Cecil Cooper, St. Louis Cardinals?

For a guy who barely made my Top 5 list of favorite Milwaukee Brewers from the Bambi's Bombers and Harvey's Wallbangers teams of the 1970s-1980s, I've made a lot of custom cards of Cecil Cooper.

Heck, I've only done two cards of my all-time favorite Brewer, Gorman Thomas. And just one of Robin Yount. And I haven't done any customs of Paul Molitor yet (I'm still waiting to find some good early Molly pictures).

Previously I created a 1977 Topps-style card of Coop as a brand-new Brewer that was designed to update his "real" 1977 Topps card picturing him with the Red Sox, and be more appealing than the airbrushed O-Pee-Chee card. Then I put together a "pre-rookie" 1971-style card of Cooper as a young Red Sox player.

Now comes a third Cooper custom -- also a 1971-style -- picturing Cooper with the St. Louis Cardinals.

Oh yes he was!

After hitting .338 at Class A in the Red Sox' organization, the St. Louis Cardinals selected Cooper in the Rule 5 minor league draft on Nov. 30, 1970. Apparently with Joe Torre's imminent move to third base, the Cards were looking for backup to light hitting Joe Hague who was to take over at first base.

Cooper went to spring training in 1971 with the Cardinals, but on April 5, the day the season opened, he was returned to the Red Sox, spending most of the year at AAA Pawtucket before making his major league debut on Sept. 8.

I had discovered all this while working on my 1971-style Cooper card. I presented that card on my blog on March 10, 2011 (feel free to pause here and look it up in the "older posts" section). 

In an addendum to that post, I added a photo that had been taken by Topps at spring training in 1971. I indicated it wasn't a good enough photo to inspire me to make a Coop-as-Cardinal custom card.

In recent correspondence with veteran collector and long-time hobby researcher/writer Keith Olbermann, he volunteered that he had a better image of Cooper with the Cardinals. Some years back, Olbermann had been privileged to comb through the Topps image archives and had acquired a number of great player photos from 1956-1980 or so.

He sent me a scan and I found that it was sufficient impetus for me to make a Cardinals version of a 1971 Cecil Cooper card. 

Having completed the Red Sox version, the Cardinals card required relatively little new work to complete the project as you see it here, thanks to Keith's willingness to share this resource with the hobby. 

You'll be seeing more collaboration in the future.

Note to blog spammers: Give it up!

For the past several months I've been getting as many as three "comments" on my blog, all from "Anonymous" and all trying to spam this site.

Here's one that came this morning:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Print run on '51 Cardinals postcards revealed": 

I'm excited to discover this site. I wanted to thank you for ones time for this wonderful read!! I definitely liked every little bit of it and I have you book marked to look at new information in your web site.
Here is my web page : XXXXXXXXXXX.

These comments are usually written in English-as-a-second-language and all include a link to another web site. 

Lord only knows what they are trying to sell you on those sites, or what viruses you'd be exposed to if you clicked their links. 

Fortunately, when I began this blog more than three years ago, I opted for the feature that requires all comments to be reviewed by me before they are posted.

I'd learned to do that from the experience of a friend whose blog on the Sports Collector's Digest web site was constantly bombarded by the ravings of a self-appointed hobby savior.

This is just another sad example of people misusing the internet to try to get over on their fellow man.

Rest assured that I'll continue to try to protect my readers from anything more harmful than my own ramblings.

Baseball cards by the numbers

When I left the employ of Krause/F+W publications in May, 2006, I arranged to buy about a million sportscards that had accumulated in the company's warehouse.
 
These were mostly cards that had been sent to our sports collectors' periodicals (SCD, Tuff Stuff, Baseball Cards/Sports Cards, et al.) by the card companies for product reviews, cataloging, etc.

The vast majority of the cards were from the 1990s.


As I sorted through these cards, a couple of themes caught my attention, and I thought it might be fun to see how many cards I could find that fit that theme. I limited my searching to baseball cards, though I imagine the same, or similar, themes could have been found among the football, basketball and hockey cards. 

By the mid-1990s the proliferation of card companies, and the proliferation of card sets from each of them, flooded collectors with new cards. At the peak of (over)production, there were at least 20,000 new baseball cards being produced each year.

