Third Healy variation found in '77 TCMA Lynchburg Mets

A third variation of the Bob Healy card in the
1977 TCMA Lynchburg Mets team set has been
discovered (bottom). The wrong-photo card was likely
the first variation printed, being quickly corrected.

Back when I was editing the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards, one of my pet interests was minor league issues. A kindred spirit who still toils in that field is collector Simeon Lipman, who has been collecting minor league cards for more than a quarter-century, with a special emphasis on the TCMA minor league team issues of the 1970s.

In his pursuits in that arena, Simeon says it is his opinion that the 1977 Lynchburg Mets set is "perhaps the toughest" of the genre.

"Amongst the late issues and variations in the set," Lipman explains, "there are two in particular that are extremely difficult to find; one being the Stu Greenstein (where the team logo is found directly beneath Greenstein's glove) and the other being Bob Healy (with no name, logo, position or league on the front and blank-backed). A complete set, including the Greenstein and Healy variations totals 35 cards. It has taken me decades to complete a set, despite purchasing at least a dozen partial sets and plenty of singles from longtime minor league collectors over the years.

"Several months ago I bought another partial set on eBay looking to upgrade a few cards. Within it I was delighted to find, as far as I can tell, an undocumented variation!

"It's Bob Healy again! This time, it's a completely different image than the previous base card and variation. I recognized the image as George Frazier from the 1977 Holyoke Millers set.

"If this is indeed what I think it is, it brings the total number of cards in the 1977 TCMA Lynchburg Mets set to 36."

Lipman appears to be correct, and is to credited with discovery of yet another rare variation in the early TCMA team sets.

The early TCMA minor league sets present unusual challenges to today's collectors because of the manner in which they were issued. 

Besides being sold to the minor league teams, the sets were offered to collectors by mail order in the hobby publications of their day. For some teams, within and among this bifurcated distribution, errors were corrected and/or players added or removed.

Today collectors have to beat the bushes to find the cards they need to complete a team set. While the SCBC back in the day attempted to make the task easier by cataloging all known variations, little or no work has been done to update those checklists for about a decade. So we have to rely on collectors like Simeon who are willing to share their discoveries with the hobby at large.

The newly reported TCMA error card has the photo of
Holyoke Millers pitcher George Frazier.

1955 Bob Thorpe, rehabbed already

After reading my  blog for Oct. 10-11, a colleague noted that I was not completely satisfied with the portrait picture used on the 1955 Topps-style custom creation.

He sent along a couple of new choices of Thorpe in a Cubs uniform. Turns out Thorpe went to spring training with Chicago in 1957 and was pictured in the yearbook.

That picture had the requisite contrast and after I colorized it, I thought it came up to the standards of "real" 1955 Topps cards. In any event it is a great improvement.

Notes on my card creation process may help others

The other day on this blog I debuted my pair of Bob Thorpe custom cards, in the formats of 1955 and 1958 Topps.

Today I want to share another little bit of my process for custom card creation. Perhaps other card creators will find something useful they can apply to their own efforts.

As you can imagine with a player who had only two games in the major leagues and just six seasons in pro ball, there are not a lot of photos of Bob Thorpe with which to work. And, for this player, one has to be careful not to select a photo of the "other" Bob Thorpe, who played for the Boston/Milwaukee Braves 1951-53.

For the '55-style card I needed both portrait and action photos.

After considerable searching I found only two portrait photos of Thorpe in a Cubs uniform. I worked with each of them for a day or two and never really got where I wanted to be.

I decided to work with the portrait of Thorpe that appeared on the rare regional 1955 Old Homestead hot dogs team set of Des Moines Bruins cards.

The picture was black-and-white, so I had to colorize it for my card and replace the letters on the cap. Frankly, I don't feel that I was completely successful with that process. The card picture did not have great contrast. Still, with my Photoshop Elements program shouldering the heavy lifting, I was able to come up with something I can live with. In the unlikely event I would ever find a better portrait, this card would be a candidate for rehabilitation on that basis.

I am much more pleased with the result on the action photo on this card. 

The original photo was a pitching pose, black-and-white of course, of Thorpe with the Stockton Ports. The image was probably made in 1954 when Thorpe was lighting up the California League. It appears to be a local press photo.

To convert that 60-year-old picture to my fantasy card use, I began by dropping out the background with Elements' eraser tools, and colorizing the resulting cutout image.

 

The resulting picture admirably fits my standard for a 1955 Topps-format custom. I thought long and hard about using the image as is.

However, doing so would have been taking liberties with the original 1955 Topps format. While I didn't check every card in the set, I believe that Topps didn't use any minor league photos. Or, rather, they did use some minor league photos, but airbrushed away any uniform details that would identify the picture as other than major league. A perfect example is the card of Orioles catcher Hal Smith, which pictures him wearing a white jersey devoid of logos. 

In a similar vein, the rookie card of Sandy Koufax shows him in a generic white uniform. Koufax came right to the majors from the University of Cincinnati, so it wasn't minor league details that Topps painted out. Some years ago, I heard an interesting bit of hobby lore that alleges the picture of Koufax with his foot on the dugout step and cap in hand originally showed him wearing a Pittsburgh Pirates uniform. That photo, it was said, was taken when Koufax had a tryout with the Bucs prior to signing with the Dodgers. If that's true, I'm surprised I've never seen the original picture.

