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Creation of this custom card required me to bend one of my cardinal rules of card-making. I strive to never make a card that is anachronistic; that is, that could not have been created by Topps, Bowman, etc., in the year represented.
That's why I've never made a Babe Ruth card is the 1958 Topps format, or a Gorman Thomas card in the style of 1955 Bowman.
My new "Tribal Elders" card is in the format of a 1959 Topps multi-player feature card (a term I invented 30+ years ago for a feature in Baseball Cards magazine).
While all three of the players pictured actually did play for the Milwaukee Braves in 1959, each had already appeared in the '59T set with another team: Mickey Vernon with the Indians, Ray Boone with the White Sox and Enos Slaughter as a N.Y. Yankee.
By the time the trio converged on the Milwaukee clubhouse, the 1959 baseball card-season was over. By the time the 1960 cards were being prepared, two of the three were no longer with the Braves.
Still, the black-and-white photo on which I based my card is just too good to ignore. It shows three All-Star veterans who you don't normally think of in a Braves' uniform. So I decided to stretch the 1959 card season and make this card in that classic Topps mid-century format.
Pretty much as it says on the back of my card, these veteran ballplayers were picked up by Milwaukee to bolster their chances at a three-peat of the National League pennant. At the time they joined Milwaukee, Vernon was just shy of his 42nd birthday. Slaughter was 43 (the oldest player in the majors), Boone was 36.
Vernon came over on April 11, just prior to the opening of the 1959 season. The Braves had sent pitcher Humberto Robinson to Cleveland in a trade. Milwaukee would use Vernon when a left-handed hitting first baseman was called for, and he provided insurance at the position for the injury-prone Joe Adcock.
Versatile Ray Boone was picked up on waivers on Aug. 20 from the Kansas City A's, for whom he had hit .273. While he was almost exclusively a first baseman at that stage of his career, Boone had earlier played at third base and shortstop. He still offered occasional power in his bat.
Slaughter didn't join the Braves until Sept. 11. He too came off the waiver wire, from the Yankees. The Braves acquired Slaughter because their regular left fielder, Wes Covington, went down with a torn ankle ligament; out for the season.
When play resumed after the (first) All-Star break, the Braves found themselves in a three-way pennant chase with the Giants and Dodgers, after having led the N.L. almost ever day since the season opener. They never dropped below third place and were never further behind than 4-1/2 games but it was a real dog fight.
The Braves ended the regular season tied with the L.A. Dodgers, then dropped a best-of-three playoff series.
As it turned out, the veterans acquired by Milwaukee didn't materially affect the outcome of the pennant race.
Vernon appeared in 74 games, almost all of them as a pinch-hitter. He batted just .220. In the second-game loss of the playoff series, he was unsuccessful in that role, striking out for the third out in the top of the ninth after Sandy Koufax had walked the bases loaded.
Ray Boone was also used principally as a pinch-hitter by Milwaukee. He did get three starts at first base to go along with 10 pinch-hit appearances. He batted .200 for Milwaukee.
Filling in for the downed Covington, Enos Slaughter started five games in left field and had six pinch-hit appearances, including both games, ineffectually, of the playoff series with the Dodgers. In his time with the Braves, Slaughter hit just .167.
Milwaukee released Slaughter and Vernon on Oct. 13, 1959.
Slaughter spent 1960 and 1961 as a minor league playing-manager. In 1960 he was skipper of the Cubs' Class AAA farm club at Houston. In 1961 the N.Y. Mets, set to begin NL play in 1962, hired Slaughter to manage their Class B team in the Carolina League. Slaughter's Raleigh Capitals ended the season in last place and did not have a single player who ever saw as much as a cup of coffee in the major leagues. Slaughter batted .341 in 41 pinch-hit appearances for the team.
Mickey Vernon was hired for 1960 as the Pirates first base coach. One of his special projects was to work with Dick Stuart to improve the slugger's fielding as a first baseman.
