Keep Durham Odd

It's been a little slow the past two weeks looking for additional color variations of the La Pizza Royale cards I have been collecting of former Durham Bulls players Rusty Staub and Gene Mauch.  The cards have multiple color variations, I have picked up a few already......

but the remaining cards are going to be tough.  The Staub cards are especially going to be tough.  A little disappointing, but along the way searching to find these Canadian pizza cards, I ran into a few other oddball cards of some former Durham Bulls players.

I really like this group of cards.   

The first card comes from a Bob Parker set.  He did a bunch of hand drawn picture sets, but I do not know much about him beyond the style of cards he made, and several of them were of the Reds.  This card is from his 1977 Cincinnati Reds set.  The orange card stock is unique to say the least.....

Frank McCormick played for the Durham Bulls during the 1936 season.  He went on to win the National League MVP for the Reds in 1940, and as it says underneath his name on the card, is in the team's Hall of Fame.  The Reds also won the World Series that season.  The little pictures around McCormick remind me a lot of the cartoons on the backs of Topps cards.  Definitely something different.  I believe there is a card in this set of Johnny Vander Meer, who was also a Durham Bulls player, so I might need to find that one.  

Speaking of Vander Meer....

This is from the 1976 Laughlin Diamond Jubilee set, which celebrated the 100th Anniversary of the National League.  The cards all have this style of cartoon picture.  Vander Meer is not a Hall of Famer, but is a notable former Durham Bulls player because of the consecutive no-hitters in back to back starts during the 1938 season.  

The back of the card gives out some details about the two no hitters.  There are also other former Durham Bulls players in the Laughlin set, along a Cardinals player or two that might be worthy of some effort in the near future.  

Last card.  

This is from the 1947 Signal Gasoline set, which featured players from the Pacific Coast League.  From what I have read about Minor League Baseball during this era, the PCL was the most competitive and talent rich league outside of the Majors.  Some really good names played for these teams during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s.  

This card reminds me a lot of the Frank McCormick card minus the orange card stock.  

Albosta pitched for the Durham Bulls during the 1941 season.  He won 15 games in just 23 games started, and had an ERA of only 1.74.  His time on the Durham Bulls actually gets mentioned on the back of the card.  He made it up to the Dodgers that same season where he got two spot starts.  

Albosta did not have much of a Major League career, but he missed several years for World War II.  He pitched the 1942 season for the Montreal Royals, who were a top Minor League affiliate of the Brooklyn Dodgers, but entered the Army at the end of the season.  He ended up pitching for the Pirates briefly after the war, but than played the rest of his career in the Minors.  

He played the last several years of his career with a semi-pro team in Saginaw, Michigan.  I drive through that town seemingly every year.  It's got the giant curved bridge in the middle of I-75.  

It's not the Mackinac Bridge, or the Ambassador Bridge.  Still unique.  

I wish I knew something more about this set, but I do not.  There are not many old Minor League cards, but the PCL seems to have quite a few.  This is my second PCL cards that is more than 50 years old.  I also have a manger card of long time Giants great Met Ott managing the Oakland Oaks.  This is from an early 1950s Mothers Cookies set.  

Always nice to find some interesting cards for the collection.  

Something Different

At the beginning of the year I made a post all about the different goals that I was going to achieve collecting baseball cards this year.  One of my goals this year was to put together four or five different sets.  It has not really happened.  I am feeling done with sets at this point.  I am almost sure I have finished Topps Series 1.  I thought about working on a Bowman set until it actually came out, and prospectors started throwing around crazy amounts of money.  

The Stadium Club cards look nice, so maybe that will be a set I put together, but I am still not sure.  These are nice.....

So, single cards.  I have decided to give myself a little focus, and do something a little different with finding my single cards the rest of the year.  Sure, there will be plenty of the usual modern cards with autographs, Cardinals cards, and Durham Bulls cards on here.  Just going to spend a little bit of time finding some older cards.  That means different things with my Cardinals and Durham Bulls collections.  

Let's do the Durham Bulls for this post.  

I want some old Durham Bulls cards.  The team has been around since 1902 and there have been plenty of notable players who have appeared in Durham prior to some of the more modern cards that I post in this space.  I have posted a few cards from the 1950s and 60s, but not much from before that time.  

