Topps Bobby Locke PC

I never thought I would include Bobby Locke in my list of PCs but here he is. Before I pulled his autograph out of a Heritage pack I really had never given him much thought. I had his 1960 Topps card but I haven't featured it yet on that blog. He has no '58 or '59 cards so I had yet to do any looking into his career.

Locke appeared in five different Topps sets during his career. I picked up the ones I didn't have from eBay last week.

This is his 'rookie' card, the 1960. Pretty standard card with a portrait and a b/w 'action' pose. I'm 99% sure this is a picture taken in Municipal Stadium. Those windows over Locke's right shoulder look a lot like the ones in this one of Rocky Colavito.

The back is where this one shines (well it does to me, I love the 1960 cream/orange/black early series cardbacks. Locke had pitched for the Indians in 1959 after nearly five minor league seasons. The pix were likely taken that season.

Second year Bobby Locke, his 1961 card. It's a high number and cost more than the other put together. It's also my favorite. Note that the picture used is the same as the one in the 1960 'action' shot. more of those windows...Municipal Stadium. 

I'm not a fan of the green cardboard but you get full stats and two cartoons.

Now we are up to 1962. Same background. More than likely the same photo-shoot with the photographer getting his cap-less pic, just in case. With Locke now with the Cubs the cap-less shot came in handy. 

A nice play on his last name in the cartoon caption. Locke didn't make it out of Spring Training as a Cub. He had issues with the the weird 'College of Coaches' idea and he was dealt to the Cardinals in April. He was with them for three weeks before being traded to the Phils. He spent most of the season in the minors.

The '63 and '64 seasons were also mostly minor league years for Locke although he was around in September of '64 to watch the club blow it's big lead in the NL. After a couple of years off Topps' radar in October of '64 he was sold to the Angels. Topps pulled out their 'Locke' file and made him another card. He is listed with the Angels but he never played for them, at least in 1965. He was in the minors before he went to the Reds in a July deal. He pitched a bit in Cincinnati the second half of the year. 

He is obviously in his old Indians uni again here. Only the cap logo is scrubbed out. The pose is also exactly the same as his 1960 'action' shot. This picture is obviously from that same photo session. 

The '65 set rightfully holds a place dear to the hearts of many vintage collectors. It's about damn perfect.

After a couple more seasons spent mostly in the minors Locke appeared in the 1968 set. This is the same photo they'd used in 1962.  It's well within the range of possibility that Topps issued five separate Locke cards over the course of nine years using the pictures taken at one 1959 photo shoot!

He'd returned to the Angels' organization about a year after they had traded him to the Reds and in 1968 he pitched in 29 games, easily his most since 1961. Topps crammed a lot onto the backs of these '68s.

I have two more Locke cards from Topps. This is the 2017 signed Heritage done in the '68 style.

And I picked up another version of the '68, a buyback issued in 2015.

So that's my Bobby Locke 'rainbow'. I know that's not the right term for whatever you call a complete run of a guy's cards but whatever. Bobby turned 83 earlier this month. Here's to many more years of health and happiness with his family.

I found a few other Bobby Locke items including a couple of cool minor league oddballs. Those will hold for another day. Here is a montage of his Topps cardback cartoons:

Let's wrap this up with a handful of off-the-wall facts I found on his SABR bio page.:...

• He debuted in the big leagues with a starting assignment against the Boston Red Sox on June 18 [1959], and in his second at-bat he hit his only major-league home run, a three-run shot off Frank Sullivan over Fenway Park’s Green Monster wall in left field. 
• Locke was born on March 3, 1934, in the little town of Rowes Run in the rough mining country of Southwestern Pennsylvania about 40 miles southwest of Pittsburgh. He was one of ten kids in the family.
• [In high school] he played fullback and defensive back in football and made several all-star teams. He excelled in baseball as a pitcher, throwing two no-hitters and averaging 13 strikeouts a game. His 1952 team went undefeated, and he pitched a one-hitter with 13 strikeouts to win the state championship. Locke played in the Sandlot Classic at the Polo Grounds in New York City as a member of the 1952 USA Baseball All-Star team.
• Locke accepted a football scholarship to Arizona State University but returned home to focus on baseball early in his first gridiron season.

You can read the rest here.

Old Time Card Show

I spent some time yesterday at a small hotel card show north of Houston. There used to be at least one every weekend somewhere in town back when card shows (and card shops) were really popular. Free admission, one small meeting room (used to be a ballroom or large meeting room back in the day), a dozen or so dealers and a lot of cheap vintage. And trust me, cheap vintage (of all kinds) was easily the most prevalent collectible in the room. Dime, quarter, fifty cent and/or dollar boxes were on about every table.

I've got about an hour's worth of uninterrupted standing and bending in me these days so that's about how much time I spent there. I ended up spending about twelve bucks and came home with 25 or 30  cards. I had no want list so I just picked out cards that struck my fancy. That may not be as satisfying as finding a 'white whale' in a dime box but it is a lot of fun nonetheless.

First up, a 1967 Frank Howard. I can't look at a Hondo card and not be reminded of my Strat-O-Matic game playing days. His 1969 Stat card was just astounding. He just tore up my replay league with it. 

1965 Masanori Murakami/Dick Estelle rookie. I already have this card but it's one of my favorite Topps cards ever, for reasons I've blogged about previously. The Japanese native is the draw here but Estele has a backstory, too.

