davis scans better than the regular white border new Topps I have. Topps likes these garish borders don't they? 

That's not nearly all of what my Thanksgiving gift from San Jose contained. But that's all I have time to do tonite.

I hope everyone gets to spend some family time today and do the kinds of things you enjoy on Thanksgiving.

1974 Memorial Stadium Giveaway

The Orioles loved to publish stuff like this back in the late 60s and into the mid 70s. There were all sorts of over-sized team pictures, commemorative publications, etc. This is a four pager given out in 1974 to mark the 20th anniversary of the first home game in franchise history. 

It features pictures from Mort Tadder, box score of that first game (a 3-1 O's win!!) and short blurbs about some of the players, coaches and staff of the '54 team. The team photo takes up the back.

I have several item in this vein, mostly over-sized team photos and promotional items. I used to buy any paper Orioles related item I could find.