A Giant Project: Update #1

I have been working hard over the past two weeks to find a few more cards from the 1964 Topps Giants set that I am taking on as my first project of 2021.  I posted five cards the other week when I introduced the project, which included Hall of Famers Bob Gibson, Warren Spahn, and Joe Torre.  This week, I have five more cards to cross off the checklist.

Here are my newest additions.  I will start out with the two Hall of Famers I found.  

I found the Al Kaline card on Ebay in an auction.  I am still amazed at how little these cards cost in comparison to the regular 1964 Topps cards.  This card was less than $10.  

This is a mid-career card for Kaline.  I did not realize that he never played a Minor League game until I looked up the batting title listed on the back of this card.  I thought maybe as a 20 year old he had led the league during his rookie season, but it turned out to be his third year.  Kaline played 22 years in the Majors, but retired before he was 40. 

The second Hall of Famer I found the past two weeks is Giants first baseman Orlando Cepeda.  

I have a few other Orlando Cepeda cards, but most of them are from his time with the Cardinals in the late 1960s.  I like this posed photo with the shot over his shoulder.  

The back of the card has a typo in his stat line from his rookie year.  The card states that Cepeda had 38 triples his rookie year, but that should have read doubles.  "Cha Cha" does not seem like the type of player who hit a lot of triples.  Looking on Baseball-Reference, he had a total of 27 in 17 years.  

Last three cards.  A little quicker.  All three of these players would be greats of the era.  They were all All-Star caliber players at some point in their careers, but just not enough to be Hall of Famers.  

I always think about Rocky Colavito as an Indian or Tiger, but apparently he played one season with the Kansas City A's.  He was an American League All-Star his only season in Kansas City hitting more than 30 home runs and driving in more than 100.  I learned something new.  

He hit four home runs in a game before Mark Whiten.  

I did not know much about Jim Gentile before buying this card.  I have an old Cadaco disc of him from the All-Star Baseball Game.  That's most of my exposure to his career.  Gentile had a short career, but had some great seasons, especially early in his career with the Orioles.  In 1961, he hit 46 home runs, drove in 141 runs, and had a .646 slugging percentage.  If it were not for Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, he would have likely won the MVP Award that season.  

The centering on the card is off on this card.  On the front scan, you can see the card is off left to right.   On the back, the print looks a crooked.  This was a really cheap card, so I might upgrade to a better copy if I can find it cheap enough.  Not a high priority, but still will put it on my list of things to do.  

Last card.  

Callison was a good player for the Phillies during the 1960s.  One of the eras "What if...." players.  He was an athletic outfielder from Oklahoma with some pop in his bat, so he naturally got branded the "next Mickey Mantle".  Callison was an extra base machine, hit his fair share of home runs, but also lots of doubles and triples.  According to the Phillies people on the internet, he was also about the only player on the 1964 team who did not completely tank during the last few weeks of the season.  Leg injuries wrecked his career along with vision problems.  

The back describes his home run in the 1964 All-Star Game off of Red Sox pitcher Dick Radatz, which was Callison's defining moment in the Majors.  

My updated checklist.  Ten cards down, fifty to go.  

1 Gary Peters
2 Ken Johnson
3 Sandy Koufax SP
4 Bob Bailey
5 Milt Pappas
6 Ron Hunt
7 Whitey Ford
8 Roy McMillan
9 Rocky Colavito
10 Jim Bunning
11 Roberto Clemente
12 Al Kaline
13 Nellie Fox
14 Tony Gonzalez
15 Jim Gentile
16 Dean Chance
17 Dick Ellsworth
18 Jim Fregosi
19 Dick Groat
20 Chuck Hinton
21 Elston Howard
22 Dick Farrell
23 Albie Pearson
24 Frank Howard
25 Mickey Mantle
26 Joe Torre
27 Ed Brinkman
28 Bob Friend SP
29 Frank Robinson
30 Bill Freehan
31 Warren Spahn
32 Camilo Pascual
33 Pete Ward
34 Jim Maloney
35 Dave Wickersham
36 Johnny Callison
37 Juan Marichal
38 Harmon Killebrew
39 Luis Aparicio
40 Dick Radatz
41 Bob Gibson
42 Dick Stuart SP
43 Tommy Davis
44 Tony Oliva
45 Wayne Causey SP
46 Max Alvis
47 Galen Cisco SP
48 Carl Yastrzemski
49 Hank Aaron
50 Brooks Robinson
51 Willie Mays SP
52 Billy Williams
53 Juan Pizarro
54 Leon Wagner
55 Orlando Cepeda
56 Vada Pinson
57 Ken Boyer
58 Ron Santo
59 Johnny Romano
60 Bill Skowron SP

60s Cardinals In 1964

This is going to be a pretty quick post.  I am excited to be here for my third post of the month!  I hope this isn't my last post of 2020, but it seems like a real possibility.  My quest to find older Durham Bulls cards skewed off course a few weeks back when I found a few really nice Cardinals cards for sale on Facebook.  All the cards are from 1964 Topps sets, some of the players are pictured as Cardinals, some are not.  

Let's start out with the 1960s Cardinals players who are pictured on other teams.  Both of these cards come from the 1964 Topps Pop-Ups. 

 

 

First up is long time Reds outfielder Vada Pinson.  He only played on the Cardinals in 1969 after being traded to the team for Bobby Tolan.  Pinson filled the hole in right field for the Cardinals after Roger Maris retired from baseball at the end of the 1968 season.  He was older at this point and had began to decline, so he was not the extra base machine he was for the Reds throughout the late 1950s and 1960s.  Pinson finished in the top 10 in doubles and triples eight times during his first 10 years, while hitting more than 20 home runs 6 times.  

