Today’s Lineup…
🔴 Card of the Day - Babe almost red-faced?
🦌 They think he’s cute!
📗 From the baseball card library
1933 Goudey Babe Ruth (#181) - Card of the Day
Back on December 29, 1933, Babe Ruth was all set to join the Cincinnati Reds as a player-manager.
According to a Reds Tweet from 2020, Cincy general manager Larry MacPhail tried to buy Ruth’s contract from the Yankees, but New York owner Jacob Ruppert wasn’t quite ready to part with his slugger.
Interestingly, the narrative of Ruth’s storied career is laced with Reds references, beginning in 1914 when they tried to acquire him from the minor-league Baltimore Orioles. Ultimately, O’s owner Jack Dunn shipped Ruth to the Boston Red Sox.
Later that summer, when the Sox tried to send Ruth to the minors, the Reds claimed him off waivers. Eventually, Boston was able to convince the Cincy brass that Ruth was only going down to help Providence win a title and that the BoSox would definitely would not trade him.
Ruth finally did land with another team, the putrid 1935 Boston Braves, though he never got the chance to manage in the big leagues. Ruth himself was pretty awful that season in just 28 games, but he did put up solid power numbers in 1934 with the Yanks.
He wouldn’t have made much difference for the 52-99-1 Reds that summer, but fans sure would have enjoyed seeing him in Crosley Field!
Speaking of Bambino-induced fun during the 1930s, Ruth appears on four cards in the gorgeous 1933 Goudey set, including the one shown above that’s probably the most “managerial” of the bunch.
Genuine original copies of any of the four will set you back a mint (and they won’t be even close to mint, most likely), but there are reprint copies that you can usually find for less than $10 each on eBay if you just want the aesthetic.
Don Rudolph — A Pic So Nice, Topps Used It Thrice
Ken Rudolph has one of the great Christmas-themed baseball names of the 20th (and now 21st) century, especially for purveyors of puns like me.
Why, not a day goes by between Thanksgiving and Christmas that I’m not whipping out a Rudolph reference or a North-Pole (Billy-Dick) combo on Twitter X or in a post somewhere.
So it seems fitting that Rudolph’s birthday would fall on December 29, after the hubbub of Christmas has died down a bit and the man has had a chance to rest his nose and antlers a spell.
Happy 77th birthday to Ken Rudolph!
Of course, Ken isn’t the only Rudolph in the annals of baseball. And one of them apparently really tickled Topps’ fancy with his face.
Well, at least with one particular image of his face:
You can read more about Rudolph (Don) and his 1958/1959/1962 boxed set over on Wax Pack Gods, in this post.
Or, you know, you can just sit here and stare at his comely mug for awhile.
The Tome
No, not Thome. Tome — as in a huge book that could crush your head if you fall asleep reading it.
That would be Topps Baseball Cards: The Complete Picture Collection, which was issued in January of 1987 and pictured every base Topps baseball card from 1981 through 1986.
It’s an amazing opus and was really the only way to lay eyes on so many different cards back in the 1980s without actually buying said cards.
These days, of course, you can find scans of just about anything you want to see online. But in 1987, “online” meant you had caught a fish or were hanging clothes out to dry.
Topps issued at lest a couple of updates to this volume, late in 1987 or early in 1988 and in 1990, and there may have been others.
For an old-time collector like me who salivated over this thing, it’s amazing to think you can go to eBay or Amazon and find a copy for somewhere right around the MSRP from 1987.
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Have a great weekend, and Happy New Year!
Thanks for reading.
—Adam