Most of these cards used at least two, and sometimes three, photos on each player's card. This created unprecedented demand for player photos . . . portraits, candids and game-action. 

One theme that I pursued involved players' uniform numbers. I wondered if it would be possible to put together a set of cards showing players wearing each number from 1 through 99.  

Naturally, for all of the numbers from 1 into the 90s, I had a wide range of choices, and could pick a card showing a favorite player, or a number being prominently displayed. 

Beginning at #80, however, things got tight. While a few players chose numbers in the upper reaches as a matter of personal preference, a high uniform number was usually relegated to spring training use. And even in the days when the card companies were scrambling to produce "rookie cards" of every player with any chance of making the big clubs, there were just not a lot of cards issued showing players wearing numbers in the 80s and 90s. 

I never did find cards depicting uniform numbers 80, 81, 82, 85, 89, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96 or 98 . . . though I did find players with #0 and 00.

Putting together a collection like this proves that the card hobby can still be fun, and isn't exclusively the province of superstars, autographs, game-used inserts and 1/1s. 

Free baseball (1988 repli-cards) cards

I am in the process of emptying all of my sportscard and memorabilia storage areas. 

In my 50+ years as a collector and with more than 25 years spent in hobby publishing, I have amassed a (literal) ton of stuff. I am now seriously working to dispose of the accumulation so that it doesn't fall to my heirs in the event the dispersal outlives me.

Upon opening one box from the basement, I discovered a kraft-wrapped package of 200+ three-card panels that were intended for insertion in the October, 1988, issue of Baseball Cards Magazine.

Because we always printed the insert-card panels in advance of the printing of the body of the  magazine, there was always a bit of an overrun. While most of those extra card panels were taken to the recycling center, I got in the habit of setting aside 100 or more of each in the (largely mistaken) belief that one day they would be valuable.

At any given time there are being offered on eBay about a dozen of the repli-cards that we inserted into issues of Baseball Cards (later, Sports Cards), Baseball Card Price Guide, and the other glossy newsstand magazines that we published from 1984 through the early 1990s. They are offered as single, strips and panels.

Generally there is little bidder interest, but occasionally, a couple of superstar player collectors will get into a bidding war and one of our inserts will sell for $10 or more.

I'm going to give all of my readers a chance to get a free three-card repli-card panel that features a Mickey Mantle card that has raised many questions in the hobby over the years, and even cost unwary buyers a lot of money.

The theme of the repli-cards in the October, 1988, issue of BBC was "cards that never were."

One such card was a 1956 Bowman Mickey Mantle. 

Prior to being bought out by Topps late in 1955, Bowman prepared some samples of proposed designs for a 1956 baseball card set. One of the proposals featured a knot-hole design that would later be incorporated in the 1958 Hires Root Beer issue.

Since Bowman only created a front design, the staff at the magazine came up with a back design that drew on the 1955 format. 

You can see on the other two cards on this panel that there is a 1988 copyright date. There was also one on the Mantle card's back, but due to an error in the stripping (it's an old printer's term) process, the 1988 copyright line that was supposed to appear was masked off and overprinted.

Almost since the magazine first hit the newsstand, some collectors became confused about the Mantle knot-hole card, and more than once unscrupulous sellers led buyers to believe this was a genuine 1956 card.

The middle card on the panel is a 1952 Bowman-style Jackie Robinson. Robinson, you'll recall, had been included in Bowman's sets in 1949-50, and in Topps sets from 1952-56. 

The Bowman-style card on this panel features a painting by Wisconsin artist Dan Gardiner, who did several repli-cards and other assignments for us in the late 1980s. He later did some paintings for the Ted Williams Card Co., and perhaps a few of the other card manufacturers.

The third card on the panel is a WASHINGTON / "NAT'L LEA." variation of Dave Winfield's Topps rookie card. 

Early in 1974, Topps acted under the mistaken assumption that the San Diego Padres were going to be moved to Washington, and printed 15 of the Padres cards with the Washington designation, later correcting it to San Diego. Other Padres cards, including #456, Dave Winfield, were printed only with the S.D. designation. 

If you'd like a free copy of the three-card panel, send a business-size (9-3/8" x 4") self-addressed stamped envelope to: Bob Lemke, P.O. Box 8, Iola, WI 54945. I'm just going to drop the panel in your envelope, so if for some reason you want it better protected, prepare your envelope that way and make sure it has sufficient first-class postage. Only one panel per reader, please.

