Monday, September 30, 2013

McGaha's cards ignored survivor status



Uncommon commons: In more than 30 years in sportscards publishing I have thrown hundreds of notes into files about the players – usually non-star players – who made up the majority of the baseball and football cards I collected as a kid. Today, I keep adding to those files as I peruse microfilms of The Sporting News from the 1880s through the 1960s. I found these tidbits brought some life to the player pictures on those cards. I figure that if I enjoyed them, you might too.

On the morning of July 24, 1948, a bus filled with the Duluth Dukes, the Class C Northern League farm team of the St. Louis Louis Cardinals was hit head-on by a truck which had crossed over the center line on a bad stretch of U.S. Highway 36 near St. Paul, Minn.

The bus rolled and burst into flames. Six people died, including Dukes manager George Treadwell, who had been driving the bus, four of his players and the truck driver. The team had been traveling from Eau Claire, Wis., to St. Cloud, Minn., for a game.

All of the players on the bus suffered  injuries ranging from severe burns, broken bones and internal injuries to those seated near the front, to bruises and/or minor burns to those in the back.

Among the fortunate survivors was the team's 21-year-old first baseman Mel McGaha (muh-GAY-uh). Seated in back, he received only minor injuries.

McGaha was only person on the bus to reach the major leagues. 

A few of his teammates had their professional careers ended that day, several others worked their way through the minors' ranks but fell short of making "the show."

The Dukes resumed their schedule a week after the accident; their roster repopulated with players from other St. Louis farm teams and on loan from other Northern League teams.

McGaha never played in the major leagues, but had three seasons as an American League manager and six years as a coach at the highest level.

Following the wreck, he continued in the Cardinals' organization through the 1952 season, rising as high as the AAA level. He then played five years with Shreveport, an independent team in the Texas League; he was a playing manager from 1954-57. 

He had a similar post in the Cleveland organization with Mobile (AA) of the Southern Association in 1958, stayed on as manager in 1959, and moved up to manage the Indians' AAA affiliate, the Toronto Maple Leafs, in 1960.

He was called to the big club as a coach in 1961 and became the Indians' manager in 1962. 

In 1963-64 he was coach for the Kansas City A's, taking over as manager a couple of months into the 1964 season and remaining in that job through 1965.

In 1966 he moved on to the Houston Astros organization as an instructional league manager in 1966 and 1969, and manager of their AAA team in Oklahoma City in 1966-67.

McGaha died in 2002.

He appeared on a pair of Topps cards, as Indians manager in the 1962 set, and A's skipper in 1965. Neither of those cards mentions the bus accident in the biography on back. 

McGaha had another baseball card, a real rarity, as manager of the Maple Leafs in the 1960 Shopsy's Frankfurters team set. 

Saturday, September 28, 2013

McCarthy mystery men #3: Keith Luncitenback UPDATE: It's Keith Graffagnini

As I work my way through the 600+ baseball player photographs that I recently purchased from the estate of Detroit photographer James D. McCarthy I have encountered a few that have thus far defied my attempts to properly identify them.

Please see my posting of Sept. 20 for background and the details of my efforts to identify these mystery players.

In this installment of the blog, I'm going to share with you the picture of another of the McCarthy mystery men and solicit your input.

The player is question is in a Houston Astros uniform and is identified as Keith Luncitenback. 


From the format of the photo, it looks like something McCarthy shot in the mid-to-late 1960s, or very early 1970s. The uniform seems to be the Astros road togs used 1965-70. The bat in the photo pegs him as a position player, rather than a pitcher. 

As you can imaging, with a name like Luncitenback, there weren't many alternate spellings to run through; regardless I had no success. Google wouldn't even give ma a hit on that name.

If you can provide concrete identification, or even a good guess, please email me at scbcguy@yahoo.com and maybe together we can figure out who this Minnesota mystery man might be.

UPDATE:

Several readers, the first being Jason Pressley and Eric Loy, have identified the player as Keith Graffagnini. It's quite an alphabetical stretch from Luncitenback to Graffagnini; congratulation to those who made the connection.

