Adding Larkin, Clark to '85T Olympics subset

Dairy Queen sort of stole my thunder on these back in 1992, but when the original images crossed my path on the internet a while back, I decided to "add" Barry Larkin and Will Clark to the Olympics subset that was part of the 1985 Topps set.


You'd think that with all the fuss that was made over the '85 Topps Mark McGwire card in the late 1990s, that it would be common hobby knowledge when and where the photos of the Team USA players were snapped. But I only learned recently, after posting these images on one of the baseball card forums that I frequent, that the pictures were taken July 20, 1984, at Cleveland's Municipal Stadium. The occasion was an appearance on the Team USA pre-Olympics summer schedule of exhibitions. In Cleveland they faced a team of "local all-stars."


Besides the DQ cards, there has been a "broder" (unauthorized collector issue) card of Clark in his blue Olympics uniform circulating in the hobby for at least 15 years. 


If your baseball memory doesn't go back 25+ years, you might not realize that baseball was only a demonstration sport in the 1984 Games in Los Angeles. The U.S. won the silver medal, being defeated by Japan in the finals. Chinese Taipei beat South Korea for the bronze. There's no telling how the medal order might have changed in Cuba had participated, but they sat out the '84 Games in solidarity with the U.S.S.R., which called for a Soviet-bloc boycott in retaliation for the U.S. having boycotted the Moscow Olympics in 1980.  


Larkin and Clark were among the players on that Team USA squad that did not appear in the Topps set because they were still amateurs. Both opted to enter the June, 1985 MLB draft, but by then the presses had rolled. 


Both had been drafted in 1982, out of high school. Larkin was the second-round pick of his hometown Cincinnati Reds, while Clark was a fourth-round selection by the Kansas City Royals. Larkin turned down a $50,000 signing bonus to take a football scholarship at Michigan, while Clark spurned the Royals' $35,000 offer to attend Mississippi State.


The rest, as they say, is baseball history.

Occasionally in the past I have posted about how the prices of high-tech consumer goods have dropped so precipitously over the past 50 years.

I was struck by another example while paging through a 1965 issue of National Geographic.

There was an ad for the Kodak Instamatic 800 camera.  The camera was one of the first to use "drop-and-load" technology of film cartridges.

Besides such convenient film loading, the Instamatic 800 was advertised as "automatically" adjusting for film speed, advancing the film for each exposure, adjusting the lens and flash speed, etc.

All of these technological advances were available for "less than $130." (That's ad-speak for $129.95.)

As I am wont to do in such instances, I am going to provide an inflation-adjusted comparison of that $130 to today's dollars. It's $889.

On reflection, that $900 seems to be about right for a high-end digital camera today.

Just as there were lower-price cameras available in 1965, there are cheaper alternatives today. A sturdy little digital point-and-shoot camera can be found all over at $10 or so. And today's $10 camera can do everything the "$889" Instamatic 800 did . . . and more.

If you're nostalgic for a Kodak Instamatic 800, I see they are widely available on eBay for less than $25 for a complete camera kit with case, flash bulbs, manual, other accessories, etc. Finding film and getting it processed is likely not so easy.

Martin survived wolves, Nazis, auto wreck

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.

Have you seen the new Liam Neeson movie The Gray yet -- plane crash survivors, Alaska wilderness, computer-generated wolves, etc.? I haven’t, and I won’t until it debuts on one of the DirecTV premium movie channels. (You can read my rant about movies in theaters at the end of this post.)

A feature I found in the April 9, 1952, issue of The Sporting News brought the movie to mind.

Written by Art Morrow, who covered the Philadelphia Athletics for TSN, the piece was about the “charmed life” of  A’s pitcher Morrie Martin.

Martin had been the A’s leading pitcher in winning percentage in 1951, with an 11-4 record. He beat every American League team at least once during the season and had done no worse than break even in the W-L column with each of them.

During the off-season, Martin picked up a little pin money by shooting wolves near his home at Washington, Mo., in the foothills of the Ozarks. There was a $10 bounty on the predators, but one of those wolf hides came pretty dear for Morris.

