TCMA The 60s Set Series II (Pt 1)

The weird and wonderful TCMA Stars of the 50s and 60s sets ended with the 1981 issue of a Series II for the 60's set. It picked up the numbering at #294 with nine minor league players (including a Sparky Anderson card) and ran through #482.

The 'Big Leaguers' begin with this Maris/Mantle beauty at #303.

There is no card numbered #319 but there were two #399s so the speculation is that one of those was mis-numbered. Makes sense. Here are the two cards involved:

The numbers on the backs are tough to read. Be forewarned of that if you have to sort these. LOL My 64 year old eyes were not happy!

Here is a better look. 

The 'set' I bought was minus the minor league cards. The eBay listing only mentioned that there were nine cards missing without further explanation. When it arrived and I saw what I needed I was afraid that the minor leaguers would be some sort of scarce short prints that would cost me dearly. Turns out only the Sparky Anderson card carried a premium. The rest were available for under a buck for the most part. A quick trip to COMC and SportsLots garnered me the nine I was lacking and that was that. 

The first of the minor leaguers that arrived at my door (the only ones so far) are these two guys from the Buffalo Bison, a Mets farm club in the 60s. Scanning them I noticed that the backs are printed upside down. Just another bit of quirkiness. 

This is infielder Cliff Cook. He played in parts of five seasons for the Reds and Mets.

Craig Anderson was an original Met who was picked up from the Cardinals in the expansion draft. He pitched in 50 games in 1962 for New York. He worked mainly out of the bullpen but did make 14 starts. Here's a weird fact. Out of the bullpen Anderson won both ends of a doubleheader against the Braves on May 12. He had won another game as a reliever six days earlier over the Phils. Those three wins in the span of less than a week were his only wins of the season. He lost 17 others as well as recording 6 blown saves.

The rest of the set is chocked full of the same type of goodies that the previous TCMA sets contained. There are however more action and multi-player cards then were seen in Series I of the 60s set. 

The multi-players cards come with one caveat, two actually. All except one feature photos of either the Yankees or Mets.

Fairly easy to name the players without looking at the back. Here is the outfield that the 1969 Series made famous... Jones, Agee and Swoboda. Bleep 'em all.

This next one is id'd as being from spring training of 1962. It features the Bombers from the 1961 team: Maris, Berra, Mantle, Howard, Skowron and Blanchard.

And they were not all 'players'. We get the photos of the two NY clubs that include the staffs. This Met's pic is actually a Dodgers reunion shot with Casey, Gil Hodges, Charlie Neal, etc. All of whom were one time Brooklyn Bums.

The Yankees coaching staff smiled for the camera. Well some of them did.

And the guys on these cards were not all star players either. Look kids, it's Ron Taylor and Don Shaw!

The oddball of the group is this one of the Cardinals brain trust. 

I'm a bit disappointed that the back makes no mention of what appears to be a t-shirt cannon prototype but is undoubtedly a ball launcher.

Also sneaking into the mix are some actual game action cards. 

This one of Roger Maris greeted at home plate has game details on the reverse. Here is an expanded view for easier reading. Does this remind anyone of a current phenomenon? Let's label this one as a TCMA Now card.  And note the pencil check marks. Some of the cards with more than one person shown have these marks. My guess is that someone tried to guess who was pictured and was checking their work.

Here's another TCMA Now card...Gil Hodges and Ed Vargo...

...with the action annotated...

Most of the 'in action' cards were simply regular cards without the gory details. The Hammer got an action photo as a regular card in the set....

As did Steve Whitaker....

Ditto for Cardinal Ray Washburn. He once told my then 9 and 11 year old younger brothers to "Go to hell!" as he jogged on the warning track pregame in the Astrodome. All they had done was call his name asking for an autograph. If I hadn't been there to witness it I wouldn't have believed it. He was an ass but he knew how to wear a uni. Nice stirrups.

And there are others which seem to be cards taken during spring practice or game warm-ups as well as a few that are hard to classify...

The Yankees' Stan Bahnsen

Senator pitcher Barry Moore. He was one of those 'his card was in every damn pack!' guys in the late 60s.

The Astros' Hector Torres got a spring training photo on his card. Torres couldn't hit a lick (career .216 average) but he used his fielding skills to carve out a nine year career in the majors. He's a baseball lifer and his current job is the hitting(!) coach of the Bowling Green Hot Rods. They are the Class 'A' Tampa farm club.

Casey Stengel got his own card. There are quite a few managers and coaches in this series. Below is Danny Murtaugh enjoying spring training life.

and Ed Lopat in the gold and green.

I have a lot more interesting cards scanned but I'll save those for the next installment. I'll end this one with one of my favorites in the set. 

This shot of Ted Savage would look perfectly at home on a 1957 Topps card wouldn't it? Great posed photo in front of an empty Polo Grounds third base grandstand.

Cards Just Because

When I go to a card show and dig thru boxes of cheap vintage I will sometimes  always  pull cards out that just strike me as cool. Either I like the composition of the card, dig the photo or get some pang of nostalgia from it. Happened again this past Saturday at the monthly (now twice monthly) hotel show.

Bob Turley was a favorite of my father and I think sometimes he was more enthused about seeing him pitch at Yankee Stadium than he was about Whitey Ford. We always got to the games early so I was very familiar with the Yankee Stadium batting cage. I wish I could figure out who that is behind him on this '61 Topps.