You can find his minor league career record here:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/player.cgi?id=graffa001kei

Graffagnini never played in the majors. He was murdered on Aug. 19, 1978 while driving a newspaper delivery truck for the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

McCarthy mystery men #2: John Loncar UPDATE: Solved

As I work my way through the 600+ baseball player photographs that I recently purchased from the estate of Detroit photographer James D. McCarthy I have encountered a few that have thus far defied my attempts to properly identify them.

Please see my posting of Sept. 20 for background and the details of my efforts to identify these mystery players.

In this installment of the blog, I'm going to share with you the picture of another of the McCarthy mystery men and solicit your input.

The player is question is in a Minnesota Twins uniform and is identified as John Loncar. 


From the format of the photo, it looks like something McCarthy shot in the mid-to-late 1960s, or very early 1970s. The mitt on the player's hand indicates to me he was a catcher. 

I thought possibly he might have been a bullpen catcher, but since most of them had at least some minor league experience, that line of investigation didn't pan out.

I tried such alternative spellings as Lochner, Lockner, etc., with no success.

If you can provide concrete identification, or even a good guess, please email me at scbcguy@yahoo.com and maybe together we can figure out who this Minnesota mystery man might be.

UPDATE: This mystery player photo has now been solved.

An anonymous reader sent an image of a 1977 Dairy Queen Tacoma Twins card of John Lonchar.

Lonchar was drafted by the Twins out of the University of Michigan in 1974. He played three years of Class AA ball at Orlando and had two years at AAA without ever getting to the majors. He never showed the power usually expected of a catcher, his top home run out being four in 1977. His career minor league batting average was .235.

Saturday, September 21, 2013

McCarthy mystery men #1: Bill Conklin UPDATE: Solved . . . it's Bill Kunkel

As I work my way through the 600+ baseball player photographs that I recently purchased from the estate of Detroit photographer James D. McCarthy I have encountered a few that have thus far defied my attempts to properly identify them.

Oh, I have a name attached to the envelope in which the pictures and negatives came to me, but that name doesn't correspond to any player I can find in my go-to source for baseball player data, the website www.baseball-reference.com. 

I've been putting together a spreadsheet of these photos with player name, team and a range of the years he was with that team. 

Since McCarthy worked many seasons at his craft during spring training, there are many photos in this archive that depict players in major league uniforms who never played in a regular-season game for that team.

My usual procedure when encountering a player whose name I don't recognize is to first check the encyclopedic Total Baseball. If the player isn't there, indicating he never played in the bigs, I fire up the baseball-reference data base and look at his minor league stats to determine approximately what years he might have been in spring training with the team whose livery he wears.

Occasionally I am thrown a roadblock when either JDM or my former assistant who originally typed the names onto the envelopes 25+ years ago misspelled the player's name. In those cases I can usually search under my best guess as to the correct spelling and find the error.

If the baseball references fail to provide an answer, I run a google-search with the player name and the team name and/or "baseball".

Thus far, however, I have encountered three cases in which I am stumped as to player identity.

In this installment of the blog, and the next two to follow,I'm going to share with you the pictures of the McCarthy mystery men and solicit your input.

Let's start with a fellow pictured as a New York Yankee and identified as Bill Conklin.

Nobody by that name turned up in my searches as a major or minor league player in the Yankees organization.  Nor was I successful with possible alternative spellings such as Conklon or Coughlin.

From the format of the photo, it looks like something McCarthy shot in the mid-to-late 1960s, or very early 1970s. McCarthy usually photographed position players with a bat, and pitchers with a glove, so this photo indicates to me the player was a pitcher.

If you can provide concrete identification, or even a good guess, please email me at scbcguy@yahoo.com and maybe together we can figure out who this mystery Yankee is.

UPDATE: Several persons have solved this mystery player photo. It is Bill Kunkel, who pitched for the Yankees in 1963.

As these more sharp-eyed observers pointed out, the name KUNKEL and uniform number 20 are printed on his glove.

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

In my entry of Sept. 10, I shared a couple of James D. McCarthy photos depicting familiar faces from my 1950s baseball cards in uniforms other than that in which I was accustomed to seeing them.

I found another such photo . . . Johnny Kucks as a N.Y. Met.

