Two Guys Named Dick Ellsworth?

Only one of these guys can be Dick Ellsworth, right?

One card was made by Topps in 1966, featuring someone other than Ellsworth.

The other is a custom card by John Hogan at the Cards That Never Were blog (who, oddly enough has not posted for 10 months) .

John had corrected this UNBELIEVABLE error by Topps a few years back.

Men Without Hats

WARNING: Do not view this post if you like well-designed baseball cards!


Here are the 1966 California Angels. Not a single player is shown with his team's logo. Why? Because they were the Los Angeles Angels, and are now the California Angels.

The Angels' lavender counterpart in the NL (the Braves) are also featured without caps, but the final 2 Braves' cards in the 1966 set (manager Bobby Bragan and pitcher Chi Chi Olivo) ARE photographed in the new Atlanta Braves caps.

Why no California Angels, Topps? Why?

(It looks like the Angels are cornering the market on Topps all-star rookies.)

And what's with these "side view" photos of Lou Burdette and Albie Pearson? Are we now collecting cards of players' ears? Burdette looks like he's in a lineup for the closing credits of a Dragnet episode.

Grady Hatton (#504)

Awhile back, I posted the Luman Harris card. Lum was the Astros' manager in 1965, but was fired in December (about 2 months AFTER most teams conduct their off-season firings!) Topps issued a 2nd manager card for the Astros in 1966. They would do the same in 1969 for the Senators.


Grady Hatton began his major-league playing career as the Reds' regular 3rd baseman from 1946-52. He kicked around with the White Sox, Red Sox, Cardinals, and Orioles from 1954-56, then became a minor-league player-coach until 1961 (which included a short stint in 1960 playing for the Cubs).



In 1962, Grady was hired as the director of player personnel for the expansion Houston Colt 45s. He followed that with 3 seasons as the manager of Houston's AAA Oklahoma City team before getting the call to the big club in 1966.

Hatton's major-league managerial career was brief. After 2 full seasons in 1966 (8th place) and 1967 (9th place), Grady was fired after 61 games in 1968, with his team in 10th place. I guess having the lowly Mets pass them in the standings was just not acceptable! He was replaced by Harry Walker, who had been fired in mid-1967 by the Pirates.

Hatton continued with the Astros as a scout until 1972. He also scouted for the Giants in the 1980s.

Jim Fregosi (#5)

Two posts ago, I mentioned that all the Braves' cards were hatless, since the Braves had just moved to Atlanta in the off-season. I just realized that Topps' other lavender team, the Angels, are also all hatless (or with airbrushed hats), as they had also moved from Los Angeles to Anaheim. This is ridiculous, because the Angels had moved prior to the 1965 season. TOPPS HAD ALL OF 1965 TO GET PHOTOS OF THE PLAYERS IN CALIFORNIA ANGELS UNIFORMS, BUT DID NOT!

Jim Fregosi was the last of the original Los Angeles Angels. He was their regular shortstop from 1962-1971, appearing in 6 all-star games during that time.



Jim was signed by the Boston Red Sox in 1960, and after 1 season of class-D ball he was selected by the Angels in the expansion draft. Fregosi spent all of 1961 with the Angels' AAA team in Dallas-Fort Worth, and made his major-league debut on September 14th. He played 11 games with the Angels that month, starting 6 of the last 9 games at shortstop.

In 1962 he was back in triple-A for the first half of the season. His first appearance for the Angels was in both games of the July 1st doubleheader. Jim took over the Angels' starting shortstop job on August 17th, and held it until September 8th, 1971. He played the remainder of the 1971 season at 1st base.

In addition to his 6 all-star selections, Fregosi won a gold glove in 1967, led the league with 13 triples in 1968, and generally was a workhorse for the Angels, making over 640 plate appearances 7 times between 1963 and 1970.

After the 1971 season, Jim was infamously traded to the Mets for Nolan Ryan and 3 no-names. After a year and a half in New York, he was sold to the Rangers, where he was a backup corner infielder for several season, before being traded to the Pirates in June 1977.


On June 1, 1978 the Pirates gave Fregosi his release, so he could take the Angels' managerial job. He managed the Angels until midway through the 1981 season.

Next was the White Sox' manager's job, which Jim held for the second half of 1986 and all of '87 and '88.

Fregosi's longest tenure as a manager was his 6 years with the Phillies (1991-96). The Phillies won the NL pennant in 1993.

His 4th and final managerial job was with the Blue Jays from 1999-2000.

Joe Torre (#130)

Today I'm posting another disaster from the 1966 set known as an Atlanta Braves card. Because the team had moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta after the 1965 season, almost every Braves card in the 1966 set is an ugly, hatless, colorless (unless you like lavender) hack job.