As he told the story, Martin said he had shot the wolf. Thinking him dead, he bent down to roll it over when the animal snarled and lashed out. “He’d been playing possum,” Martin said. “Well, I guess I could have placed in the Olympic high jump,” the A’s pitcher quipped, “but the wolf was quicker I was. He got me.”

Morris backpedaled three steps then shot the wolf again. Morrow said, “his rapacious adversary could play only permanent possum.”

The wolf’s claws had raked Morris, leaving a jagged wound from ankle to thigh. Writing in late March, Morrow said, “Morrie still has to douse the scab with antiseptic two-three times a week, and the scar may last a long time.”

The wolf scar wasn’t the only disfigurement Martin carried with him into spring training. He was sporting a shin bruise that was still black and blue, the result of an October auto accident that nearly killed him and his family.

Martin had been behind the wheel of the family car, “cruising along at 60-65 miles per hour,” when he crested a blind hill and his left front tire hit a pile of cinders in the road. The car careened out of control, Martin was thrown sideways and knocked unconscious. His wife and two children were relatively unscathed. The concussion that Martin sustained bothered him for several weeks.

“It would take more than a wolf or an auto to kill Morris Martin,” the reporter continued. “The Nazis had numerous tries at it without success when he served in the Combat Engineers. They shot him three times in three invasions—Africa, Sicily, France—which is par for any war.

“They even bayoneted him in Germany,” Morrow continued, “But the best they could do was a bullet-hole through the thigh in the Battleof the Bulge. That finally took him out of action.”

Despite the wolf attack and auto wreck, Martin allowed he’d had “a good winter . . . Got 305 quail and once I went up into Nebraska and shot 16 pheasants.”

Martin's good luck didn't hold far into the 1952 season, however. In a May 10 game against the Senators, Martin broke the index finger on his throwing hand trying to field a hot smash off the bat of Mickey Vernon. He was sidelined for the remainder of the season.

 RANT: As promised, here’s my rant about movies in theaters. The last one I went to was the remake of The Longest Yard at a theater in San Antonio. The volume at which the movie played was very nearly intolerable. I guess these days the theaters have to blast the audio to allow the movie to be heard above the knuckleheads talking and the cell phones ringing. I don’t know if that was an aberration or the new normal, but I’m not about to find out any time soon.

Jansen owned Reds; Maglie owned Pirates

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.


Last time I shared with you the unusual success that N.Y. Giants pitcher Dave Koslo enjoyed over the St. Louis Cardinals, winning 13 straight decisions between 1950-52.


But Koslo wasn't the only Giants pitcher of that era that enjoyed mastery over a particular team.


On July 26, 1952, Larry Jansen notched his 12th consecutive win over the Cincinnati Reds. It was a streak that dated back to Aug. 29, 1948, and gave him a lifetime 19-2 record against the Reds. 


Cincinnati finally broke the jinx on Aug. 25, beating Jansen 3-0 and knocking him out of the box in the fifth inning.


That was the last time Jansen faced the Reds in 1952. Following that loss, he opened the 1953 season by running off five more consecutive winning decisions over Cincinnati, improving his record against that team to 24-3. The last time he faced Cincinnati, on Sept. 3, 1953, he lost 9-2, and lasted only into the third inning.


While Koslo was fattening his record on the Cardinals, and Jansen was beating up on the Reds, moundmate Sal Maglie was owning the Pittsburgh Pirates.


Between May 6, 1950 and June 6, 1952, the Barber had clipped the Bucs for 13 straight decisions. After losing 8-1 to the Pirates on June 6, he dropped a July 11 decision, following with a win on Sept. 11.

Maglie's first game against Pittsburgh in the 1953 season was a loss on April 21. He evened the record with a May 10 win, and his only other game against the Pirates had a no-decision on July 1.


In 1954 Maglie was perfect against the Pirates, winning twice and adding a save. In 1955, he was 2-0 in decisions against Pittsburgh before he was waived into the American League with the Indians. 