Not a Hall of Famer, but a really good player from his era. 

 

Speaking of Hall of Famers, I also picked up a Topps Stand-Up of Orlando Cepeda.  He was a really good player while he was on the Cardinals, winning the National League MVP during the 1967 season.  That was after spending a decade being paired with Willie Mays in the middle of the Giants line-up.  I really like the picture on this card.  It took me a few minutes to figure out what was happening here, but I believe he is throwing ground balls warming up the other infielders before an inning, or taking infield practice before a game.  Not something you see very often on a baseball card.  

One more Topps Stand-Up. 

 

Former Duke basketball player Dick Groat.  

This is one of the worst airbrushed card of all-time.  The STL on the hat is something.   Clearly an old Pirates picture that was taken while he was wearing one of the sleeveless vest style uniforms like this......

Love that they got the gold stripes on the socks red and blue, the sleeves on his shirt red, but then left the gold and black piping around the arm holes and neck line of the vest.  Regardless, good player for the Cardinals and an important member of the 1964 World Series winning team.  

Last card, the best one in this post.  I don't need many words for this card.  

 

 

This is a 1964 Topps Giants Bob Gibson.  Great looking card of the Hall of Fame pitcher.  Love that light shade of gray the 1960s Cardinals had on their road uniforms.  

Cha Cha Graph

During my high school years I used to regularly go to Cardinals games on Sunday afternoons with my father.  We'd drive downtown to Busch and check out the early-mid 1990s Cardinals which were some of the worst teams in the history of the franchise.  Gussie Busch died at the end of the 1989 season leaving his son, August IV, in charge of the team.  The Cardinals became cheap and indifferent to the product on the field.

The pitching staff was led by such notables as Bob Tewksbury, Omar Oliveras, and Rene Arocha, and while I love Ray Lankford and will argue you non-stop about him deserving to be in the Cardinals Hall of Fame, he had very little help.  Mark Whiten was decent, Pagnozzi was a nice defensive catcher, but there were too many players like Tripp Cromer and Scott Cooper on the roster.  

In the end my father and I often spent time watching players on the team shine against the Cardinals and I also got a fair share of stories about the Cardinals teams of the 1950s and 1960s that my father grew up watching.  That included lots of stories about Musial, Gibson, and Brock.  Other notable names got tossed in there too like Roger Maris, Julian Javier, Mike Shannon, and Ken Boyer.  

Then there was Orlando Cepeda.  There was only one Cha Cha story that my father ever told and it came out every time someone hit a long home run.  I think I first heard the story at some point in late elementary school after Jack Clark launched a ball to the back of the bleachers.  Basically, the first game my father went to in Busch Stadium II, the cookie cutter one, was a pitchers dual that was decided on a Cepeda home run.  

Supposedly the home run landed in the home deck of Busch, straight down the left field line, near the top of the second deck.  There is no video of the dinger, but there are news stories....

While I have spent time and money chasing down autographs of a lot of the players from those Cardinals teams of the 1950s and 1960s, there have been a few players who have escaped me.  I actually have a Cepeda autograph, but it is with the Giants.  I am sure that most people who saw Cha Cha in person probably remember him better as a member of the Giants, still he won a World Series with the Cardinals in 1967 and won a National League Championship with the team the following year in 1968.  Pretty good stretch before he was traded to the Braves for Joe Torre.  

There have been a few Cepeda autographs in a Cardinals uni over the years, but I have never tracked one down until last week.......

The 1968 Topps are not my favorites, I am a fan of the burlap sack comparisons, but that was a good year for the Cardinals.  Very happy to add this nice Cepeda autograph to the collection.  Maybe I need to find the other Cardinals autographs in this year's Heritage set....there are a few more nice ones....

Gaggle of Great Graphs

I had posted a Scott Rolen autograph a few days back.  I had actually ended up with that Topps Heritage autograph through a fellow collector who was also trying to get rid of a few old Fleer Greats of the Game autographs.  I really enjoyed collecting those sets way back in the day, liked the autographs that were in the lot, so I decided to jump at the chance to pick up these cards.  I ended up with five in all.  Here's a look at the cards, all from the 2001 Great of the Game set...

I have a bunch of Enos Slaughter autographs, but I had never picked this one before now.  Slaughter had a really nice autograph and this one is generally his roughest signature on a certified card.  At the time this set came out the Roxboro, North Carolina native was fighting Lymphoma.  While it's not his best signature, it's one of his last.  I like the black and white photo on the card too.  These were the simplest design of the Greats of the Game set, but I think the simplicity works well. 

So this is where I am a little bit lost on the design of this set.  The Mazeroski autograph above has a color picture.  The card still looks really nice.  I thought perhaps the color/black and white pictures were based on when they played, but Orlando Cepeda's career lined up almost exactly with Mazeroski and he had a bacl and white photo.  Same with Killebrew at the bottom.  Let's just enjoy the autographs.  Prior to this card, I did not have a Mazeroski autograph.  His signatures are never expensive, nor hard to find, just never got around to picking one up.  

I have other Cepeda autographs, with the Cardinals, but I liked the look of this card.  Obviously a younger version of Cha Cha at the beginning of his career with the Giants.  

This is my only duplicate out of the lot.  Roger Craig is a Durham native, so I have picked up a few of his autographs over the years.  I remember Roger Craig best as the manager of the Giants when I was a kid, but as I have gotten older I have run into him as sort of local sports legend around central North Carolina.  I am pretty sure that three different high school's in Durham try to claim him, he went to NC State, and every baseball fan I have ever met from North Carolina over the age of 65 saw him pitch locally in the minor leagues.  

Not my first autograph of the Twins Hall of Famer, but Harmon always has a nice autograph.  Great looking card.