Why couldn't Topps have back-loaded the Braves' players to the later series, after they had time to develop the photos (I assume) they took in spring training? I admit, this notion didn't occur to me until tonight, but then, I'm not the one on Topps' payroll heading up the planning department. They could have done the same thing in 1968 with the Athletics. I'm sure fans of these teams wouldn't have minded waiting a bit, so that they could get decent cards of their favorite players. Each of my yearly binders from the 1960s has the cards arranged by teams, and when I get to the Braves' section, it's a Rogues' Gallery at best!


Joe Torre (remember the post title?) was one of the Braves' star players during the 1960s, before going on to play for the Cardinals and Mets in the 1970s.



Joe was signed by the Milwaukee Braves in 1960 and spent his rookie season in the minors, with a 2-game call-up at the end of the season. In 1961 he played part of the season in the minors, but made the Braves for good that year. Although strictly a catcher in '61 and '62, Joe would play several dozen games at 1st base for the Braves from 1963-68, along with his role as the team's #1 catcher. In 1964, he split his time almost evenly between the 2 positions, as veteran Ed Bailey started over 70 games behind the plate.

After the 1968 season, Torre was traded to the Cardinals for 1st baseman Orlando Cepeda. Since the Cardinals already had an all-star catcher in Tim McCarver, Joe took over the 1st base position on a full-time basis. The following season, with Tim McCarver traded to the Phillies in the Curt Flood for Richie Allen deal, Joe moved back behind the plate. After Torre had started every game at catcher in April and May, rookie Ted Simmons began starting most of the games behind the plate, with Torre moving to a new position - 3rd base. Joe would hold down the regular 3rd base job for the 1971 and 1972 seasons as well.

Torre played in 4 straight all-star games while in St. Louis (1970-73). He also had an excellent 1971 season, winning the MVP award, while leading the league in hits (230), RBI (137), and batting average (.363).

After the 1974 season, he was traded to the Mets, and played the corner infield positions there until his release in June 1977. Immediately after his release, he was hired as the team's manager.

These days, Torre is best remembered for his managerial career, with the Mets (1977-81), Braves (1982-84), Cardinals (1990-95), Yankees (1996-07), and Dodgers (2008-10). Joe managed for 29 seasons, and won 6 pennants and 4 World Series, all with the Yankees.

I heard Torre say recently that this spring is the first since 1959 that he wasn't at spring training with one team or another. He now works for Major League Baseball.

Willie Mays (#1)

Here's the Say Hey Kid, occupying the #1 card in Topps' set. I received this card from DeansCards.com. This is the 2nd Willie Mays card I got from Deans Cards, having purchased a replacement for my lost 1969 card a few years ago. Coincidently, Topps used the same photo on both the 1966 and 1969 Mays' cards. That was no surprise, since Topps had also used the same photo from 1965 on the 1968 card. Willie seems much happier here than on his 65/68 cards.


[I wonder why Topps decided to abbreviate San Francisco on the last stat line on the back of this card, after spelling it out completely the first 7 times?]

I'm not going to rehash Mays' career here, having done it elsewhere. I'll just say that I recently watched various "Prime 9" shows on the MLB network ("Top 9 centerfielders", "Top 9 defensive plays", etc), and Mays was just an awesome player! I saw him play briefly from 1967-73 on TV, but I was too young then to appreciate what I was seeing.

Multi-player Cards

It's hard to figure out Topps' logic when it came to multi-player cards in the late 1960s.

In 1966, there were 5 such cards, all within the first 300 cards:
Astros
Giants
Phillies
Pirates
White Sox
In the later series, multi-player cards just disappeared.


In 1967, that number grew to 13 cards, but only for 11 teams:
Braves
Cardinals
Giants
Mets
Phillies
Pirates
Indians (2)
Orioles (2)
Tigers
Twins
White Sox


In 1968, Topps cut way back to just 3 cards (all in the 6th series):
Orioles
Stars from multiple teams (2)


In 1969, there were 4 such cards, again all in the 6th series (it's as though Topps waited until they were sure they wouldn't need a 5th Royals Rookies card!)
Giants
Orioles
Senators
Athletics
(I first discovered these baseball card blogs last September, when I stumbled upon PackAddict's 1969 Athletics' card shown in the above link.)



I previously posted the Giants' multi-player card. Here are the rest:


#152 Power Plus - How can they make a card about the Phillies' power hitters and not include Richie Allen?



#99 Buc Belters - Stargell and Clendenon would also appear together on the 1967 Pirates' multi-player card. Hey Topps, where's Roberto Clemente? In 1965, he had 10 homers to Clendenon's 14. (They both had fewer than Jim Pagliaroni's 17.)