Be that as it may, I ultimately decided that as nice as the Thorpe-Stockton action picture had turned out, I would have to change the "S" on the cap to a "C" and white out the letters of "STOCKTON" from the jersey.

The logo-switch on the cap was easily accomplished. I searched pictures of other 1955 Topps Cubs cards until I found an action photo of a player facing directly front. That turned out to be El Tappe. I picked the "C" off Tappe's cap and grafted it onto Thorpe's.

In the process of poring over '55T  Cubs cards, I noticed that the small photo of Cubs manager Stan Hack provided a good luck at the "CHICAGO" logo on his jersey. I guessed, correctly as it turned out, that with a little finagling I could replace some of the "STOCKTON" logo with the Cubs lettering.

I think it turned out admirably.

One other element found on 1955 Topps cards could have sunk my project before it ever got off the ground . . . the facsimile autograph.

As scarce as Bob Thorpe photos are, images of his signature are even harder to find. Again, you have to be careful to get the right Bob Thorpe (Robert Joseph Thorpe) signature. There are plenty of images of Benjamin Robert Thorpe's autograph on the internet, including on his 1952 Topps high-number card.

After a bit of searching, I discovered that Thorpe had been included in the first edition of the 1955 Chicago Cubs yearbook, with a nice bold facsimile signature under his picture.

I put out an SOS to the members of the Network 54 vintage baseball memorabilia forum and received a rapid response from Georgia collector Tom Hufford, who sent a scan of the yearbook page. Hufford not only has a 1955 Cubs yearbook, but his book is almost completely hand-signed by members of that team. As he noted, the penned signature of Thorpe matches his facsimile autograph stroke for stroke.

So, there you have my "notes" on the creation of my 1955-style Bob Thorpe card.From time to time in the future, if I think similar presentations would be useful to card creators, I'll try to share similar details.

Bob Thorpe, '55 Cubs, added to my custom cards

            It's not surprising that Bob Thorpe didn't have any Bowman or Topps cards while he was active in pro ball. Despite an impressive minor league record, he played only two games in the majors, both with the Cubs in 1955.
           One has to be careful when discussing Bob Thorpe of the early 1950s; there were two of them in the big leagues. Benjamin Robert Thorpe was an outfielder for the Boston/Milwaukee Braves 1951-53. Robert Joseph Thorpe was a pitcher for the 1955 Chicago Cubs. It is the latter who is the subject of my most recent custom cards.

Thorpe had been named the outstanding high school athlete of Southern California in 1952, when his San Diego High School team won the Southern California state championship. He then pitched his San Diego American Legion Junior team to second place in the national finals and was named American Legion Player of the Year.

Signed by the Cubs for a reported $15,000, Thorpe pitched for Class C Stockton of the California League in 1953, with a 16-8 record. From his first year in pro ball, he was widely heralded as a pitcher, rather than just another teenage thrower. He didn’t have a great fastball, but kept hitters off balance with off-speed pitches and an outstanding change-up. He threw a curve that dropped off the table and he could deliver it with pinpoint accuracy.

Returning to Stockton in 1954, the young right-hander tied a league record with 28 wins, the most in Organized Baseball that season. He started 33 games and finished all but one of them, pitching 300.1 innings. His 2.28 ERA led the league. He was named California League Most Valuable Player.

That performance earned him a call-up from the Cubs for 1955, the first time the team had ever advanced a player from Class C to the majors.

The Cubs debuted Thorpe before the Wrigley faithful in the final game of the 1955 exhibition season, with the White Sox visiting.

Starting before the crowd of 19,504, Thorpe was only able to last two innings. While he struck out four, he walked five and gave up four runs on four hits.

That outing appeared to shake the confidence of Cubs manager Stan Hack and he limited Thorpe to mop-up appearances in two games with no decision before he was optioned to Des Moines on May 9, where he was 10-10.

He developed arm trouble and in the next two seasons in the Pacific Coast League was 14-22.

In the Rule 5 minor league draft after the 1957 season, the Pirates drafted Thorpe for 1958, but he spent the entire season on the disabled list after undergoing an operation to remove bone chips from his right elbow.

He tried a comeback with Columbus in the Sally League in 1959 but retired after three games.

Working for his father-in-law as an apprentice electrician on a power line near San Diego, Thorpe was fatally electrocuted March 17, 1960. He was splicing a high-powered 2400-volt electric cable. He instinctively jumped back as the power hit his palm and his elbow grounded against a metal transformer box. The force of the current burned his fingerprints into the metal base of the awl he was using to apply insulating fluid.
Thorpe had only one "real" baseball card during his playing days. He is found in the scarce 1955 Old Homestead franks team set of the Des Moines Bruins.
I chose to create two different Bob Thorpe cards. My 1955-format card is what might have been when he was a highly touted rookie. My 1958-style card is an optimistic look at what Topps might have done if Thorpe had not been injured.
As hard as it was to find suitable photos of Bob Thorpe to make the '55-style custom, getting the photo of Thorpe was a purely a stroke of good fortune. 
The spring training picture of Thorpe as a Pirate has been in my files for two or three years, if not longer. In fact, I don't remember now from whence it came. I do know that a google-search for Bob Thorpe photos does not return this image.
For those who have an interest in my custom card-making process, tomorrow I'll share some of the challenges I faced in making the 1955-style card.

