How to Create a Top Ten Set

The offseason between 1998 and 1999 was busy for the Chicago Cubs marketing team and Vine Line magazine staff. A marketing campaign with Old Style beer was conceived to conduct a fan vote for the Cubs’ All-Century team in early 1999 that included the production of an accompanying 21-card set. As discussions of the greatest players of the century were ongoing, the marketing department proposed a second set of cards highlighting “greatest moments.” According to Cubs team historian Ed Hartig, however, the problem they grappled with was “top moments of what? Of the team? Of the team during the century? Of the park? Of the team at the park?”

Ultimately, they decided to do a card set highlighting the top ten Cubs moments that occurred at Wrigley Field. A Budweiser sponsorship provided for a 10-card set to be given out at the August 6, 1999 game.

Unlike the Cubs All-Century Team, there was no fan voting component for the top moments. Instead, Hartig was tasked with selecting the greatest moments at Wrigley Field. After surveying media members, media relations staff, broadcasters, and others, Hartig took their suggestions and made the call on the definitive Cubs moments at Wrigley Field. He wrote some notes for each event and reviewed them with the Vine Line staffers. Hartig had “a couple ‘extra moments’ in [his] back pocket in case there was any pushback.” However, the conversation went almost as planned. 

The only moment they struggled with was Babe Ruth’s alleged “Called Shot” during the 1932 World Series. Hartig jokingly argued it should not be included “because it didn’t happen and wasn’t truly a Cubs moment.” They eventually agreed it was too big a happening (despite its apocryphal nature) not to be included; however, they decided to use a photo of Cubs twirler Charlie Root on the card instead of Ruth.

Once the “moments” were finalized, the project was turned over to the Vine Line staff to design the cards. Photos for the older moments were selected from the George Brace Collection and newer ones came from Cubs photographer Steve Green. Hartig wrote the highlights for each moment to be used for the card backs. They intentionally did not rank the moments, but instead chose to list the cards chronologically. 

Hartig recalled “a little bit of pushback from fans” regarding some of the top moment selections. Some folks were critical of what constituted “the moment” of Kerry Wood’s 20-strikeout game pitched on May 6, 1998. Others suggested that Mark Grace’s catch for the final out of the 1998 Wild Card tie-breaker game against the Giants on September 28, 1998 was more of a “moment.” Regardless, Ed knows they made the right call including the Kerry Wood game because “the whole game was a special moment!”

Some other games/moments considered included the first Chi-Fed game at the ballpark (then called Weeghman Park) on April 23, 1914; the first Cubs game at the park on April 20, 1916; the August 25, 1922 game in which the Cubs beat the Phillies 26-23 (still the most total runs ever scored in a game); Game 6 of the 1945 World Series; Jackie Robinson’s debut at Wrigley Field on May 18, 1947; no-hitters by Sam Jones and Ken Holtzman; and All-Star games at Wrigley Field in 1947, 1962, and 1990.

If only Topps Now existed all along!

Here are Ed Hartig’s personal Top Three Moments (through 1999):

  • September 28, 1938 – Gabby Hartnett’s “Homer in the Gloamin’”

“Hartnett’s HR gets the number 1 spot for me because it checks off so many boxes.  He was a Cubs legend and Hall of Famer, it was dramatic AND it had a significant impact on an improbable comeback to win the NL pennant.  The HR didn’t win the pennant as many may claim, but it certainly crushed the Pirates’ spirit.”

  • May 6, 1998 – Kerry Wood Strikes out 20 Houston Astros in his fifth Major League start

“Wood’s 20 K game would be second.  I’ve jokingly said that game reminded me of an adult playing in a kids’ game of Wiffle Ball—with the kids mouthing off. Rather than take it easy on the kids, the adult is throwing curve balls with two-foot breaks or blowing fastballs right past them. It just wasn’t fair.”

  • December 12, 1965 – Gale Sayers Scores Six Touchdowns
(Author created card)

“Number Three is the “Kerry Wood Game” equivalent for football—when [Bears running back] Gale Sayers scored six touchdowns against the 49ers. I know we didn’t include football in the top moments card set, but in a true list of top moments at the park, this game must be included. Sayers was the adult running through, over, and around a group of kids.  It was the original ‘it just wasn’t fair.’”

  • May 12, 1970 – Banks’ 500th Home Run
  • August 8, 1988 – First Night Game at Wrigley Field

“The first night game and Ernie’s 500th would likely come next—I go back and forth on which is fourth and which is fifth. I got to know Ernie while working with the team and his 500th was the first great moment I can remember watching as a kid, so maybe that pushes him to fourth. But without the lights, the Cubs might not be playing in Wrigley Field today. Toss a coin which is fourth and which is fifth.”

  • October 1, 1932 – Ruth’s “Called Shot”

“A lot of people list Ruth’s home run high on their lists. As one who thinks it is more myth than truth, I personally don’t rate it very high. But I know others do, so I included it among the top ten—but it would be further down the list.” [Regardless of all the lore that has followed this alleged event, video footage clearly shows that Ruth was pointing at the Cubs’ dugout, not predicting a home run.]

Hartig also had a few ideas for moments that would crack the Top Ten today: the Cubs clinching the Central Division at home in 2008; knocking off the Cardinals in the 2015 NLDS; and Miguel Montero’s grand slam against the Dodgers in the 2016 NLCS. Kyle Hendricks’ two-hit gem over the Dodgers to win the NL pennant in 2016 would certainly be a worthwhile entry for that new list, too.

1999 Budweiser Wrigley Field Top Ten Moments Checklist

(Cards are unnumbered, list presented in chronological order)

  1. May 2, 1917 – Hippo Vaughn-Fred Toney Double No-Hitter
  2. October 1, 1932 – Babe Ruth’s “Called Shot” (photo is Charlie Root)
  3. September 28, 1938 – Gabby Hartnett’s “Homer in Gloamin’”
  4. May 15, 1960 – Don Cardwell’s No-Hitter
  5. May 12, 1970 – Ernie Banks’ 500th Home Run
  6. September 2, 1972 – Milt Pappas’ Near-Perfect Game (Cubs broadcaster Lou Boudreau in foreground)
  7. June 23, 1984 – The Sandberg Game
  8. August 8, 1988 – First Night Game at Wrigley Field (uncorrected error – “Wrigley Feild” on front of card)
  9. May 6, 1998 – Kerry Wood’s 20 Strikeouts
  10. September 13, 1998 – Sammy Sosa Hits Home Runs 61 and 62

Notes:

Special thanks to Chicago Cubs team historian and Chicago SABR member Ed Hartig for the behind-the-scenes information into how he helped the Cubs create this fantastic card set. 

Sources:

Ed Hartig interview with author, May 23, 2023.

1935 Goudey: Over the border line

Introduction

I enjoy picking apart unexplained details of vintage sets to see where that journey leads. This article puts 1935’s Big League Gum baseball set, often shortened to “1935 Goudey,” under a microscope with similar aims. It looks at what’s in the set, obsesses over missing details, and considers how it fits into an important decade for baseball and our hobby.

