The night I "met" Fuzzy Thurston

Menus, circa late 1960s, from the Left Guard restaurant, ownjed by
Fuzzy Thurston and Max McGee.

My two most recent blogs have detailed my attempts to create custom cards of Lombardi-dynasty Green Bay Packers great Fuzzy Thurston.

I actually met Thurston one night . . . sort of.

It must have been about 1971, when Thurston was about 38 years old. I was in college then, and working for a company that traveled around the state of Wisconsin taking physical inventory at supermarkets and other retail stores.

Our crew was headquartered out of Fond du Lac, where I was born and raised. At the edge of town was the "Left Guard," a supper club that was one of a handful Thurston owned along with teammate Max McGee.

One night after we had finished work, our crew stopped at the Left Guard for a drink. There were four or five of us in the car, which was driven by Bill, whose last name I no longer recall. Bill, at that time, really needed to be a "Friend of Bill." It's sobering (no pun intended) to think of all the miles we drove back then with Bill behind the wheel in various states of intoxication.

It was rather late on a weeknight when we entered the bar area of the restaurant. Besides the bartender, I don't recall seeing anybody else in the place . . . except for Fuzzy Thurston.

Thurston was sitting on a stool at the far end of the bar, with his stocking feet propped up on the bar.

After a few minutes, and probably into his second drink, Bill looked over, caught Thurston's eye, and said, "Jesus, you're a sloppy son of a bitch"

That night I witnessed what was usually reserved for opposing NFL linemen, Fuzzy Thurston in action. 

He came off his stool like a shot, grabbed Bill by the collar and belt and gave him the classic bum's rush out of the place, using Bill's head to open two sets of doors. 

Thurston came back in, and resumed his place at the end of the bar while we filed out without a word, helped Bill back behind the wheel and drove back to the nearby mall where we had parked our cars.

Come to think of it, and I may be misremembering because this happened 40 years ago, one of us may have said to Fuzzy as we were leaving, "Thanks for not killing him."

Second-choice custom for Fuzzy

As I posted on Saturday, I had long intended to create a 1958 Topps-style football card of Fuzzy Thurston with the Baltimore Colts. A lack of a suitable foil has sidelined that effort, but since I did find a decent picture of Thurston during his college days, I've gone ahead and created a '55 All-American custom.

In researching Thurston, I was surprised to find he didn't play college football until he was a junior at Valparaiso University in 1954. He had been recruited to Valpo as a basketball player. During and after his NFL career, Thurston continued to be a fixture on the Green Bay Packers charity basketball squads.

With the Crusaders in 1954, when they won the Heartland Collegiate Conference in 1954, Thurston was named an AP "Little All-American." As team captain in 1955, he repeated as a Little All-American and was named the HCC Most Valuable Lineman. In his two years at Valpo, the team was 17-7-2.

Thurston was a fifth round pick (#54 overall) of the Philadelphia Eagles in the 1956 NFL draft,but never played for them. He spent two years in military service before joining the Baltimore Colts in 1958. His play during the last four games of the stretch drive helped the Colts to a World's Championship.

Just three days into the Colts' training camp in 1959, Thurston was traded to the Green Bay Packers for linebacker Marv Matuszak. New head coach Vince Lombardi wanted Fuzzy to anchor the offensive line which was integral to the "run to daylight" offense he brought to the Packers' dynasty of the 1960s.

Thurston won five more championship rings with the Packers (1961, 1962, 1965, 1966, 1967) before retiring after Super Bowl II.

In my next posting, I'll tell you about the time I "met" Fuzzy Thurston.

1958 Fuzzy Thurston custom card -- fail!

Fuzzy Thurston, who starred with the Green Bay Packers during the Lombardi
Dynasty, got his NFL start with the champion 1958 Colts. In this reproductrion
of a brewery premium  photo, he's #64 just to the right of center in the third row.

Well, doody!

It was only a couple of years ago that I learned that 1960s Packer lineman Fuzzy Thurston had actually begun his NFL career as part of the World's Champion 1958 Baltimore Colts.

Since Thurston only appeared on two mainstream football cards, 1962 and 1963 Topps, and a 1962 Post cereal card, I thought it would be neat to create a custom card of Thurston as a Colt in the 1958 Topps format.

I scoured all the usual resources for a picture of Thurston as a Colt and came up empty until I discovered he was included in a team photo premium issued in 1959 by the Colts' radio-TV sponsor National Bohemian beer.