Ballplayers on the other side of the camera

When I left the employ of Krause/F+W publications in May, 2006, I arranged to buy about a million sportscards that had accumulated in the company's warehouse.
 
These were mostly cards that had been sent to our sports collectors' periodicals (SCD, Tuff Stuff, Baseball Cards/Sports Cards, et al.) by the card companies for product reviews, cataloging, etc.

The vast majority of the cards were from the 1990s.


As I sorted through these cards, a couple of themes caught my attention, and I thought it might be fun to see how many cards I could find that fit that theme. I limited my searching to baseball cards, though I imagine the same, or similar, themes could have been found among the football, basketball and hockey cards. 

One theme that I noticed was cards of players taking photographs or videos. Players are constantly being asked to pose for the team or MLB publicist, baseball card photographers, television or video crews and even fans along the rail. These cards show players on the other side of the camera; whether they're fiddling with the pros' long lenses, the TV camera or their own equipment.

By the mid-1990s the proliferation of card companies, and the proliferation of card sets from each of them, flooded collectors with new cards. At the peak of (over)production, there were at least 20,000 new baseball cards being produced each year.

Most of these cards used at least two, and sometimes three, photos on each player's card. This created unprecedented demand for player photos . . . portraits, candids and game-action. Today, with far fewer cards, the need for photos is nowhere near as acute, so photos such as these are seldom seen on cards from the late-1990s to date.

I came up with 40 cards that fit the theme; there are probably more. Putting together a collection like this proves that the card hobby can still be fun, and isn't exclusively the province of superstars, autographs, game-used inserts and 1/1s. 

Gatorade product placement on baseball cards

When I left the employ of Krause/F+W publications in May, 2006, I arranged to buy about a million sportscards that had accumulated in the company's warehouse.
 
These were mostly cards that had been sent to our sports collectors' periodicals (SCD, Tuff Stuff, Baseball Cards/Sports Cards, et al.) by the card companies for product reviews, cataloging, etc.

The vast majority of the cards were from the 1990s.


I spent the next five years sorting more than 180 monster boxes down, separating the wheat from the chaff (OK, these were 1990s cards, so it was mostly separating the chaff-ish from the chaff). Mainly I was setting aside cards and sets that I felt had a value of $1 per card or more, or might in the future.

As I shuffled through these cards, a couple of themes caught my attention, and I thought it might be fun to see how many cards I could find that fit that theme. I limited my searching to baseball cards, though I imagine the same, or similar, themes could have been found among the football, basketball and hockey cards. 

One theme that I noticed was cards of players drinking Gatorade, or with the product prominently visible in the background. 

By the mid-1990s the proliferation of card companies, and the proliferation of card sets from each of them, flooded collectors with new cards. At the peak of (over)production, there were at least 20,000 new baseball cards being produced each year.

Most of these cards used at least two, and sometimes three, photos on each player's card. This created unprecedented demand for player photos . . . portraits, candids and game-action. And, since the jug of Gatorade is ubiquitous in major and minor league dugouts, it's no wonder that in the rush to get enough unique player photos for each new set, it's not surprising that some of the photos featured the "product placement" of Gatorade.

I came up with a dozen cards that fit that theme; there are probably more. Putting together a collection like this proves that the card hobby can still be fun, and isn't exclusively the province of superstars, autographs, game-used inserts and 1/1s. I'm including Craig Lefferts' card from 1993 Topps in this "collection," despite the fact that it looks like Topps airbrushed away the sports drink's logo from the cup in his hand.

"Suitcase" Seeds' power surge

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.

Because of its proximity to New York City, Newark, N.J. has had an up-and-down history in professional baseball. The city’s teams generally operated in the upper levels of the minor league classification system between 1884-1949, when the city last had a team in Organized Baseball. For one season, Newark even fielded a major league team, in the 1915 Federal League.

What must surely be the greatest two-game performance by any Newark player was recorded May 6-7, 1938, when the International League-leading Bears were playing the Bisons in Buffalo.