I had completely forgotten about his having won a Cy Young Award until I was checking his bio the last night. He was also #2 behind Jackie Jensen in MVP balloting after that terrific 1958 season. I was too young to remember his days with the fledgling '54 Orioles but he won 14 games on a team that only won 54 overall.

I already have a nice '61 Billy Pierce but if I ever decide to collect the set I need a dupe Pierce to slide into the slot on the binder spine. Now I have one. Plus it's another Yankee Stadium shot. I always like to think I was there the day they took these shots. This is classic Pierce.

I grabbed these two rookie related cards as well. Julian Javier has that great Topps top hat trophy and Fritz Brickell got the star that designated him as a rookie in 1961. I'm not sure that was actually the case (he played for the Yanks briefly in '58/'59). The real reason I bought the Brickell card was the 'windbreaker under the jersey look'. That used to be common. Not anymore.

Brickell's dad Fred was a big leaguer in the 20s and 30s. He died at the age of  54 the year his son's card was issued. Fritz died just a few years later of cancer at the age of 30 in 1965.


Breaking my pattern of 1961s was this Casey/Woodling '63 special. I like the original Mets' clean pinstripe look and the Polo Grounds background. Too bad had forgotten that I already had this card. I could have spent the 50 cents on some other vintage gem.

All in all another great Saturday morning spent with baseball cards. I sunk $85 into 1958s. Oh, did I mention that I'm now committed to collecting that one? Well I am. More on that soon.

Topps 1960 Managers Subset... AL Edition

The American League managers in the '60 Topps set have some interesting photos and back-stories. 

Casey Stengel needs no words from me. He's Casey. Paul Richards (his middle name is 'Rapier'... how cool is that?) was a baseball 'lifer' who managed the White Sox and Orioles among the numerous jobs he held in the game. He was the Tigers' regular catcher during the mid-40s and helped them win the 1945 World Series. BTW.. his 1933 Goudy is IMHO among the best baseball cards ever produced:

I like the fact that Memorial Stadium is visible on Richards' managers card.  

Al Lopez played in the majors for 19 years and managed for another 17 winning pennants with the Indians and White Sox. After a 22 year playing career Jimmy Dykes managed six different clubs in the majors, mostly with the White Sox. He never won a pennant.

I love the Nats uniform worn by Cookie Lavagetto on his card. The 'reverse drop-shadow' "W" and pinstripes and not features I usually associate with that team. Billy Jurges never managed a full season. He was hired during the '59 campaign by Boston and fired during May of 1960. He was a three time NL All Star middle infielder.

Joe Gordon's card shows Municipal Stadium in the background. A nice touch. Joe Gordon played for 11 seasons with the Yankees. He made nine All Star squads and was the 1942 AL MVP. His managing record isn't nearly that good but he is a Hall of Famer. 

Bob Elliott is shown in his only year as a big league manager. His playing career covered 15 seasons. He hit .289 and he was selected to multiple All Star squads and was the 1947 NL MVP with the Boston Braves. His nickname was "Mr. Team". And while his card makes him look like everyone's favorite goofy uncle he is not to be confused with the Bob Elliott who made up one half of the radio comedy duo of Bob and Ray. Look 'em up, kids.

Here is a look at the backs of a few of these. I've included the Jimmy Dykes card because it's about as pristine a 1960 card as I've seen outside a grading slab. The back is even whiter than the scan shows. The backs of the '60 set cards tend to brown over time as shown in the Gordon and Alston cards. Jimmy Dykes has escaped that fate for whatever reason. Sharp corners as well. 

Dos tarjetas de directivos del béisbol

OK, according to Babelfish the title of this post is a translation of  "Two Cards of Baseball Managers". My wife, a Spanish speaker said "No, it's not, really". Well, it's a stupid idea for a post title but I thought it up because I had two cards of managers who were bilingual. Al Lopez, son of Spanish natives whose family immigrated here by way of Cuba spoke fluent Spanish. Casey Stengel, a native of Kansas City, spoke fluent... hell, I don't know. But whatever it was was usually pretty entertaining.

Here is something remarkable about Al Lopez as a manager. Between 1951 and 1965 his clubs, first the Indians, then the White Sox, only finished lower than second in the American League three times. That's 12 second place finishes in 15 seasons with the outliers being a third, a fourth and a fifth coming in consecutive seasons, '60 thru '62. That's only one season finishing in the second division*.

He won a pennant with each of the franchises he managed and was a pretty darn good ballplayer during his playing days as well. In 19 seasons as a catcher he made a couple of All Star squads.

He looks particularly managerial on the 1960 Topps card, doesn't he?

Casey Stengel was really one-of-a-kind. His record as manager of the Yankees speaks for itself. In 13 seasons with the Dodgers, Braves and Mets he never finished higher than 5th. Make of that what you will.
Casey, who had aspired to the field of dentistry growing up (think about that for a minute), was a good outfielder with several NL clubs and, as the card notes, he hit well in his three World Series appearances.

Here is my odd Casey fact...  "The Old Perfessor" coached the 1914 Ole Miss baseball team while just in his third year as a major league player. Read a lot more about Casey here or here or here.

Both Al Lopez and Casey Stengel at members of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

*="2nd Division" is how each league's bottom half finishers were refered to back when each league had eight or ten teams. You remember those days, don'tcha?