Originals of that premium picture are rare and costly. I thought I'd found a solution when I saw an 8 x 10 reproduction offered on eBay. I bought the repro and stuck it in my "futures" file.

When enlarged to "card size" the image of Thurston
scanned from the reproduced premium photo is not
sharp enough to be used on a custom card.

When I recently completed by first 1958-style football custom (Dave Hanner, presented in my blog on Jan. 18), I decided the time was now to work on the '58 Thurston.

I dug out the photo, scanned it . . . and was greatly disappointed when the quality of the image proved totally unacceptable. Thurston's image on the team photo is about 3/4" square. Because my photo was a picture of a picture, when enlarged to about 2", the player scan was, well, fuzzy.

Perhaps some day I'll have access to one of the original National Bohemian premiums, which are larger (though I don't know the actual size) and may yield a more usable scan.

I did find a nice college photo of Thurston with Valparaiso, so I guess I'll work on a 1955 All-American card. Watch this space for the result.

And, I have a couple of other subjects planned for 1958-style customs.

My first '58 football custom honors Hawg Hanner

I've had a few 1958 Topps-style football cards on my to-do list of customs for a long while. The recent discovery of a Topps Vault photo of a long-time favorite 1950s-60s Green Bay Packer was the impetus to actually get a '58 tribute into production.,

The 1958 Topps football set was a childhood favorite. It was right in my collecting heyday; I was seven years old when the cards hit the street.

Years later, after I had become involved in publishing books, magazines and papers for sportscards collectors, I was made aware of a more local connection with the '58T set.

Pioneer card dealer Larry Fritsch told me that many of the photos of Green Bay Packers that appear in the 1958 Topps set were taken in his hometown of Stevens Point, Wis., in 1957. At that time the Packers conducted their pre-season training camp at what was then the Wisconsin State University-Stevens Point campus, about an hour and a half west of Green Bay. The Topps photographer caught the Packers while they worked out at the city's Bukolt Park. Larry drove me over to the park and some of the background and structures that are shown on the Topps cards were still in evidence.

The posed-action photo of Dave Hanner that I used for my first '58-style custom football card was undeniably from that Summer of '57 photo shoot. However, it was never used on a Topps card.

Hanner appeared on 1954 and 1955 Bowman cards, and on 1957 and 1959-60 Topps cards. I guess we'll never know why Topps skipped him in 1958, but I think my custom card helps fill that void.

As I mentioned, Dave Hanner was one of my favorite Packers of that era. Maybe it was his nickname, "Hawg," that paid tribute to his college days as a two-time All Southwestern Conference lineman for the Arkansas Razorbacks. Football players today are apparently too cool or too professional to have old-school nicknames.  

Hanner was the Packers' 5th round draft pick in 1952 and spent more than 40 years with Green Bay as a defensive tackle (1952-64), defensive line coach (1965-71), defensive co-ordinator (1972-74), assistant head coach (1975-79) and scout (1982-96).

A fact that I found amazing while I was googling Hanner's career was that from 1952-64, the Packers played in 167 regular-season and NFL Championship games, and Hanner played in 163 of them -- remarkable given the propensity for injury among NFL linemen. The four games Hanner missed came at the end of his playing days, one in 1961, and three in his final season, 1964.  

What I didn't find while surfing the 'net was any confirmation of the well-known childhood "fact" that Hanner was the cousin of pro wrestler Dick the Bruiser, who, playing under his real name of Dick Afflis, had been Hanner's teammate on the Packers from 1952-54.

While poking around on the internet, I was also struck by the number of fond personal remembrances of Hanner by family, friends and former teammates. You can find some of them here:
http://www.hognation.net/greats/hanner.html .

As I said earlier, my Hanner custom is the first of several 1958-style customs that I'm planning. Now that I have the template down, the others should come more easily. Watch this space.

I took a vacation from the hobby

From 12/22-1/9 I was on vacation in Hawaii. I had no computer access, so I had no contact with the various hobby forums. I had no way to work on my blog. I also couldn't do any work on custom cards.


Hey, I survived.


Since I quit working a year ago I haven't really been able to get into the swing of retirement. I always thought I'd have time to read, to learn to play the Call of Duty video games my wife bought for my birthday some years ago, etc.


Instead, I found myself spending 3-4 hours a day on hobby forums, and obsessively turning out custom cards. I was "working" on the hobby on a nearly full-time basis.


I think that two-week hiatus from hobby action will help me put this whole retirement thing in perspective and give me more balance in my remaining years.


