The Trading Post #122: Night Owl Cards

As 2018 draws to a close, along with the NFL regular season, it's a good time to continue to chip away at my perpetually-growing backlog of cards. It's been an extremely busy time of year, as I'm sure is true for most of you. Hanukkah and Christmas have come and gone, the quarterly chaos at work is wrapping up, and I attended my first-ever NFL game a couple weeks ago, watching the Denver Broncos lose by a single point to the Cleveland Browns. The NFL puts on a good show, but it was pretty chilly at that night game, and I still prefer baseball.

My next few posts will probably be of the one-or-two card variety. They're quick to write, and the thanks owed to the senders of these cards is no less diminished.

Night Owl Cards has been at this little hobby-within-a-hobby for over a decade, and he ran a very generous giveaway contest a couple months ago. Somehow I managed to get an entry in early, which was sheer luck. Often, I don't have a chance to keep up with the community other than once a week, and sometimes, once every two weeks. I just happened to see that post at the right time to get an entry, and the randomizer was extra-kind to me, putting me 4th on the list of over 30 entrants.

So after a couple short prints of legendary Hall of Famers went first, the vintage started going next. A 1933 Goudey card was snapped up one pick ahead of me, which would have instantly become the oldest card in my collection by far. But there were still great prizes left on the table, and I selected an early Bowman card with that 4th pick.

1954 Bowman #154 Don Newcombe

That's how great this community is. One of the top bloggers in our midst hit an impressive milestone, so he decided to give back to his readers with great cards like this. I have a few 1955 Bowman cards, but none from 1954 until now.

Don Newcombe, the 1949 NL Rookie of the Year, was a star pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and had his best year in 1956. Following the Dodgers finally winning the World Series in '55, 1956 saw Newcombe win the NL MVP award and the inaugural Cy Young Award. Back in those days, the Cy Young Award was given league-wide, and it wasn't until 1967 that the award was split, one for each league. The AL needed to have a chance to win the award, since most of the early ones were won by the NL, and especially by the Dodgers.

Newcombe is at the beginning of a very short list of players who have won both the MVP and Cy Young in the same season, a list that contains all-time greats like Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson, Justin Verlander, and Clayton Kershaw. Verlander, by the way, is only the second player in history besides Newcombe to have Rookie of the Year, Cy Young, and MVP awards to his name.

I'd venture to say he's much more worthy of being in the Hall of Fame than Harold Baines.

Card designs don't get a whole lot simpler than this. A facsimile signature backed by a bold color, and a color painting of the player. It's a small set, just 224 cards, and there are some variations to chase if that's your thing. Real variations, not those artificial gimmicks they produce today.

Flip the card over and you'll get a reminder of just how old this card is. The language is just a touch archaic, referring to fans as "Brooklyn rooters", and Newcombe's hard-to-hit pitches as "slants". It also mentions his military service, as he served in Korea during the 1952 and 1953 seasons.

Like many of his contemporaries, Newcombe got his start in the Negro National League. He briefly played for the Newark Eagles, and then for the Class-B Nashua Dodgers, which was the first professional team to be racially integrated, a year before Jackie Robinson played in Brooklyn. As with night games, the slow pace of change in baseball took root in the Minor Leagues first.

As with most of the early-'50s cards, this one is just a tiny bit bigger than the dimensions we're used to today. It will probably go in the same 8-card page that's designed for this size, along with the handful of 1955 Bowman already in my collection.

Slowly but surely, my vintage collection is growing, and I have lots of my fellow bloggers to thank for that.

Congratulations to Night Owl on his first decade of blogging, and thanks for this vintage treasure!