Dale Long went from last-to last-to last in 1951

Uncommon commons. Based on contemporary accounts from The Sporting News; tidbits that as a collector of baseball and football cards I found interesting because they help bring to life the faces on the cards I collected. I figure that if I found these items of interest, so would other vintage card collectors.


Dale Long is best remembered for setting a major league record by hitting a home run in eight consecutive games with the Pirates in 1956. While that record was tied by Don Mattingly in 1987 and Ken Griffey, Jr., in 1993, it has never been broken.


He is also remembered as one of the few modern-era major leaguers to play as a left-handed catcher (two games with the Cubs in 1958).


I don't know if this is any kind of a record, but I found it interesting . . . 


In 1951, Long was waived from the last-place team in the National League to the cellar-dwellers in the American League and then released to the last-place team in the Pacific Coast League.


Long had begun his pro career in 1944, and played in the Reds, Red Sox, Tigers and Yankees systems when he was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates in November, 1950. 


The Pirates brought Long to spring training in 1951, planning on him as a power-hitting first baseman. When Bucs brass decided to bring in their star slugger Ralph Kiner from the outfield to first base, they decided to try to make a left-handed catcher out of Long. 


Neither of those experiments worked out, so when the Pirates traded for Joe Garagiola, they put Long, who was hitting only .167 at the time on waivers. At the time, Pittsburgh was in 8th place in the National League. 


The St. Louis Browns claimed Long on waivers. At that point, the Brownies were also in last place, 17 games off the pace, and were desperate to find a first baseman who could hit with power. 


When he was able to generate only two runs on a .238 average in seven weeks, the Browns released Long.


With no other club in either major league interested in him, Long went to the Pacific Coast League, where he joined the last-place San Francisco Seals in the outfield. He ended the 1951 season at S.F. with a .266 BA and four home runs in 36 games. He was one of 49 position players the Seals trotted out that season.  


Long returned to the Pirates' farm system with New Orleans in 1952, but didn't get back to the major leagues until 1955. From then through 1963 he played in the bigs with the Pirates, Cubs, Giants, Yankees and expansion Washington Senators. His lifetime major league marks were a .267 BA, 132 home runs and 467 RBI in 10 seasons. 


Long didn't appear on a mainstream baseball card until his debut in the 1955 Topps set. He then appeared with Topps each year through 1963. Collectors may also remember him as part of the 1962 Post cereal card set and Salada tea coins.

'52 Berk Ross cards were unlicensed

As I kid, I had only ever encountered a single Berk Ross card; a 1951 Warren Spahn that my older brother Tom had picked up somewhere. 


Though that '51BR Spahn never made its way into my collection back then, I never forgot the image on that card. When I got back into collecting in the late 1970s, that card was always somewhere on my mental want list. A couple of years ago, when the planets (the availability of a nice example on eBay and some money in my PayPal account) aligned, I scratched that itch and bought a replacement.


Still, even after being involved in the card hobby professionally for more than 25 years, I was left with a basic unanswered question: From whence did the Berk Ross cards come?


It has been well-known in the hobby for decades that the 1951 BR cards were issued in two-card perforated panels, in four windowed boxes, containing nine panels each. The entire set  comprises 72 cards, with 40 baseball players and an assortment of college football and basketball players, NHL skaters and boxers. 


It has always been assumed that these boxes were sold as a stand-alone product.


In 1952, the Berk Ross name disappeared from the cards, though the "HIT PARADE OF CHAMPIONS" title remained. Also disappearing for 1952 were non-baseball subjects -- all 72 of the '52BR cards were MLB players. 


The 1952 Berk Ross cards were larger, at 2" x 3" than the '51s, and like the earlier issue, were printed in panels or, more likely, strips that were originally perforated at top and bottom. The strips, however, were separated before the individual cards were placed into paper wrappers.


Again, it was assumed hobby lore that these one-card packs of 1952 Hit Parade ballplayers were sold as a stand-alone product. 


Because of the heavy concentration of Yankees, Giants and Dodgers in the set's composition, and the survival of cards in that part of the country, it was also presumed that the BR cards were regionally distributed in the Northeast. (How that lone Warren Spahn '51 made its way to Fond du Lac, Wis., in the mid-1950s will likely always remain a personal mystery.)


In perusing microfilm of 1952 issues of The Sporting News, I think I found some answers . . . and some interesting background of the 1952 Berk Ross baseball cards.