1935 Goudey Big League Gum (Ruth at upper-left)

This set exists thanks to work by two seminal companies from Boston, Goudey Gum and National Chicle. The former ran parallel US and Canadian operations that reflected its founder’s Nova Scotia heritage. Chicle itself emerged from 1933’s trading cards explosion and lasted just long enough to give Goudey real competition. Much of what that era faced echoes in today’s hobby, including a gambling mindset among potential buyers and baseball’s push to raise fan interest during hard financial times.

Goudey Gum’s Hollywood beginnings

Our 1920s produced, for the most part, small trading cards sets with low print quality. “Bubblegum cards” didn’t exist yet because our Federal Trade Commission blocked marketing gimmicks like packing cards with candy as anti-competitive (and thus illegal). Many lawmakers believed that selling penny gum with unknown contents would start kids down the road to compulsive gambling and objected to its use, with success, on moral grounds.

Sports like baseball also shut down for several months at a time and those lengthy off-seasons made it challenging to sell product tie-ins on a consistent basis. That led Goudey to Hollywood as something more predictable. Their first set appears to be western movie postcards linked to the popular brand Oh Boy Gum.

1929 Oh Boy Gum movie cards (cataloged E282)

This made their first “sports card” a candid of western movie star Tom Mix working out with his friend (and boxing champ) Jack Dempsey. The text variation that lacks Goudey’s name implies they integrated an existing Mix/Dempsey card into this larger Oh Boy Gum set.

Goudey’s next set told “the story of chewing gum” and trumpeted their production process during 1930 sponsorship of a kid’s radio show, Big Brother’s Radio Rascals.

1930 Goudey “Story of Chewing Gum” (uncataloged)

I bet kids obtained Rainbow cards from local stores or by mail-in request to its home station, WEEI. Every Goudey marketing effort from this era pushed hard against the perception that penny gum meant “low quality.”

In January 1933, a majority decision in R.F. Keppel Brothers vs. FTC overturned the ban that applied to bubblegum cards as marketing gimmicks and freed companies to sell them. Goudey was ready for that change of fortune and launched Indian Gum in February, followed by the debut of Big League Gum cards around Opening Day.

The first Big League Gum set sold so well during 1933 that Jason Schwartz argues Goudey may have squeezed a multi-year plan into one season. I think they also tried to use Ruth’s stardom as a solution to the “off-season problem” by adding him to the multi-subject Sport Kings Gum in December. Given its comparative scarcity today, even The Babe failed to keep kids buying baseball during wintertime.

1933 Goudey Sport Kings Gum #2, Babe Ruth

In the end, Goudey made six different Babe Ruth cards in 1933 alone! Four in Big League Gum, one in Sport Kings Gum, and another from this wrapper mail-in.

Goudey ex-treasurer, Harold DeLong, offered some candy store competition in 1933 with a set made by his eponymous gum company. Lou Gehrig stands out as its best player (full checklist and gallery).

The set’s back text shared playing tips by Austen Lake, a Boston sportswriter, who also wrote bios for National Chicle’s Diamond Stars Gum cards. SABR profiled DeLong and said more about Lake himself in 2019.

DeLong’s 1933 Play Ball Gum set, not to be confused with Gum, Inc.’s 1939-41 sets, stopped at one series of 24 players. We might attribute its modern scarcity to one of baseball’s first agents, Christy Walsh, and the need to pay his clients or face legal trouble. See SABR’s Death and Taxes and Baseball Card Litigation series for several tales of legal wrangling over player images. (Jimmie Foxx’s 1941 case happened to go up against Harold DeLong’s next company, who produced the Double Play set.)

Sports promoter Christy Walsh (center) negotiated endorsements for Gehrig (left), Ruth (right), and several other MLB stars around this time. I suspect he turned 1933’s card boom into higher endorsement fees for each player in 1934, forcing companies to choose who they could afford.

New Yorker writer Louis Menand cited Lou’s new wife Eleanor as working with Walsh to create a pitchman persona for her husband. Goudey bet on Lou alone for 1934, linking this Big League Gum card set and their Knot Hole League customer loyalty club to his smiling mug. Walsh, always the promoter, even worked his own name onto each card with a “by arrangement with Christy Walsh” byline.

Sometime in 1933, a group of Goudey executives led by Alvin Livingstone left the company to start crosstown rival National Chicle. I think much of its creative talent followed them, based on how good their Art Deco Diamond Stars Gum (left) and die-cut Batter-Up Gum (right) sets looked in 1934.

Whether you blame competition or changing consumer tastes, later court filings show Goudey’s baseball card business suffered after 1933, dropping by 50% in 1934 and another 50% the year after, even as gum itself continued to sell well.

Goudey sales data, via SCD editor Bob Lemke

Goudey’s dropping card revenue and the exit of key staff to competitors reflects America’s wider business landscape for fans and collectors.

Depression impacts on Goudey and baseball

The mid-1930s proved a tough time for our pastime itself. America’s depression squeezed every entertainment dollar and attendance slacked to under 5,000 per game by 1933. Team owners threw new stuff at the wall each year to see what stuck and we can thank this era for, among other things…

1935 wrappers evoke Babe Ruth, now in his final season, and I suspect they added a date because 1934 Big League Gum’s entire first series reused images from 1933 and left a poor taste in buyer’s mouths. (“This time it’s different,” implied Goudey, before reusing many player pictures once again.)

This Ruth batting pose seems based on several lookalikes published in that decade, including an earlier Sanella Margarine card.

1932 Sanella Margarine, one of many cards with this swinging pose

Goudey’s set of 36 cards and three loose ends

1935 Big League Gum put four players on each card and its selection bridged eras, from Babe Ruth to rookie phenom Cy Blanton, who led the NL in shutouts and garnered his own 2021 SABR card profile.

Collectors used the literal flip side to build six-card puzzles for individual stars like Mickey Cochrane…

…and twelve cards each for three team photos (Tigers, Indians, Senators).

Big League Gum’s 36 arrangements of four players each should equal 144, except they printed six twice (Bottomley, Brandt, Cochrane, Comorosky, Kamm, and Mancuso), for 138 different faces.

1935 Goudey Big League Gum’s two Mickey Cochrane fronts

Other hobby writers already addressed some of 1935’s puzzles and peccadilloes. I know of three more loose ends that might connect with a single thread.

First loose end: Player selection left out many big names. Even if you accept choosing between Ruth or Gehrig as your biggest star, where’s Yankees Ace Lefty Gomez? He appears on a Goudey 1935 photo premium, yet none of their Big League Gum cards.

1935 Goudey Big League Gum premium (R309-2)

Many big names went missing, like New York ace Carl Hubbell and St. Louis stars Joe Medwick, Ripper Collins, and Daffy Dean. Future HOFers Gabby Hartnett and Billy Herman led the Cubs to an NL pennant in 1935, so were also missed by Chicago fans.

