Barrier Breakers: 1951 Minnie Minoso - Chicago White Sox

 

Although Orestes "Minnie" Minoso broke the color line for the White Sox in 1951, he made his MLB debut on the Indians in April of 1949. He hit .188 in 20 plate appearances with 2 walks and 2 hit-by-pitch. He spent the rest of '49 and '50 in San Diego of the PCL hitting .297 and .339 respectively. That earned him a short-lived promotion to the Indians in 1951.  It was short-lived because he was dealt to the South-Siders in a six-player, three-team swap. Once on the Sox, he batted .324 with 10 homers and 74 RBIs.  He also led the league with 31 stolen bases and 14 triples, was 4th in MVP voting and second in Rookie of the Year voting.

Minnie is a favorite of mine and has been featured on this blog several times.  This 1951 Bowman first appeared here in August of 2011.  I also made a 1951 Topps card for him as an Indian.

I've made several cards of the Cuban Comet over the years, but wanted to find another to make for this post.  I settled on a 1965 "Career Capper".  I considered a 1963 Fleer card featuring him on the Senators because he doesn't have a card in a Washington uniform.  But decided that this post was about the White Sox.  That'll be a project for another day.

Glenn Beckert

October 12, 1940 - April 12, 2020

I hate to keep doing this.  But Glenn Beckert was part of my childhood and I couldn't let his passing go without a small tribute.  We are living in difficult times now.  He was in hospice in Florida with dementia when he passed away. It was heartbreaking to read how his daughters were unable to visit him due to the Corona Virus. 

He was a Gold Glove, a four-time All-Star and an important part of the ill-fated 1969 Cubs. Most impressive was his low strikeout to at-bat ratio. He led the league 5 times and placed in the top ten every year from 1965-1972.  To put it into perspective as to how much the game has changed, the player with the most at-bats to strikeouts in 2019 was the Orioles utility infielder, Hanser Alberto.  He averaged 1 strikeout in every 10.5 at-bats.  Beckert's career average was 1 strikeout in every 21.4 at-bats.

Four years ago, when Milt Pappas passed away I found this photo of Pappas and Beckert at the 100 year celebration at Wrigley Field in 2014. 

I've created a few cards of Glenn Beckert over the years. Here they are once again.

Some 1965 Requests

Since I'm doing a bit of "tying up loose ends", I had a request for some non-multiplayer rookie cards from 1965.  It took a little digging to find the time appropriate uniforms, but it was worth it.

The request were for Jose Cardenal, Glenn Beckert, Ken Berry and Paul Schaal.

Checking in with "Rating the Rookies"

This has been a busy time for me and I haven't really had the time to commit to this blog. Although I haven't been very busy on this blog, I have still been occasionally creating Cards That Never Were for my other blog, Rating The Rookies.

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Here is a 1975 Topps card for Lloyd Allen and a 1973 Topps card for Winston Llenas. They shared a 1970 Rookie Stars card while on the Angels. You can see that post here.

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Craig Reynolds, Lamar Johnson, Johnnie LeMaster and Jerry Manuel all share a Rookie Infielders card in the 1976 Topps set. 

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Jim Miles and Jan Dukes were both on a Senators Rookie Stars card in 1971. Here they are representing the same team in 1968 and 1971 repectively.

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In the 1963 set Rogelio Alvarez, Dave Roberts, Bob Saverine and Tommy Harper share a Rookie Stars card.

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Sammy Ellis and Mel Queen were both on the 1964 Reds Rookie Stars card.

Do You "Bunt"?

Apparently, I do.   

I never really saw the point of collecting "virtual" cards. Especially since I've been making virtual cards for this blog for the past 4 years or so. But curiosity finally got the best of me and I had to check out Topps Bunt. To my surprise, I came across this Harmon Killebrew Topps Bunt Card using the same design I used for the 1971 Topps All Star Cards That Never Were.

 Admittedly, the design was not entirely mine. I lifted it from the World Series cards from that set. 

 Nonetheless, I'm kinda stoked that they used a design that I had a hand in creating. 

And I am not the only blogger who's CTNW designs were used by Topps Bunt. Over at The Baseball Card Blog, the writers created a 1965 Topps All Star set. Their design was also incorporated into Topps Bunt.  Here is their design. Basically they made an All Star designation for the regular issue 1965 cards. This is The Baseball Card Blog's version of a 1965 Topps Brooks Robinson All Star card: 

And this is the Topps Bunt version:

On these cards, Topps Bunt utilized the design element that we had also used to create our Cards That Never Were. But on this card of Yogi Berra, the entire card was identical to the one created by Uncle Doc's Closet. Here is the one by Topps Bunt:

And here is the Uncle Doc version:

Did some Topps intern not realize that this was a fake card? Or did he know it was fake and just didn't care? In reality, the design belongs to Topps in the first place and they probably actually paid for the rights to use Berra's image.

