Problems on the Back

Black Lives Matter.

I said in my previous post that I'd be keeping this blog's focus on baseball. And I am. But we need to talk about how racism applies to baseball cards. Systemic racism is a real thing, and the baseball card industry isn't immune. Nothing really is in America, which is what makes it systemic.

1988 Topps Big #110 Ken Griffey Sr.

There's always plenty of debate about where sets rank among all-time favorites. 1993 Upper Deck comes up a lot. Some like 1965 Topps, others think that 1975 Topps was the high-water mark. 1973 Topps is underappreciated outside this community. Some can enjoy 1991 Fleer despite its retina-searing yellow borders. There are even some 1995 Fleer fans out there. Me, I'm a Stadium Club guy.

But no one ever seems to wax poetic about Topps Big.

It existed for three years, from 1988-1990. Topps cut it to the same dimensions as their early-'50s sets, 3 3/4" x 2 5/8". Non-vintage collectors can find their 1989 Bowman to get an idea of the size. It is too big for 9-pocket pages, so most of us just threw them in a box somewhere until Ultra Pro got around to manufacturing specially-sized 8-pocket pages.

That's Ken Griffey, Sr. on this card from the inaugural Topps Big set. This was a year before his son appeared in the first Upper Deck set and changed the hobby forever. Note that his nameplate just says "Ken Griffey", as his son had yet to surpass his dad's own excellent career, let alone even make his Major League debut.

Please also note that Ken Griffey is Black.

1988 Topps Big #110 Ken Griffey Sr. (Reverse)

I call attention to that because when you look at the card back, none of the cartoons show him as Black. Not Ken pinch hitting in the first panel, not Ken reminding us that he's from the same Pennsylvania town as Stan Musial, and definitely not his son Ken, Jr. holding a trident, although they did get Junior's handedness correct.

It's not an oversight on this one card, nor even an oversight in the 1988 Topps Big set as a whole. It was this way for all three years of Topps Big, the entire run. Everyone is a white guy on the card back. Tony Gwynn, Rickey Henderson, Roberto Alomar, everyone. Which is, at the very least, inaccurate.

I mentioned this to my girlfriend earlier this week, and she asked, "Was it like that in the 1950s?" I'm not a vintage expert, so I had to think for a moment, but no, it wasn't.

1954 Topps #3 Monte Irvin (Reverse)

This is the back of a 1954 Topps Monte Irvin card, the same card I got at a card show a few years ago from one of my favorite vintage dealers. The dimensions are the same as Topps Big, but even though printing technology was decades behind what was available in the late-'80s, Topps clearly made the effort to show Monte Irvin as a Black man on the back of his own baseball card. It's most obvious in the first and third panels of the Inside Baseball cartoon, and it's clear in the first panel which of these characters is meant to be Irvin and which is meant to be the Indians' third baseman, likely Al Rosen.

Incidentally, the exhibition game in which Monte Irvin injured his ankle as shown in this cartoon was a Spring Training game in Denver. It might have even taken place at Bears Stadium, later known as Mile High Stadium. Spring Training stats from the early 1950s are tricky to come by.

But there he is, right there on the back of a 1954 Topps card. Monte Irvin was just the tenth Black man to play Major League Baseball, and numerous teams had still yet to integrate. Yet 1954 Topps, ten years before the Civil Rights Act, got it right, much more right (infinitely more right?) than the whole run of Topps Big.

Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there.

I had been aware of the racial insensitivity associated with Topps Big for a few years, but it wasn't until I saw a tweet the other day that I was made aware of a pretty glaring problem with 1993 Leaf.

1993 Leaf #387 Terry Pendleton

1993 Leaf is another well-liked set from later in the overproduction era. It was the first Leaf set to include Rockies and Marlins, had a nice amount of gold foil, full-bleed printing, and a design that could reasonably be confused with both 1992 and 1993 Fleer Ultra, now that I think about it. Here's a good photo of another Brave, Terry Pendleton in Wrigley Field, with just the tiniest sliver of a catcher's mitt on the left side.

The card backs on '93 Leaf take a unique approach, including a photo of the player in front of a landmark that's relevant to the team's city. Usually it's the skyline, but there are some alternate backdrops for each team. Bridges, piers, beaches, that sort of thing. The Rockies have a glorious mountain range. The Astros got an oil well. The alternate photo on the Braves' card backs is, well, take a look.

1993 Leaf #387 Terry Pendleton (Reverse)

All these years I never really knew what I was looking at, but this photo behind Pendleton is Stone Mountain in Georgia. As briefly as possible, it's basically a Confederate version of Mount Rushmore, which officially opened 100 years to the day after Lincoln's assassination. Think for a moment about what message that sends. And it also happens to be the backdrop for a Black player's baseball card.

It's not just Pendleton; it's also on Otis Nixon's card, and likely a few others throughout Series 1 and Update, which I haven't completed. I assume no one at Leaf thought much of it, since it's also on Tom Glavine's card. They likely just decided that this was what the Atlanta area had going for it other than the skyline, and peppered it throughout the Braves checklist at random.