What it means to this blog is that I'll be posting a bit less frequently than I have in the past. I hope you'll find the longer interims between entries isn't intolerable.


Stay tuned in the next few days for my presentation of a new-to-me format for my custom card creations . . . 1958 Topps football.

Kurt Russell missed the minor league card era

I'm a fan of Kurt Russell's movie and TV work. He's shown great acting range in more than 50 years on the big and small screen. One of my favorites is his role as Wyatt Earp in the 1993 Tombstone.

While he hasn't had any major baseball-related roles, his friend Ron Shelton (himself a former minor leaguer, 1967-71) is said to have written the role of Crash Davis in the 1988 movie Bull Durham for Russell. The studio insisted on Kevin Costner for the role, however.

Kurt Russell spent his early 20s shuttling between Hollywood and the Pacific Northwest as he tried to decide whether he was an actor or a ballplayer . . . or a little of each.

Russell had been signed to a 10-year contract by Walt Disney's studio in 1960 when he had a part in the Elvis Presley movie, It Happened at the World's Fair. He worked regularly in TV and movies for the next decade, but when that contract expired, he decided to give professional baseball a try.

He signed with the California Angels and spent most of three seasons in the short-season Northwest League.
He was a second baseman on the Bend Rainbows in 1971, at the age of 20. He played in 51 games, the most he would play in any one season. For Bend he batted .285 with one home run, though he had 11 doubles.

For the 1972 season he remained in the Northwest League, with Walla Walla, part of the San Diego Padres organization. In 29 games he hit .325 with no power.

He was back on the Angels' NWL team in Portland to start the 1973 season, in the process of being converted to an outfielder. he batted .299, again with little power, in 23 games before being called up to the Angels' AA team, the El Paso Sun Kings of the Texas League.

He played in just six games at El Paso, back at second base, batting .563 when an injury to his throwing shoulder effectively ended his hopes of a career in pro ball. (Though he did make a token at-bat with Portland in 1977, when the team was operating independently, with 38-year-old Jim Bouton as their pitching star.attraction.)

The totality of Kurt Russell minor league career consisted of 110 games over four seasons. His career average was .292 and he had two home runs (one each in 1971 and 1973). The lower minor leagues didn't keep great stats in those days, so I don't know what his fielding was like.

It's too bad that Kurt Russell's minor league career preceded the heyday of minor league baseball card issue. TCMA was only in its second year of what would be some 15 years of team-set production in 1973, and had not yet expanded its reach into the Northwest League. Few minor league teams in 1973 were doing their own locally sponsored sets. The Standard Catalog of Minor League Baseball Cards shows TCMA only set in '73 was for the Cedar Rapids Astros, while local entrepreneurs sponsored sets for the Sherbrooke Pirates, Syracuse Chiefs, Tacoma Twins, Three Rivers Eagles and Wichita Aeros.

All of those early Seventies minor league sets were quite crude compared to the work that would follow by Mike Cramer, ProCards, Best, Classic and even Fleer and Upper Deck in the 1990s.

When I found a picture on the internet of Kurt Russell in the uniform of the El Paso Sun Kings, I decided to invest a few hours in creating a fantasy Kurt Russell TCMA card. I had to improvise a bit for the team logo on the card back, as I could not find a contemporary rendering of the logo, and had to work from the uniform on a photo of uncertain vintage.

The facsimile autograph was lifted from a later photograph, so I don't know how closely it resembles what he would have signed in the early 1970s.

Holiday hiatus

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

I'm taking a Christmas break with my family and will be away from my blog for a couple of weeks.

I expect to return some time after the first week of January.

My 4th and final Don Shula custom

By now maybe you're sick of seeing what Don Shula player cards might have looked like if Bowman and Topps had included him in their sets of the 1950s.

This represents what I'm quite sure will be my last custom card tribute to Shula, the player.

It is also my first-ever attempt at replicating the 1954 Bowman format, which was one of my favorites as a kid.

If you're not intimately familiar with 1954 Bowman cards, you might not have caught on that virtually all of Baltimore Colts cards in that set appear to have been photographed on the same practice field on the same day, with lots of blue sky and some green trees in the background.

Like Bowman, I had to colorize my team publicity action pose of Shula to make my card. For the background, I used the original '54B of Fred Enke.

I'm currently planning to introduce another new format to my body of custom card work with my next cards -- 1958 Topps. I've got at the top of my to-do list a Green Bay Packer or two that didn't make the cut in 1958, along with some rookie cards of players that were overlooked.