High-flying Hudlin sold, bought himself in 1944 comeback

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.

When the St. Louis Browns were in the thick of the American League pennant race in 1944 they called on former major league pitcher Willis Hudlin. At age 38, Hudlin  had last pitched in the major leagues four years earlier, compiling a 2-5 record for the Indians, Senators, Giants and Browns in 1940. 

After leading the league most of the season, St. Louis dropped into second place on Labor Day. When Bob Moncrief was shelved with arm trouble after five straight losses on Aug. 27, the call went out for Hudlin. 

Hudlin, at the time, was part owner of the Little Rock Travelers in the Southern Association and the ace of its pitching staff, with a 12-3 record and 2.56 ERA. He was playing in his fourth season for Little Rock.

Hudlin sold himself to the Browns. Despite appearing in only one game for St. Louis, taking the loss Aug. 31 in a two-inning relief role, he picked up a check from the loser’s cut of the 1944 World Series, being voted a one-quarter share of $685.95. Then he sold himself back to the Travelers.

The pitcher had been released from the Army Air Corps in May, having reached his 38^th birthday. He had been stationed at Little Rock, where for the past two years he had been tutoring the army’s flight instructors and pitching part-time for Little Rock.

Hudlin was unique among ballplayers in that era in that he disdained rail travel around the Dixie circuit, instead piloting himself from series to series in a two-seater monoplane.He flew a Culver Cadet, which a reporter described as a “speedy, economical lightweight, which he can park in a pea patch.”

Thus while his teammates wearied through 13-hour day coach rail trips from New Orleans, Hudlin was winging home in three hours. “I spent every night in a hotel or at home,” he said.

Despite his choice of transportation, Hudlin expressed doubts that the major leagues would be switching to air travel any time soon. “Team travel in a huge plane is too risky,” he was quoted “When one of those big babies falls, it’s—whoof! Maybe it won’t happen in a hundred years, but the loss of an entire team would mean millions of dollars in players alone and might disrupt a league.”

Following the 1944 World Series, Hudlin returned to Little Rock where he resumed his job as a flight instructor at a municipal airport.

In the spring of 1945 he resumed his pro ball career. Hudlin had played only one year in the minors, with Class A Waco in 1926. He had a 16-11 record in the Texas League he was acquired by the Cleveland Indians in mid-August of '26.

Hudlin spent the next 13 full seasons at Cleveland, earning a 155-150 record before beginning his four-team tour in 1940. On Aug. 11 at Cleveland, he gave up Babe Ruth 500th home run; despite also being homered off of by Lou Gehrig, Hudlin won the game 5-4.

After his one-game comeback in 1944, Hudlin pitched for two more years at Little Rock, then ended his pro career at Jackson in the Southeastern League in 1947-48. His minor league lifetime total were 71-49 with an ERA of 3.52, all pitched at Class B or higher levels.

In the 1950s he served as a pitching coach for the Detroit Tigers and later scouted for the Yankees. He died in 2002 at the age of 96.

As a star pitcher throughout the bubblegum card era of the 1930s, Hudlin was included in many of the major sets from Diamond Stars, Goudey, Batter-Up and National Chicle.

Bucket list: West Point. Check

Cody, the "prison puppy," was part of my bucket
list-trip West Point for an Army football game.

Since childhood I'd always wanted to visit West Point and the U.S. Military Academy.

As a youngster I'd heard my mother speak of an automobile trip she and her younger sister had taken from their hometown of Fond du Lac, Wis., to West Point,, N.Y. I wish now that I'd asked her more about the trip when I was older, because I really don't know many of the details.

Through the magic of the internet, I've been able to piece together some of what I assume are the details of that trip. 

I'd always thought that my mother had made her epic auto trip while in her late teens; which greatly impressed me . . . two teenage girls driving more than 950 miles cross country in the pre-interstate days. Now, I don't think that was the case; she must have been somewhat older.

Another assumption, logical at least in my mind, is that my mother and aunt made the trip to visit their cousin, Esther, who was married to James R. Andersen, an instructor at West Point. Since Andersen was at the USMA from 1939-42, I now believe mom must have been about 24 years old at the time; still a gutsy adventure for two young small-town women.

During World War II, Andersen rose quickly in rank and responsibility. By early 1945 he was a brigadier general and Chief of Staff to Lt. General Millard F. Harmon, commander of U.S. Army Air Forces in the Pacific. 

On Feb. 26, 1945, Harmon, Andersen and eight other officers and enlisted men were lost when the B-24 Liberator in which they were flying en route to Washington, D.C. vanished between Guam and Hawaii. When last heard from, the converted bomber had plenty of fuel and was traveling in good weather over calm seas. What newspaper accounts called the most extensive air and sea search in the Pacific to that time failed to turn up and any trace of the plane or its crew.

My oldest brother, who was born in September, 1946, was named James Roy after Gen. Andersen.
In 1949, an Army air base on Guam was renamed Andersen Air Force Base.

My own trip to West Point was occasioned by the desire to attend a football game there. My daughter, son-in-law and I drove up from our winter place in western Pennsylvania to attend the Oct. 4 game vs. Ball State. 