In six trips to the plate on Friday, May 6, center fielder “Suitcase” Bob Seeds hit four home runs and a pair of singles. The homers came in four consecutive at-bats in the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh innings; the bingles were both hit in the eighth inning as Newark beat Buffalo 22-9. He had 12 RBIs on the day. One of his home runs came with the bases loaded, there was one man on for each of his other three homers and he drove in one run on each of his singles.

He became the fifth IL player to hit four home runs in a game. At that point in major league history, four players had tied for that record. His 12 RBIs set a new league record. The major league record for RBIs in a game was 12 (Jim Bottomley, 1924). Seeds’ 18 total bases and six hits in a game also tied International League marks.

The next day, Seeds homered in his first two trips to the plate, in the first and third innings, to start his day. He walked in the fifth and then hit another home run in the sixth inning. The Bisons finally got him out when he struck out in the ninth inning. Newark won again that day, 14-8.

His two-day power surge had netted him 30 bases and 17 RBIs.

Due to rainouts and cold weather, Newark didn’t play again until May 11; Seeds was 2-for-5 that day, with a triple.

Seeds had never previously stood out as a power hitter. In his previous pro seasons, he had averaged little more than six home runs per season.

In 59 games with Newarkin 1938, he had 28 home runs and 95 RBIs. There’s no telling how many International League records he might have broken if he had remained with Newark all season.

However, despite his early-season hitting heroics, the parent N.Y. Yankees didn’t feel he could make the grade in their outfield. (In 1936 the Yankees had acquired Seeds in a trade with Montreal on Aug. 22. He spent the rest of the season in New York. In 13 games he batted .262 and in only 42 at-bats, had hit four home runs.) On June 24, the Yankees sold him to the N.Y. Giants for $40,000. He finished the 1938 season for the Giants batting .291 with nine home runs.

As noted on the back of his 1939 and 1940 Play Ball baseball cards, Bob Seeds had another claim to baseball fame . . . he was the only major leaguer to ever own a minor league ballclub while he played in the big leagues.

In 1939, after 10 years out of Organized Baseball, the Amarillo Gold Sox joined the Class C West Texas-New Mexico League. Bob Seeds was the owner and team president, his wife was the business manager.

Considered one of the finest athletes ever to come out of West Texas, Seeds had played pro ball at Amarilloin 1928, when the team was in the Class A Western League.

Seeds’ big league career (1930-32, 1934 Cleveland, 1932 White Sox, 1933-34 Red Sox, 1936 Yankees, 1938-40 Giants) ended after the 1940 season. He played the next four seasons in the high minors with Baltimore (1941-42), Indianapolis(1942) and Little Rock(1943-44).

After a year out of OB, he managed and played for his Amarillo Gold Sox team in 1946, batting .302 with one home run in 32 games.

Contemporary with his ownership of the Gold Sox, Seeds owned a hardware and sporting goods store in Amarillo, and later operated a large hog farm. He died in 1993.

Because he was a limited-use player for most of his major league career, Bob Seeds didn’t appear on many baseball cards. His two most mainstream issues are 1939 and 1940 Play Ball.

Hey, Mister! Please sign this!

If you were of a mind to, how big a collection of baseball cards could you amass that show a picture of the player signing autographs?

I got to more than 275 over the period of 2006-10 while I was in the process of sorting through a mountain of monster boxes that I had acquired from my former employer, the publisher of SCD, Tuff Stuff, Standard Catalog, etc.

These were mostly cards that had been sent to us by the card companies for product reviews, cataloging, etc.

The vast majority of the cards were from the 1990s.


A trend that developed in baseball cards by the mid-1990s was the proliferation of card companies, and the proliferation of card sets from each of them. At the peak of (over)production, there were at least 20,000 new baseball cards being produced each year.

Most of these cards used at least two, and sometimes three, photos on each player's card. This created unprecedented demand for player photos . . . portraits, candids and game-action.

So it's not surprising that there exists in the baseball card universe of the 1990s-2000s more than a few cards showing players signing autographs for fans: hats and bats; pennants, posters and programs; balls and gloves and even a few baseball cards. In sorting through all those cards over the years, There are cards showing players from the rawest rookies to superstar Hall of Famers obliging the fans. I generally limited this "collection" to card fronts; I could have added dozens more if I'd considered the photos on the backs.

I'll share just a few of them here. It's my way of showing that "commons" can be uncommon and that a card collection doesn't have to cost big bucks to be fun.