It's a scuffed up copy but I couldn't pass it up, even as a dupe.

1979 Willie McCovey. For a quarter? Done deal! McCovey just has an aura. Willie Mays was the Giant you couldn't hardly take your eyes off of. But when you did it was usually to follow the flight of a huge McCovey blast.

1963 Fleer Tom Cheney. I have this idea in the back of my mind that someday I'll seriously chase this set. I don't think anything caused as much of a stir in the St. Mary's School playground in the early 60s as the appearance of the 1963 Fleer packs (that cookie though!) at drug stores in Nutley, NJ. 

I have the Orioles and the Phillies in the set, the Koufax and a couple of others. Yes, I used to like the Phils and I bought the Fleer Phillies in a wave of nostalgia years ago. When I find a '63 Fleer card cheap I'm going to pick it up

1956 Topps Calvin Coolidge. The other night I found a copy of his biography on the 'last chance' rolling cart at Barnes & Nobles. Even with about a half dozen unread books waiting on my book shelves I bought it. This will make a neat bookmark for it. (Tell me you don't do that yourself.)

There was a fairly nice stack of these things on the dealers table, I should have bought more. Maybe I will next month. I have the Lincoln, the Teddy Roosevelt and the LBJ (that one is from the '72 re-issue). So this one is my third card from the '56 set.  The show runs regularly and it appeared to me that the dealers were all regulars. So they will still be around. 

Here's the book, by the way. It got some good reviews. As a 'fan' of the presidency and it's history I'm ashamed to say I know almost nothing about Coolidge, but that'll change once I get around to reading it. 

Here is my wacky card pick-up of the day. It's from the 1966 AB&C Battle Cards set. This is a re-issue of the Topps set of the previous year with a few additional cards tacked on. AB&C did a lot of sets in England,mostly 'soccer' ones and they had ties to Topps. Lots of their footie sets were based on Topps baseball designs.

The set shows 'scenes' from World War II. Why there is a Revolutionary War era soldier gracing the back is a mystery to me. Again, the dealer had a handful of these but I just picked up one. I chose this one because, well, there's a torch carrying Nazi and a leggy blonde damsel-in-distress. My 14-year-old inner self from 1966 made the choice!

I have never heard of this set but here is how Dean's Cards describes it (you can see the checklist there as well):

The original Battle set produced by Topps in 1965 contained 66 cards depicting various battles from World War II.  One year later, A &BC Ltd, an English company, produced a replica set of the Topps issue.  The most notable difference is that the English version consists of 73 cards instead of 66.  The additional seven cards depict leaders and fighters from World War II, including President Roosevelt, General Eisenhowever [sic], the US Marines, the Nazi Army, and several others.  Card #73, the last card in the set, is a checklist card.

I have a bunch of other cards from the show but this is enough for today. 

The Odd Couple

A week or two ago Fuji had a post on his blog that featured some recent card show pick-ups, one of which was a Masanori Murakami statue. That post shook loose a memory for me and prompted me to dig out a card I've been wanting to post about but never had the initiative to go find in my boxes of 'stuff'.

Growing up my best friend Chris was a diehard Giants fan and by extension I knew a lot about the team. I wouldn't call myself a Giants fan exactly but it's like living in Houston now... I pick up a lot of Astros info just by being around my family who watch them pretty closely. We'd go to lots of Giants-Mets games at Shea so I more or less 'followed' the club. I even had two favorites, Jim Ray Hart and Juan Marichal.

Murakami's debut as the first Japanese player in the majors caused quite a stir in September of 1964. We developed a real fascination with the guy. I had this card when the '65 set was new but like most of my cards it disappeared along the way. So a few years ago I grabbed another one.

I never gave much thought to Dick Estelle who shared this card with Murakami. Both pitchers were September call-ups in 1964. Murakami debuted on September 1st, Estelle first pitched three days later in Philadelphia on the same Giants' road trip. Murakami pitched one inning against the Mets and allowed a single while fanning two while Estelle's first game was a start and he went six innings against the Phils giving up a run on four hits. He walked five which may have been a case of nerves. Estelle was a New Jersey native from down the Shore so it's possible (probable) he had family on hand for his first game.

Estelle finished out '64 with five more starts and had an ERA of 3.02 and a 1-2 record. He actually was rolling along nicely but was beaten up by the Cubs in his final appearance of the year. He didn't make the Giants' staff in '65 but again was called up in September. This time he worked a few times as a middle reliever, again pitching well and got got a start on the last day of the season. Like the previous year his last weekend on the season work was underwhelming and he was beaten soundly by the Reds.

Estelle, who had been 23 with five seasons of minor league ball behind him when he debuted, never pitched in the majors again. He spent seven more seasons in the minors before retiring.

Like Estelle, Murakami pitched again in 1965 for San Francisco but he had made the club in the spring and was up for the whole season. In 45 games he pitched nearly 75 innings and had a 4-1 record with eight saves. He made one start along the way and the result showed the Giants that they were right in using him as a reliever. He returned to Japan in 1966 and pitched through the early 1980s.

There is much more to Murakami's background including the fascinating story of how he came to pitch in the States, why he returned to Japan and the politics of it all. His story is an interesting one and his BR Bullpen page is a good place to read about him.