1954 Orioles/American League Schedule Booklet

I don't remember where this little item came from. Someone may have gifted me with it. But it's been sitting on my desk for months waiting to be posted.

1954 was, of course, the inaugural season for the Orioles in the modern Major Leagues. So I suppose this qualifies as a 'rookie' schedule booklet. More than that, though, I love that it features a neat design with Jim Hartzell's original Oriole and some fun typography.

The booklet is 2.5"x4" and I scanned it with a standard Topps card to show how it compares. The card also gives me a chance to plug my 1960 Topps blog. I'm posting four or five times a week over there.

I only scanned the cover. The rest of this post uses phone photos with the schedule held open with clips. I hate squashing old paper items on my scanner's platen. And this piece is in very nice condition.

Most of the pages are a day-by-day American League schedule.

The center pages are specific to the Orioles, beginning with the ticket price and ordering info. NO TELEPHONE RESERVATIONS

Next is the centerfold with stadium and game facts. The opposite page list the Orioles' home night games for 1954. Night games were not the default back then so pointing them out was a necessity I guess.

Next comes a list of Sunday and holiday dates at Memorial. A few things of note include the fact that the Orioles had home games on the three major in-season holidays, Memorial Day, the 4th of July, and Labor Day. There were eight doubleheaders. We're raising a generation of fans who have no idea what it's like to watch two games with one ticket. And it's apropos that the second half of the booklet starts with the All-Star Game, played in Cleveland.

BTW...that was a wild and fun game, won by the AL 11-9. There were four AL homers, two by Indians' corner infielder Al Rosen, a pinch knock by Indians' outfielder Larry Doby, and another by former Indian, Ray Boone. Bobby Avila, yet another Indians' player, started at second for the AL and went three for three before being replaced by Nellie Fox who won the game with a two-run single in the eighth.

Back to the schedule... The whole league took off for the then-annual Cooperstown Hall of Fame Game in August. The Yanks beat the Reds 10-9 with Mickey Mantle hitting a home run.

Following the AL schedule, we get a listing of ALL the league's night games.

Inside the back cover gives us a promo for some big league films available for screening. Nowadays you can just crank up YouTube.

And the back cover had a promotional ad for the official big-league baseball. The AL used Reach branded balls while the NL had ones with the Spalding markings. But as the page points out, Spalding made them both. Spalding had acquired Reach, a rival sporting goods firm, way back in 1892 but kept the name on the AL balls for decades. 

I remember league-wide schedules back when I was a kid. We used to find them at the local car dealerships. I don't think I ever had any with team-specific covers or info, though. It might be a fun area of collecting to dig into.

Batman Lemon Drink Carton ¯\_㋡_/¯

Yeah, I don't know what to make of it either. Mine appears to be unused. I came from a dairy company in Ohio. It was listed as a 1966 item and given Batman's popularity at about that time I suspect that's the case.

Front and back panels are identical while the sides have 'cards' meant to be cut out, one is a stand-up sort of thing.

There were also boxes containing 'Peninsula' Fruit Drink and Orange Drink.  I'm not sure what 'Peninsula fruit' means. Florida? Upper Peninsula of Michigan (which is closer to Ohio)?

Just looking at these I can 'taste' the contents. And it ain't good. But I'm happy to have this oddball thing for my Batman collection.

Great Plains Greats set

I bought the Chief Bender card out of the 1975-76 Great Plains Greats set a month or so ago at one of the hotel card shows. Oddball sets can be fun and I got curious about the set and dug around online. I found a "complete" set cheap and bought it on a whim. It's full of Hall of Fame players and other big names. All the pics used are black and white.

Here's that Bender:
 

The seller (and a lot of other online sellers) list the set at 24 cards. But that's not technically correct. Hence the quotation marks around 'complete' in the first paragraph.

But first here is a look at some of the cards that I received. They come in groups of eight with each group in a different color, both front, and back. The artwork that is printed behind the players' name is different for each color as well.

The Allie Reynolds and Bob Feller appear to be different shades of blue but I think that's just a quirk of the printing process.

Carl Hubbell, star of the 1934 All-Star Game.

