1910 Tip-Top Pirates Baseball #5, Tommy Leach

A century-spanning star for 4 of the sport's oldest franchises, Tommy Leach played third base and outfield from 1898 to 1918. This 1910 set marks his only championship, but he also appeared in baseball's first modern World Series (1903), collecting its first hit and scoring its first run.

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The fact that Tommy lived to age 91 says something good about his habits—probably that he didn’t drink or smoke too much. It's hard to remember now that Prohibition (and its undoing) came about after a century of alcohol-related cultural tumult. By the early 1900s, plenty of folks considered booze an absolute evil and demonstrated in the streets to that effect. Without its influence (so claimed their rhetoric), the poor would be unshackled and we’d have little reason for prisons and reform schools. It’s enlightening to compare that language to any number of social issues today! (Temperance organizations eventually delivered the political pressure necessary to pass the 18^th Constitutional Amendment, which lasted from 1920 to 1933.)

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Value: I picked up this antique from eBay about four years ago for $225. Check out a Robert Edwards Auctions listing for the whole set to see more pictures, including the anachronistic apron-wearing Tip-Top Boy Mascot.

Fakes / reprints: The set's valuable enough to fake, so don't make it your first early 20th century purchase--research others from the era first and get familiar with how authentic paper and ink looks. Buying from a reputable dealer also helps.

UPDATED: Paragon Auctions posted the original studio shot for this Tommy Leach card and probably others from the same era. Note that Tip-Top's artist added PITTSBURGH to his otherwise unadorned uniform.

Paragan Auction #1

1951 Topps Blue Back Baseball #5, Johnny Pesky

Today’s guest, John Michael Pesky, played for the Red Sox from 1942 to 1954, excepting 3 years in WWII service, and has worked for them in a advisory or promotional role ever since. He appears in 2 of Topps' earliest issues, in portrait on the 2" x 3" 1951 Blue Back and full-size as 1952 Topps #15.

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A few years back, my first trip to the Baseball HOF coincided with promotional showings of the movie companion to the book The Teammates, which features Boston's own Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, and Dom DiMaggio. I live nearby, so am slightly biased, but the show’s collection of film, interviews, and chronology really pumped my enthusiasm for the game’s Golden Age.

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Like the more common Red Back set, Blue Back cards portray player busts hovering above a baseball diamond like disembodied gods. They’re also known as “Doubles,” as Topps joined two cards with a perforated edge for each penny pack. Set collectors could use the play results, like the “OUT” shown here, to hack out a tabletop game of baseball. This theme recurs throughout card history, starting as far back as the 1910s and continuing to my own childhood play, put into action with 1978’s card backs. When my vintage collecting group gets together, sometimes we bust out the 1951s—typically the easier Red Backs—for nine papery innings.

1953 Mother’s Cookies #5, Fletcher Robbe

Check out that purple background! I’m trying to imagine where a Portland Beaver would find that kind of cloudless, blueberry sky. A subtle plug for their state’s Growers Association, perhaps?

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You see a lot of one-note card backgrounds in the late 40s and early 50s, as makers lurched shakily forward into the world of full-color photography. Mr. Robbe’s actually a hand-tinted black-and-white photo, not far removed from 1949 Bowman or 1952 Berk Ross. At least Topps’ own sets distinguished themselves with extra “features” like team logos and player positions.

My own collection includes a number of “modern” Mother’s Cookies cards, primarily Mariner sets from the early 1980s. I lived in Seattle throughout the decade and at least once per year, the team’s baseball card day gave kids a crack at glossy, round-cornered players of Seattle’s own minor league team. (They played like it, anyway.) Check out eBay for complete sets, which usually run $5 or less. You can’t have too many Matt Young cards!

This 50s PCL card (with an extra rounded corner) cost me about $5, a pretty affordable sum compared to what they run in really nice shape. Most of the “better” cards have smooth arcs or slightly angled corners. See this store page for two grizzled-looking examples, including Lefty O’Doul. The California sun clearly took its toll on some people!

1967 Topps Red Sox Baseball Stickers #5, Hank Fischer

Today’s guest is one severe, disembodied dude. The preponderance of hair, almost meeting twice on both the middle and sides of the forehead, makes me think of dark alleys and unpaid loan sharks.

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Henry William Fischer came out of Yonkers just before World War II and the lightness of his Wikipedia article testifies to the relatively small impact his career made on 1960s baseball. He pitched for Boston in parts of two seasons and (surprisingly) threw the best ball of his life there, despite going 3-5 with 1 save in only 15 games. He only batted in 9 of them, so probably served as a spot reliever and emergency starter, and didn’t appear in the postseason.