The Dodgers brought him back to the National League in mid-May, 1956, and with Brooklyn he was 5-1 against the Pirates until he was picked up by the Yankees on waivers on Sept. 1, 1957.


In his brief return to the N.L., with St. Louis (June 22-Aug. 31, 1958), he lost 2-0 in his only appearance versus Pittsburgh. Maglie's lifetime record against the Pirates was 25-6. Interestingly, he had a better lifetime won-loss percentage record against the Chicago Cubs(15-2), but never had a real lengthy consecutive-win streak against them.

Williams touched father-son for homers --Update

1960 Fleer

I gave a lot of space late last month to Ted Williams, but I recently learned of a bit of TW trivia that seems worthy of passing along.

On Sept. 2, 1960, his last season playingh in the majors, Williams hit the 517th home run of his career (his 25th of the season) off Washington Senators pitcher Don Lee. Williams took Lee's pitch in the bottom of the eighth inning into deep center field at Fenway Park. It was the only run the Red Sox scored in a 5-1 loss.

Later, it was widely speculated that this might have been the first time that a major league player had ever recorded a home run off father-son pitchers. Williams said he recalled hitting "one or two" home runs off "Thorny," Don Lee's father, Thornton Lee.

According to the game logs on Baseball-reference.com, it was one home run, in Williams' rookie season.


1960 Topps



That home run was the 28th for Williams in 1939, so naturally it was also the 28th of his major league career. The blast came in the bottom of the fourth at Fenway, and as was the case 21 years later, it was the Red Sox' only run in a 6-1 loss to Thornton Lee's Chicago White Sox.



1936 National Chicle Fine Pen



There've been more than a dozen father-son pitchers in the major leagues, but a quick review didn't turn up any instances where they both yielded home runs to the same batter. I'm not saying it didn't happen before Ted Williams, or after, but I didn't find it. If you know of another, post a comment.


Feb. 22, 2012 update . . . 
I just learned that Thornton and Don Lee also gave up home run balls to another player, though Don's gopher ball came while he was not yet pitching professionally.

1953 Topps

Pitching for the N.Y. Giants in 1948, his last year in the majors, Thornton Lee came on in relief after starter Sheldon Jones had been tagged for four runs in the first inning against the Brooklyn Dodgers. Lee gave up a home run to Dodgers first baseman Preston Ward on the way to taking the loss in a 17-7 rout. 


In 1952, while 18-year-old Don Lee was pitching for the Casa Grande (Ariz.) Cotton Kings in the American Baseball Congress amateur tournament in Wichita, he gave up a home run and a double to Ward, who was playing with the U.S. Army's Ft. Leonard Wood team that eventually came in second in the tourney. Don took the loss in the 5-2 game. 

Giants' Koslo was Cardinal killer

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.


This is the second time I've had occasion to post about former N.Y. Giants and Milwaukee Braves pitcher Dave Koslo; the first time was my May 31, 2011 entry.


Back when I was publisher at Sports Collectors Digest, Koslo's grandson was one of my ad salesmen. Koslo had been born and died in Mensaha, Wis., less than an hour east of our headquarters in Iola. I once did a column in SCD about Koslo's gravesite in Menasha. His black marble headstone features a thick glass "window" behind which is a color pitcher of Koslo while with the Giants. 


If I recall correctly, along with a few of his career stats, there is an inscription on the marker along the lines of, "He was something of an iron man."


The St. Louis Cardinals of 1950-52 probably had a different nickname for him. 


While poring over the 1952 run of The Sporting News microfilm, I discovered that between June 11, 1950, and Sept. 14, 1952, Koslo won 13 straight decisions over the Cardinals. During that stretch he also racked up two saves and six no-decisions.


I'm sure there are similar winning streaks by other pitchers against a particular team, but I found this one appealing because Koslo was related to an old acquaintance and was a former Milwaukee Brave.


By the way, while with the Braves, Koslo pitched against the Cardinals three times, having no decisions in two of the games and the historic loss mentioned in my May 31, 2011, entry. 