We saw a good game and a Black Knights win. The experience was made extremely enjoyable by the Army's handling of my special needs for wheelchair accommodation. Everything was handled in a professional and efficient manner from start to finish.

As game day approached, I discovered that my parking pass had not been mailed with the tickets. With a single phone call I was able to secure the pass delivered by next-day express.

We drove up on Thursday evening, staying at a hotel in Mahwah, N.J. On Friday we drove the 40 minutes or so to West Point and spent the day at the USMA Visitor's Center and the West Point Museum.

The museum is, simply stated, awesome. There are four floors of the history of warfare and of the U.S. Army. We spent nearly four hours poring over the displays and dioramas. You could not overuse the word "priceless" to describe some of the items held there. There is an original Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington, along with a pair of his pistols. Napoleon's sword and brace of pistols are exhibited. Hermann Goering's sidearm, dagger and a silver presentation pistol he gave to Hitler are displayed among the war trophies. More plebeian, but no less historically interesting in my view, are a pair of arrows retrieved from the Little Big Horn battlefield. 

I have no doubt that the museum lives up to its claim to be the largest and most comprehensive military museum in the nation. From foot-long silver darts dropped -- silent but deadly -- from high altitude over enemy positions in Vietnam to a WWI tank and a replica of the first A-bomb it was all immensely appealing to my interest in military history.

A week out, we knew that game-day weather was going to be iffy. Predictions called for a 90 percent chance of rain. And the predictions proved accurate. Rain in the morning caused the cancellation of the cadet parade that I was greatly looking forward to. 

It continued to rain virtually non-stop until almost the end of the game. Fortunately, wheelchair seating at Michie Stadium is under the upper deck and we remained dry and comfortable. By the time the game was over, so was the rain, and our half-hour wait for the wheelchair-accessible shuttle bus was also dry.

I cannot stress strongly enough my recommendation that you add West Point and an Army football game to your own bucket list.

An unusual aspect of our trip was that we were accompanied by Cody, a year-old yellow lab service dog in training. Cody is a "prison puppy." He is being given his basic training by a prisoner at the facility where my daughter teaches. As part of that training, he is periodically taken outside the walls for socialization and a broad range of experiences that aren't possible in the prison setting.

He handled everything well. Army football games feature liberal use of cannon fire inside the stadium and across the Hudson River. Cody jumped just a bit at the gun's report at kickoff, then was unphased by subsequent firings. 

After another four or six months with his prison handler, Cody will move on to advanced training to become a service dog in an area such as advanced seizure detection, providing stability to a handicapped walker or some other discipline. 

My daughter has worked with these dogs for as long as she's been at the prison. The program involved is called Canine Partners for Life, a non-profit organization that for more than 20 years has been training service dogs, home companion dogs, and residential companion dogs to assist individuals who have a wide range of physical and cognitive disabilities. You can check out the program at http://k94life.org. 

As I get older and less mobile, my days of traveling to attend college football games may be drawing to a close. If I never get out to another, my West Point experience will have been a fine capstone.

Zacher first to catch ball from plane?

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've presented accounts in this space (most recently on July 15-16) about stunts of late 19th and early 20th Century ballplayers catching -- or attempting to catch -- baseballs throw from great heights.

One much such story can't hurt.

In 1912 former major leaguer Elmer Zacher became one of the first -- his 1944 obituary claimed he was THE first -- players to catch a ball thrown from an airplane more than 300 feet in the air.

The feat made Page 1 news in the Feb. 18, 1912, issue of the San Francisco Call. 

Zacher's catch came amidst an aerial show that took place at Oakland's Aviation Field on Feb. 17. The air show featured all manner of stunt flying, wing walkers and other attractions that drew a crowd reported at 15,000.

According to the newspaper, Zacher and fellow Oakland Oaks outfielder Izzy Hoffman thrilled the crowd and "risked their heads and hands in a semisuccessful attempt to catch oranges and baseballs thrown by Lincoln Beachey at heights varying from 300 feet to 550."

Beachey was a nationally famed pioneer aviator and stunt flyer, who soared aloft in a Curtiss biplane to make the drops. The paper reported, "three nice ripe oranges spattered on the grass after a fall of more than 500 feet, and one baseball sank in the sod before Zacher succeeded in catching a ball tossed from 300 feet or more."

Born in Buffalo, N.Y., Sept.17, 1880, Zacher graduated as a pharmacist from the University of Buffalo in 1904. 

That same summer he started in the pro game with Pottstown of the independent Pennsylvania League He played with Woodstock (Canadian) and Concord (New England) in 1905. He was with Worcester (also in the New England League) for 1906. In 1907 he moved up to Newark in the Class A Eastern League, then was with New Haven (Connecticut State) in 1908-09.

Zacher advanced to the major leagues when the New York Giants purchased his contract from New Haven on Aug. 22, 1909. He played only a single game with the Giants, in 1910, before being sold to the St. Louis Cardinals on May 8. It was reported in his obituary that he roomed with Christy Mathewson.

In 47 games with St. Louis, in the outfield and at second base, Zacher hit only .212, ending his big league career.

He was subsequently with Chattanooga (1911), Oakland (1911-14), Salt Lake City (1915), and, in 1916, with Newark, Elmira and Rochester ) He retired from pro ball after the 1916 season.