Kucks (I always pronounced it "kuhx," he preferred "cooks") was kind of a childhood card favorite, especially his 1956 and 1957 Topps cards. 

You may recall that he pitched for the New York Yankees from 1955-1959 and for Kansas City 1959-60.

He was out of the major leagues before the 1961 season commenced, but not off of Topps cards. He has a 1961 Topps card with the A's, although he spent the entire season pitching for Rochester, the Orioles' AAA International League farm team. 

Kucks may have been on loan to the Baltimore organization; according to baseball-reference.com, the A's didn't sell him to the O's until after the 1961 season.

In December, 1961, Kucks was traded to the Cardinals. Despite the fact he has a 1962 Topps card as a Cardinal, Kucks never made the majors with St. Louis. He spent the 1962-63 seasons at Atlanta, in the IL. He had a 14-7 record in 1962 and was 14-9 in 1963.

While with the Crackers, Kucks appeared in the 1962 Kahn's Weiners Atlanta team set.

So why is Kucks in a Mets uniform in the JDM photo? He was given a spring training tryout with New York in 1963, but according to one newspaper account was "hit hard and often" and was returned to the Cardinals organization. 

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Pitcher Rowe was hot one-handed hitter

Uncommon commons: In more than 30 years in sportscards publishing I have thrown hundreds of notes into files about the players – usually non-star players – who made up the majority of the baseball and football cards I collected as a kid. Today, I keep adding to those files as I peruse microfilms of The Sporting News from the 1880s through the 1960s. I found these tidbits brought some life to the player pictures on those cards. I figure that if I enjoyed them, you might too.

While poring over some 1949 microfilm of The Sporting News recently my eye was captured by a photo of a player swinging a bat one-handed. Used to seeing such photos of wartime one-armed outfielder Pete Gray, I was surprised to read the story of a veteran pitcher who was forced by injury to take his cuts one-handed for a period.

During a 15-year major league career between 1933-49, pitcher Schoolboy Rowe was a .263 hitter.

For a brief period in 1948, Rowe did considerably better than that – one hundred points higher, in fact – batting one-handed.

On May 5, the Phillies’ pitcher had the thumb of his left hand broken by a line drive from the bat of the Cubs’ Peanuts Lowrey.

While the thumb and wrist were put in a cast, the injury didn’t keep Rowe off the mound.

On May 25, Rowe was called in to relieve against the Pirates. He came up to bat in the eighth inning against Elmer Riddle.

According to The Sporting News’ Philadelphia correspondent Stan Baumgartner, “The fans, laughing when he first swung the bat with one hand, stared in amazement when he socked the second pitch over Stan Rojek’s head at short for a clean single.”

On June 5, Rowe started against the Cubs, who had Cliff Chambers on the mound.

In his first at-bat, Rowe drove a line single past Eddie Waitkus at first. He hit safely to left on his second trip. In his third time at bat he laid down a bunt and on his fourth trip to the plate he smashed a line drive to center but was robbed of a hit when Hal Jeffcoat made a shoestring catch. Rowe got the complete game win.

“It’s just like I always thought,” Rowe was quoted, “I can hit most of these cunny thumb pitchers with one hand tied behind my back.”

According to the TSN report, during the period in which Rowe wore the cast, he didn’t wear a glove on his left hand. He protected the thumb by taping a ten-penny spike to the cast and was able to knock down even hard-hit grounders and throw the batter out at first.

During the period in which Rowe was forced to bat one-handed, as near as I can determine from the stats, he was 4-for-11, batting .364.


When batting two-handed, Rowe was a good-hitting pitcher. He hit .300 or better three times: .303 in 1934, .312 in 1935 and .300 in 1943. 

Saturday, September 14, 2013

1953 Army-Penn program; 3 weeks, no bidders

As I've been divesting my 30+ year collection of sportscards and memorabilia one of the biggest surprises I've encountered was a total lack of interest in what I obviously once thought was a neat item.

Near the end of my active life as a collector I decided to pick up items that reflected my burgeoning interest in college football. I thought it would cool to collect 1950s game programs.

They seemed to offer a combination of colorful mid-century modern graphics with names and faces that I remember from my childhood days collecting football cards.