In our next posting, I'll look at a couple of Koslo's moundmates who also enjoyed prolonged mastery over particular teams.

Latest custom: A card for Vallie Eaves -- updated 2/20/12

As a teenager and young adult, the closest thing my father and I had to a common interest was baseball. Besides fueling my childhood card collecting passion with the occasional and always unexpected purchase of a nickel wax pack, Dad's baseball stories awakened in me a lifelong interest in baseball history.

Raised in Fond du Lac, Wis., my dad's favorite major league team when he was growing up was the Chicago Cubs. In the years just before he went off to war, one of the Cubs top farm clubs was the Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association.

While Fond du Lac had its own Class D professional team in those days, the Brewers and Cubs were clearly the fan favorites in town. Dad would tell me about a fellow could walk all over town on a hot summer day and follow the Brewers or the Cubs game in progress emanating from the radios in living rooms and front porches along the way.

He told me countless stories of the characters harbored on those teams in that era: "Dim" Dom Dallasandro, Lou "The Mad Russian" Novikoff, Dizzy Dean, Paul Erickson (with whom Dad golfed in the Sixties), and a pitcher named Vallie Eaves.

Using language that was more common in those less politically correct days, Dad related how Eaves was the stereotypical drunken Indian ballplayer.

Those stories were recalled recently when I found on an internet sales site, a George Burke/Brace portrait photo of Eaves in a White Sox uniform. 

The famed Chicago baseball photographers would have had to have been on the top of their game to catch Eaves in a major league uniform. For, while he pitched professionally for 19 seasons between 1935-1957, he was in the majors for only bits and pieces of five seasons. 

At the age of 23, Connie Mack's scouts caught his starring performance in the first National Semi-Pro Tournament in 1935. The Philadelphia A's signed him and brought him immediately to the major leagues. He won his first-ever professional game, beating the White Sox 4-3 while pitching the distance on Sept. 12. 

Eaves got two more starts that season, but proved to be ill-matched at the big league level and lost them both.

After four years of seasoning in the minors and back in semi-pro ball, Eaves pulled off a 21-10 season with Shreveport in the Texas League and was called up by the Chicago White Sox in mid-September. He lost his only start, but was retained on the big league as the 1940 season opened.

Between April 22-May 9, Eaves pitched in five games, with three starts, but had an 0-2 record when he was released to Toronto. Through the remainder of 1940 and into mid-1941, Eaves had a 7-26 record but the Chicago Cubs were still willing to give him a chance. At Milwaukee he was 4-6 when the Cubs called him up on Aug. 12.

Eaves pitched in a dozen games for the 1941 Cubs, including seven starts. His record was 3-3.

Because the Cubs played only day games, Eaves volunteered to Milwaukee manager Charlie Grimm that he would continue to pitch night games in Milwaukee, if desired. 

Grimm did not take Eaves up on his offer. Jolly Cholly later claimed that during Eaves' time with Milwaukee, the pitcher had taking a particularly bad shelling and left the game and the clubhouse immediately. Later that night, Grimm received a phone call from the night watchman at Borchert Field. The security guard said there was a player there with a can of gasoline, a pile of newspaper kindling and a box of matches, threatening to light himself up.

Rushing to the ballpark, Grimm found the suicidal player was a drunken Eaves. He talked Eaves out of striking the match, telling him that if he's wait until after the season, Grimm would assist him in self-immolation.

After appearing in two games with the Cubs in April, 1942, with no decisions and a 9.00 ERA, Eaves was done as a major leaguer. His swan song came on May 19, when Cubs' manager Jimmy Wilson suspended Eaves and sent him back to Chicago for being drunk when he showed up at Ebbets Field for a Sunday doubleheader against the Dodgers.

One account, perhaps apocryphal, says that with major league-caliber pitchers in such short supply during World War II, the Cubs offered Eaves yet another chance for redemption, inviting him to spring training. If the account is to be believed, Eaves dutifully showed up at the Cubs' traditional spring training home on Catalina Island. The Cubs, however, because of wartime travel restrictions, were in spring training at French Lick, Ind. If the story is true, it would have been one of Eaves' most memorable no-shows. He spent the 1943 season with Chattanooga and Montgomery in the Southern Association and Minneapolis of the American Association.