Unrealized potential aside, Hank does appear in one of Topps’ more interesting 60s oddball issues. They printed two teams’ worth of paper-backed stickers in 1967, one of the Red Sox (who finished 9^th in the AL in 1966), and another picturing the Pirates (who finished 3^rd). Fischer's a good example of the Red Sox design, which screams “it's just a test issue, don't spend more than 10 minutes on each sticker.” Bodiless players float, smirk, and grimace over paste backgrounds and primary color shapes. Three stickers portray a boyish rooter with an art style usually seen on card backs. It’s amazing that this amateurish look preceded the 1969 Topps Supers (Yaz image linked) by only two years. I assume they circulated in their team-specific markets, both a short truck ride from T.C.G. headquarters in New York City.

Kids probably slapped these stickers on folders, wrapped them around bike frames, and otherwise made the set hard to finish. Most hobby examples come in decent shape, if only because collectors prefer unstuck versions. Lower grades often still possess a back, but exhibit stains, pen marks, or creasing. Mr. Fischer, around G/VG, came to my collection from eBay for $5. I recommend that type collectors get a hat-wearing player with a decent looking photo, even if it limits your selection somewhat. Joe Foy, George Scott, and Rico Petrocelli all look like sharp fellows you’d take home to Mama Binder.

1931 W517 Baseball #5, Chalmer Cissell

Anything prefaced by “W” in the card catalog means a strip card, so the W517s originally came in attached rows ready for cutting by a vending machine or scissors. Many examples, even the hatchet job that I own and picture here, show a vestige of dotted line along the edge.

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The 54-card, blank-backed set features real photos, a vast improvement over typical hand-drawn 1920s strip cards. You can find three forms of this set, large, small, and (what I've got) large-trimmed-to-small. The “mini” versions use the same image and proportions, but printed on a smaller paper strip. This probably made them cheaper to produce, a key consideration in the lousy 1930s economy. Multiple print runs created a handful of variations, including Mr. Cissell listed on both Cleveland and Chicago.

Chicago version (green tint)

The W517s present a decent, collectible group of newspaper-like player photos. A recent Robert Edwards auction shows off both an original photo (of Babe Ruth) and the final product. While its overall quality lacks refinement, the set compares well to the dearth of interesting cards (and poor card stock) from that era. The rising cost of all the HOFers makes it pretty hard to finish, but at least you only need a few dozen cards to do so.

UPDATE: Thee more scans of a Cleveland version and tint variations.

Cleveland, green tint

Chicago, purple tint

Chicago, red tint

1965 Topps Baseball #5, AL RBI leaders

The 1964 AL league leaders include a range of players and teams, all skilled with the bat. (Most are known for more besides.)

• Ah yes, Mantle, Topps icon and regular run producer. He continued to light up the scoreboard, even as the late-1960s Yankees sank to the second division.
• Harmon Killebrew's towering shots equaled the Mick in force, if not in lasting fame. Like other tailing sluggers from the mid-70s, Killer dipped a toe in the new free agent market to finish his career in Kansas City. One year, 14 HR, .199 batting average.
• Dick Stuart, a.k.a “Dr. Strangeglove,” tallied more errors than round-trippers some seasons. Observers agree that every play at first felt like an adventure.
• Finally (and firstly), Brooks Robinson, who took advantage of his prime of life to pound out 118 RBIs in 1964 and set career highs in many offensive categories. “The Human Vacuum Cleaner” added an MVP to his credentials that year, beating out a second-place Mantle.

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Topps debuted league leader cards in the 1960 set and they continue to this day. Multi-player cards stretch back significantly further, both post-war and pre-war. As baseball fell increasingly under the spell of statistics, the cachet of plating the most runners or striking out more hitters than the next guy also rose. Hence, I assume, the desire to add this kind of subset to the mix. Perhaps it's also an easy way to get less-than-the-best photos onto cardboard. This LL card shows alternate poses for each player, kind of like home-and-away jerseys. One particular player jumped around enough that we need the Internet just to keep track of things.

• The Mick's regular card shows him batting righty, kind of a cool switch from this lefty close-up.
• Killebrew's #400 moves the portrait to a different angle.
• Brooksie's smiling mug dominates his “regular” card, not far removed from 1957's rookie pose.
• Dick Stuart's card throws a bucket of cold water over the whole process. First, the picture's clearly a hatless Pirate uni, probably taken in 1962. Pittsburgh traded him to Boston prior to spring training 1963. He indeed finished runner-up in 1964 AL RBIs, but the Sox shipped him to Philadelphia around Thanksgiving. Topps slapped a PHILLIES flag on the old photo and voila, he appears for both American and National League teams in the same set.

