One Of My Favorite Cards: 1953 Topps #138 George Kell

The 2013 MLB season is almost here!

Let's take a quick break from the modern day excitement and enjoy some 60 year-old cardboard, shall we?

I can't recall exactly how I acquired this old '53 Topps card, but I'm sure glad I did.   Yes, it's technically a Red Sox card......but hey, it's a '53 Topps card of a Hall of Fame slugger George Kell!

The Player

Mr. Kell played professional ball from 1940 to 1957 with the A's, Tigers, Red Sox, White Sox and Orioles.   He was one of the most successful players to emerge during the player shortage of World War II.   Though not known for slugging home runs (78 for his career total), the third baseman was a tough out and captured the batting title in 1949 - displacing Ted Williams from the top slot during the final week of play by a margin of .0002!   His "2 for 3" performance on the season's final day prevented Williams from earning his third Triple Crown.

He finished his career as a 10-time All Star with a .306 average, 2,054 hits and 870 RBI.   he is probably best remembered for his time in Detroit, where he played for six years from 1946 to 1952.   Replaced by some up-and-comer named Brooks Robinson, George decided to hang up his spikes and became a broadcaster for the Orioles in 1957.   He began his broadcasting career in Baltimore but soon returned to Motown and joined up with the likes of Al Kaline to call Tigers games almost continuously from 1959 to 1996.   He was elected into the Hall of Fame by the Veteran's Committee in 1983.

Two of my favorite stories about Kell showcase both his grittiness and humility.

Keeping in mind the 'delicacy' of our modern day heroes, George missed some games during the 1948 season when he broke his wrist on a Vic Raschi pitch.   A few weeks later - YES, a few weeks later - misfortune found Kell again when a line drive off of the bat of Joe DiMaggio busted his jaw.   Kell recalled the DiMaggio smash play later on, "...I got up, made the play at third and then passed out."

And all of that was without deer antler spray, I suppose....Can you imagine that timeline these days?   By the way, George Kell won that batting title the next season, remember?   The other memorable moment of humility came during his Hall of Fame acceptance speech in '83:

    "I have always said that George Kell has taken more from this great game of baseball than he can ever give back. And now I know, I am deeper in debt than ever before."

   Awesome, awesome stuff.

The Card

It's a 1953 Topps card.   Classic design - a baseball card.   The painted portrait here doesn't give us any action but you can get a good sense of the country man from Arkansas who probably made a few folks smile in Boston back then.   It was a sunny day for this portrait, with the traditional puffy clouds drifting by in the skies beyond as Kell gazes forward.....we also get a sneak peek at the corner of the stadium's roof down the first base line.   A crumpled up Sox cap.......good stuff.   My favorite part of this vintage card is probably the old school Red Sox logo featured in the lower left corner:

Delightful

The card is pretty well centered with some touched edges and corners....okay, some rounding of the corners.   I don't really care too much.   The coloring is great too and the original gloss/surface of the card is fantastic.   No major creases that take away from the overall appearance either - I'm a happy camper.

Here's the back:

Efficient

My labeling of this year's card backs as efficient is not a slam!   I love everything we get here.   The biographical information up top (Clyde!) and quick synopsis of his career easily gives us a sense that Kell had already established himself as one of the game's highly regarded players by this time in his career.   The ode to his fielding abilities is a nice touch.   I love having the facsimile autograph but it makes it a tiny bit frustrating to read the write-up.......yeah, I'm nit-picking.   I just don't want to be 100% fan boy, you know?

The streamlined 'past year & career' stat columns is easy to review and a cartoon/trivia opportunity is ALWAYS welcome in my collection!   This one is no slouch, either, as the card quizzes the collectors of 1953 on who "participated in the greatest number of consecutive games?"

Of course, the answer to this question became outdated on September 6, 1995 when Cal Ripken Jr. played in his 2,131st consecutive game.   But this is George's post - so I'll keep it at that.   The back of the card is in great shape for me, too.   Some hairline crease action in the top right but no paper loss and some more great color on that wonderful, wonderful old card stock.

Have a great weekend and thanks for reading! 

Jelly Beans

Not from Morpheus!

That’s how this all got started.   Actually – that’s not quite true.   I’ll get back to those jelly beans in a moment.   This all got started with a 1986 Topps Doug Corbett baseball card.   I don’t know where Doug came from but I like to think that HE found ME. I still have him somewhere, tucked away in a treasure trove pile of youthful memories that now rests in our basement.   Ah!   Here he is......say hello, Doug.

I just noticed - Mattingly's number!

My HS football team has battled Apopka HS many times... 

My first card.   As you can see, it's well loved.   Nice "fuzzy" corners and a couple of meandering creases.   Original gloss, though!   I think now that I’d like to find out more about Doug.   It’s only fitting since he is responsible for everything that has happened since he turned me into a collector...


I fell in love with baseball at some point.


