The Second Best Yankees Catcher From St. Louis

If you polled a group of well informed baseball fans from the St. Louis area about some of the great amateur players to come out of the area many would quickly give you the name of Yogi Berra.  Pretty important player, and while he's not Babe Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, or Mantle, he is the best catcher in the history of the Yankees.

10 World Series Championships, 14 American League pennants, 3 MVPs, and a Hall of Famer.

There is another well known Yankees catcher from St. Louis besides Yogi Berra.  In fact, there careers intersected a bit.  By the late 1950s the Yankees actually played Yogi in the outfield.  I think few realize that the left fielder in the 7th Game of the 1960 World Series, the one that drifts back towards the wall on Bill Mazeroski's walk off home run, was Yogi Berra.

I will spare Yankees fans the video, but he's to the right of the scoreboard in this picture of Mazeroski's swing on the home run.

I'm sure that Yogi's knees were worn down or something.  The usual types of things that happen to catchers at the end of their career, but the Yankees had a legitimately talented replacement in the form of St. Louis native Elston Howard.

Beyond replacing Berra as the everyday catcher for the Yankees, which became official at the start of the 1960 season, Howard also broke the color barrier for the team.  The Yankees were actually one of the last teams in the Majors to place an African-American player on their roster.  The two National League New York franchises had both fielded integrated teams since the late 1940s.  Dodgers obviously starting in 1947 with Jackie Robinson and the Giants in 1948 with Monte Irvin.

Elston Howard had a pretty big impact early in his Yankee career, including a few big World Series home runs.

All tolled Howard helped the Yankees win four World Series.  He's not a Hall of Famer, but the Yankees did retire his number 32.  Seems like a pretty good player to add to the old baseball card collection.  For whatever reason, up until I picked up these two cards, I actually did not own any Elston Howard cards.  

Zero.  Pretty rare for me to be missing baseball cards of St. Louis players, whether they were Cardinals players or not.

First up is a 1959 Topps card.  I have seen this card before, always a little curious about the blue coloring on the frame around the card.  The cards in the set have all sorts of different coloring on frames, but the blues are all darker than this card.  I would not consider myself to be a 1959 Topps expert, so I am not sure if the Elston Howard card's border is different for a reason?  I know most of the other Yankees cards in the set have a red or orange border.  

This card did not cost me a ton for a name player in the 1959 Topps set.  The surface conditions on the card are nice, but the centering on the card is off both left to right and top to bottom.  I am not going to spend the money on a high grade card of a Yankees player, so I am good with nice condition over centering.  

Last one.  

This is a 1956 Topps.  It's Elston Howard's first Topps card, but Bowman made a card of him in 1955.  The television set.  I like the action photos on these cards and Howard's is no different.  Looks like an overthrow on a play at the plate against the Tigers...maybe?  The picture on the right kind of bothers me.  The lips, the hat, just so much that looks like it's artificially touched up.  

This is two vintage posts in a row.  Don't worry, I will go back modern on Monday.