1960 Bazooka Baseball #5, Milt Pappas

Once cigarette cards petered out in the early 20^th century, gum companies stepped in to pick up the mantle with their own sugary products. Post-WWII, Topps and Bowman took over the field with large-count sets, echoing Goudey Gum's pre-war success. In both cases, it was hard to tell which came first financially, the gum or the cards, but at least the players are still with us.

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Before long, the newly crowned Topps Goliath cast about for ways to expand the baseball market. Enter their subsidiary Bazooka, my childhood synonym for bubblegum. They printed cards directly on gum boxes for trimming with scissors, much like Post cereal sets from the same era.
The 1960 set featured 36 numbered cards and our #5 guest, Baltimore righty Milt Pappis. See this cool proof sheet for a good overview of the set itself, if divorced from the final, gum-protecting product. Relative to their over-sized 1959 set, the three-panel layout made for small individual cards and less impressive photos. Physical limits aside, Bazooka did capture some nice images, and Milt's one of the few that look stoic and static.

Although one of the 1960s' strongest starters, today's guest could've been even better in ideal career circumstances. For all his boyish good looks and pitching acumen, personality conflicts crowded Mr. Pappas like a hard-breaking slider. His Wikipedia entry mentions a number of issues with managers, fans, and umpires, even lingering to the present day. Of course, a greater man than I would be sore to miss out on a perfect game with a walk. At least make the batter work for it, ump!

1954 Topps #5, Ed Lopat

Junkballer Ed Lopat made the most of a career in the Yankees organization, winning 163 games in 12 pinstriped seasons. He hurled at least 20 games each season, completed almost as many as he won, and led the league in ERA and W/L% in 1953, the year prior to today's card. The Yanks beat the Bums in 6 games for another World Series win and “Steady Eddie” tossed all 9 innings in game 2, winning 4-2 on the strength of late inning homers by Billy Martin and Mickey Mantle.

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Note the eccentric top border, an edge-bleed color that overlaps one side of the print row to those above. The printer laid out the 100-card sheet with flip-flopping rows to achieve this effect, something visible in the Topps Archives blog profile. The overall look resembles a mis-cut, though spacing on the other three edges can confirm the centering as good, bad, or ugly.

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The 1954 design clearly bridges the early big-card efforts to the mid-50s. Black-and-white body photos accent a tinted portrait against a solid background. This multi-image presentation moved to a landscape in 1955 and included full-field action shots in 1956, but saved full-color for 1957.

1954 Red Man AL #5, Sherm Lollar

Sherm Lollar played catcher in the AL for 18 seasons and 4 different teams, starting with the Cleveland Indians in 1946 and finishing with 11 quality years on the (as pictured) Chicago White Sox. He made 7 All-Star teams and garnered MVP votes in six different years. Several skills stand out as even more valued now than then.

1. Walked more often than struck out in every full season
2. Batted at least 100 OPS+ in half his seasons, including 5 in a row from 1955-1959
3. Three Gold Gloves, including the combo AL/NL award for 1957
4. Took one for the team a lot, finishing in the top 10 HBP 11 times

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Germane to the type collection, Mr. Lollar managed the Tucson Toros for a couple of years in the early 70s. Yes, the very same team of the worst uniform ever (and not just in Arizona). Viva Toros!

1953 Johnson Cookies Braves Baseball #5, Lew Burdette

Lew's the first player to appear in my type card profiles that I met personally. A couple years prior to Mr. Burdette's death from lung cancer in 2007, he toured New England area card shows, signing pictures and cards for $10 each. (My dad, a childhood Braves fan, received that Lew-modified 1961 Topps card.)

A few things stood out upon meeting the man himself. He must've been 78 at the time, but damn he still seemed tall, slim, and farmhand strong. Hands big enough to put a curve on a cantaloupe swallowed up my city boy fingers like combat boots eat shoelaces. Sharp eyes, exact facial features, and a rumbling voice completed the image of a former elite athlete in his golden years.

The only weakness on that championship frame seemed to be hearing, as a friend of Lew's did a lot of “translating” by repeating what you said into his right ear. Over a couple of minutes, I got across how important the Braves were to my 10 year-old dad and thanked him for making the trip north from sunnier Florida. Along with Eddie Mathews (by mail), former Milwaukee players make up the only two times I've paid for an autograph.

How about the cards themselves? As you can guess from the set title, they came with packs of cookies and profiled the local Milwaukee team. Manager Charlie Grimm led off the set and 24 players followed, including the HOFers Spahn and Mathews. See the full TCDB gallery for its portraits and these glossy collars on Braves undershirts!