Gair Allie Was in the Right Place at the Right Time

And the wrong place at the wrong time

1954 Topps Gair Allie (#179) - Card of the Day

When it came to baseball, Gair Allie found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And then, in fairly short order, he was in the right place at the right time

And then…

Well, first of all, some background is in order.

Allie first caught the eye of baseball scouts playing semipro ball in 1951, when he hit a cool .400 with 19 home runs at 19 years of age in the Eastern North Carolina League. That led the Pittsburgh Pirates to sign him to a minor league deal with a bonus.

After a solid season with the Double-A New Orleans Pelicans in 1952, he was set to join the Bucs in 1953. Instead, he broke his ankle playing winter ball in Cuba and made it into just 32 games back in the minors in 1953.

Wrong place, wrong time.

Meanwhile, the Pirates were losing buckets of major league games. They fielded rookie Dick Groat at shortstop in 1952, but lost him to the United States Army in 1953.

That summer, they gave 22-year-old Eddie O’Brien a shot at short, alongside twin brother Johnny O’Brien at second base. They each found their way into 89 games, with Johnny outhitting Eddie, .247 to .238.

By the next spring, Allie was mostly healthy, Pittsburgh had lost 104 games in 1953, and O’Brien was a .238 hitter.

Right place, right time.

So Allie started at short for the Pirates on Opening Day in 1954, going 0-for-2 with a walk and two strikeouts. He got his first hit two days later to raise his average to a cool .100. He nudged that to .207 by April 22, the first time he was over the as-yet-unnamed Mendoza Line.

In the meantime, Topps must have been busy reading the Pirates’ tea leaves, because they issued Allie’s rookie card at #179 in their brand new set, as seen above.

Back on the diamond, Allie’s average dropped below .200 again on April 23, and it would stay there until May 19. It was the same sort of story all summer long, and by the time the season ended in October, the rookie had appeared in 121 games, hitting .199 with three home runs, 30 RBI, 38 runs scored, and a single stolen base.

He also played roughly league-average defense at short.

That was enough to reserve card #59 in the 1955 Topps set…

It wasn’t enough to hold off Groat in his return from the service, though.

Come Opening Day 1955, Groat was back in the Pirates’ starting lineup, and Allie was back in the minors — where he’d stay through 1961 aside from a one-year military hiatus of his own in 1957.

Wrong place, wrong time.

Even so, Allie made his big league dream come true, and he scored two pretty nifty baseball cards for his trouble.

And in case you were wondering, the late Gair Allie was born on this day in 1931.

Bucs ‘Stuck’ on Groat

As mentioned above, Allie was the most frequent flyer at shortstop for the 1954 Pirates, taking over for Eddie O’Brien, who had that distinction the year before.

They were both just keeping the chair warm for Dick Groat, who was the starting shortstop in Pittsburgh for most of 1952 as a rookie before serving in the military for two years.

Groat was back on the (diamond) job in 1955, helping the Bucs end their streak of three straight 100-loss seasons. By 1960, the Pirates were World Series champions, and Groat was the National League Most Valuable Player.

The next year, he appeared on a pretty unusual “card” — a Chemstrand Iron-On Patch. Read all about it right here.

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Just a heads-up that this “season” of my daily ramblings here in this space will wrap up at the end of this week (November 1), roughly corresponding to the end of the World Series.

You can probably expect it to be pretty quiet around here at least through November. We’ll see what happens after that.

The weekly Wax Pack Gods Newsletter will continue as always.

In the meantime, enjoy the Fall Classic, and thanks for reading.

—Adam

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