In the “Major League Flashes” column of brief news items on Page 21 of the August 7, 1952, issue of The Sporting News was this item . . . 

SEVEN GIANTS POP POPCORN

Two popcorn firms have been asked by Supreme Court justice Samuel Gold of New Yorkto show cause why they should not be stopped from placing pasteboard photographs of seven members of the Giants inside bags of their product. Larry Jansen, Bobby Thomson, Sal Maglie, Wes Westrum, Montia Kennedy, Dave Koslo and Bill Rigney also instituted action to recover $50,000 each from the companies on the ground that their pictures were used without their consent.

Upon reading this item, I was originally intrigued by the thought that it might refer to an obscure, as yet uncataloged, baseball card issue. After digging around on the internet for a couple of days (ain't it great to be retired?), however, I discovered that Jansen and his teammates were sore about the cards we now know as Berk Ross.

Represented by sports and entertainment attorney Jones J. Shapiro, who lawyered for Haelan Laboratories (Bowman Gum) in its landmark suit against Topps  in 1953, the Giants players on Aug. 14, 1952, obtained a show-cause order to prohibit the use of their images to sell non-baseball related products without their permission.

Besides the popcorn mentioned in the TSN article, the legal paperwork also mentioned that the baseball cards were being distributed with gum. Perhaps the purchase of a piece or pack of gum entitled the buyer to a wax-wrapped card.

Defendants in that and subsequent legal proceedings were a group of legal entities apparently all owned or controlled by Harry Horowitz: Model Airplanes, Inc., Hit Parade, Inc., Hi Lo Packing Co., (the name that appears on the card wrappers) and Theater Concessions, Inc. They appealed the lower court's Nov. 14, 1952, refusal to dismiss the players' suit.

I'm sure there is lots of interesting hobby-related legalese to be found about this case, especially if you're connected to some of the paid legal internet resources. Some of the articles I found indicated that the Jansen, et. al. case and its issues of the status of ballplayers as public figures and a person's right to control and profit from distribution of his image was more or less lost in the larger Bowman v. Topps case. 

The net result of the proceedings seems to have been that on Nov. 17, 1953, the First Department, Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York confirmed the lower court's enjoining of the Hit Parade card distribution and the "$20 costs and disbursements to the respondents" apparently assessed against the Horowitz empire. 

The double sawbuck that each (presumably) of the named plaintiffs received seems to have been all the vindication that the court saw fit to award, not the $50,000 that had been originally sought. Who paid Shapiro's fees in the case was also something I didn't uncover in my cursory research. 

Thus, it appears that the 1952 Berk Ross baseball cards -- including the multi-thousands of dollars Mickey Mantle card -- were the "broders" of the early 1950s.

  

Now pitching for Scranton, Bob Smith. Which one? The lefty. Which one?

Robert W. Smith made his baseball
card debut in 1958 Topps.

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.

If card-collecting kids had a bit of trouble keeping straight their Bob Smith cards in 1958, imagine how fans, scorekeepers and statisticians of the Scranton Red Sox felt in 1951, when, for a time, the team had two left-handed pitchers named Bob Smith on the team.


Robert Gilchrist Smith, then 20 years old, came to Scranton, a Class A Eastern League affiliate of the Boston Red Sox at the beginning of the 1951 season. He had signed with Boston in 1948 and worked his way up the minor league ladder, to a 13-5 season in 1950 at Class C Oneonta.


He stuck around at Scranton only long enough to get into four games. With an 0-1 record and 7.20 ERA, he was dropped down to Class B Roanoke.


Robert Walkup Smith, age 23, had been signed by Boston out of the University of Missouri - Columbia. Scranton was his first stop in professional baseball. He played the entire year with Scranton, winning 13 and losing eight, with an ERA of 3.30.

Bob Gilchrist Smith has refused to
autograph this card, saying the picture
is that of Bobby Gene Smith, who never
played for the Pirates.

Both Scranton Smiths eventually made the major leagues. 


Robert G. debuted with the Boston Red Sox in 1955. Then bounced up and down between the majors and minors through 1959. He was with the Cardinals and Pirates in 1957, with Pittsburgh again in 1958, and with the Pirates and Tigers in 1959.


Used principally in relief, R.G. Smith had a major league career record of 4-9 with a 4.09 ERA.