Walter Johnson and Dave Bancroft. Two very serious guys.

The green group has three of my favorite photos in it. Yogi, Cool Papa Bell, and Roger Maris.

The backs have a few brief essentials and a write-up, brief stats and an ad for the set's sponsor, Sheraton Hotels. Each color group has a different Sheraton. The back colors are a variation of the fronts..the red cards have purple-ish reverse accents.

Green fronts got a darker shade on the back...

Blue fronts got a lighter shade...

One eBay seller says the cards were distributed mostly in Iowa. But the Sheraton hotels listed in the ads were in Omaha, Nebraska and Wichita, Kansas, so who knows? These cards are larger than standard modern cards which will make storing them a problem. They are only a whisper wider than the pre-57 cards from Topps so I may try using the 8-pocket pages. Here's one with a standard card for comparison.

I mentioned that sets are usually listed as complete at 24 but there were two groups of nine cards each that were also distributed which brings the total to 42 players. The additional 18 cards were not Sheraton sponsored but carry an ad for NU SASH windows, a company that now seems to be active across the MidWest.

There are also some that I have found with a promo blurb for the Great Plains Sports Collectors Association. I can't find any reference to that group now and I'm also unsure of which cards carried the back promoting it. I'm fairly certain it was the last two (highest numbered) groups but that's just a guess. That grouping also contains the Mickey Mantle card. I might dig around on eBay and COMC and try to puzzle it all out but I'm not sure it's a big deal.

Here is the 42 card checklist. I've coded them in the colors that are found on the front.

1 Bob Feller             
2 Carl Hubbell             
3 Jocko Conlan             
4 Hal Trosky             
5 Allie Reynolds            
6 Burleigh Grimes            
7 Jake Beckley            
8 Al Simmons           
9 Paul Waner            
10 Chief Bender            
11 Fred Clarke            
12 Jim Bottomley            
13 Dave Bancroft            
14 Bing Miller            
15 Walter Johnson            
16 Grover Alexander            
17 Bob Johnson            
18 Roger Maris           
19 Ken Keltner            
20 Red Faber            
21 Cool Papa Bell            
22 Yogi Berra            
23 Fred Lindstrom            
24 Ray Schalk              
25 Lloyd Waner            
26 John Hopp            
27 Mel Harder            
28 Dutch Leonard            
29 Bob O'Farrell            
30 Cap Anson            
31 Dazzy Vance            
32 Red Schoendienst            
33 George Pipgras          
34 Harvey Kuenn            
35 Red Ruffing            
36 Roy Sievers            
37 Ken Boyer            
38 Al Smith            
39 Casey Stengel            
40 Bob Gibson
41 Mickey Mantle
42 Denny McLain

There are also two unnumbered checklists that cover only the #s 1-24. They can be found in either red or blue.

Here (scan from TCD) is what the checklists look like. The back had a 'Buy the set' coupon:

And from COMC and The Trading Card Database comes scans for the alternate(?) backs. I found a couple with the club promo...

....but mostly I see them with the NU SASH advertising back.

If I could find the #25-42 cards as a group I might be inclined to go after them but as singles, with the Mantle going for $10 or so, I'll pass for now.

Awesome Pierce Oddball

Yesterday I posted the '16 Heritage and Segui postcard I received from 'friend of every blog' Mark Hoyle. I get home and flip through the mail and there is another envelope from Mark and inside was this cool item.

The Billy Pierce Queen of Diamonds comes from a deck of White Sox cards that is manufactured and marketed as 'Hero Decks' by a company out of Ohio known as Parody Productions. I bought the Black America deck at the Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham a few years ago to get the Jim Brown, Bill Russell and Muhammad Ali cards but I think it's still unopened in my closet. I was vaguely aware that there were other products in the same line out there. I think I've stumbled across a couple out of the Baltimore Colts/Ravens set here and there.

If you check out their website you see that they make decks for quite a few other cities/teams as well as decks for various other subjects. I don't see any licencing info but maybe they have a good lawyer on staff. The decks are not available individually from the company or I'd buy an Orioles set from them.