If the recent no-sale of one such program is any indication, I was really far ahead of the collecting curve or had completely missed the boat.

Recently I put up for auction on eBay one such program. I timed the auction to end after one week, on Aug. 31, at the start of this year's college football season. 

The program was for the Nov. 14, 1953, University of Pennsylvania homecoming game, with Army visiting. It's a 48-page magazine-format program with lots of player photos and colorful ads in nice condition.

The starting bid was $9.99. That auction had only two people view it, and generated no bids.

Thinking the starting bid may have been a bit steep -- I've been trying to list on eBay only items that make the time and effort to sell in that venue worthwhile -- I relisted the program at $4.99 with a Sept. 8 ending date.

I rechecked the category in which the auction was presented. It was listed under Sports Memorabilia, Cards and Fan Shop > Vintage Sports Memorabilia > Publications > Programs > College - NCAA. I don't think I could have listed in a better category.

This time absolutely nobody clicked open the auction, so there were no bids.

I have now relisted the program for another week, at the same starting bid of $4.99, ending Sept. 16. I'll keep you posted on the results.

As you can see from the accompanying pictures of front and back covers, and some of the interior pages, this program screams 1950s college football, with two of the more famed teams in the east. Granted there are no big names among the rosters, but this item should have struck a cord with some college collector.

I guess the whole experience just goes to show that I don't know everything there is to know about marketing sports collectibles in this day and age.




Thursday, September 12, 2013

TSN decried Veeck's "rookie" Paige


Uncommon commons: In more than 30 years in sportscards publishing I have thrown hundreds of notes into files about the players – usually non-star players – who made up the majority of the baseball and football cards I collected as a kid. Today, I keep adding to those files as I peruse microfilms of The Sporting News from the 1880s through the 1960s. I found these tidbits brought some life to the player pictures on those cards. I figure that if I enjoyed them, you might too.

            Followers of this blog may have discerned that I am a Satchel Paige admirer. After all, I have already created three custom/fantasy cards of Paige and have three or four more on my to-do list.
            I was, therefore, particularly interested in what The Sporting News had to say about Paige’s signing with the Cleveland Indians in July, 1948.
In the headline of a July 14 editorial, TSN publisher J.G. Taylor Spink, called Paige’s signing an “Ill-Advised Move.”
Spink led off with, “Many well-wishers of baseball emphatically fail to see eye to eye with the officials responsible for . . . the signing of Satchel Paige, the superannuated Negro pitcher, by Bill Veeck, publicity minded head of the Cleveland Indians, to ‘save the pennant’ for the Tribe.”
Spink continued, “No man should set himself up against the achievement of another man’s chances in life, be that other man Negro or white, Chinese or Indian.
“Any criticism by this publication of the addition of Paige to the pennant-seeking forces of the Cleveland club obviously is not based on Paige’s color.
“Certainly, no man at all familiar with the editorial policy of THE SPORTING NEWS and its reaction to the strivings of the Negro to gain a place in the major leagues, will question the motives of this paper.”
The publisher went on to lay out his bona fides on the subject of baseball integration, “It was THE SPORTING NEWS which last fall named Jackie Robinson the major league Rookie of the Year. THE SPORTING NEWS, and its publishers, too, went on record as favoring the entry of more Negro players when Robinson was signed by Branch Rickey for his Montreal subsidiary, and again when Jackie was moved up the Brooklyn club.
“In criticizing the acquisition of Satchel Paige  by Cleveland, THE SPORTING NEWS believes that Veeck has gone too far in his quest of publicity, and that he has done his league’s position absolutely no good insofar as public reaction is concerned.
“Paige said he was 39 years of ago (sic). There are reports that he is somewhere in the neighborhood of 50.
“It would have done Cleveland and the American League no good in the court of public opinion if, at 50, Paige were as Caucasian as, let us say, Bob Feller.
“To bring in a pitching ‘rookie’ of Paige’s age casts a reflection on the entire scheme of operation in the major leagues.
“To sign a hurler at Paige’s age is to demean the standards of baseball in the big circuits. Further complicating the situation is that suspicion that if Satchel were white, he would not have drawn a second thought from Veeck.”
Spink concluded, “William Harridge, president of the American League, would have been well within his rights if he had refused to approve the Paige contract.”
Veeck’s perspicacity in signing Paige was borne out as Satch threw to a 6-1 record with a save on a 2.48 ERA and the Indians won the 1948 World Championship.
Paige also proved to have been a shrewd financial investment for Veeck, whose outlay in bringing Paige to the Indians was said to have totaled $55,000.
Paige was reported to have received a $10,000 signing bonus, and a three-month contract calling for $5,000 per month. In addition, Veeck paid $15,000 to the Kansas City Monarchs for Paige’s contract and another $15,000 to Chicago promoter Abe Saperstein, who handled Paige’s bookings as a barnstormer.
While the Indians’ turnstiles would certainly have kept spinning as the team worked its way to the A.L. pennant, the boost in attendance every time Paige was announced as the starter proved to be an instant return on investment.
In his Aug. 3 start against the Senators, Paige helped set a new Municipal Stadium night-game record by drawing 72,434. He notched his second major league victory that night, beating Washington 5-3.
His next scheduled start was Aug. 13 in Chicago, when he beat the White Sox 5-0. Attendance set a record for a Chicago night game with 51,013 paid, and an unknown number of literal gate crashers who flooded the park when the crush of the crowd knocked down part of a fence.
A week later the Indians broke the previous Cleveland night-game record when Paige beat the White sox with a three-hit shutout before a paid attendance of 78,382.
After each of Paige’s successful outings, Veeck is said to have sent telegrams to Spink urging him to name Paige TSN’s Rookie of the Year.
In the Sept. 1 issue, TSN followed up with another Spink-bylined editorial.
By that time, Paige had run up a 5-1 record, albeit largely against second-division clubs.
In the later editorial, Spink wrote:

