Standard Catalog Update #20-21a : Another Globe Discovery

O.K., I think I've got it now. Another piece of the puzzle that is the Globe Printing Co. minor league opus of the early 1950s has come our way . . . and forced a correction to what we had posted here on Aug. 25.

In that post we listed a checklist of nine Globe Printing Co. Ponca City Dodgers, speculating they were probably part of a set of 18, since it appears that Globe printed six-card sheets. The next day we posted about a Globe card for Fred "Rip" Collins, that had been reported by the same collector who turned up the P.C. Dodgers. We speculated that the Collins was probably part of a Globe team-set of the Independence Browns.

The other day, in response to the SCD Update #20-21, we heard from collector Chuck Hensley, woh has a friend who has a 1952 Globe Ponca City Dodgers album, with all nine of the checklisted P.C. Dodgers. What really caught my attention, though, was that the scans he sent also included the Rip Collins card, along with two other non-Dodgers.

Earlier I had been willing to believe that the inclusion of the Collins card with the first group of P.C. Dodgers was an anomaly, but when the same card turned up in a second grouping, it dawned on me that Collins was actually part of the Ponca City issue.

The two other non-Dodgers cards that Hensley has in the album are Hershel Martin and Al Reitz. It then became clear that Globe's issue for the P.C. Dodgers included not only their manager Boyd Bartley, but also the managers of at least three other teams from the 1952 Kansas-Oklahoma-Missouri League. Collins, as mentioned was one of them. A little poking around on the SABR Minor League database confirmed that Reitz and Martin were also K-O-M skippers in '52.

Reitz was plying manager for the Blackwell (Okla.) Broncos, the Chicago Cubs affiliate in the Class D K-O-M. Martin was manager of a Pirates farm team that moved from Bartlesville, Okla., to Pittsburg, Kans. during the 1952 season, the final year for the K-O-M.

Reitz was a career minor league player and manager whose career spanned 1924-1953. He made it as far as Milwaukee and Buffalo, but never saw any major league meal money. With the Broncos in 1952, he was still pitching at age 48.

Martin, in contrast, did enjoy a modest major league career, albeit mostly during the WWII years. After having been playing professionally since 1932, he spent the 1937-1940 seasons with the Philadelphia Phillies. He appears in both the 1939 and 1940 Play Ball card sets. After stints wiht Jersey City, Tulsa and Milwaukee, 1940-1944, he was traded to the New York Yankees, for whom, he played in 1944-45. After the war he played in 1946-1947 for Oakland in the Pacific Coast League, where he appeared on such regional minor league issues as the 1946-1947 Remar Bread Oaks, and the 1947 Signal Oil Oaks. He remained in the minors as a player and/or manager through 1957. With the K-O-M Pirates in 1952, at the age of 42, he managed and played some at first base and in the outfield, batting .298.

With those three managers and the nine known P.C. Dodgers, we come up with 12 cards -- two press sheets if Globe followed its usual format. Whether or not there was a third six-card sheet with a few more of the P.C. Dodgers and [the other managers of the K-O-M League, Woody Fair of the Iola Indians and John Davenport of the Miami Eagles, remains to be seen.