I can't speak for the other bloggers, but I am not the least bit upset, offended or otherwise outraged by the Topps Bunt versions of these cards. Quite the opposite. I'm hoping that they use more of our designs. The whole reason I made most of these cards is because I thought Topps should have made them themselves. With the recent addition of Archives, Heritage and now Bunt cards, Topps will have more chances to create the cards they missed the first time around.

More "Rating The Rookies" Cards That Never Were

This week I created 4 new cards for my sister blog: Rating the Rookies. Click Here to see more about these players as well as the real Rookie Card they shared.

1965 Topps Howie Koplitz

This 1961 Sporting News Minor League Player of the Year blew out his shoulder in 1966. He had Topps cards in 1962. 63, 64, and 1966. But not in 1965. He is featured on my sister-site, Rating The Rookies.

1967 Topps NL Stolen Base Leaders: Lou Brock, Sonny Jackson, Maury Wills

In 1966 there was a changing of the guard. After finishing 2nd in stolen bases in 1964 and 1965, Lou Brock passed Maury Wills as the stolen base leader. Wills was the N.L. stolen base leader from 1960-1965 but fell to 3rd in 1966. Lou Brock would go on to be the new N.L. leader in 8 of the next nine years. 

Nearly lost in the middle of these two superstars is Sonny Jackson. Jackson had a career high 49 stolen bases in 1966. He made brief Major League appearances in 1963, 64 and 65,  but 1966 was still officially his rookie year and he finished 2nd in Rookie of the Year voting to the Reds' Tommy Helms.

1965 & 1966 Topps Chris Short

This is the final installment of my versions of the Chris Short cards that never were. If you read the last few posts you know that like Maury Wills, Short was missing from Topps sets during the same time period for possibly similar reasons. Unlike Wills, the missing Chris Short cards are not as well documented. 

Chris Short led the Phillies in starts and innings pitched in 1965. He still managed to make 7 relief appearances earning 2 saves. The left-out lefty had a career high 237 strikeouts and went 18-11.

In 1966 Short won a career high 20 games which was enough for at least one sports writer to throw him an MVP vote. 

1965 Topps American League ERA Leaders Redux

In my last post I re-did the 1965 Topps ERA leader card because Chris Short was left off because he was not under contract with Topps. In an apparent attempt to make it look like it was the plan all along to have only 2 on the ERA card, Topps made the AL card to match (see below). Talk about cutting off your nose despite your face, they left out future Hall of Famer Whitey Ford. Here is the version that would have appeared in 1965 if Topps was more like me and totally ignored licensing laws.

1965 Topps National League ERA Leaders Redux

While making these recent posts featuring 1965 leader cards that never were, I stumbled upon a mystery. 

 I was wondering why Topps made their ERA leader cards with only 2 pitchers instead of the usual 3. This is the original NL ERA Leader card. The card above is what I think it should have been.

In 1962 they made a couple leader cards with 3 players instead of 4 because there were players tied for 4th place. In this case it was because Joe Adcock and Dick Stuart were tied for 4th with 35 homers.

And in this case because Johnny Podres, Lew Burdette and Sandy Koufax were tied for 4th with 18 wins each. (By the way, which Topps employee let their 4 year old daughter cut these pictures out?)

But normally Topps just keeps adding players like in this ridiculous 1970 leader card where they doubled the normal number of photos to accommodate the 4 way tie for 3rd with 20 wins each.

Even in the 1965 season they bumped the number of players up to 4 in this case to accommodate Mantle and Killebrew's tie for 3rd with 111 RBIs each.

And included 5 photos in 2 of their leader cards to include all 3 tied for 3rd in homers.

and in this case the 2 tied for the lead with 20 wins and the 3 tied with 19 behind them.

So why only 2?  

The answer is Chris Short.

Like Maury Wills, Chris Short made his Major League debut in 1959 and also like Wills, short had his 1st Topps card in 1967. From '59-'67 Maury Wills was playing in World Series, winning the NL MVP and setting stolen base records and was conspicuously missing from Topps sets. He was, however, included in Post and Fleer sets of that era. Chris Short was just missing. No Post cereal cards. No 1963 Fleer card. Nothing. He was a solid pitcher, though. He was a regular in the Phillies rotation, even representing Philadelphia in the 1964 All Star game.

If the explanation for why Wills had no cards from 1959-1966 is simply that Fleer got to him first, then why didn't Chris Short have any cards (including Fleer) during that same period? After digging around the interwebs I found only one unsubstantiated reference stating that Chris Short was under exclusive contract with Fleer and set to appear in a later series that was never published. If anybody has any other info please let me know. 

In the mean time, I think I've found my next project.