            THE SPORTING NEWS would make no change in its original editorial, except to express its admiration for any pitcher—white or colored—who at Paige’s age can gain credit for five victories over a period of six weeks in any league, major or minor. But it cannot express any admiration for the present-day standard of major league ball that makes such a showing possible. Why not build up those standards, instead of demeaning them further?
            All this raises the question of whether Satchel’s early successes are due to his sterling pitching abilities or to the fact that some major clubs still have a considerable distance to go before they attain prewar standards.
            Whatever may be the opinion as to the motives of publicity-expert Bill Veeck in signing Paige, there is no question that Ol’ Satch has brought a lot of color into the majors—and we don’t mean black. It’s the red on the faces of American League officials and partisan who have seen this veteran of the barnstorming trails giving lessons to the batters and other pitchers in the junior major.

 And, as much as Spink proclaimed himself Jackie Robinson’s champion, the ensuing 10 years would find TSN becoming more and more critical of Robinson the player and Robinson the man. Whether that was due solely to Robinson’s increasingly evident failings on both scores or whether Spink became unable to completely sublimate his Southern heritage cannot be definitively discerned 70 years later.



Tuesday, September 10, 2013

McCarthy archive yields players in unfamiliar uniforms

As I work my way through the 750+ photos of ballplayers shot by Detroit photographer J.D. McCarthy from the late 1950s through the early 1980s, some of my favorite "finds" are images of players from my childhood card collecting days in the uniforms of teams other than those which they are most commonly associated.(Wow . . . a 54-word sentence!).

I've often found myself thinking, "I never knew he played for them." In some cases "he" didn't. The McCarthy photos are rife with pictures taken in spring training of players trying to extend their major league days with a new team, or players who worked their way through the minor league system of one team, only to finally make the show with another.

I'd like to share two of my favorite such photo finds with you.

The first is a picture of Clem Labine with the New York Mets. 

The Mets were Labine's last team. 


After pitching for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers from 1950 through mid-June, 1960, Labine was traded to the Detroit Tigers. He was released by the Tigers two months later. He signed with the Pirates who, in turn, released him after the 1961 season.

The Mets signed him as a free agent for their inaugural season of 1962. He pitched only four innings for New York before being let go on May 1.

It's really too bad this McCarthy photo of Labine is in black-and-white; it would be fun to make a 1962-style custom card of him with the Mets. At that, it wouldn't be impossible for me to colorize the photo, but I just don't see such a project making it to the top of my to-do list.