But that's the whole problem. It's unlikely that either of these design choices were done maliciously, but that doesn't really matter. They were made nonetheless, whether out of malice or neglect or ignorance. That's the distinction we need to learn to make, between individual acts of bigotry such as John Rocker opening his mouth, and deeper, more systemic instances of racism, such as a Confederate monument on display in Georgia for all to see appearing on a baseball card in the same fashion as a cluster of office buildings or a bridge.

That's how deep it goes. Racism is just so woven into the fabric of the USA that it's literally a backdrop. A landmark. A tourist attraction. And it's so easy to just, not pick up on it. I certainly didn't all these years until it was brought to my attention. The designers at Topps or Leaf certainly didn't. And that's telling, because for far too long we've gotten away with thinking that as long as we're not acting like John Rocker, we're doing OK. We're not. Bigotry and systemic racism are not the same thing, but we've been taught that they are. Thinking they are is what leads to racially insensitive blunders like these cards, and far worse.

It's a lot to take in, I know. I will share a resource that's helped me navigate these waters in recent weeks, and that's season 2 of the Scene on Radio podcast, titled Seeing White. I hope you find it useful.

In any case, maybe think twice before mailing this card off to Terry Pendleton for an autograph.

Antique Mall Mystery Pack: Braves

My trip to the Brass Armadillo Antique Mall in Denver happened almost a year ago. I got lots of good material out of it, so much that I'm still doing posts a year later. Including this one, there are three left, and we'll continue this long-running series with the Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves.

First off, a little trivia question. Who is the only player to play as a Boston Brave, Milwaukee Brave, and Atlanta Brave?

1994 Topps Archives 1954 #141 Joe Jay

I'll let you mull that one over for a while, but first, how about some 1954 Archives? This is easily my favorite Archives set, but I've yet to add anything from the actual '54 set to my collection. Joe Jay (who usually goes by Joey) was just a rookie in 1953, and had just a single start. It was a gem, though, a three-hit shutout against the Reds. He did most of his work out of the bullpen for his first four seasons, and didn't get much playing time until 1958.

Besides that excellent first start, Jay holds another claim to fame. He's the first Little Leaguer to make it to the major leagues, and "he shows amazing skill!" He was not actually in the Little League World Series, so he didn't make Night Owl's recent post, but he gave hope to millions of little kids across America, myself included.

1994 Topps Archives 1954 #176 Bob Keely

Coaches got cards in 1954 Topps, and Robert William Keely (full names on the back decades before Donruss did it) served as a coach and bullpen catcher for the Braves for twelve seasons. His Major League experience consisted of two lone games, one each in 1944 and 1945, when a lot of the league was away at war.

Coaches in those days wore a lot of hats, but he'd probably be considered a bullpen coach by today's definition. He served on the coaching staff in 1957 (his final year), which is the only time a World Series trophy has been brought home to Milwaukee. The Brewers haven't done it yet.

Last chance for guesses on that trivia question!

2003 Fleer Tradition #76 Eddie Mathews ML SP

Eddie Mathews, elected to the Hall of Fame in 1978, was the only player to call Boston, Milwaukee, and Atlanta home as a Brave.

This is a quasi-reprint card, which is based on Fleer's 1963 set. It commemorates the 40th anniversary of that iconic set, just like 1954 Archives did in 1994. Mathews didn't actually appear in that set, getting this "Missing Link" subset card forty years later. I wonder if Upper Deck will manage to pull anything off in 2029. Unlikely. Also, 40 years really isn't that long, is it?

Mathews was part of that 1957 Championship team, beating, well, I'll give you one guess on who they beat. And the card refers to him as a nine-time All Star, which was as correct in 1963 as it is today. His last appearance in the Midsummer Classic was in 1962.

You might think Mathews was a career Brave, seeing as he stuck with them long enough to call three cities home. But his production trailed off in the mid-1960s, and the Braves traded him to Houston in 1966, along with a guy named Arnold Umbach, plus Sandy Alomar, Sr., who was the Player To Be Named Later in that particular transaction. Both players the Braves got in return were out of the Majors by the end of 1967.

Mathews may have been past his prime, but he still had some baseball left in him. He passed the 500 home run milestone as an Astro in 1967 (hitting #500 off of Juan Marichal), then wrapped up his career in Detroit with his second World Series ring in 1968.

1995 Collector's Choice SE Silver Signature #142 Greg Maddux STL

The Braves have consistently fielded some truly amazing players, from Mathews and Aaron, to Maddux and Chipper. But the championships have always been hard to come by. The franchise has three, one in each city they called home. But despite dominating their division fourteen straight times from 1991-2005 (except for 1994, sorry Expos), they only had one World Series win to show for it.

Greg Maddux had a lot do to with that dominance. He was such an efficient pitcher that he now has an unofficial baseball stat named after him. When you pitch a complete game shutout with less than 100 pitches, you have thrown a Maddux.