He pitched in the minors through the 1964 season, compiling an 88-84 record and 4.03 ERA.


Robert W. Smith came up with the Red Sox in 1958. He was with the Cubs and Indians in 1959. He was also used mainly in relief. His major league record was 4-4 with a 4.75 ERA.


He pitched in the minor leagues every year between 1951-63, with a lifetime record of 94-92 and an ERA of 3.68.


Besides the coincidence of their 1951 time with Scranton, the two Bob Smiths, though they looked nothing alike, shared a general physique. "G" was 6'1", 190 lbs. "W" was 6' 185 lbs. 

Topps got the photo right on the 1959 Bob G. Smith card, but used a cartoon intended for Bobby Gene Smith, Cardinals outfielder.

They also shared a general ineptitude with the bat. As major leaguers, Bob G. hit .069, Bob W., .080. Each played in 13 minor league seasons. Bob G. batted about .103, Bob W., about .110.


Both Smiths ostensibly made their rookie card appearance in the 1958 Topps set, Bob G. as card #226. Bob W. was card #445. 



That was Bob W's only mainstream baseball card, though he does appear in the scarce 1961 Bee Hive Starch team set of the Toronto Maple Leafs.


However, according to Bob W. Smith, who has refused to autograph that 1958 Topps card, the photo is not of him, but rather Bobby Gene Smith, who bears a strong facial resemblance to Robert Gilchrist Smith.

Bob G's actual rookie card, and his only mainstream baseball card, is in the 1959 Topps set, as a Pirate. To make matters more muddled, it appears that Topps mixed up Bob G. Smith and Bobby Gene Smith in the cartoon on the back of the 1959 Topps card, which refers to the player as an outfielder. The same cartoon is used correctly on Bobby Gene Smith's 1959 Topps card #162.


I can't really blame Topps for the error, though, as pitcher Bob G. Smith was a teammate of Bobby Gene Smith on the St. Louis Cardinals from mid-April through mid-May, 1957. The Cards had drafted the left-handed pitcher from the Red Sox in December, 1956, then sold him to Pittsburgh on May 14, 1958.

Players got penny apiece for facsimile auto balls

In our last posting, we revealed the production number for a series of 1951 St. Louis Cardinals player postcards.


Today, we have a similar revelation, from the same source.


Writing in his "from the RUHL BOOK" column in the August 13, 1952, issue of The Sporting News, Oscar Ruhl provided a glimpse into the finances of facsimile autographed souvenir baseballs, as sold at ballpark concession stands and by mail order. 


Facsimile or stamped autographed balls are collectible in their own right, and for many hobbyists represent a reasonably priced alternative to a genuine team-signed ball -- which may or may not be entirely authentically autographed, often bearing some signatures forged by the clubhouse man or bat boy. 


Since at least 1948, eight-year major league veteran Dick Culler of High Point, North Carolina, was operating the Autographed Ball Corporation in partnership with former Cubs and Giants shortstop Billy Jurges. Culler retired from professional baseball after playing the 1950 season with the Baltimore Orioles, .  


The company licensed the use of players' signatures on the basis of one cent apiece for each ball sold.


Washington Times-Herald baseball reporter Bob Addie did some digging and obtained the sales figures for the first six months of 1952. Ruhl quoted those figures in his TSN column.


The royalties paid to the players for the first six months' of sales in 1952, according to Addie, were:


American League
New York Yankees   $46.85 (representing 4,686 balls sold)
Cleveland Indians       18.33
Chicago White Sox    10.54
Boston Red Sox           9.84 (no Ted Williams that season)
Detroit Tigers               6.24
Philadelphia A's           4.56
Washington Senators  3.72
St. Louis Browns            .30 (Really? Just 30 balls sold in six months?)
National League
New York Giants       $16.82
Brooklyn Dodgers       13.73
Chicago Cubs             13.55
Philadelphia Phillies     7.80
Boston Braves              4.44
Pittsburgh Pirates        1.68
St. Louis Cardinals      1.08
Cincinnati Reds              .12


While these figures might be said to reveal the relative popularity of the teams of 1952 among souvenir buyers, those numbers for the Browns and Reds don't seem like they could be accurate. Perhaps those teams, and maybe some of the others, didn't offer the balls at their concession stands, or perhaps had their own version of the facsimile-signed spheres.


A year earlier in his column, Ruhl had mentioned that the 1950 Yankees "regulars" had been paid $99.18 each on the sales of the souvenir balls.