Host's auto is key to '59 Home Run Derby

One of the great baseball card regional issues of the late 1950s was the 20-card set issued in conjunction with the syndicated television series, Home Run Derby. 


The TV show was taped after the end of the 1959 baseball season and aired prior to the 1960 season. Because it was a syndicated program, it ran on different dates in different TV markets.


There's a lot of good information on the show itself available via a Google-search, so I won't go into that here.


Because the show was principally sponsored by American Motors, a primary venue for the distribution of the black-and-white, blank-back, postcard-size cards was local Rambler auto dealerships. The cards were probably distributed a few at a time to coincide with the appearance of the pictured players on the TV show.


Original Home Run Derby cards are scarce today, though a reasonable facsimile of the set can be had because Card Collectors Company issued a complete-set reprint in 1988, about the time ESPN first re-ran the entire original TV series. The series is now available on DVDs.


While it would seem to be possible to put together a complete set of Home Run Derby originals that had been authentically autographed by the pictured players, it would be a great challenge and a very expensive proposition. 


Nine of the 19 players pictured are Hall of Famers; eleven of the players are deceased. Gil Hodges was the first player in the set to die, in 1972. Three died in 1982, Ken Boyer, Jackie Jensen and Wally Post. Two players died in 1995, Bob Allison and Mickey Mantle. Eddie Mathews, Dick Stuart, Jim Lemon Harmon Killebrew and Duke Snider passed away between 2001 and today.


The real challenge to completing an autographed set of Home Run Derby cards, however, would be acquiring one of the show's host, Mark Scott. Besides the natural tendency of baseball fans and collectors to be more interested in getting signatures of star players and hometown favorites, Scott's autograph is probably the rarest because he died shortly after the TV show had finished its initial run in 1959-60.   


Scott died on July 13, 1960, at his home in Burbank, Calif., of what The Sporting News described as a "heart ailment." He was 45 years old.


I always thought Scott made an affable host for the TV show, making small talk with the ballplayers as their opponent of the week was at the plate. 


Mark Scott had an extensive background in sports broadcasting. He lettered in football at the University of Illinois, and began working in radio at Champaign, Ill., and South Bend, Ind., before moving on to do sports at WCAV in Norfolk, Va.


In 1952 he moved to Hollywood to do play-by-play for the Pacific Coast League Hollywood Stars and other assignments on KFWB radio.


At the time of his death, Scott was working with TV producer and star Jack Webb to secure the L.A. franchise in the nascent Continental Baseball League. 


Assembling a set of Home Run Derby cards today would be enough of a challenge -- with even mid-grade examples of the biggest stars selling for several hundred dollars each -- but it looks like putting together an autographed set would be a lifetime's work.

Home Run Derby host Mark Scott was photographed
during filming of the TV series with Willie Mays
and Mickey Mantle.

As long as I was on the subject . . .

I hadn't intended to do a custom card of Don Shula in the 1955 Bowman format, but when yet another good photo of the legendary coach in his playing days turned up, I decided to add a fourth Shula custom to my body of work.

The '55 joins my 1951-style "rookie" card, a 1954 Bowman-style and a 1957 Topps-style Redskins card. I think this will mark the end of my Don Shula custom card binge.

I've always been a big fan of the 1955 Bowman football set, so I really didn't need much of an excuse to add a Don Shula card to my "updating" of that classic issue. My Shula custom joins '55B-style cards of Otto Graham, Raymond Berry, Max McGee and two John Unitas as a Steeler, one in horizontal format, one in vertical.

In coming years I expect I'll add to my '55B-style collection. I'd like to find a picture of Marion Motley as a Steeler at the end of his career for that purpose.

Metkovich moonlighted in movies

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.


Journeyman outfielder George Metkovich was a California boy who got his start in show business before he got his start in professional baseball.


As a 17-year-old student and star basketball player at Fremont High School in Los Angeles, Metkovich landed a bit part in a basketball movie for MGM in 1938. He later said he was paid $350 for the role, and earned his Screen Actors Guild union card.


The next year he was signed by the Detroit Tigers and played in their Class D and C teams during the 1939 season. He was released by the Tigers and signed by the Boston Bees/Braves. He played most of the next three seasons with Class B Hartford. 


In 1943 he was sold to the San Francisco Seals, then in mid-season was traded to the Boston Red Sox, for whom he made his big league debut. 