At least one prominent 1935 rookie (Cy Blanton) appeared in Big League Gum, so I mocked up a card for three that didn’t, Phil Cavarretta, Rip Radcliff, and Lew Riggs. Frenchy Bordagaray gets in on the strength of his facial hair alone. Goudey’s many omissions loom large over such a small set. And speaking of things left out…

Second loose end: Goudey’s name and Big League Gum appear nowhere on the card itself. This represents a big change to their earlier, text-heavy sets. Compare 1934 bios (left) to 1935 puzzle pieces (right).

You might already know Goudey licensed portions of 1933 and 1934 Big League Gum sets to their Quebec partner, World Wide Gum, for Canadian printing and distribution. Each of those cards proclaimed its Montreal origins, just as American sets came from Boston. (I wrote more about these cross-border sets in 2019.)

1934 Big League Gum card backs, Canada (left) and USA (right)

So why leave out all this info for 1935 cards? I think the reason Goudey omitted it will sound outlandish, yet serves their goal of making money during a tough financial era. They wanted to hide the set’s country of origin and sell to fans on each side of our northern border without paying import costs.

1934-36 National Chicle Batter-Up Gum (blank back)

If this seems like a reach, remember that National Chicle published two sets in 1934 and one of them, Batter-Up Gum, also lacked attribution. Did Goudey follow their competition’s lead selling these cards in multiple countries?

Excerpt from The Story of the Great Lakes in 8 Maps

American Prohibition, an era rife with border smuggling, ended in late 1933 and some no doubt continued moving other goods by land, boat, or air across our Great Lakes. MLB towns Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland all offer land or waterway routes to Canada, as do International League baseball cities Toronto and Buffalo. Obscuring a set’s origin would enable Goudey or National Chicle to print cards wherever proved cheapest and evade import costs at their eventual point of sale. (Canada’s higher dependence on exports could also be why this made sense.)

Big League Gum wrappers, 1934 Goudey (left) and
undated World Wide Gum (right)

While there are no World Wide Gum wrappers dated as 1935, this design echoes Goudey’s 1934 look without specifying a year, so could be from later. Did they wrap them around 1935 Big League Gum cards up north?

1936 Big League Gum (cataloged R322) also omits company name and country of origin, so perhaps Goudey succeeded in cutting costs and decided to keep their scheme running for another year.

To add more spice to our soup, recall that O-Pee-Chee released their debut Canadian baseball set in spring 1937, just as National Chicle declared bankruptcy.

1937 O-Pee-Chee baseball (cataloged V300)

These cards use die-cut folds along each player profile, making them close cousins to 1934-36 Batter-Up Gum. Perhaps OPC printed it first for National Chicle and then sold the set themselves when their American partner folded.

Believing that cross-border smuggling could be done differs from proving it happened. Each company would work to hide contemporary evidence of their trickiness, let alone leave a trail to follow 90 years later. These card and wrapper designs allow for intriguing monkey business, if Goudey and National Chicle wanted to reduce costs with clandestine assistance from Canadian partners.

Would you believe another mystery remains for 1935 Big League Gum?

Third loose end: These six cards, and these six alone, come with blue borders, while the remaining 30 feature red borders.

1935 Goudey Big League Gum blue border cards (uncut panel)

Advanced collectors might remember Goudey printed a second baseball-related set in 1935, tied to their Knot Hole League collector club you saw earlier. Candy stores who stocked Big League Gum boxes received a stack of these flip game cards featuring 1934’s World Series opponents (St. Louis & Detroit) with instructions to share them with buyers of Big League Gum. Fronts show game rules below a scoreboard and backs introduced the game situations also seen on black-and-white 1936 cards.

1935 Goudey Knot Hole League (front and back)

Despite its promised “series of 100,” this set stopped at #24, equal to one 4×6 print sheet of cards. Having two groups of 1935 cards with a shared border color recalls a situation two years earlier, as one series of Indian Gum used blue name banners about when Goudey’s Boston facility also produced the first sheet of their pirate-themed Sea Raider Gum.

Hobby legend says these series shared ink across two sheets. (See PSA’s set profile for details.) If Goudey printed this way again in 1935, then the existence of blue-bordered Knot Hole League could explain how six Big League Gum cards ended up the same way: it was more efficient to share colors across similar work.

If that scenario fails to convince you, how about printing cards with regional appeal? Master set collectors will know those six blue fronts come with three back puzzle variations, all of future Hall of Fame players from Great Lakes cities Chicago and Detroit. (As before, complete player puzzles require six fronts and I show uncut versions for image clarity.)

Puzzle 2, Chuck Klein, 1933 NL triple crown winner who joined the Cubs in 1934.

Puzzle 4, Mickey “Black Mike” Cochrane, traded to Detroit after 1933.

Puzzle 7, Al “Bucketfoot” Simmons, sold to the White Sox after 1932.

Perhaps Goudey produced blue Big League Gum cards with Chicago and Detroit in mind, knowing these three stars held extra appeal. Specific border color would make it easy to target their distribution.

A third scenario for these borders recalls that Goudey printed 30 different red border cards with four players each, 120 total, half the size of 1933 Big League Gum. An equal number of blue cards, another 120, would give us 240 players. If they intended to make an equal quantity of each, this implies a halt to production soon after changing ink colors.

That gives us three scenarios for 1935 Big League Gum blue borders, based on what we see today.

  1. Efficient printing alongside Knot Hole League
  2. Great Lakes “subset” of Chicago and Detroit star puzzles
  3. Printing stopped before Goudey reached their planned 30 blue borders

That last option makes the most sense in retrospect. Goudey shortened sets from other years when cards stopped selling and 1935’s falling baseball revenue shows that happening.

This scuttling of additional series also answers our question about missing players, since a full complement of 30 blue border cards would add many more names to its checklist. Multiple scenarios might work together. For example, an attempt to promote stars in Chicago and Detroit could fail to meet Goudey sales expectations, so they stopped spending money on that year’s set.

Summary of what we covered

Just a few years after kids could start buying cards and gum together, these intriguing baseball sets omitted basic info about their origins during an era when people with flexible morals could profit from hiding that kind of information. One of them, 1935 Big League Gum, took the mystery further with a subset of blue borders in search of explanation. I proposed a handful of explanations, some worthy of being in a police report for smuggling to either side of America’s northern border.

Baseball sets from our past can seem prosaic now, as if printed in similar circumstances to today’s more predictable hobby. I think Goudey and National Chicle, like many Great Depression businesses, stood willing to try almost anything to stay afloat, even dodging government regulations when it helped them keep money coming in. Perhaps 1930s card creators were their company’s edgy marketers who ran hot and fizzled out fast. However things worked behind the scenes, they left intriguing puzzles to work out a century later.

The All-Time Greatest Baseball Card Set of the (20th) Century

Like many Chicago kids of the 1960s and 1970s, Ed Hartig owes much of his baseball love to WGN-TV broadcasts of afternoon Cubs games from Wrigley Field. When his older siblings were at school, he would sit in front of the television with his baseball cards spread out in front of him arranged in the line-ups for each team. When his siblings got home from school, mom would kick them all out of the house. So Ed would grab his glove and play ball in the backyard while listening to the rest of the Cubs game on WGN-Radio. Little did he know at that point that he would someday help prepare an All-Century Team card set commemorating the ultimate Cubs roster for the 20th century.