When the rosters expanded on Sept. 1, Vernon was tendered a player's contract. He appeared nine times as a pinch-hitter, getting one hit, a walk and an RBI. In the first base coach's box, Vernon was the first person to shake Bill Mazeroski's hand when Maz hit a walk-off home run to defeat the Yankees in the 1960 World Series.
In 1961 Vernon was named manager of the expansion Washington Senators. He was fired in mid-1963, later coaching the Pirates and Cardinals and working as a minor league manager for the KC/Oakland A's, the Braves and the Mets through 1971.
Ray Boone remained with the Braves until May 17, 1960, when he was traded to the Boston Red Sox. Aging and ailing knees prevented him from continuing as a major leaguer and in mid-September, he retired and took up scouting for Boston in his native San Diego area.
I'd had the Slaughter-Boone-Vernon photo in my files for a number of years before reconciling to the fact that any card I made with it would have been an impossibility for Topps in 1959, but it was just too good a concept not to pursue.
I've written here before (Sept. 18, 2014 blog) about what it was like to be a 7-year-old Milwaukee Braves fan finding a 1958 Topps Bob Hazle card in a wax pack.
Little did I know then that the Second Series of '58 Topps would hold another Braves rookie surprise -- card #164 Bob Taylor.
If I knew about Bob Taylor at all back then, it was in the context of his having signed a $100,000+ "bonus baby" contract in June, 1957, upon graduation from Metropolis High School in Illinois. The fact that he came from Metropolis -- the same as Superman -- was also memorable.
But as the Braves battled the Cardinals and Dodgers through the month of July before taking possession of first place, Taylor was largely forgotten.
While he made his major league debut on June 9 as a pinch-runner, we heard little of Taylor during the 1957 season. According to the back of his 1958 Topps card he appeared in seven games, scoring twice and failing to hit in his only at-bat.
As the Braves brought World Series glory to Wisconsin we forgot about Bob Taylor . . . until the Second Series of 1958 Topps hit the shelves. By the time we held a Taylor card in hand, however, he was nowhere to be seen in the Braves' box scores.
Prior to the '58 season, Baseball had written its bonus rules yet again, freeing those high-priced youngsters from two years of (usually) idleness on the big club's roster and bench. Moreover, the new rules were applied retroactively, allowing Milwaukee to send Taylor to the minors for much-needed professional experience.
Taylor had a good year at Class A Cedar Rapids in 1958, batting .297 with 22 home runs. During the season, an injured finger had forced him from behind the plate to the outfield. When the Braves recalled Taylor to Milwaukee in mid-September, it was largely to give left fielder Wes Covington some rest for the coming Series rematch with the Yankees.
On Sept, 27 Taylor got his first big league hit, a double off the Reds' Ted Wieand in a 6-1 win at County Stadium.
After spring training in 1959, Taylor was sent down to Class AA Atlanta. He split the season between catching and the outfield, but again lost time to an injured finger. He repeated his .297 batting average but had only four home runs in 99 games. There was no call-up to Milwaukee in 1959.
Taylor spent the 1960 season at Louisville, the Braves' Class AAA team, where he was part of the team that won the American Association pennant and defeated Toronto in the Junior World Series. Taylor again divided his time between catching and the outfield, batting .270. He led the Colonels with 17 home runs, 26 doubles and 80 RBIs.
He spent the off-season in the Army, missing all of spring training. Taylor spent the entire 1961 season with Milwaukee but appeared in only 20 games, mostly as a pinch-hitter. In the final game of the season, Taylor got his first major league home run, a game-typing blast off the Giants' Mike McCormick. The homer wasn't enough to lift his BA over the .200 mark, however, and he ended the season at .192.
Recalled to service with the 32nd Infantry after the season, Taylor didn't rejoin the Braves for the 1962 season until Aug. 11. He was again relegated largely to pinch-hit duty until early September when, he got his first real chance to play every day, first in left, then in right field.