Zacher returned to Buffalo where he was employed by the city parks department from 1921-25, and 1927-44, rising to the rank of supervisor of city playgrounds. In 1926-27 he served as New York’s assistant Secretary of State. He died Dec. 20, 1944, after a four months’ illness.

With his lengthy career in the Pacific Coast League, Zacher appears in many of the regional sets of the 1910s, including the 1911 Obak cigarette card at top and the 1911 Zeenut candy card above.

WWII pilots sought pro ball caps

Baseball caps from pro teams were highly sought by pilots and
crew during World War II.  T/Sgt. Bob Caron, tail gunner on the
Enola  Gay, wore a Brooklyn Dodgers cap on the mission to
bomb Hiroshima.

In my reading of microfilm of The Sporting News from 1944-45, I’ve noticed several items indicating that baseball caps from professional teams were highly prized by U.S. pilots.

Besides the prestige of wearing a cap formerly worn by a ballplayer, there was a practical side. Pilots found that the peaked visors of a baseball cap provided better protection from the sun’s glare than did the standard-issue headwear. Also, the professional ballcaps fit more snugly than Uncle Sam's version, giving the pilot and crew a better fit for their headsets.

Billy Southworth, Jr., (right) shown here with Bob Hope, wore a St. Louis
Cardinals baseball cap for much of his distinguished WWII flying career.

The trend was said to have started with Billy Southworth, Jr., son of the St. Louis Cardinals manager. The younger Southworth had played his way up to the top rungs of the Cards' minor league chain between 1936-40. He became a highly decorated bomber pilot in World War II, often wearing a Cardinals' cap in cockpit. He died in 1945 in a stateside plane crash.

Anybody who had a contact within a professional baseball organization from whom caps could be procured earned instant admiration from the flight crews.

Typical of the items carried by TSN of this subject was this short piece from the “In The Service” column of the April 27, 1944, issue.

White Sox Caps to Pay

Another Visit to Japan

            Chicago, Ill.—Back in the winter of 1913-14, when Charley Comiskey and John McGraw took their respective White Sox and Giants on a trip around the world, White Sox caps were worn by Tris Speaker, Sam Crawford, Herman Schaeffer and Urban Faber when they played in Tokyo, Yokohama and other Japanese cities. Some American airmen, wearing White Sox caps, now hope to pay another visit to Nippon’s big cities in the not-too-distant future.

            At the request of the former White Sox pitching star, Captain Ted Lyons of the Marines, Jimmie Dykes, Chicago manager, sent two dozen Sox caps to Ted in a fighting sector in the Southwest Pacific. They are to be used by fighting pilots from the base. For good measure, Dykes included Ted’s old White Sox shirt, with the familiar “16”on the back, the number which endeared Lyons to Chicago fans for 20 seasons with the Hose.

I don’t have it at hand, but I recall a 1945 TSN article about a “lucky” Brooklyn Dodgers cap worn by a B-17 pilot in Europe.

Wearing the Brooklyn cap, the pilot had brought his ship and crew through an unusually high number of bombing missions. He was hospitalized with some internal ailment or other and was visited by his crew prior to their next mission. He forgot to give the cap to the pinch-hitting pilot. The plane and its crew of 10 were lost.

Another noteworthy case of WWII pilots requesting pro ball caps was related by St. Louis Cardinals manager Billy Southworth in 1943. 

He received a request for St. Louis Cardinals caps from the commander of a Marine fighter squadron in the Pacific. The commander said that if Southworth would provide the caps, he and his pilots would shoot down one Japanese fighter for each cap received. 

Southworth sent the caps and later learned that the unit had splashed 48 Zeros by early 1944. The flying leathernecks' unit was Maj. Pappy Boyington's "Black Sheep Squadron."

The impetus for bringing this posting to fruition was an episode of Pawn Stars that I watched last night. Somebody was trying to get an inordinate amount of cash for a couple of autographed photos related to the Enola Gay and its crew.

I noticed that the one of the B-29 crew (it wasn’t pilot Col. Paul Tibbets) was wearing a Brooklyn Dodgers cap on that Aug. 6, 1945, mission that delivered the first atomic bomb over Hiroshima.

The airman wearing the Dodgers cap was T/Sgt. Bob Caron, the plane’s tail gunner. It was appropriate he had the cap since he was a 1938 graduate of Brooklyn Technical High School.

More T.V. Westerns customs: Clint Eastwood and Rawhide

Continuing with my recent efforts at creating custom cards in the motifs of some of favorite non-sports bubblegum card sets of the 1950s and 1960s, I've recently completed two more T.V. Westerns cards. (On Aug. 13 I presented my trio of Maverick T.V. Westerns customs.)

My latest customs derive from the long-running CBS series Rawhide, which aired 216 episodes from 1959-65 and made a star of Clint Eastwood.

Until very recently, reruns of Rawhide were being broadcast on Saturday mornings on one or another of the cable networks. They've held up well over 50 years and I enjoyed the reruns as much as I'm sure I did the original showings. If the reruns aren't currently airing, dvd boxed sets of complete seasons are widely available for $20 or so.

You can find out all you ever wanted to know about Rawhide at various sites all over the internet, so I won't go into that here.

I'll just step back and show you what I've come up with.