Hartig began working for the Cubs as a freelance writer on special projects in 1988 and was a regular contributor to the Cubs’ Vine Line magazine by 1996. Shortly after the 1998 season ended, the team’s marketing and publications departments met to pitch story ideas and promotions for the coming year (perhaps a few of which may have involved the home run chase from the previous season). One of those ideas was selecting a Cubs all-century team in either 1999 or 2000. However, once Major League Baseball decided to run their All-Century promotion during the 1999 season, the Cubs decided to follow suit.

Hartig was tasked with compiling a ballot of the best Cubs players and managers whose careers took place in the 1900s and—crucial for our story—was told that the finalized team would be memorialized with a baseball card set. Hartig carefully put together a slate of the 40 most deserving individuals and got approval from the marketing and publications departments. The final ballot included 26 position players, 10 pitchers, and four managers.

The selection of the Cubs’ All-Century Team was then turned over to the fans. Voting began during spring training and ran through mid-April, which gave the team time to produce the first set of cards for a scheduled giveaway on May 15. Votes were accepted either by mailing in a paper ballot from the newspaper or on-line through Metromix.com, an entertainment-based division of the Chicago Tribune. The ballot was divided into position players, pitchers, and managers; however, fans were asked to simply select their favorite 20 Cubs with no special instructions for picking so many per category or position. The promotion was sponsored by Old Style beer and voters were automatically entered into a contest to win tickets and the chance to throw out the first pitch at a Cubs game later that season.

In total, Cubs fans cast over 120,000 votes and the All-Century Team was announced in early May. The final team consisted of 21 individuals, instead of the 20 originally planned, after a decision was made to add Frank Chance as the manager.

The baseball card fronts and backs included a handsome Wrigley Field marquee motif done by the Vine Line staff. Photos of older players were selected from the George Brace Collection and the more recent photos were those taken by Cubs team photographer Steve Green. Hartig prepared the card backs using the materials he had researched during the initial ballot construction and he separately authored full-page articles for the Vine Line’s All-Century Team. Unlike a number of the Cubs’ team-issued card sets, the Old Style All-Century Team cards were produced in the standard 2½” x 3 ½” size.

The set was distributed in seven-card packs across three home dates on May 15, June 26, and August 3. Because the card set was sponsored by Old Style, the cards were only handed out to the first 20,000 fans at each game who were 21 years of age or older. Accordingly, it is not easy to determine how many of these cards survived.

The living All-Century Team members—including current Cubs Mark Grace and Sammy Sosa—were honored at the September 25, 1999 game and the retired players serenaded the crowd of 39,000 with their rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh-inning stretch.

Although there was some apparent recency bias in the fans’ voting, Hartig was generally satisfied with the results. If he had to pick one slight, however, it would have been 1940s outfielder Bill “Swish” Nicholson, “what a great slugger and an even nicer person!” Ed also wished that he had thought to honor a trainer (Andy Lotshaw), equipment manager (Yosh Kawano), and traveling secretary (Bob Lewis) on the All-Century team photo after the fan’s selections were tallied.

As for his All-Century starting lineup, Ed would have gone with this squad:

  • Manager – Frank Chance
  • Starting Pitcher – Mordecai Brown
  • Relief Pitcher – Bruce Sutter
  • Catcher – Gabby Hartnett
  • LF – Billy Williams
  • CF – Hack Wilson
  • RF – Sammy Sosa
  • 1B – Mark Grace
  • 2B – Ryne Sandberg
  • 3B – Ron Santo
  • SS – Ernie Banks

Also, please check out this fantastic video of Cubs All-Century Team member interviews by Chicago SABR’s own Tom Shaer.

1999 Old Style Cubs All-Century Team Checklist

(Cards are unnumbered, list presented in alphabetical order)

  1. Grover Alexander
  2. Ernie Banks (Vine Line’s “Player of the Century”)
  3. Mordecai Brown
  4. Phil Cavarretta
  5. Frank Chance
  6. Andre Dawson
  7. Mark Grace
  8. Charlie Grimm  
  9. Stan Hack
  10. Gabby Hartnett
  11. Billy Herman
  12. Fergie Jenkins
  13. Andy Pafko
  14. Ryne Sandberg 
  15. Ron Santo
  16. Lee Smith
  17. Sammy Sosa
  18. Bruce Sutter
  19. Joe Tinker
  20. Billy Williams
  21. Hack Wilson       

Notes:

Special thanks to Chicago Cubs team historian and Chicago SABR member Ed Hartig for all of the behind-the-scenes information into how he helped the Cubs create this beautiful card set. 

Sources:

Ed Hartig interview with author, April 26, 2023.

Chicago Tribune, April 14, 1999: 148.

New Dick Perez film features card set

In what came as wonderful and welcome news to card collectors of a certain vintage, filmmaker Marq Evans announced Monday his plans for a full-length feature film on legendary baseball artist Dick Perez, along with a Kickstarter campaign to fund the effort.

Helping break the story was SABR member and junk wax savant Ryan Fagan of the Sporting News.

Since that time, Marq and Dick have appeared on several livestreams and podcasts, offering collectors some fun behind-the-scenes stories about the Donruss Diamond Kings, Dick’s other artistic ventures, and of course the film itself. Here is a nice sampling.

Marq has also released several short clips from “The Diamond King” as part of his promotional efforts of the film and its Kickstarter campaign. All are worth a watch or listen. For example, here is a clip of Dick sharing his memories as a young collector in the 1950s.

Marq was kind enough to provide SABR Baseball Cards with some previously unseen images from the 22-card baseball card set accompanying the film. The majority of the set features Hall of Famers personally selected as “Diamond Immortals” by Dick, but there are also five players not yet enshrined in Cooperstown. Their cards bear the “Diamond Destiny” moniker.

UPDATE: The set has now been upped to 25 cards!

Dick has also designed backs for the cards, as seen in these mockups.

A total of 499 sets will be produced, individually serial numbered and available only through the film’s Kickstarter page. Here is the complete checklist.

2023 Dick Perez “Diamond Immortals” checklist

Additionally, Marq and Dick were both generous with their time in providing me the opportunity to interview them about “The Diamond King,” the new baseball card set, and whatever else popped into my head.

SABR Baseball Cards: Let’s begin with your earliest memories as a card collector. We’ll start with Dick.

Dick Perez: Baseball cards were another grand feature of Spring: warmer weather, schooldays coming to an end, the birth of another baseball season, and the reappearance of baseball cards. I was hooked on baseball and the imagery that brought my heroes to life. 

Marq Evans: Baseball was my life as a kid, and from age 7 to about 13 I was all about collecting cards. Every dollar I earned from chores, every birthday or Christmas present, it went towards cards. When Ken Griffey Jr. came on the scene in 1989 he instantly became my favorite player and the main focus of my collection. I collected hundreds of his cards and pretty much every weekend was spent at the local card shop to see what the new stock was. 