The artwork reminds me of some of Jack Davis' Mad magazine drawings. My scanner hated the front of the card so I laid it out with a sheet of white paper over it and it scanned fine that way. Anyway it's a neat addition to the Pierce collection. Thanks again for looking out for me, Mark.

Billy Pierce Comiskey Cash

Here's the second newly acquired Pierce item that I've added recently. It's not particularly worthy of it's own post but I had forgotten to upload the scan until last night. BP collector and all around good guy JediJeff from 2x3 Heroes alerted me to these a year ago. It took me awhile to find them on eBay.

As you can probably deduce these things were to be used like cash at Comiskey concessions. I know a lot of teams/stadiums use this sort of thing now. I'm sure there is a logical reason for it. I guess that once you buy a wad of these you are committed to spending you dough there. Plus when you buy some you are paying upfront. The Sox (or whatever team) get to put your $$ in the back and draw interest on it for however long it takes for you to get around to using them. Oh, and some knuckleheads will buy them as souvenirs and the Sox come out ahead. Imagine that.

The Texans came up with a debit card-type thing which you can preload for any amount and it works that same way. It was offered for the first time last year (I think). I jumped on it last season because they were offering $85 concession cards for $65 if you bought them with your season tickets. If there isn't a discount this year I'll pass. And I spend so little at the stadium that I ended up having to find ways to use it up. Nobody could tell me it the balance carried forward to this year.

Anyway here is the back of the Pierce $5 'bill'. It's sort of hard to tell from the scan but it appears that it's printed on 'check' paper. Makes it harder to duplicate.

I picked up two of these so if one of my fellow Pierceheads wants one just say the word.

Please Don't Judge Me

I like oversized collectibles. Postcards, 8x10s, even those old 5x7 photocards that Topps (and others) foisted on us in the cardboard bloated 80's...all that stuff is in my collection. The '68 Dexter Press Photo Cards are one of my most treasured collectibles. So I guess it's no surprise that I bit when Topps produced this 'commemorative' 1970 World Series Champions set made up of 5x7 reproductions of 1970 Topps Orioles cards.

I don't know what the big deal about a 45th Anniversary is other than an excuse for Topps to churn out one more set in their line of Cardboard Icon stuff. While the 1970 set gets a fair amount of  well deserved criticism I cherish the Orioles in the set. I think Topps chose some really great pics.

This Cardboard Icon set contains ten cards plus the 'header' card shown above. As advertised they are blown up, gold bordered versions of  the originals. The set is numbered, I bought the cheapest available version which was numbered to 49 (why 49?) and my set is #5. If I was given a choice of sets I would have taken set #1 but #5 would have been my next choice. Not that it makes any difference in the grand scheme of things.

Anyway, here is Dave McNally. I like the fact that the larger photo size makes it easy to see what's going on in the background. McNally is posing with a bunch of hard working fellow Spring Training engaged teammates behind him.

The little World Series 'trophy' that's been added is embossed and stands out every so slightly from the surface of the card. Next up is the always smiling Paul Blair.

Boog Powell at Yankee Stadium. Looks like Mark Belanger is posing for a different photographer behind him.

Brooks Robinson in another Yankee Stadium shot.

Jim Palmer, Spring Training in Miami.

Frank Robinson, in still one more Yankee Stadium shot. He has the contented look of a man who knows a championship is in his future.

Davey Johnson posing as a second baseman flipping the ball to his shortstop or to a fan hanging out at the railing. No telling who that is way back to the left leaning into this Spring Training shot.

Topps included the two Orioles All Star cards, Brooks and Frank Robinson. The printing on these, especially the black ink, has a bit of the 'embossed' feel that is present with the World Series trophy logo on all the rest of them.

Like the fronts, the backs are replicas of the original cards.

Most of the backs are sharp and clear. They reproduced well. Except.....

...for Dave Johnson's card. This one is not nearly as sharp as the rest.

I saved one card for the end. Don Buford. I was scanning these as I opened the wrapper and didn't notice the fact that the team designation on Buford's card looks so terrible. How does this stuff happen on what is supposed to be a specialty (or at least premium priced) product? C'mon man!

UPDATE: I've contacted Topps Customer Service regarding the Buford card. We'll see what they say.