Print run on '51 Cardinals postcards revealed

Photo courtesy Frank Kealoha Ward.

Specific data on print runs of vintage baseball cards is virtually non-existent.

In most cases that information was never recorded in any sort of archive that survived the passage of half a century or more and made its way into hobby hands.

An exception to that norm has been unearthed in the "Major Flashes” news roundup column of the March 14, 1951 issue of The Sporting News. 

In its entirety, the item read:

INTRODUCE PLAYERS BY MAIL

The Cardinals are introducing their rookies by a series of postcards being mailed to fans who have bought box and reserved seats over a period of years. Ten rookies were selected for the postcard medium of presentation, each card featuring one player, with his picture and data on his career. A batch of 25,000 cards on Infielder Solly Hemus was delivered last week.

Specialty team collectors will recognize these as one of several series of player postcards that the Cardinals issued in the postwar era. Most of the series are known as "Dear Friend" postcards because that's the salutation of a message purportedly by the pictured player thanking the recipient for his past and future support of the team.

The Dear Friend postcards seem to have been used most often to satisfy fan requests for player pictures and autographs.

We never included the Dear Friend and other Cardinals team-issued postcards of the 1940s-1970s in the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards for lack of a definitive checklist. Some of the players were issued year after year, sometimes with new photos, sometimes not.

In today's internet age, there has been a lot of progress made on checklists for these issues and a catalog listing could probably be compiled.

I know that if I was still involved with the catalog, I'd go at least as far as creating a listing for the 1951 "The Cardinals Introduce . . . " series referenced in TSN. Of course I'd want to get a better picture to illustrate the set.

The 10 players mentioned by The Sporting News were divided into two formats, horizontal and vertical. 

The horizontal cards, which closely mirror the Dear Friends format, were: Don Bollweg (debut Sept. 28, 1950), Larry Ciaffone (April 17, 1951), Jack Cohan (never played in majors), Bob Habenicht (April 17, 1951), Solly Hemus (April 17, 1949), Larry Miggins (Oct. 3, 1948), Don Richmond (MLB debut Sept. 16, 1941, Philadelphia A's, Cardinals debut May 13, 1951)and Bill Sarni (May 9, 1951).

Appearing on vertically formatted cards were Kurt Krieger (April 21, 1949) and Tom Poholsky (April 20, 1950).

In typical condition, usually postally used, these cards sell for $25-35 each, with Hemus commanding a bit of a premium. 

1958 Topps-style Ed Bouchee "completes" set

Kids looking to complete a set of 1958 Topps baseball cards back in the day were confounded by the inability to locate card #145, Ed Bouchee. 


The Second Series checklist on the back of the Washington Senators team card (#44) confirmed that the Phillies slugging young star first baseman was card #145. But, hold on. The Second Series checklist on the back of the Phillies team card (#134) had no name beside the box for card #145. 


Was there, or was there not, a 1958 Topps card #145 Ed Bouchee?


There was not. 


At least until now . . . sort of .


My latest custom card creation is a 1958 Topps-style card #145, Ed Bouchee.


I'm not going to go into the reasons Topps did not issue the card. It's a sad sorry that serves no purpose in the retelling. 


Even today, some collectors are not 100% certain that did not print the Bouchee card and that at least a few made it into gum packs. I'm of the opinion that the card was never printed. If it had been on the Second Series press sheet, I'm certain that at least a few would have slipped out. Despite internet rumors to the contrary, nobody has ever seen an authentic '58 Topps Bouchee.


Bouchee made his Topps rookie card appearance in the scarce 1957 #265-352 series. Batting .293 with 17 home runs and 76 RBIs that season, he came in second to teammate Jack Sanford in N.L. Rookie of the Year voting. The Sporting News, which divided its own Rookie of the Year awards between pitchers and position players, made Bouchee its N.L. position player winner.


In the remaining five years of Bouchee's major league career, he never again matched his '57 hitting numbers, and ended big league days as a member of the original 1962 N.Y. Mets expansion team. 


With the exception of 1958, Bouchee appeared on Topps cards every year between 1957-62.


It may be coincidental, but the only other major multi-team baseball card issue of 1958, the Hires Root Beer carton stuffers set of 76, also has an unissued card. There is no card #69. However, since there is also no checklist, we'll never know if Bouchee was intended to be part of that set.