SABR Baseball Cards: Dick, you grew up in an era where baseball cards and art were inseparable. What impression did the artwork of the early 1950s baseball cards make on you?

Dick Perez: I became interested in baseball cards in 1952.  Although at the time I thought they were photographic, they had a special look. The 1953 issue of the cards was even better. They looked more artistic. I still believed they were photographic, but in 1954 the imaging of baseball cards changed. It was later in life that I learned that the ’52 and ’53 cards were produced by artists. It seems that the goal was  to make those hand painted cards look like photos. That is something I strive not to do when I create my baseball images. I want the viewer to know for sure that a hand was responsible for the work.

SABR Baseball Cards: Visually, did you have any favorites from the 1953 set?

Dick Perez: My favorites from that ’53 set were Jackie Robinson, Luke Easter, Mickey Mantle, Satchel Paige, Al Schoendienst, Joe Collins, Monte Irvin, Vinegar Bend Mizell and Ted Wilks in that order.

Best of 1953 Topps in order!

SABR Baseball Cards: Exceptional choices from top to bottom! How about you, Marq? I know you started collecting a little bit later than Dick. Was there a set in particular you liked best?

Marq Evans: I just loved cards and don’t remember having a favorite set as a kid. The hunt for Griffey brought me to just about every set there was. I do recall having a distinct emotional connection to the Donruss Diamond King cards and they became a set I looked forward to every year. It’s funny though, I don’t think back then I ever thought about the artist that was painting these cards. I just thought they were cool. It wasn’t until decades later that became curious about the artist behind these great images.

SABR Baseball Cards: I suppose that’s a great opportunity for me to ask. How did the idea for this film come about?

Marq Evans: When I read about Dick’s journey, coming to New York at age 6 and learning English and about America through the game of baseball, and his inspiring life story, I thought there was the potential to make a film about baseball through his life and work.

SABR Baseball Cards: And how did that go?

Marq Evans: I sent Dick a blind email just introducing myself and seeing if he was interested in discussing the concept. To my delight he said he’d be happy to talk. We really hit it off right away and he has been a great participant and collaborator in this whole process. He’s an insanely talented artist, of course, but an even better person.

SABR Baseball Cards: Dick, you’ve created your first brand new baseball set in way too long as part of the fundraising for the film. The inclusion of both Orator O’Rourke and J-Rod tells me you were fairly intentional in your player checklist. What was your approach to selecting 22 players from all of baseball history?

Dick Perez: Many of the players chosen for the set are players I knew personally, painted often, played tennis with, or worked together with on some project. There is an even longer list, which still could appear later on. It is possible we may make the card set grow some. 

SABR Baseball Cards: Marq, are there other things collectors should know about these cards?

Marq Evans: I love how the set spans the whole history of baseball from the origins until today. I’ll just add that the printer that is printing this set did the last several years of Diamond Kings, so we’re getting some of the old team back together. Finally, our Kickstarter has more than just the baseball card set. For example, we have a limited edition Aaron Judge print numbered to 99 and Dick’s original artwork of Shohei Ohtani!

SABR Baseball Cards: This may sound like an odd question, but many collectors care about such details. Will the card set’s serial numbering be reflected on the packaging only, or will each card be individually numbered?

Marq Evans: Each card. For example, the 50th set ordered through our Kickstarter campaign will have all 22 of its cards individually numbered 50/499.

SABR Baseball Cards: Now you have me hoping the 21st set ends up with a Clemente collector and set 99 goes to a Judge fan! Just one last question. Dick this one will take you back 40 years if that’s okay. The 1983 Donruss Hall of Fame Heroes set represented the first time cards of Negro Leaguers Josh Gibson and Cool Papa Bell could ever be pulled from packs, at least in this country. What inspired you to include them in the set?

Dick Perez: I guess it was to emphasize the point that there were players from the Negro Leagues who were just as great as any Hall of Fame member. They are now part of the heritage that institution honors. 

SABR Baseball Cards: Thank you, gentleman. Best of luck with the film. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed that there’s an Oscar in your future!

Oscar Charleston by Dick Perez

Al Williams: Pitcher, Fighter, Survivor

A few weeks ago, my daughter walked downstairs and handed me a handful of baseball cards I had given her years ago. She had been using them for bookmarks, she confessed, and was ready to get them off her desk.

As I sifted through about 30 cards, scanning them front and back, I remembered something that had escaped me as I have become a more casual collector: You can sometimes learn a lot about a baseball player from his card, and it isn’t always about baseball. 

A good example can be found on the back of Al Williams’ 1982 Donruss. Under “Career Highlights,” among the stats and facts, we learn that Al, a Minnesota Twins pitcher from 1980 to ‘84, “survived a Nicaraguan earthquake in ‘72 that destroyed half his house while he was sleeping.” 

That line itself sent me Googling for more information about the earthquake. The 6.3 magnitude event struck near the capital city Managua about 30 minutes after midnight on December 23, 1972. Reports vary widely about how many people were killed, between 4,000 and 11,000. More than 20,000 were injured and 300,000-plus were left homeless. 

(Baseball historians will be quick to note that Roberto Clemente was delivering aid to the victims of this earthquake when he died in a plane crash off the coast of Puerto Rico.)

Al was 18 at the time of the earthquake. It was just a year after he began playing baseball. 

The next line Donruss listed among the pitcher’s “Career Highlights,” said Al “fought 16 months with the guerilla forces against the Somoza regime in Nicaragua in ‘77-’78.” The next line tells us he “was the strikeout leader of the ill-fated Inter-American League in 1978.”

OK, that sentence seems a bit out of place. Let’s go back to Al fighting with guerilla forces.

According to an April 3, 1984, New York Times story, which quotes that year’s Minnesota Twins media guide, the Nicaraguan government would not grant Williams, then a minor leaguer for the Pittsburgh Pirates, a visa to leave the country to join his ball club in the United States in 1977, so “this prompted Al to sign up with the Sandinista National Liberation Front guerillas and he was engaged in jungle fighting against forces of Anastasio Somoza for the next 16 months.”

Times reporter Ira Berkow asked Al about those months of fighting and his “cloak and dagger” escape – that’s the way the Twins media guide phrased it – from his home country. 

“That’s in the past,” Al replied, sitting in front of his locker. “I live for the future.”

Three years prior, the Times wrote about “Fearless Al Williams” for a section titled “Sports People.” There, Al spoke briefly about the time he spent fighting and away from baseball. 

“I really missed baseball the two years I was out of it,” he said, “but, I wasn’t thinking about baseball all the time. “I was just trying to stay alive.”

The Story Behind The 1953 Bowman Color Pee Wee Reese Card

The 1953 Bowman Color Pee Wee Reese is one of the most popular and iconic cards ever produced. And yet surprisingly, very little documentation exists on the origins of its creation. Who took this striking photograph of Reese leaping in the midst of a play? Why does this card look so different from the other Bowman Color cards? And who is that base runner on second?