Metkovich spent the next 15 seasons bouncing between the Pacific Coast League and various major league teams: Cleveland in 1947, the White Sox in 1949, the Pirates 1951-53 and the Braves in 1954.


During the off-seasons, Metkovich wintered in Los Angeles and appeared in more than a dozen movies, usually  typecast as a ballplayer.


By 1952, he was getting $100 a day as an actor. He explained that if he had to do any stunt work, such as "sliding or bumping into somebody," he earned an extra $55. That scale was about equal to what he was making as a veteran ballplayer.


Metkovich liked to say that in his movie roles he worked with some of the most beautiful women in the world. He ranked young Elizabeth Taylor at #1 in that group. Metkovich said that Doris Day was the nicest female star with whom he worked. He said that between takes she would play catch and pepper with the guys on the set.


In 1951 he worked with Ronald Reagan in the Grover Cleveland Alexander biopic, The Winning Team. Also that year he filmed with Esther Williams in Million Dollar Mermaid. The previous year he had appeared as baseball coach/clown Al Schacht in a Fred Astaire musical, Three Little Words.


Other movies in which Metkovich appeared were Gilda, The Stratton Story, The Jackie Robinson Story and Angels in the Outfield.


Following his playing days on the Coast, Metkovich managed the San Diego Padres from 1957-60. He died in 1995.

Custom '51B-style Shula rookie . . . almost wasn't

This is the second of my trilogy of custom cards of Don Shula in his NFL playing days. It almost didn't see the light of day.

I spent most of an afternoon working with a black-and-white posed action photo of Shula in the early 1950s when he was with the Cleveland Browns. The photo suffered from a lack of contrast, so colorizing it and converting its look from a photograph to "artwork" was more difficult than usual and I was not satisfied with the initial result.

The 1951 Bowman Jim "Bulldog" Turner card provided the background on my Shula custom. When I had placed the player photo on the background, I still was not happy with the result. I brooded on it overnight and had pretty much decided to scrap the project. The next morning, I opened up the file for one last look and found it was not as bad as I remembered. 

Bumping up significantly the color intensity on both the player and the background got me a lot closer to what I think a 1951 Bowman should look like. 

While I wouldn't tout my 1951-style Shula rookie as the epitome of my custom card work, the final card will be printed and placed in my album.

There's one more Shula player card on my drawing board, it should be available for viewing in a few days.

My first '57 football custom

I've expanded by repertoire once again, creating my custom football card in the format of 1957 Topps.

As you can see, the subject is Don Shula, in his final year of playing in the NFL, and his only year with the Redskins.

I was never a big fan of the 1957 Topps football set . . . not as a six-year-old kid and not as a 60-year-old custom card creator. But there have been a couple of players in my photo file that would have been appropriate for a 1957 card, so I thought I'd create the template and kick it off with Don Shula.

Since Topps reprinted the 1957 football set in its entirety (along with the 1956) in a 1994 Archives presentation, you'd think finding the parts to build a Shula card would be a piece of cake. Not quite.

Topps did a great job with the 1957 reprints, but they look "too new" to strip down for the elements I need to make a card. Still, the reprints allowed me to see the backs of each card in the set to find those that could contribute to my custom. Specifically, I was looking for cartoons that could be re-purposed for a Don Shula card. I chose to go with a cartoon that ran on the back of the 1957 Raymond Berry card (the college cartoon) and a piece of the cartoon (the bus) that ran on the back of the 1956 Harlon Hill card.

By searching for those cards on the internet, I was able to glean images of the backs of the originals and work them into my Shula back design. 

Notice however, that in making the 1957 reprint set, Topps changed the typeface on the player name on front. While I wasn't able to find an exact match for the original name type, I found that Rockwell Condensed Bold adequately fills the bill and the difference between the two is likely noticeable only to a print professional comparing an original '57 and my Shula custom. 

The portrait half of my card was taken from a "Chalkboard Legends" subset card from the 1994 Roger Staubach's NFL Football set from the Ted Williams Card Company.

The action photo at right on my card probably started out as a team promotional/press photo taken in 1953 when the Baltimore Colts joined the NFL. If you're familiar with 1954 Bowman football, you'll recognize the format and background of the photo as being similar to many of the Colts' cards in that great vintage set.

You'll be seeing that photo again in the near future, when I've finished a 1954 Bowman-style card of Shula with the Colts. Creating a custom in that format will be another first for me.