As a major leaguer, Eaves had appeared in 24 games over five seasons with a 4-8 record and 4.58 ERA.

Only 30 years old, Eaves embarked on a 15-year odyssey of the western minor leagues, usually playing for two, three or four teams in a given season. As often as he would drink himself off one team, another manager would be convinced that he could control Eaves' thirst and would give him another chance.

Fellow Oklahoman Pepper Martin, no stranger to the eccentricities of ballplayers, in 1945 convinced San Diego Padres owner Bill Starr to bail Eaves out of jail and put him on the mound. By late-July, Martin had gotten fed up with Eaves' antics.

Vallie Eaves in a George Burke/Brace photo
with the Chicago White Sox circa 1939-40.

An Associated Press account dated July 23 from Oakland ran under the headline, "Martin Cuffs Pitcher Eaves".

The newspaper article read, "Manager Pepper Martin of the San Diego baseball team conceded today that he 'slapped' Pitcher Vallie Eaves in a hotel lobby here last night. Witnesses related, however, that the 'slap' was a hard right-hand punch to the chin.

"'He had it coming to him,' the volatile Martin declared, 'He let me down during the game yesterday, besides upsetting the discipline of the club and setting a bad example for the rest of the players.'

"Eaves, who stands a head taller than the former St. Louis Cardinals star, has been suspended five times for breaking training, Martin declared, and this is 'positively his last chance.'

"Eaves lasted three innings as a relief hurler in the second game with Oakland yesterday. The Oaks won the game and the series."

After stints with Texarkana and Oklahoma City in 1946, Eaves was back with the Padres briefly at the end of the season, winning one and losing three.

After that, Eaves never played at a higher level than Class B for the rest of his career, though he did have some singular successes. In 1947 he led the Big State League with 25 wins (and only five losses) for Texarkana. With Lufkin/Leesville in 1950 he led the Gulf Coast League with 26 wins.


On Aug. 21, 1952, he pitched a no-hitter over Natchez to give his Meridian team the Cotton States League pennant. It was nearly a perfect game, only one batter reached first, on a base on balls . . . and Eaves drove in the first two of Meridian's runs.

After a 13-13 season in 1954, spread over four teams in two leagues, Eaves left professional baseball until 1957, when at the age of 45, he joined his son, Jerry on the Hobbs (N.M.) Sports in the Class B Southwestern League. Vallie was 2-4 with a 9.17 ERA for Hobbs. His 20-year-old son was 1-0 on the mound.

As a minor leaguer for 18 seasons between 1936-1957, Vallie Eaves pitched in 549 games. He had a 228-176 record and an ERA of approximately 3.94. Records of the era do not allow his strikeouts or walks totals to be compiled. He played for at least 30 different teams in Organized Baseball, pitching semi-pro several times in between those gigs.

Eaves died in 1960, at the age of 48.

For all his lengthy baseball career. I'm not aware that Vallie Eaves appeared on any career-contemporary baseball cards or collectibles. While the White Sox and Cubs both produced team picture packs in the years he pitched with them, Eaves either wasn't on the team when the photos were taken, or missed his appointment with the photographer.

My custom card was done in the style of 1941 Play Ball, though of course I had to take some liberties with the timing of his stint with the Chicago Cubs. The card is intended to represent a late-season "update" to the '41PB, whose original set was limited to just 72 cards.

I could have opted to picture Eaves with the White Sox, but by the time the 1941 _Play Ball cards were issued, he had been off the team for nearly a year.

Frankly, my Vallie Eaves card is not among my best work. Converting a black-and-white photo as a White Sox to the soft pastel look of the 1941 Play Balls as a Cub was a challenge that I was unable to master. I did learn, though, a few things about Photoshop that might stand me in good stead if I attempt to work in that genre again.