Pee Wee in flight.

The main reason these questions persist can be traced to the famous commercial war between Topps and Bowman Gum of the early 1950s, which left Bowman on the losing end of things. In any war, commercial or otherwise, the loser rarely gets much of a chance to tell their side of the story, and the details are soon lost to time. As such, much of the Bowman legacy was unceremoniously thrown out or auctioned off into the ether. And so here we are decades later as collectors, attempting to put the puzzle back together again in the hopes of shedding some light on these marvels of pop culture.

The majority of the photographs featured in the gorgeous and eye-catching Bowman Color Set were taken during the 1952 season. It’s widely known that the folks lighting, composing, and snapping these shots were also taking photographs of Marilyn Monroe, Gary Cooper, and other cultural giants of the time to grace the covers of every major publication of the era: Sports Illustrated, Life, Look, National Geographic, to name just a few. 

In order to ease the workflow for the New York City-based photographers, Bowman arranged to take most of the shots in two of the game’s biggest hubs: Yankee Stadium for the American League players, and The Polo Grounds for the National League. Not to be completely left out of the mix, there’s exactly one card that represents Ebbets Field, where Brooklyn first baseman Gil Hodges mans his position against the backdrop of the iconic Schaefer Beer scoreboard. But sprinkled here and there throughout 160 photos captured in New York stadiums are a handful of outliers – Spring Training shots of players fielding and throwing in staged poses that feature palm trees instead of grandstands as backdrops.

Aerial view of City Island Ballpark – Daytona, FL

In 1946, the Brooklyn Dodgers would spend their spring training at City Island Ballpark in Daytona, Florida – the site of Jackie Robinson’s appearance with the Montreal Royals in an historic exhibition game vs Brooklyn that same year. The Brooklyn organization was still a couple of years away from the purchase and conversion of a WWII naval base in Vero Beach that would famously become known as Dodgertown. 

It was here in 1946 that the now-iconic image of Pee Wee Reese leaping over a baserunner to make a throw to first base was taken – 6 years earlier than the majority of the photographs from the 160 card set. When you compare the environment behind Reese in the photo, it most clearly matches up with the low fence and sparse tree-lined backdrop of the Daytona ballpark. The Reese card would be one of the few that fell outside of Bowman’s 1952 season-long photo shoot. 

Publications featuring the Reese image. From author’s collection.

As it turns out, this particular image had a life in the public eye well before it was used on a baseball card in 1953. Images from the Reese photo shoot were featured in several magazine publications in the late 40s and early 50s, including a 1950 edition of The National Police Gazette and a 1946 edition of This Week Magazine from the New York Herald Tribune. While the image used on the magazines is slightly different (take note of both Reese and the baserunner’s position in comparison to the Bowman card), it’s no doubt from the same photoshoot. Thanks to these publications, it is finally possible to identify and give credit to the photographer of this unforgettable image – David Peskin.

Peskin’s photo credit in 1946 NY Herald Tribune.

Peskin’s work can be seen across a myriad of publications from the era, most of them depicting sports figures in the midst of their craft. Although he did cover live sporting events, his most striking images are posed moments of athletes in action. From these works it’s easy to see how Peskin’s disposition to capture athletes in motion led him to favor Reese’s leap for his image.

Magazine covers featuring David Peskin photography.

It’s worth mentioning that Peskin’s horizontal image of Reese was not the only card of its kind originally being considered for the set. A Bowman Color proof card exists which has been dubbed “Dodgers In Action” – clearly following the same formula of a horizontal card depicting action from the field, although this image appears to be from an actual game, as opposed to Reese’s staged leap for Peskin. Ultimately, the “Dodgers In Action” card never made it past the concept phase; traces of a horizontal action subset for the 1953 set? It is fun to speculate. 

“Dodgers In Action” proof card

Lastly, the debate as to which player is desperately hanging on to second base underneath Reese lingers to this day, with names like Morgan, Hodges, and Snider bandied about. The theory given the most credence seems to be the one offered by Reese himself, who was asked about the photo years later. He identified Stanley George “Frenchy” Bordagaray as the base runner, which checks out: Bordagaray was with the Dodgers up until the start of the 1946 season, when he was released. He was soon offered a coaching position within the Dodgers’ minor league system. With no definitive proof on the card however, collectors are still inclined to speculate: staring intently at the folds of the base runner’s jersey, straining to make out the number on his back. Now, why is the runner facing the wrong way on the basepaths? Despite being known as an action shot, it’s clearly a posed moment for Peskin, who was likely less concerned with game accuracy as he was with grabbing an aesthetically pleasing moment. Bordagary is not sliding so much as lying down, allowing Peskin to focus his attention on getting the best shot of Reese’s leap.

Stanley George “Frenchy” Bordagaray

These cards, once thought of as trivial bits of ephemera for bicycle spokes and shoeboxes, have grown in both value and lore over the decades. It’s only fitting then to give credit where credit is due; Warren Bowman and his cohorts, along with some talented hired guns – David Peskin among them – who went out onto the ballfields of the late 40s and early 50s to shoot some of the most breathtaking images the hobby has ever seen. 

Reese stands out amongst his Bowman Color brothers. From author’s collection.

SOURCES:

http://barnstormingwithfrankbarning.blogspot.com/2011/10/

http://www.thetoppsarchives.com/2022/02/proof-negative.html

The First Time Jackie Robinson Broke Baseball’s Color Barrier
Frenchy Bordagaray

Collecting King Carl

Though a die-hard Dodger fan, I’ve always had a fondness for two lifelong Giants, Mel Ott and Carl Hubbell. How much fondness? At the risk of losing favor with the Great Dodger in the Sky, let’s just say I have more cards of each than I do Dodger legends like Duke Snider, Sandy Koufax, and Jackie Robinson!

One flip through my “old cards” binder is enough to reveal that despite my allegiance to all things Dodger Blue, I’ve been sleeving with the enemy.

As I added my latest Hubbell to the collection, a 1941 Double Play in remarkably nice shape, I stopped to think about why it is I had such a connection to the Giants ace.

I think the allure goes way back to when nearly all of my knowledge of baseball history came from (and this will make me sound old!) books and radio.

I imagine Vin Scully mentioned Carl Hubbell once or twice in the games I’d listen to before bed starting around 1979, perhaps in conjunction with our own screwballer, Bobby Castillo, and I have no doubt King Carl came up even more as Fernando rose to prominence.

Dodgers “back-to-back” screwballers

As for books, I gravitated more toward cartoon-illustrated tomes with titles like “Baseball’s Zaniest Plays” (and still do!) than biography or serious analysis, a consequence being that I came to prize the 7-for-7 game or double no-hitter even more than the 500 home run hitter or 300 game winner. No surprise then that striking out five of the greatest hitters in baseball history–in a row!–would command my attention.