The second "What's he wearing?" photo is Dick Schofield (Sr.) with the New York Yankees. 

Old J.D. was really on his toes to get pictures of Schofield as a Yankee. He played only 25 games with New York in 1966, between June 21 and Aug. 13. The Yankees acquired him in a trade with the Giants, and traded him away to the Dodgers.

The Yankees pictures were the only Schofield photos in the McCarthy trove. If there were pictures of him as a Cardinal (1953-58, 1968 and 1971), Pirate 1958-65), Giant (1965-66). Dodger (1966-67), Red Sox (1969-70) or Brewer (1971), somebody else got to them first.


Sunday, September 8, 2013

Bowmans also had only one capless player


In our last posting, we passed along a reader's observation that from 1951-1958 there was only one Topps baseball card that pictured a player not wearing a cap.

It turns out that based on the research of a fellow denizen of the net54basball.com vintage card and memorabilia forum, the same situation holds true for the entire run of Bowman's baseball cards, 1948-1955.

The only player who appears without a cap in Bowman is Milwaukee Braves catcher Ebba St. Claire, #34 in the 1953 black-and-white series.

As in the case with the league presidents in 1956-58 Topps, there is a non-player among the Bowmans who appears without a cap: American League supervisor of umpires Cal Hubbard.

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Topps trivia: Capless cards 1951-1958

One of my regular readers and fan of my custom/fantasy cards sent in an interesting bit of baseball card trivia that I had never realized.

Arn Mentz wrote, "(R)egarding Topps baseball cards from 1951 through 1958 -- every ball player has a baseball cap on forwards or backwards except #134 Joe Tipton from the 1952 Topps set. 

Arn added, "That is why when my brother and our friends were buying and collecting the 1959 cards (the year that Topps started using pics with no hats), I started collecting the 1958 set."

I'd guess that the situation with the Dodgers and Giants moving from New York to California after the 1957 season may have had a lot to do with this

Topps had to scramble to airbrush new cap logos on several dozen Giants and Dodgers cards in its 1958 set (and some of those are pretty rough). 

With expansion and possible franchise shifts looming, not to mention the possibility of an entirely new major league (Continental), Topps seems to have decided that adding a "capless" portrait to each photo shoot might prevent having to do hurried and expensive retouching later on.

Like Arn, I was never a fan of the capless photos.

Of course, there were capless subjects in the 1956-58 Topps baseball sets. League presidents Will Harridge (American) and Warren Giles (National) were pictured individually in 1956 and jointly in 1957-58 without hats.

I thought this was worth sharing with you.

Monday, September 2, 2013

1960 Fleer Babe Ruth photo source found

A baseball card collector probably always has a soft spot for his first Babe Ruth card.

I know that even today, when I am no longer actively collecting, I still get the urge to reacquire a 1960 Fleer Babe Ruth All-Time Greats card.

My first had been a wax-pack find as a nine-year-old baseball card nut. 

My dad had been especially generous in buying me packs of the Fleer ATGs. Almost every trip to one of the corner grocery-drug stores in the neighborhood yielded a pack.

On the walk home he would tell me stories about the "old-timers" whose cards I'd added to my collection. Those cards and that father-son bonding helped make me a lifelong fan of baseball history.

I recently discovered the source of the photograph that Fleer chose for that 1960 Ruth card. 

The photo was taken on June 20, 1948 at Yankee Stadium. The occasion was ostensibly the 25th anniversary of Yankee Stadium and a tribute to the World Champion 1923 Yankees, but in reality it was the team's send-off to its greatest star -- less than two months prior to Ruth's death.

Among the dozen or more photos published in the June 23 issue of The Sporting News was a photo headlined "Babe Takes One More Swing as Yank." It is evident that the TSN photo was snapped just prior to the follow-through shown on the Fleer card. That photo was uncredited in the paper.

Ruth also appeared on the front page of that issue, in a five-column presentation of the iconic photo of the Babe, leaning on Bob Feller's bat, addressing the crowd. That photo, however, was wrongly credited to Bob Olean of the New York Daily News. The following week, TSN ran a correction, crediting the picture to the N.Y. Herald-Tribune.