Thoughts sought on modern collecting

I  received  an email from a reader the other day seeking my thoughts on how to approach card collecting in today's hobby milieu. He wrote:

Hello Mr. Lemke,

I came across your blog and figured I drop you an email. I am 34 years old and have collected cards since 1987. Unfortunately I grew up in the junk era and have accumulated many cards from the late 80s thru 90s.

I have since tried to revamp my collection in order to focus better – I still need some more focusing in my opinion but would like to hear your thoughts. Here is what I collect:

• Michael Jordan cards – mostly commons and inserts (I may stop this collection and save up for a rookie card instead)
• Yankee cards – Jeter rookies and commons/inserts, Mo rookies and commons and inserts and cards of any Yankee player. I have also tried to stop buying the average Yankee cards and instead will buy a common or insert of a great – Mantle, Joe D, Lou G, Yogi etc.
• Commons/Inserts of baseball HOF
• Thru the mail autographs

So that being said I have lots or commons/insert Jordan, Yankees and baseball HOF. I want to have a collection that I can pass on to my kids that will have some value. I love the vintage cards but they are too pricey but sometimes I wonder if I am wasting my money with what I currently collect.

Thoughts, ideas, suggestion are welcome. Tell me a little about your collection.

  

Pete Pagliaro

In most ways, I'm not really the guy to ask about this subject, since I am no longer a "collector," and have not been for nearly 20 years.


I began collecting cards in the mid-1950s. I bought Topps and Bowman bubblegum packs of baseball, football and non-sports cards at the corner store. I persuaded my mother to buy Johnston cookies for the Braves cards packaged inside, and I studied the backs of Post cereal boxes for the cards of favorite players. I traded with my brothers and other kids at school and around the neighborhood.


As kid collectors go, my interest waned rather early, by the time I was 11-12 years old -- say around 1962 --the first phase of my collecting days was over. 


My interest in cards returned in the late 1970s, when a coin collector who I saw regularly at shows around the Midwest introduced me to Sports Collectors Digest, at that time the hobby's largest publication. 


Like many card collectors of my generation who were re-exploring the hobby in the Seventies, I wasn't so much interested in the current cards as in those I had collected 20 years earlier.


Through SCD, I discovered that the hobby was benefiting from a tremendous boom in the type of information that had not been available to kid collectors in the 1950s-60s. 


Prior to 1956, we were collecting "blind." There were no checklists to tell us what cards had been issued and whether or not our sets were complete. By the late 1970s, Larry Fritsch had published the first readily available book of baseball card checklists and the hobby papers were printing articles from collectors around the country sharing information about obscure regional issues.


At the same time, Dr. James Beckett was using the pages of SCD to solicit and distribute information about baseball card values; the first time this had been done on anything approaching a comprehensive or scientific basis. 


With five or six years of hobby publishing experience in the fields of coins and old cars under my belt, in 1980 I began my professional association with the card/memorabilia hobby by creating Baseball Cards magazine and arranging for the purchase of SCD and several smaller periodicals in the field. 


From 1980 through early 2006, I was involved in the world of cards and related collectibles every working day. From late 2009 until very recently, I re-engaged in that world on a part-time basis as vintage editor of the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards.


For all professional involvement, however, I never really considered myself a collector of contemporary cards. 


Because of their ubiquitous presence on television I had become a Braves fan once more, especially so after a second baseman named Lemke joined the organization. My collecting of current cards, such as it was, was limited to a few favorite players. Even that was abandoned, however, in the mid-1990s when card companies began creating instant rarities in the form of numbered parallels, contrived short-prints, game-used and autographed inserts. I pretty much tuned out modern cards when buying packs became a lottery.


Through the 1980s I maintained my interest in vintage cards, primarily those of the 1950s though I dabbled a bit in cards as far back as the Old Judge series of the late 1880s. My concentration was primarily on cards that I had enjoyed as a child, and cards of that era that I never knew existed when they were new.


In late 1991, realizing that the market value of cards in which I was interested was rising faster than my budget, I sold virtually my entire collection to Alan "Mr. Mint" Rosen. 


That experience seems to mirror what my correspondent Pete Pagliaro is seeing today. He realizes that even a millionaire can't realistically pursue a "complete" collection. The greed of the leagues, the unions, the card companies and the "collectors" has changed cards from a kid's toy to a speculative penny stock


Those realities, whether they are the cause or the effect, have conspired to significantly limit the number of today's youngsters who have any interest in sportscards. 