Technicality freed Borton, crooked P.C.L. players

(continued from yesterday)

Among the first to come forward were Salt Lake City pitchers Ralph Stroud and Spider Baum. Stroud swore out an affidavit that said Borton and Chase had approached him prior to a game at Vernon on April 28, 1920, and offered him $300 if he would throw that day's game. Stroud said he spurned the offer, but went on to lose 5-1, giving up nine hits and four walks in seven innings. He said that Borton attempted to press the $300 on him after the game, but that he'd refused the money, telling Borton he'd pitched as hard as he could and been fairly beaten. Stroud came back to pitch the final game of that series, winning the second game of the traditional Sunday double-header 5-3 on a four-hitter. Baum, whose brother served as P.C.L. president from 1911-19, made a similar accusation against Borton and Chase.

Ed "Tubby" Spencer, catcher for Salt Lake City in 1919, swore out a statement that he had been offered $1,750 by Borton to cooperate in fixing games that season. Borton later admitted that he had made a bribe offer to Spencer, but not in anywhere near that amount.

Portland's second baseman, Paddy Siglin, made a statement charging that Borton had offered him $100 to stay out of the line-up during a week that Vernon was playing the Beavers in 1919.

The following season, when Vernon was visiting Portland, Borton apparently had his money on the home team to win. Two Beavers reported that Borton offered to tip them off when they were base runners.

Pitcher John Glasier said, "Babe Borton told me while I was a runner on first base to get a good lead off first,as he would tell me when the Vernon pitcher would throw to first, and if I was caught he would not tag me."

Portland right fielder Dick Cox told a similar story. "In one of the games I was on first base and thinking the pitcher had the ball I was just going to get my lead off first and Borton told me (Vernon second baseman Bob) Fisher had the ball so I stayed on the bag and Fisher did have the ball, waiting for me to get off the bag." He recounted a second incident, "In another game of the same series I was on first base and Borton told me, 'Don't get too big a lead, kid, the pitcher is going to throw over here' and sure enough he did throw over to catch me, but I did not have a big lead so he didn't get me as Borton had told me right."

By mid-August McCarthy's investigation had turned up three actual payments of a suspicious nature from Borton to members of the Salt Lake City Bees.

Outfielder Harl Maggert had been observed accepting $300 cash, and bank drafts in the amounts of $200 and $500 were traced to outfielder Bill Rumler and pitcher Gene Dale, respectively. Called on the carpet, Maggert said the 300 iron men he'd been paid were owed from a card game or a dice game (his story varied, according to the local press) from the previous year. Dale said the $500 he'd received was repayment of a loan made to Borton. Rumler's alibi was that the $200 he got from Borton was the proceeds of a "safety bet" made by the pair when each of their respective clubs was near first place in the 1919 pennant race. Safety bets, despite what baseball's hierarchy liked to believe, were a common practice at the time. According to Rumler, his agreement with Borton was an effort to insure that each would get at least some share of the post-season money regardless of which team won. When Vernon won, Borton owed Rumler $200; if Salt Lake City had won the pennant Rumler would have paid Borton $200. Technically, of course, it's betting against your own team, but it was a common practice in that era -- even among World Series opponents, who often paired off and agreed to split the winner's and loser's shares 50-50.

When word of the payoffs to the Salt Lake City players was received, Maggert and Rumler were immediately suspended from the team. Dale had moved on to Dallas for the 1920 season, and finished the Texas League season there before his name was dragged into the scandal.

As might be expected, lawsuits and threats of litigation began to fly. In late August, McCarthy virtually ordered Vernon's management and players to sue Borton for slander in naming them as participants in a bribery cabal. Borton threatened to counter sue. Hal Chase threatened to sue the P.C.L.'s owners for barring him from its parks. Bill Rumler threatened to sue the league for $50,000 for handing him a five-year suspension.

In 1913 the Yankees traded Hal Chase to the White Sox for
both their first basemen, Rollie Zeider and Babe Borton. In
1920, having been run out of Organized Baseball, Chase
joined Borton in fixing Pacific Coast League games. He was
subsequently barred from all P.C.L. parks 

Borton struck first in the courts, slapping Vernon manager (and his former roommate) Bill Essick with a $50,000 criminal libel suit for labeling Borton's contention that other Vernon players were involved in the bribery a "mass of lies." Borton promised that when his suit came to trial he would prove his story true "and that Essick was as deep in the plot as any of them." Borton eventually abandoned his suit against Essick and, for reasons that can only be guessed at, Essick and the Vernon players did not press their suits.

That, however, did not keep the affair out of the courthouse. In October, spurred by constant agitation of the L.A. newspapers, District Attorney Doran convened a grand jury. Under the direction of Deputy D.A. Stafford, the panel seemed unable to get beyond what McCarthy's league investigation had already turned up.

Borton expressed delight at the official probe. Los Angeles baseball best writer Matt Gallagher wrote, "Whatever else is to be said of Borton, he is one of the eager ones in getting the grand jury busy, which makes it appear he thinks the inquiry will do more to clear him than damn him -- or rather damn others with him. Borton has confessed his part and says he is sick and sore at being a goat because others, as he alleges, have not had the nerve to face the music."

After a week of taking testimony, Stafford could say only that there had been "some tall lying done by witnesses examined." Many of the Vernon players from 1919 were called into the hearing, as were various other P.C.L. players whom Borton had named as recipients of bribe money. One by one they denied knowledge of any general conspiracy by the Vernon team and evidence mounted that Borton had been acting as sole agent for the gambling interests.