He appeared in 20 games for the '62 Braves, garnering just a dozen hits. Five of those hits, however, came in a single game, Sept. 15 in a 9-8 win against the expansion Houston Colt .45s. That perfect day at the plate raised his season's batting average from .156 to .270. He ended the season at .255.
As the 1963 season approached, it looked like it might finally be Taylor's year in Milwaukee. He had won the left field job with a torrid spring training, but as the season opener neared his was again bitten by the injury bug. Playing out of position at third base in a March 17 spring training game, a bad-hop grounder broke his collarbone.
It was June 18 before he returned to the Milwaukee lineup. He played in just 16 games, getting above the .100 batting mark for just one game, ending the season -- and his time with the Braves -- with a .067 BA.
For what is now believed to have been a $119,000 bonus (including a $20,000 payment to his father), the Braves had Taylor's services in just 67 major league games in which he'd had just 20 hits.
At the winter meeting following the 1963 season, Milwaukee drafted pitcher Jack Smith from the Dodgers' organization. To make roster room they sold Taylor to the fledgling N.Y. Mets for $30,000.
Taylor played six more years in the majors, with New York (1963-67), the Angels (1967) and Royals (1969-70) mostly as a back-up catcher, bouncing between the big clubs and their AAA farms.
Taylor retired after the 1971 season, eventually earning a Master's Degree. He taught and coached at the high school and college levels. He died in June, 2012, at the age of 73.
For as few games as he played with the Braves, Taylor had a decent number of Topps baseball cards, a trend that continued through his later travels.
After his rookie card in the 1958 Topps set, Taylor appeared with the Braves in the 1961, 1962 and 1963 sets. On his 1961 card, his nickname of "Hawk" appears on front. He is also identified as "Hawk" on his 1965 Topps card, which, like his 1964 card, pictures him with the Mets. The Hawk nickname is on the front of Taylor's 1968 Topps card (and the Canadian and Venezuelan versions), which pictures him with the California Angels. His final career-contemporary Topps card is in the 1969 set, as a Royal.
Both during and after his playing days, Taylor was included in a number of collectors' issue sets.
You can't blame Topps for not producing Hawk Taylor cards in 1959 and 1960; he spent both of those seasons in the minor leagues.
If Topps had included Taylor in the 1959 set, I think my recently completed custom card provides a pretty fair idea of what it might have looked like.
Many vintage-card collectors know the story of why there are no Topps cards of Maury Wills as a Los Angeles Dodger.
The official line is that when Topps began signing players in 1951, their scout didn't think Wills had what it took to make the major leagues, and no contract was proffered to him.
For a number of years, it looked as if the scout was right, Wills was a banjo-hitting (also, coincidentally, a banjo-playing) utility player in the low minors. The Dodgers' farm people kept him moving around in an attempt to find a position that he could field without being a detriment to the defense.
But Wills always could run, and as he worked his way slowly up the Brooklyn-L.A. farm system, he became a proficient base stealer.
After nine years in the bushes, he was finally ready for The Show. He credited Spokae manager Bobby Bragan, for whom he played in 1958 with turning him into a switch-hitter, paving his way for promotion to the big club. Wills burst onto the big-league stage in time to help the Dodgers win their first World's Championship in L.A. He was integral to three more Dodgers pennants, piling up an MVP, multiple All-Star selections, a few Gold Gloves and six consecutive stolen-base titles before being traded to the Pirates for 1967.
While there were no Maury Wills cards to be found in Topps packs until 1967, kids still had a few options.
If you lived in SoCal, Wills could be found on a dozen or more local/regional baseball cards and team-issued collectibles. Nationally, he was available on Post cereal and Jell-O box backs 1961-63. When Fleer made a run at Topps monopoly on current-player bubblegum cards in 1963, Maury Wills,, fresh from his MVP win, was their main attraction.
Over the years I've been asked to create some of the "missing" Topps Maury Wills cards; it was never high on my to-do list. Besides, lots of other custom-card guys were filling the gaps (though few, if any, have undertaken to make the card backs).