For all those reasons, I doubt that Pete can succeed in putting together a baseball card collection that he can pass on to his kids that "will have some value." In 30-40 years will many of today's kids even have any interest in a collection of their dad's cards? 


With nothing other than a lifetime's experience in studying collectible hobbies to base it on, I'm of the opinion that baseball cards -- current and vintage -- have largely had their day in the sun and that overall trends will be of declining market values.  


To be sure, the iconic rarities of the hobby -- T206 Honus Wagner, 1933 Goudey Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle -- will always have significant value, and that value will likely continue to rise, but I'm not sure buyers in a future generation will understand why those cards are valuable. They will have become status symbols rather than collectibles.


I believe the card hobby over the next 25-50 years will mirror the stamp collecting hobby of the past 25-50 years. The current generation of collectors will die off, there will be few new collectors and values overall will spiral downward.


All that being said, my advice to Pete can be succinctly stated: Collect what you like, within a budget you are comfortable with expending in the name of entertainment, and give no regard to future potential value. It is only natural that your collecting focus will shift over the years as favorite players change teams and retire, and new favorites emerge. Try to eliminate the concept of investment from your collecting endeavors; that is not the yardstick against which your lifetime of collecting should be measured. Rather, the "success" of your collecting should be tallied in the enjoyment you took in making the connection between your cards and through-the-mail autographs and your favorite players and teams, as well as the connections you may have made with like-minded family and fellow collectors.

'52 White Sox had priciest caps

In 1952, McAuliffe of Boston was the official supplier of caps to Major League Baseball team.


A short item in The Sporting News quoted the cap-maker's spokesman, Tim McAuliffe, as saying the Chicago White Sox had the most expensive caps among the current teams.


White Sox' caps of that era were black with a white interlocking SOX monogram on a red background. These cost the team $6 apiece, according to McAuliffe; other teams' cap were $4 each.


Adjusted for inflation, a $6 cap in 1952 would be about $49 today. I see on New Era's website that an on-field White Sox cap retails for $35; with tax and shipping, that probably adds up to most of $49.


Back in '52, McAuliffe said that the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers spent about $600 a year on caps. 


McAuliffe also revealed that Dodgers' infielder Billy Cox wore the smallest cap in the majors, a size 6-1/2. He said Dick Kryhoski of the Browns wore the largest cap, but didn't reveal the actual size.

Custom cards -- two for Troy

I "see" cards. That is, sometimes when I see a photo of a baseball or football player, my mind's eye instantly pulls into focus what that image will look like on a custom card. The year and company that will be the format for such cards is unquestioned.

For college football players, my default is the 1955 All-American style, of which I've now completed more than  140 cards. But sometimes, looking at a college player photo, I see some other format.

Such was the case with an action photo of Troy Polamalu that I found about a year ago. The photo shows Polamalu carrying the ball with a Penn State player in hot pursuit. The photo probably depicts Polamalu's 43-yard touchdown interception in the second quarter of the 2000 Kickoff Classic at Giants Stadium, when USC beat Penn State 29-5.

When I saw that photo, I immediately thought "1952 Bowman."  And, a year later, you see the result.

I think I'm improving my Photoshop skills in turning a photo into artwork, so I may be turning out more "art" cards in the future. Baseball card collectors are more likely to recognize the background of this card . . . it's from Mickey Vernon's 1951 Bowman card.

Normally the '52B-style card would have been the only use I made of the Polamalu photo, but the picture seemed to tell such a great story that I decided to go ahead and add a Polamalu card to my "Third Series" update in the 1955 All-American style.

Back in 1955, Topps had only one All-American card that showed more than one player -- the Notre Dame Four Horsemen. That's probably because Topps used only portraits and posed-action photos for the originals. 

This is my sixth multi-player action card. Earlier examples were Brian Bosworth (Oklahoma State), Eric Dickerson (Southern Methodist), Conrad Dobler (Wyoming), Eric Jensen (Iowa), and, Austin Lane (Murray State). I also have a two-player card with Army's Blanchard and Davis, and the "Boulder College" backfield card of the Three Stooges.

I don't currently have any more multi-player football cards on the drawing board, but you never know what the future may bring.

Cobb vilified for '52 Life article

Though his playing days had ended a quarter-century earlier, Ty Cobb made regular appearances in the pages of The Sporting News until his death in 1961. 


The sports weekly often reported on Cobb's civic philanthropy, his speeches at banquets in what the paper liked to call the "Knife and Fork League," his visits around the batting cages during spring training and in clubhouses around the majors throughout the season. 