The grand jury's net even brought in the known gamblers who testified that prior to the crucial Vernon-Salt Lake City series of September, 1919, the odds had swung to 3-1 for Vernon to come out on top. Gamblers who normally bet no more than $100 on a game were said to have wagered up to $1,500 per contest on some of the games in that series, a strong indication that the "sure-thing" bettors knew when the fix was in.

On Dec. 10, after six weeks of "exhaustive inquiry," the grand jury concluded that there was no truth to the allegations that any other Vernon player or official had taken part in any bribery. Indictments were returned against Borton, Rumler, Maggert and gambler Raymond, charging them with criminal conspiracy and "collusion to throw ball games in the Vernon-Salt Lake series in Los Angeles" in September, 1919. The charges carried potential penalties of up to two years in prison and fines of $2,000.

No other players were indicted, according to the grand jury, "so their names are not to be mentioned in the case as far as legal proceedings are concerned, whatever opinions the officials of the league may have, and regardless of any action the league may take later."

It was fully expected that the trials of the indicted fixers would bring out facts implicating other, unindicted, players, so the case, from a baseball standpoint, was not closed by any means.

L.A. County Judge Frank R. Willis ordered the arrest of the indicted men, setting bail at $1,000 each. Borton and Maggert appeared voluntarily a few days later to post bond. Rumler, at home in Nebraska, indicated he would appear for trial. Raymond was laying low in Seattle and was not heard from.

On Dec. 24, the criminal justice system gave the players and the gambler an early Christmas present by dismissing the indictments. Judge Willis held that there was nothing in California law that prohibited a ballplayer from throwing a ballgame. 

According to San Francisco writer "Seal Rock," the judge's decision "was not entirely unexpected. It had been pointed out that there was weakness in the California statutes that raised a great doubt as to the baseball prosecutions holding, and that as a matter of fact the Los Angeles indictments were merely regarded as test cases."

Rock editorialized, "A ball player can be as crooked as his conscience will permit, in California, and the law can't tuch him. He can even admit he is a crook and get away with it, so far as the law in concerned."

In dismissing the indictments, Willis said the players had entered into contracts to play ball to the best of their ability, but their failure to do so amounted only to a breach of civil contract and was in no way actionable as a criminal offense. The judge did excoriate the players with his personal opinion that their actions were reprehensible and he expressed regret that the law could not reach them.

The powers-that-be in the Pacific Coast League could, however, reach the players, and they did so. Borton, Maggert, Rumler and the unindicted Dale were formally expelled from the league. To add insult to injury, the players' 1919 season stats were expunged from the league's official records.

Borton never again played in Organized Baseball. He died in Berkeley, Calif., July 29, 1954, at the age of 65.

Borton's return to P.C.L. ends in infamy

(continued from yesterday)

Despite playing in pro ball throughout the golden
age of tobacco and caramel cards, Babe Borton
is found only in three issues of the Zeenut candy
cards on the West Coast, 1914, 1918 and 1919.

Borton was returned to the Pacific Coast League for 1917, when the Browns sold him to Portland. He would play out his career in the P.C.L. The beginning of the season found Borton embroiled in a domestic dispute. In mid-May his wife received a divorce in St. Joseph on the grounds of infidelity. The court ordered Borton to pay $700 of his annual $2,100 salary to his wife and baby girl as support. A week after the divorce Borton married again.

That soap opera apparently didn't tarnish Borton's image with the Portland fans. The Sporting News described him as "one of the most popular players that ever donned a Beaver uniform." The paper said, "His quiet manner and ability as a player have made him a great favorite, not only with Portland fans, but also with fans in other cities comprising the Coast League." In late July, Borton suffered a severe rupture that had to be surgically repaired. Despite optimism that he might be able to return to the line-up prior to season's end, Borton was unable to recover sufficiently to do so. The Portland ownership continued to carry him on the roster for the remainder of the season and Borton signed a 1918 contract in gratitude. Owner Walter McCredie looked forward to Borton's return in 1918. "He will hit .300 in any league," the magnate said, adding , "If Babe hadn't been hurt we would have been much farther up in the race (Portland finished fourth in a six-team race in 1917). We want him to take a good rest and report in fit shape in the spring."

The war-shortened 1918 season found Borton in Vernon, rather than Portland, however. In fact, Portland had lost its P.C.L. franchise to Sacramento, due to its distance from the California cities that made up most of the rest of the league. When the league shut down on July 14, Vernon was in first place in the standings, two games ahead of Los Angeles. A best-of-nine playoff series was ordered to decide the pennant race, with L.A. coming out on top, five games to two.

For 1919, the league expanded to eight teams with Seattle and Portland back in the fold. Borton raised his batting average back over the .300 mark that season (.303) and tied for third in the league with 14 home runs -- nearly as many as he'd hit in the previous eight years combined. As mentioned, Vernon won the 1919 pennant -- with a little help from players on several other teams.

Testimony would later reveal that at least three players accepted bribes from Borton in amounts of $200-500. Others around the league reported attempts to bribe them in amounts between $100 and $1,750.