Of course, as is true with much in my life, there was a baseball card angle. At a card show around 1980, perhaps my very first, I rummaged through the “quarter box” and left with a 1961 Nu-Cards Baseball Scoops card immortalizing the Meal Ticket’s midsummer heroics.

Of course I had no idea it was from 1961. To ten-year-old me this card—bargain price be damned— had to be from 1934, or maybe 1935 at the very latest, which made this card my very first really old card of an all-time great. (In truth, that status still would have held had I known the card’s correct year.)

A few years later I was fortunate enough to receive a through the mail return from the Meal Ticket himself, though the card, like many from my early collecting days, did not survive the decades.

Fast forward nearly 40 years and my Hubbell collection included the glorious plastic sheet shown earlier, a 1935 Diamond Stars, and several pages of post-career cardboard: Fleer Baseball Greats, TCMA, Renata Galasso, Dick Perez, Conlon, etc.

1983 Renata Galasso #208

There were definitely other cards I wanted, but I had two things working against me. First off, my “best of” binder page looked so magnificent, I didn’t really want to tinker. Second, vintage Carl Hubbell cards weren’t exactly free. Fortunately, each of these problems had a solution.

If the collection grew a bit, I could borrow a Cigar Box display from one of my Dodger collections, however traitorous that sounds. As for cash, I came to the conclusion that supporting an Ott and Hubbell collection took me a bit outside my means and that selling some Ott cards would be an excellent way to generate some Hubbell money.

It was definitely painful to part with any beloved card of Master Melvin, but I knew I’d made the right decision when I was able to add this absolute dream card to my collection. Plus, Ott played for the Giants, so there’s that. 😃

Another big “hit” was Hubbell’s 1934 Goudey card, notably the year of his famous strikeout feat. (The “Sports Kings” card was likely also released in 1934, though the multi-sport Goudey set is nearly always referred to as a 1933 issue.)

I also decided I was long overdue in picking up some of the Meal Ticket’s early 1970s Laughlin cards.

The result is this wonderful Hubbell display, which sits atop my mantel.

Keen eyes might notice I’ve subbed in this homemade “Heavy J Studios” version of Hubbell’s Sport Kings card while the real one anchors a separate wall display.

I’ve also applied similar treatment (plus cut autograph—thanks, Sean!) to my 1984 Donruss Champions series featuring the glorious artwork of Dick Perez.

To an extent I suppose I’m now where I was almost a year ago, display full and wallet empty. The only difference is now I have exactly the Hubbell collection I’d always dreamed of. Still, I’ll highlight the cards most likely to sneak into my collection someday if the price or timing is just right.

STANDARD-ISH SIZE

In honor of Hubbell’s strikeout record, I’ll start with this group of five cards, any of which would bump the 2019 Panini Diamond Kings card out of my display.

1933 Goudey #234

I’m a sucker for 1933 Goudey, so this is an obvious want. However, it’s not quite a need. The image is the same as Hubbell’s 1934 Goudey card, and I already have both that and Hubbell’s other 1933 Goudey. Shoot, though. I do love red backgrounds.

1934 Batter Up

This card is attractive to me in a couple ways. The pose is tremendous, so there’s that. But there’s also the fact that I don’t have a single Batter Up card in my collection.

1941 Goudey (Blue)

There is so little to love about this set, but I do think the Hubbell is among its least terrible cards. Yet another set I have no cards of in my collection.

1943 M.P. & Company

Literally the exact same comment as above.

1974 Laughlin All-Star Game

I absolutely LOVE Laughlin cards, having grown up on the Fleer sticker backs of the early 1980s. I know a lot of collectors my age would go back to card shows of that era and buy up Mantle cards. Me, I’d scoop up all the 1970s Laughlin sets for two to three dollars a pop!

OVERSIZED

As much as I enjoy the larger pieces, they’re a challenge to display with my other cards. Still, I’m forced to at least call out two cards so spectacular I’d find a spot for them somehow.

1937 and 1938 Wheaties

* * * * *

How about you? What are your favorite cards of the Meal Ticket? Do your player collections include enemies from the rival team? Let me know in the comments, and happy collecting!

A FEW LESSONS

  • When “collecting them all” is a practical impossibility, building a player collection of personal favorites, perhaps restricted or otherwise influenced by display parameters, is a great way to go.
  • If displaying is an end goal, you might be surprised how much customs, modern, and art cards can enhance the overall look and obviously save a ton of cash.
  • Selling or trading all but a couple favorites of a player you collect is a great way to build up your collection of someone else. Not easy but no regrets!

RANDOM CARL HUBBELL TRIVIA

  • Hubbell’s feat of five consecutive All-Star Game strikeouts was matched in 1986 by fellow screwballer Fernando Valenzuela. However, the batters retired by Fernando (Mattingly, Ripken, Barfield, Whitaker, Higuera) don’t read quite the same as Ruth, Gehrig, Foxx, Simmons, Cronin).
  • Hall of Fame teammates Mel Ott and Carl Hubbell died exactly 3o years apart (November 21, 1958, and November 21, 1988) from injuries suffered in automobile accidents.
  • Born in Carthage, Missouri, King Carl won 18 games in 1929 but was outdone by namesake and fellow Show Me State native Edwin Hubble (Marshfield, MO) whose discovery of Hubble’s Law had profound implications for our understanding of the universe.

Of Pack Nights and Rub Downs (It’s Not What You Think)

One of the great inventions in recent hobby history is the invention of Pack Night. Created by a group of Chicago friends/SABR members, Pack Night is simply joyful – a small band of pals get together with unopened boxes of packs, mostly from the 1980’s and 1990’s and split them equally, trading, sharing, and gabbing about cards and baseball for hours. And there’s pizza and beer. The generous spirit of Pack Night is what makes it special – Dodger collectors get Dodger cards, Cub collectors get Cub cards, set builders are helped to build sets. And there’s pizza and beer.

Pack Night made a rare road appearance two weeks ago in Cooperstown. Almost 20 baseball friends came to the village and hung out for the weekend. There was a Pack Night to end all Pack Nights. Not only was there a giant table piled high with boxes and packs, but there were multiple tables set up with free stuff that was up for grabs (I left with a bag full of RC Cola cans I didn’t have).

One thing that’s difficult about Pack Night is that the product can get repetitive. Lots of 1988 Donruss make their way to the table. Same for 1990 Topps. It ain’t called “junk wax” for nuthin’. Twitterless Rich, a non-social media member of the core Chicago gang, keeps a spreadsheet of what’s been opened. It’s both helpful and frustrating, because it’s awfully tough to find a rarity, but I was determined to find something that hadn’t been opened before. And I did – a box of 1984 Topps Rub Downs.

I was intrigued when I stumbled upon these. I had never heard of them. The cards, such as they are, are lightweight stock, like tracing paper, with images you can transfer from the Rub Down sheet to wherever. They’re slightly smaller than regular cards and come two to a pack. That’s 72 in a box and there are 32 in the set.

I was very excited to open these packs and, maybe, I could cobble together a set. I wasn’t tied to anything else I was opening and was happy to give them all away. My goal was to come away with a complete set of Rub Downs and I announced to the long table that, if anyone didn’t want theirs, they should send them my way.