Flip this Silver Signature parallel over and see for yourself. In the strike-shortened 1994 season, the best pitchers in baseball had an ERA of about 2.70. Bret Saberhagen was slightly above that, Steve Ontiveros a little below. Maddux blew them all out of the water with a 1.56 ERA, earning his third of four straight Cy Young awards in the process. Only Randy Johnson has matched that streak.

This was one of my favorite parallel sets in my early collecting days. I was always chasing a Gold Signature parallel, but didn't find one until many years later. I was also quite the fan of Topps Gold.

1994 Topps Gold #735 Terry Pendleton

Speaking of Topps Gold, I found one of those too! Like the Yankees pack, most of these Braves were actually in a binder page where I knew what I was getting. 1994s are a little tough to find (and even to see, if the light isn't right), but I have an eagle eye for these things.

Terry Pendleton, who appeared in one of my earliest posts, wasn't quite as dominant as Greg Maddux, but he did win the batting title and the NL MVP award in 1991, the first year of the Braves long run of division wins. And winning an NL batting title in the era of Tony Gwynn is no small feat.

1962 Topps #58 NL Win Leaders Warren Spahn / Joe Jay / Jim O'Toole

Finally, I'm still very, very slowly adding to my 1962 Topps collection. Warren Spahn, another Hall of Famer, tied for the NL lead in wins in 1961. As much as the game has changed since then, 20 wins in a season is still darn good. No Rockie has ever done it, but Ubaldo Jimenez missed the mark by just one in 2010.

Spahn gets the largest head on the front of this League Leaders card, even though Joe Jay is just as deserving. Yes, that's the same Joe(y) Jay we saw at the top of this post. He was traded to the Reds in 1960, a year before the Reds faced the Yankees (who else?) in the 1961 World Series. That Series was Jay's only appearance in the postseason, but perhaps as some consolation to losing to the Yankees and having a smaller head on this card than Spahn, Jay got listed first as a league leader on the card back.

The card looks a lot like a checklist, listing about fifty guys all the way down to just six wins. A lot of familiar names are on it, like Drysdale, Burdette, Podres, Koufax, Haddix, and Marichal. Even some lesser known players like Roy Face and Tony Cloninger appear in the second column.

The corners are a little beat up, but the printing itself is fine, front and back. It looks no worse than some of my 1987 Topps cards, and only set me back a couple dollars, if I'm remembering correctly. Not bad at all for my favorite vintage set.

Oh, and one last note on that trivia question. Warren Spahn came pretty close to being a correct answer, but his contract was sold to the Mets after the 1964 season. He retired in 1965 as a Giant, just a year before the Braves moved to Atlanta.

Good guess, though.

Warning! Protective coating may damage product!

I have always liked Topps Finest. I've never actually purchased a box because they're frightfully expensive, but the base cards always seem to work their way into the discount bins once the rare inserts have been pulled. Shiny, thick card stock, slightly less likely to have that frustrating curl than Topps Chrome; what's not to like?

My favorite release was 1994 Finest, the brand's second year. They're almost as green as 1991 Fleer is yellow.

1994 Topps Finest #32 Charlie Hayes

I think I even have a couple basketball cards with a roughly similar design. Basketball cards make up a tiny, tiny part of my collection, so let that stand as proof of how much I like this brand.

But then things started getting weird. In the mid '90s, well after the 1994 strike and the subsequent collapse of baseball card values, Topps decided to inject some novelty into the brand. They came up with this barely comprehensible idea of a "fractured set". And for good measure, they even gave us a handy clear protective coating on the front of the card, just like those peel-away films you find on new computer monitors and smartphones. In all honesty, I find an inordinate amount of joy in peeling those away as part of the unboxing process. And finding an unpeeled film on a years-old gadget (like my mom's microwave) is cause for celebration and can even become legendary.

1996 Topps Finest #B8 Terry Pendleton

Trouble is, though, the film found on Topps Finest cards is rather unsightly and a bit difficult to remove. It can be pretty tough to get those off without dinging a corner or bending the card. Longer fingernails help.

What, after my admission above, you think I leave Topps Finest Protectors on? Absolutely not.

However, after a decade or so in a discount box, the Topps Finest Protector can become fused to the card itself, making removal quite problematic. Take a look at these two examples from 1999 Finest.

1999 Topps Finest #18 Quinton McCracken

1999 Topps Finest #19 J.T. Snow, Jr.

Despite the protector happily doing its job for many years, the peeling process on these two left behind a very noticeable, even legible, residue running down the left side of each card. At least Topps abandoned the ridiculous "fractured set" idea by the time 1999 rolled around. That Pendleton card above is listed as "Card 8" from "Theme G58" and is clearly noted as "Common".

So given that it's a common, (the B in the card number indicates that it's Bronze, as opposed to Silver or Gold), surely removing the protective coating won't do much to harm its long-term value.

There. Much better.