Cobb's observations about baseball from his day to the present were recorded and, due to their often thorny nature, were frequently dissected in TSN's pages.


In early 1952, Life magazine paid Cobb a reported $25,000 to compile his thoughts on baseball at that time for a two-part article titled, "They Don't Play Baseball Anymore." 


Twenty-five grand was a lot of money in 1952. It represented a year's salary for many everyday veteran players that season. (Today's average salary is about $2 million). 


Selling for 20 cents a copy in 1952, Life was counting on Cobb's article to generate a lot of newsstand sales. They even purchased a full-page ad in the March 12 TSN to promote the article, hinting at the bombshells Cobb would be dropping.


Cobb's take on the current state of baseball (no doubt ghost-written) delivered all of the controversy the promotional ads had promised. 


San Francisco baseball writer Joe King called it a "petulant, undocumented and high-priced 'indictment' of today's baseball." King said it was "typical of the attitude of many famous men through the centuries at Ty's age (he was 66 at the time).


"Only 'the good old days' remain for them," King concluded, "Perspective is lost."


Both Washington Senators manager Bucky Harris and Stan Musial were more succinct in their reviews; they said Cobb was "crazy."


Copies of the March 17 and March 24, 1952, issues of Life are readily available on eBay. While sellers price them at $15 or more on a "Buy it Now" basis, when offered at auction, they can be had for well under $10.

Ty Cobb was an elder statesman of baseball when he
presented a critical look at the contemporary game in a
two-part Life article in 1952.

Raffy was Campy's "cousin"

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.


I don't suppose they use the term anymore, but years ago when a player had unusual success against a pitcher, the pitcher was referred to as the player's "cousin," implying some sort of familial connection that caused the pitcher to ease up on the player when he was at bat.


Such a relationship was supposed in 1950-51 between Hall of Fame Brooklyn Dodgers catcher Roy Campanella and Cincinnati Reds pitcher Ken Raffensberger. 


Another baseball-related term you don't hear anymore is "figger filbert." i.e., a statistics "nut." Today they call them SABRmetricians. 


Allan Roth, was the first full-time Major League statistician. Dodgers GM Branch Rickey hired him in 1947, and he remained with the team in Brooklyn and Los Angeles until 1964. 


In a 1952 issue, The Sporting News applied the figger filbert label to Roth when they quoted his findings about Campy's success against Raffensberger.  


According to Roth, Campanella was 8-for-22 (a .364 average) against Raffensberger in 1950-51 -- and seven of those hits were home runs. 


The left-handed Raffensberger pitched for 15 seasons between 1939-54 in the National League, with a career record of 119-154 and a 3.60 ERA. 

A career-summary card for Koufax

As I mentioned yesterday, my card collecting days had gone on hiatus by 1967. My little brother was just beginning to get into cards, so I could look at his new cards every year and get a feel for what was going on at Topps.

I showed you the custom multi-player feature card I created, "All-Star Starters," with Sandy Koufax and Denny McLain.

Working on that project, I determined that there was yet another card to be coaxed from that photo. Back in the 1960s, Topps seldom showed any sentimentality regarding a player's career. If the gum company had enough advance notice that a player was leaving the game, they simply omitted him from the next year's set.

Thus many players, even superstars of the game, did not have a "final" card, the stats on which would provide a career summary. Such was case with Sandy Koufax. He announced his retirement shortly after the end of the 1966 World Series in which the Dodgers were defeated by the Orioles. So Topps never put a Koufax card into its 1967 set, a decision that latter-day collectors have lamented.

Several other custom card makers have tackled a 1967-style Koufax card, so I never felt any great "need" to add one to the body of my work.

When that great photo of Koufax at the 1966 All-Star Game came my way, however, I began to tinker around with ideas on how it could be worked into a single-player Koufax card in the 1967 style.

You'll notice that I took the figure of Koufax out of its original context. After looking at other Dodgers cards from 1967, I decided that a spring training setting would have been appropriate.

For the background to the left of Koufax and the blue sky, I used the '67 card of Bruce Brubaker. To the right of Koufax, I adapted the background from a 1973 Don Sutton card. The autograph was picked out of the 1959 Topps Koufax card.

The cartoons on back were adapted from the '67 Brubaker and the 1973 Nolan Ryan.  

Putting all those pieces together resulted in what I consider to be a pretty fair approximation of what Topps might have done if Koufax had been included in its set nearly a quarter-century ago.