#199 Chisox Clubbers - In the land of the Go-Go Sox, "clubbers" is a relative term. Skowron and Romano each had 18 dingers in 1965, Robinson had 14.



#273 Astro Aces - At least the title of this card isn't implying home run power for its featured players!

Lum Harris (#147)

We haven't had a manager's card for awhile. Here we have Lum Harris, the manager of the Astros (or is he?)



On the back of the card, after going on and on about Harris' career, Topps wraps up with the statement "Lum was released as manager of the Houston Astros on December 12, 1965."

This raises several questions:
1) How inept was the Astros' front office that it took until December 12th before they decided to fire their manager? What losses occurred between October 1 and December 12?

2) Why would Topps bother to include a Harris card? After reading this a second time, I noticed that the text starts off "Lum was the manager...". (Not "is", "was".) So a sentence about his firing wasn't just tacked on to the end of an already-composed card back. It's at the top! Why not just pull the card, replace it with another Astros player, and catch up later in the summer after the Astros have decided who the new manager will be?

Harris went on to manage the Braves from 1968 to 1972.

Who didn't get a card, but shoulda...

Here are some players who didn't have a card in 1966, though playing in the majors for some time:

Joe Adcock
Joe was a long-time first baseman for several American League teams in the 1950s and 1960s. His last player card was in 1963, although he continued to play regularly for 3 more full seasons with the Angels. After retiring following the 1966 season, he was immediately hired as the Indians manager, and has a 1967 manager card.

Dick Hall
Hall was a relief pitcher for the Pirates (1955-59), Athletics (1960), Orioles (1961-66, 69-71), and Phillies (1967-68). He had Topps cards in 1955-57, 1960-63, and 1967-71. The missing cards in 1958 and 1959 are to be expected, since he spent most of 1957 and 1959 in the minors, and was either out of baseball or injured during the 1958 season. However, there doesn't appear to be a baseball reason for the missing cards from 1964 to 1966, since he was a full-time major-league player with plenty of appearances from 1960 to 1971.

Maury Wills
Wills didn't have a Topps card until 1967. I read a note from Ted Taylor saying that Wills was under contract to Fleer (he had a Fleer card in 1963) and Fleer would not release him to Topps.

Chris Short
Like Wills, Short's 1st card was in 1967. He had been pitching regularly for the Phillies since 1960.

Tony Horton
Tony was a backup 1B-OF for the Red Sox between 1965 and early 1967. Although he only played 6 major-league games in 1966, in 1965 he appeared in 44 games for the Red Sox, playing 344 innings at 1st base. This should have warranted a card for 1966.

Doug Clemens (added 2/28/10)
Clemens was in the major leagues for parts of every season from 1960 to 1968, and continuously since opening day in 1964. He had 218 at-bats in 1964 and 340 at-bats in 1965, yet his only baseball card was in 1967.


I will continue to add to this list as others are discovered. Please email or comment if you have any others. (Players who were sent down during the previous season are likely to not have a card in the following season, especially if they are marginal players or aging veterans.)



11/30/09 edit:
Hey, I got a mention in Ted Taylor's column:

The Mail Bag…

Jim from Downingtown writes…

“My question relates to vintage Topps baseball cards. There are some veteran players that don't have cards for certain years. I can understand that when a player spends significant time in the minors one season, he may not have a baseball card for the next season, but here's a few that don't fit that mold.”

Question - Joe Adcock's last card was in 1963, although he played significantly for the Angels from 1964 to 1966.

Answer - Fleer owned his rights, wouldn’t release them. When they did, he was no longer playing. The Adcock card is a very tough one in the ’63 Fleer.

Question - Tony Horton - A part time player in Boston for 1965 and 1966, and a fulltime first baseman in Cleveland since mid-1967, yet he has no baseball card until 1970. In fact, no Cleveland Indian's first baseman card was printed in 1968 or 1969, so it's not as though Horton was passed over for another player.

Answer – Clay Luraschi at Topps says there is no one at the company that remembers why Horton was skipped. It assumes it was contractual, but I doubt the contract was with Fleer. Maybe he was holding out for more money from Topps. Luraschi adds that the exclusion could be as simple as the person putting the set together didn’t want that player in it. (That, unfortunately, often has to do with who gets included and who doesn’t. The old personal preference card.)

Question - Why No Chris Short card until 1967?

Answer – Not sure, but since his team (Phillies) and Fleer were both in Philadelphia we suspect it was that he was under contract to them.

Question - Why no Maury Wills card until 1967?

Answer – This one we know for sure. Maury Wills was under exclusive contract to Fleer and they maintained his rights, despite not producing baseball cards since 1963 until the contract expired. He was their highest profile player.

Thanks Ted!