To my surprise I didn’t do very well, leaving with only about half the set. However, the sharing philosophy of Pack Night does not end at the door. I put out an ask to our Cooperstown group via Twitter DM and I was quickly two shy of complete. Those last two were easy to find on Sportlots, cheaply (even though one Rub Down featured Steve Carlton and the other Mike Schmidt).

Fun to put together, fun to have. There’s a 1985 set, but some of the Rub Down sheets are the same as the 1984 version, the only difference being the date stamp. There are new players – Gwynn, Boddicker, Gooden,etc. – scattered throughout. Maybe I’ll buy one, but one set may be enough. It wouldn’t be the same anyway; my 1984 set is inextricably connected to a special weekend in Cooperstown, and that makes all the difference in the world.

Matsui Home Run Cards- A Japanese Tribute to a baseball Hero

On May 2, 1993, an 18-year-old phenom hit his first major league home run for the Yomiuri (Tokyo) Giants against Shingo Takatsu of the Yakult (Tokyo) Swallows. This was his first of 507 hit in two continents across three decades. 

Hideki Matsui was that prospect that lived up to the hype.  From his teenage years in amateur ball, he was touted as a future legend.  Today, he is one of the best-known people in Japan and even has a museum honoring his accomplishments.

Hideki Matsui struggled early in his rookie season and was demoted to the minor leagues. His second home run was on August 22 upon his return.  He didn’t miss another of his team’s games until May 2006 with the New York Yankees.

Each of his 507 home runs is commemorated in a special card set produced for NTV (Nippon TV) by Toho and then continued by Upper Deck and Topps.  As a Yankees collector who wants to have everything, this set piqued my interest, for the 140 cards, one for each Yankees home run from 2003-2009. Angels, A’s, and Rays homers are represented also, along with one for each of his 332 home runs with the Yomiuri Giants. 

Cards for his 1st, 200th, and 214th home runs

What I like most about these is that each has a unique picture- featuring the actual home run.  What a contrast with the Topps Alex Rodriguez Road to 500 or the Barry Bonds 756 set! For milestone home runs the card was even more special. On the back Matsui tells the story of the home run, along with the date, the opposing team and pitcher.

The cards were sold by subscription starting in 1993.  Subscribers were notified when a group of 5-10 or more were ready, usually two or three times per year.  The cards sold for about 50c-$1 per card.  There were also several albums offered for $10-15 each that held anywhere from one year to several years.  Albums can be found for certain years, or by team.  An album was even released for the Rays, where Matsui hit just two home runs!

The cards and albums were sold by NTV throughout the run, but because of licensing the manufacturers changed.  Toho produced the cards from 1993-2002 coving his years in Japan.  There were 332 cards representing each of his home runs in Japan.  Upper Deck continued the collection through much of 2009, when Topps took over until Hideki’s retirement in 2012 after a stint with the Rays.

Matsui in America

But there’s more!  There were additional Matsui cards offered to subscribers around special events.  There were editions to honor postseason home runs. There were at least five folios with cards during his Yankees career. One in 2004 covers Hideki’s return to Japan with the Yankees for opening day. Also, there is a two-card collection for Matsui’s 55th (he wore number 55) home run in the USA, and another 17-card folio with a card for every Matsui hit in the 2009 World Series.  A single bonus card welcomes back Matsui from the disabled list in 2006.

A few of the special event series

I purchased the main set and have enjoyed going through these albums reliving his career.  They really bring out the passion that Japanese people have for baseball, and one of their greatest heroes, Hideki Matsui.

Special thanks to Jason Presley, an expert on Asian baseball cards.

2023 SABR Jefferson Burdick Award Winners

For those of a certain generation, The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book, was the greatest book ever written, certainly the greatest book we had ever read, and Brendan C. Boyd and Fred C. Harris were Bouton, Tolstoy, and Shakespeare rolled into two. In 152 pages, Boyd and Harris mined the ore of why we all collected baseball cards.

For their literary efforts in shaping a generation (or two, or three) of card collectors, Brendan Boyd and Fred Harris are the recipients of the 2023 Jefferson Burdick Award for their contributions to the baseball card hobby.

GABCFTBGB was, and is, wildly funny, hysterically funny, tears, rolling down your face funny – but with healthy servings of nostalgia, tragedy, and pathos. Sandy Koufax’s 1955 Topps rookie card – his bar-mitzvah picture, wearing a uniform that was a present from his grandmother – is offset by the tragedy of Harry Agganis (and his 1955 Topps card). A few pages after Albie Pearson and his favorite bat Merle, is a solemnly stark page with both 1956 Jackie Robinson and 1963 Roberto Clemente cards surrounded by black. Their deaths were recent, shocking and still raw, and you can feel it on the page.

For young card collectors, the book had serious import. First of all, most of us had never seen these cards. This was the early years of card shows, there were a few dealers, and fewer checklist books, and seeing hundreds of cards from Ted Williams to Whammy Douglas was a feast.

Second, and maybe paramount, was that it gave real validation to our collecting passion. As some of us were bordering on junior high and high school, card collecting became our dark secret. We were at the age where we knew that talking about the 1974 Topps Hank Aaron subset was not going to get us a girl. It was the beginning of card collecting feeling a little weird and a lot uncool.

“I was 12 when this book came out,” recalls Mark Armour, SABR Board President, “Most of my friends had moved on to cooler hobbies and girls, and I had slowed down a bit myself. But Boyd/Harris made me realize that someday people might look back on the cards I collected with the same nostalgia, and maybe I wasn’t so uncool after all. [I might have been wrong about that.] My father and his friends started to pick up the book and read some of the passages aloud—not just the funny ones, but the more poignant ones too. Suddenly adults started to ask me about what was in my shoe boxes, and Mom began to tell her friends that her son had a card collection. It was a real game changer.”

SABR Baseball Cards Committee member Mike O’Reilly adds that “this book will take you back to the days when baseball cards served as kid currency among friends. When a quarter bought 5 wax packs and enough bubble gum to mimic Nellie Fox all day on the sandlot. A time when Ted Lepcio was your white whale, and there were no takers for your Mantles because everybody you knew was a Red Sox fan and hated the Yankees.”

Boyd and Harris showed us a different, and better, way to think about all of this – the nostalgia, the players, the sport, the cards. Each entry was a human interest story of people we had grown to know about, and even care about. The cards themselves became something personal, and not strange. The book made us feel like we were part of a larger family that we never knew existed. Yet I don’t think that was their goal when they wrote “Who the hell is Cuno Barragon?”

Congratulations Brendan C. Boyd and Fred C. Harris on their much-deserved 2023 Jefferson Burdick Award. And goodnight Sibby Sisti, wherever you are.

Editor’s Note: Attempts to locate or contact Mr. Boyd have been unsuccessful, and there is reason to believe he may be deceased. Readers with pertinent information are encouraged to contact SABR Baseball Cards.