I want to do more with older Durham Bulls cards, but more outside of the single card posts I do about a former player.  I recently found two older Bulls cards last week.  Pretty nice cards from the 1940 Play Ball set. 

First up is former Bulls pitcher Mace Brown.  I have not written about him before, so he definitely deserves a post at some point.  He played for the Bulls in 1931 after graduating from the University of Iowa, and eventually ended up playing for the Pirates and Red Sox.  Brown was one of the first full time relief pitchers, and also spent time working for the Red Sox after he retired as a player.  More on Brown on a different day.  Love this card.  

Next up a little bit more consequential player.  

"Buck" McCormick is actually Frank McCormick who was the National League MVP in 1940 with the Cincinnati Reds.  He had played for the Bulls while he was in the Minors, and went on to become one of the better hitters in baseball during the late 1930s and early 1940s.  

I like the little pennant up in the top left corner of the card.  The Reds went to the World Series in both 1939 and 1940 with McCormick as their main offensive cog.  The 1939 team lost to the Yankees, but the 1940 defeated the Tigers.  Great card that will look nicely in my small collection of Frank McCormick cards.  

So Many Reds Hall of Famers......

There are two Durham Bulls players in the Baseball Hall of Fame, or at least there will be later on this summer.  There is former Astros and Reds second baseman Joe Morgan.....

who actually came through Durham in the early 1960s while the team was an Astros affiliate.  There is also Chipper Jones, who is going into the Hall of Fame this summer.

Chipper came through Durham while they were a Braves affiliate in the early 1990s.  I am using Chipper's 1991 Topps card for this post, but he actually has several Durham Bulls cards out there.  Morgan has a recent one too.  

That's two Hall of Famers off of the Durham Bulls who have been enshrined in Cooperstown.  Then there is the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame.  The Bulls actually have three players who are members of that franchise's Hall of Fame.  Joe Morgan is in their Hall of Fame for his role with the 1970s Big Red Machine teams that won a pair of World Series titles.  

Pitcher Johnny Vander Meer also played for the Bulls and appears in the Reds Hall of Fame.....

being best remembered as the only Major League pitcher to throw no-hitter in back to back starts.  The prime of his career was interrupted by World War II, but his pitching numbers with the Reds prior to his service time were very good.  Which brings me to my newest card, obviously the player was on the Durham Bulls and is now in the Reds Hall of Fame.  

Card front....

Which shows off the signature of the National League's 1940 MVP, Reds first baseman Frank McCormick.  In the six years that I have written in this space, I do not think that I have ever posted a cut signature.  Well, I think I have a Kyle Skipworth out of Topps Pro Debut, so outside of that one this is all that I have in my collection.  The signature is on a notecard and comes out of the Donruss Limited Cuts set.  I do not know much about this product, but I am pretty sure that the main purpose of buying these cards is to get cut signatures.  

They just happen to be a little less expensive than some of the other cut autograph products.  I know that McCormick, who died in 1982, has other autographs done in this fashion.  I know there is a Leaf one, not sure if Upper Deck has ever put him into a set.  

Card back....  

which gives a little snippet into the career of Frank McCormick.  I will give you a little more.  He played for the Bulls in 1936, most importantly while he was there, Bulls manager Johnny Gooch changed how he gripped his bat.  The changes allowed McCormick to hit over .380 with the Bulls, record more than 200 hits, and almost 50 doubles during is one season with the team.  He had several great seasons during the late 1930s through the mid 1940s, his best year's are in line with those of Hall of Famers, but his career was just too short.

My favorite McCormick stat, which I am borrowing from SABR, shows the difference between the slugging first baseman of the 1930s and 1940s, and their modern equivalents.  In almost 6,000 career at bats McCormick struck out 189 times, which is almost the same number of strikeouts Ryan Howard had in 2007.  There were three seasons during his career where he had more home runs than strikeouts.  During his thirteen year career, there was only one season where he had more strikeouts than doubles.  Amazing.

McCormick's best season, as mentioned before, was his 1940 MVP campaign.  His 1944 season was comparable, but winning the World Series in 1940 tilts the argument in favor of the earlier season.