For my custom card, I chose to go with the dramatic black background that, if my memory serves me correctly, was only seen on Phillies cards in the 1958 Topps set. I liked those as a kid, and I like them now.

Update: Kyle Rote's Short, Sweet Minor League Career

Most of us remember Kyle Rote as an important part of the N.Y. Giants NFL dynasty of the 1950s when he was the go-to receiver for Charlie Connerly and Y.A. Tittle.

The things he did to catch the football and rack up those important yards-after-catch were often a deciding factor in the epic Giants-Packers games of the era. We Packer fans would have gladly traded his cousin, our quarterback, Tobin Rote to the Giants for Kyle (especially after Bart Starr came along in the late Fifties).

Prior to coming to prominence in the NFL, Kyle Rote had a collegiate Hall of Fame career with Southern Methodist University. I recapped his college days (in 100 words or less) on the back of my 1955 All-American style custom card pictured at the bottom of this post, but there was no room for these interesting tidbits:

• In the biggest game of his collegiate career, Rote took over at tailback for injured starter Doak Walker in the final game of 1949, playing undefeated Notre Dame. Against the Irish he ran for 115 yards, passed for 146 yards, punted for a 48-yard average and scored all three of SMU's touchdowns in a 27-20 loss. The Texas Sportswriters Association later voted that performance as the finest by a Texas athlete in the first half of the century. Texas' oil and cattlemen probably also had some accolades for Rote, as they had bet their ranches, rigs and lungs on the Mustangs to beat the 27.5 point spread by which Notre Dame had been favored.
• In 1950, Rote was runner-up in the Heisman Trophy balloting to Ohio State's Vic Janowicz, who went on play in both the NFL (Redskins 1954-55) and MLB (Pirates 1953-54).
• He appeared on the cover of Life magazine's Nov. 13, 1950, issue in a dramatic portrait.

In the months before Rote reported to the Giants training camp in 1951 and began earning the reported $20,000 salary that a #1 draft pick commanded in those days, the San Antonio native tooks a few swings in minor league baseball. He signed with the Corpus Christi Aces of the Class B Gulf Coast League. He was given uniform #44, the number he wore at SMU.

He proved to be more than just a box office attraction, though. His hitting earned him a promotion from a pinch-hitter to a starting outfielder. He played in only 22 games, but in 66 at-bats had seven home runs, including three in one game on April 26. Team owner George Schepps said one of those homers was the longest ever hit in the Corpus Christi ballpark. Rote hit .348 with a .712 slugging average. The Aces went on to win the GCL pennant by 12 games, but by then Rote was long gone to the NFL.


In pre-game ceremonies prior to the Aces' April 11, 1951, home opener Rote participated in a football punting contest with other members of the team. But he didn't win! His 60-yard punt was bested by "spindly pitcher" Eddie Johnson, who booted the ball 65 yards.


For the ceremonial first pitch, the Corpus Christi mayor threw outa football, instead of a baseball.

Rote played his entire NFL career with the Giants. When he retired after the 1961 season he was the team's career leader in receptions (300), receiving yards (4,795) and TD catches (48). He had played in NFL Championship games four times (losing to the Colts in 1958 and 1959 and to the Packers in 1961 and earning the big ring against the Bears in 1956) .

The real measure of a man is not what he accomplishes between the lines. How he is perceived by his contemporaries is a more important gauge of the worth of a man. Rote was not only the Giants' captain for many years, but was also a force in the founding of the NFL Players Association and was its first elected president. Perhaps most telling of all, though, is that it is reported that 14 of his teammates named sons after him.

Following relatively minor surgery in 2002, Rote developed pneumonia and died at the age of 74.

I'd love to be able to give credit for the baseball photo of Kyle Rote in 1951 with Corpus Christi to the fellow collector who gave it to me, but I lost his name in a hard-drive crash of my computer last winter. He had offered the picture on eBay as Tobin Rote and received no bids. I'm sure that wouldn't have happened if he had properly identified it as Kyle Rote (it is correctly identified in the Associated Press cutline on the back). When I contacted him after the auction with an offer to buy it, he sent it to me free.

Coincidentally, I once owned a 1951 Corpus Christi team autographed baseball that included Rote's signature. I had bought it in a group of about 10 lower-level minor league balls from Texas clubs of the 1950s. I sold them all on eBay several years ago.