When the scandal became public, Borton shocked the baseball world by contending that the entire Vernon team had been in on the bribery, and that the payoff money had come from a pool created when each of the players had kicked in $100. Further, Borton said the Vernon management had been aware of the plan. Borton alleged that he had told the team president's business manager, Lou Anger, about the fixed games at the close of the season, and that Anger had been sore because he'd not been informed earlier so that he could place some bets. 

Despite Borton's assurances that teammates would come forward to verify his statements, and despite a $500 reward offered by the league for information proving conspiracy on the part of the Vernon team as a whole, no real evidence ever linked the other Vernon players to knowledge of the bribery. It was generally believed by the press and league officials that Borton had implicated his teammates and management in the belief that the league would not or could not take punitive action against an entire team.

In an editorial in the Aug. 19, 1920, issue headlined "Can't Drag the Game Down," The Sporting News commented on Borton's allegations. "It is nothing new for a crook when caught to attempt to distract attention from or seemingly lessen his own guilt by a plea that others are just as black as he is. It is the plea of every briber or taker of bribes, of every grafter high or low.

"Bill Borton, driven into a corner by evidence that he betrayed the great national game that gave him some measure of fame and a goodly share of material favors, adopts (such) tactics. He proclaims that whole teams of ball players were crooked and attempts to explode his bomb with a story that Vernon players won their pennant last year by bribing players of other teams to throw games to Vernon."

As it turned out, Seattle gambler Nate Raymond was apparently the money man in the plot. During the following season, hotel registers around the league showed that Raymond was following the Vernon team from city to city, continuing the dirty work begun the previous season. In August of 1920, when Raymond was trying to get Seattle first baseman Rod Murphy to accept a $3,000 payoff, he told the player that he had cleaned up $50,000 during the 1919 season by betting on fixed P.C.L. games.

Also in 1920, Hal Chase, for whom Borton had been traded in 1913, returned to California and immediately set up a partnership with Borton to fix games.

It is remarkable that despite the widespread bribery and attempted bribery, not one opposing player blew the whistle on Borton until well into the 1920 season. Writing in the Los Angeles Evening Express in November, 1920, Harry Grayson editorialized on that phenomenon under the headline, "An Indictment Against the Ball Players as a Whole."

"The real reason for the belated housecleaning to which the national pastime is being subjected at this time is because the players and magnates have been too eager to put the soft pedal on shady stuff. The tendancy has been to hush things up," Grayson wrote.

"The baseball playing fraternity has certainly proved itself a close-mouth one until the jam came. Until a bunch were caught red-handed they were secretive. They told of nothing deep or dangerous until the blow came."

Grayson named a half-dozen of Borton's teammates and others in the league who had told him they knew Borton was "not walking the straight and narrow."

San Francisco baseball writer Seal Rock (pen name) played the same tune in an Aug. 26, 1920, column in The Sporting News. Its headlines read, "Players Tardy in Their Part Toward Keeping Game Clean / Common Club House Gossip Since Last Fall of Something Rotten Yet They Failed to Inform Those Who Could Set Matters to Right."

Rock wrote, "One of the astonishing things about the Coast League bribery scandal is that honest players in baseball, and there are ten honest men to every one crook, do not get together and hound the bad ones out of baseball. That's what they should do. They know they should but no one seems to want to take the lead. The honest players will have to get in and help clean up the game for their own protection and the sooner they start the sooner the atmosphere will be cleared and baseball will get a real chance again."

Later, he repeated that "it was astonishing that so many ball players, innocent themselves of wrong doing, knew that others were guilty, that bribes were being offered, and probably accepted, and yet these players kept the matter from the club magnates and the league head.

"The timid ones shivered when this scandal broke and thought baseball was doomed. They know differently now. Baseball is bigger than the crooks and gamblers and it will survive when some of the misguided players who forgot all sense of decency and honesty are in the ash heap."

Rock continued, "In the past certain players in this league have been entertained by and been friendly with notorious gamblers. In some cases the boys did so innocently. From now on, however, they will have no excuse. If they pal around with crooks after having been warned, something will drop on them like a ton of coal falling down a chute, and they will find themselves out in the cold, cruel world, with hard work staring them in the face."

He concluded, "President McCarthy has shown that a bold stand and a vigorous investigation, publicly conducted, is the wisest policy and the only policy in the long run. McCarthy has had experience as foreman of a grand jury, so he knows something about investigations. He is on record as saying that he will keep up the fight until every crooked ball player is driven out of the game and he will never let up on the gamblers who have corrupted the players."

The Sporting News also expressed confidence in McCarthy's ability to clean up the mess. The paper editorialized, "President McCarthy has shown that he is a man who has the courage to swing his stick on any guilt head; one who will play no favorites, nor will he deviate from the course he has taken to clean up baseball in his league if the whole playing personnel has to be reorganized."

The editorial worked itself to this feverish conclusion, "So again we say, get all the crooks, in any and every league, and let there be no mistaken policy of secrecy in getting them. Make up the dishonor roll and publish it so large and high that all the world shall know who the traitors have been and bend every effort toward seeing that no names are missing from that roll. Let the names that it carries be bywords for all that is mean and contemptible."

McCarthy's investigation was vigorous. He promised the public, "it would have no complaint to make of anything being covered up in the investigation," but asked for patience until the facts could be assembled and sifted through. He traveled the length and breadth of the league and summoned legions of players to his office to give testimony.

(continued tomorrow)