I loved to watch it, in person or on television, with my grandfathers or with my Dad.   They loved baseball and I loved them, so I loved baseball BIG time.   We would always talk about it.   Sometimes, I would just listen to it.   I can remember listening to baseball radio broadcasts on Boy Scout camping trips.   Out in the woods, around a fire whilst eating horrible things!   It was all good so long as I could follow the Braves on their quest for greatness.


I learned about the sport, its teams and their players.   Naturally, I sought out heroes – those I would cheer for and even emulate.   Yes, I even played baseball from time to time.   I have the post-game Dairy Queen mini-helmets to prove it.   Little League was fun but my career never quite played out the way I had dreamt it would.   Which is a shame because I practiced my autograph until it was absolutely perfect.   I would have been SUCH a cool major leaguer.   I still get way too excited when I sign anything.   Alas, even a second, Favre-esque comeback attempt for me in high school was thwarted by reality.

Like a pile of scalps, much soft-serve met its fate in these...

That’s okay. 


There were other ways to immerse oneself in the religion of baseball and that's where that '86 Doug Corbett became the gateway.   I happily spent much of my youth, along with some of the best friends I ever had, at the altar of baseball cards.   I’d save everything I earned to buy them.   I would study them and trade them with my partners in crime.   My mission? Acquire every Don Mattingly card in northwest Florida and then try to get at least ONE of everything else.   A Saturday afternoon couldn’t be perfect without a stop by TBS Comics & Baseball Cards to fuel my collection.   I would organize my cards and memorize the players. I couldn’t get enough and life was simply perfect.



And then life changed.



Don’t worry.   This is not “VH1-Behind the Music”.   I didn’t crash a Mustang into a Hotel 6.   No, life rolled on.   I got older.   I started playing competitive golf and football.   Necessary extracurricular activities became important for new future dreams.   Besides, my baseball heroes decided they weren’t getting paid enough in ’94 and quit.   Fine, then!   I needed to grow my music collection binders more than my Super Star baseball card binder……plus there were too many different types of cards anyways.   There were sparkly cards and foil-y cards.   Baseball cards that didn’t come with gum and cards that were way too expensive.   They were more about money than warm summer afternoons anymore.   I bet Doug Corbett even shed a tear.   But that’s life and life doesn’t stop. 


High School, girls, college, adulthood and everything in between happened.   Doug was locked up safely with the rest of my collection at my parents’ house.   A career in the Navy happened.   That made keeping up with baseball even harder.   But there was my favorite part, too.   Along the way, THE girl happened and, unlike baseball, I know the exact moment that I fell in love with her.   The first moment.   She was the coolest person I had ever met and yes, she liked baseball, too.   I tricked her into marrying me and we eventually had a perfect little daughter.   She is a beautiful princess who makes me smile every day and reminds me the world is a pretty great place.   Jobs changed and the zip codes flurried by.   


Then one day…..the jellybeans showed up.   A friend (who’s more family than friend) handed me a jar filled with pink and blue jellybeans.   I was told to count, sort, organize and divide.   I did so feverishly, just as I had with those little pieces of cardboard so many years ago.   In the end, there was one jellybean left.

One jelly bean to rule them all, one jelly bean to find them..

One blue jellybean that has brought us here today.



I was going to have a son.   In an instant, I knew…I needed to find Doug.   I missed my old friend and more importantly, there was now a new life that he needed to touch.

And so, here we are.   My boy has joined us (happy and healthy) and my little girl just told me the other day, “Daddy, I’m starting to really like baseball!”   I told you she was perfect, right?   My love for baseball has been rekindled and I couldn't get enough.   Fortuitously, Doug and the rest of the treasure trove have been recently delivered from their parental deep-storage resting place (thanks, Mom and Dad).   I liked to picture it being wheeled out of the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.   Everything looks to be in good shape, too!   Here’s a look:

Bay Bridge Series hat and Starting Lineups!

Good shape is a relative term, though.   It is a couple of packing crates full of assorted, wonderful, random STUFF.   It needs to be re-discovered, re-organized and pared down as much as possible.   My wife is excited about those last two goals.   I love my wife, so therefore I love those last two goals A LOT, too.   I’m also under the delusion that there are some people out there who might like to dig through that treasure trove with me to reminisce, share or even tie up loose ends?   Ah, to trade again!   I have discovered many of my fellow collectors out there in the Internet ether over the past year.   It’s been fun re-discovering our hobby.   I have received a rookie's introduction to new terms like Blaster's, "hits", patches, swatches, relics, chrome and heritage.   Your blogs are a joy to read and I can only hope to capture some of the same passion and joy regarding my collections as you all have with yours.   Thank you for your warm welcomes and friendly encouragement to share my own thoughts.   The chase in on to rediscover the old stuff and acquire some new treasures for the next generation.   Maybe a few things for Dad along the way, too!


So…without further delay….it’s blog time.   My first blog, to be exact.



Crazy?   Probably.



But I feel like this is a tale worth telling.   A story about baseball cards - the heroes and times they depicted.   A story about the fans who cheered them on and the world that was better for all because they did.   A story that includes Doug Corbett, our national pastime and a bunch of jelly beans.



This is a story about baseball, life, a little history and a LOT of cardboard!