skip to main |
skip to sidebar
In my reading of early 1950s microfilm of The Sporting News I learned a great deal about baseball's first $100,000 bonus baby, Paul Pettit, who signed out of high school with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1950.
Arm injuries early in his career -- some sources say even before he ever pitched an inning in pro ball -- derailed what had been projected to be a great future.
On March 17 on this blog I presented my 1956-Topps style fantasy card of Pettit later in his career as a position player with the Hollywood Stars of the Pacific Coast League.
My new 1952 Topps-style custom card imagines what Pettit's Topps rookie card might have looked like.
For as big a splash as Pettit made going from high school superstar to the pro game, there are not all that many photos of him readily available in a Pirates uniform; certainly none in color. I colorized a pitching-pose photo and it seemed to fit in well with the horizontal format used for some Topps cards in 1952.
The stats box on back is not what I would ideally like to have there. Certain pitching statistics such as runs allowed and strikeouts for his three minor league stops were beyond my ability to hunt them down. I would have preferred the stat box to have lines for his 1951 cup of coffee with Piittsburgh and for his cumulative 1950-51 minor league numbers.
As it is, I'm not unhappy with how this custom card -- my 12th in the 1952 Topps style -- turned out.
It's taken me nearly four years but I've now completed the second of a real fantasy card series.
This purports to be a 1956 Topps-style regional form the Donovan's Drive-In chain of Southern California.
You can read the back story on my blog posting of May 16, 2012, here: Donovan's '56 Maz.
Some years back in my perusal of microfilms of 1950 back issues of The Sporting News, I read the contemporary accounts of the first $100,000 pitching phenom, Paul Pettit. His story epitomizes the bonus baby phenomenon of that era.
For their $100,000 gamble on a high school kid, the Pittsburgh Pirates got a return of exactly one major-league victory in the 12 games in which Pettit appeared at the big-league level in 1951 and 1953.
My fantasy card looks back to the 12 seasons Pettit played in the minors. Early on he was a pitcher, then, after arm injuries, he hung on as an outfielder and first baseman in the higher minors. He played in five seasons for the Pirates' Pacific Coast League farm club, the Hollywood Stars.
If you're a veteran vintage baseball card collector, you may recognize the background of my new card as that used by Topps for Dale Long's 1956 card.
There are no career-contemporary baseball cards for Pettit. I'd like to make a 1953 Topps-style card, but I have yet to find a suitable photo, though I do have the germ of an idea that piques my interest.
For all the ink that he got as an impossibly handsome high school hero, there really isn't a lot of material on Pettit to be readily found on the internet. Over the years I set aside dozens of notes about his baseball struggles, but I don't want to author a definitive biographical sketch.
I'm just going to share my fantasy card creation of one of baseball's most interesting players of the early 1950s.