Recently, however, one of my most regular followers made a good case, and the availability of a couple of really nice circa 1960 color photos compelled me to action.
Thus you have here my take on 1959 and 1963 Topps-style Maury Wills cards.
These will likely be the only Topps-style cards of Wills that I undertake, though it is tempting to see what I could do to improve what Topps did in 1969 making an Expos card of Wills with a heavily airbrushed Pirates uniform.
While working on my '63-style Wills card, I noticed that Topps was not entirely consistent in some of its details between earlier and later series.
For instance, on some cards the player position on front and back was spelled out, while on some cards it was abbreviated. On some Dodgers cards, the team name was spelled out, "LOS ANGELES DODGERS", while on some cards it was abbreviated "L.A. DODGERS".
In the biographical data, sometimes the birth date was spelled out, as "Oct. 2, 1932", and sometimes is was presented as "10/2/32".
Another curious inconsistency is that beginning with card #512, in the midst of the high-numbers, the cards included a vertical rule in the stats box between the TEAM and LEA. columns. Strange, eh?
For my 1963 Wills card, I picked and chose the options that best suited my design eye.
Since I've now created templates for 1959 All-Star Rookie and 1963 Topps cards, you may see more of them in the future.
Yesterday I explained why I am compelled to create custom cards for former Milwaukee Braves pennant-chase hero Bob Hazle.
Shown above is a custom card I created showcasing Hazle as a Detroit Tiger in 1959, the year after he was sold by the Braves.
Today's fans and collectors may not know the significance of Hazle's nickname, "Hurricane."
Here's what I wrote nearly a decade ago in my Bleacher Bum column in the Dec. 2, 2005, Sports Collectors Digest.
Why 'Hurricane'?
The sporting press was more colorful in the 1950s, although the era of great baseball nicknames was drawing to a close. Bob Hazle got one of the last really good ones. It wasn't just alliterative appeal that made it memorable, there was historic and geographic context. Hazle was born in Laurens S.C., and played his first season of pro ball in Columbia, S.C., in 1950.
What Hurricane Katrina is to the current generation. Hurricane Hazel was to the previous one. Besides its massive toll of death and destruction, Hazel stuck in the national psyche because it hit at a time when television coverage of such human tragedies was coming of age. In 1954, for the first time, U.S. households with a television set surpassed the 50 percent mark.
The National Hurricane Center had only begun officially naming tropical storms in 1953. The following year Hazel was up in the alphabetical rotation when a storm began forming in the Caribbean on Oct. 5.
A week later Hazel hit Haiti, leaving an estimated 1,000 dead or missing. A handful more died in Bermuda. The storm struck the Carolina Coast on Oct. 14, making landfall near the border of North and South Carolina. Hazel's winds were a sustained 150 miles per hour and the Category 4 blow was preceded by a storm surge of over 14 feet.
Hazel was an especially fast-moving storm, but unpredictable in the path that it cut. More than 90 Americans died in 12 hours as the storm raged through Virginia, uprooted trees on the White House lawn and sliced through western New York state before crossing Lake Ontario and becoming the most famous storm in Canadian history.
Toronto was pounded with winds of nearly 70 mph, but it was the accompanying deluge that did the deadliest damage. Nearly eight inches of rain fell in 24 hours, with another three inches the next day -- an estimated 300 million tons of water. Flooding claimed 81 lives and 4,000 families were left homeless in southern Ontario.
In the U.S. and Canada, damage from the storm, adjusted to 2014 dollars, was more than $1.9 billion, putting it among the top 20 to that time. As would become policy following such a deadly storm, the name "Hazel" was retired from hurricane nomenclature.
Tomorrow I'll show you the last of my Bob Hazle custom cards and tell you about the time I met him at a card show.
You can purchase this card. You can obtain a copy of this custom card for $12.50, postpaid. E-mail me at scbcguy@yahoo.com for ordering details. Illustrated lists of all available custom baseball and football cards can be found on my blog post of July 17.
