last year, sometime after completing the 1955 bowman set, i decided to bring back the samplers as i am fairly certain i will not be completing another vintage flagship set. i still had most of the cards from my first go at this, but did need to pick up a few more to complete and supplement the effort. i should note that i am maintaining my topps flagship through the years mini-collection, so the chuck stobbs 1952 topps card remains there and not in this sampler.
in 1952, there were 16 teams represented. there weren't any subsets in the way that we think of them today, but there were some other things to showcase. most cards had red backs, but some came in a black back variety as well. there were different types of card stock used, resulting in some cards having what is considered a "white back" and others a "gray back". as for the fronts, most cards had a vertical orientation, but some feature horizontal images. and before you ask, i won't be including any high numbers in this sampler!
as for the design itself, the marquee element for the name and facsimile autograph work well. i am on record as not being a fan of facsimile autos on cards, but containing it within the marquee box on these cards makes it more than tolerable for me. the team logos add some color, and really the only thing missing from the card fronts are the fielding positions for each subject.
enough now. let's see what the 1952 sampler set looks like, starting with an ai generated needlepoint sampler for the set.
then i asked for one that referenced the design of the cards and got this
it has some issues, but it's ok i suppose.
i will start these posts by going through the representative for each team (starting with the american league) followed by the subsets. then, i'll show any other cards that i have to fill out the remainder of the last binder page.
st. louis browns - dick kryhoski
kryhoski's card is a red back, and a white back. as noted on the back, he was dealt to the browns in 1952 - on valentine's day, to be exact. the topps artists did a decent job of hiding the tigers uniform he was wearing in the image used on his card - the browns didn't have piping on their jerseys. as for his 1952 season, he got to play under rogers hornsby which blows my mind a bit. kryhoski hit 11 homers in '52, including a walk-off home run off of virgil trucks in june.
boston red sox - willard nixon
card #269
card #254
card #199
zuverink's card mentions his military service (as does dobson's although more subtly), and it was during his time in the philippines that he was scouted and recommended to the cardinals. he signed with st. louis but was dealt to cleveland in the late 1940's. in 1952, he appeared on only one game, called in for mopup duty to close out an early season loss to the browns.
here we have a gray back example, so that's out of the way.
nixon was used as both a starter and a reliever by the red sox in the early 1950's, and in '52 he made 23 appearances, with 13 of them as the starting pitcher. he threw five complete games, one a 10-inning victory over the white sox that was ended by a walk-off grand slam by don lenhardt.
chicago white sox - joe dobson
clearly a free elf as he is wearing clothes given to him by his employer, "dobby" continued his streak of winning seasons with a 14-10 record in 1952. he threw shutouts in back-to-back starts early in the season, with the latter start resulting in a two-hitter against the a's.
cleveland indians - george zuverink
detroit tigers - marlin stuart
card #208
not sure i've seen the name spelled that way too often, but i grew up with mutual of omaha's wild kingdom featuring marlin perkins so perhaps it's the other spelling (marlon) that is uncommon. stuart wound up splitting his 1952 season between the tigers and browns thanks to a late season trade. overall, he went 3-2 with a couple of complete games to his credit.
new york yankees - frank overmire
card #155
"stubby" was such a strong nickname for overmire that he is listed in baseball reference under that name. i am thankful to topps for including him in the early series because he actually spent the 1952 season back in st. louis with the browns, and this was one of the cheaper yankee cards available to me. overmire went 0-3 in his return to st. louis in what turned out to be his final big league season.
philadelphia a's - dick fowler
card #210
card #93
card #264
card #105
as the card back notes, pramesa was dealt to the cubs after the 1951 season. he was traded by the reds, whose caps were very similar to those of the cubs back then. this is clearly a reds' cap on pramesa, but it's close enough for me to not worry about it. i'll have more to say about this sort of thing later. as a cub, pramesa hit .283 in limited action during the 1952 season, which was his last at that level.
a canadian vet like my grandfathers and father, fowler did indeed throw a no-hitter against the browns in the fall of 1945. he was pitching on three days rest to boot. and, like overmire, 1952 was fowler's final year in the majors. he went 1-2 for the athletics in 18 appearances, three of which were starts. his lone win was the result of a complete game victory against the tigers in one of those starts.
washington senators - al sima
i am just noticing now that baseball reference lists the 1952 washington baseball club as the "nationals". they don't use the name "senators" until 1957. topps, however, lists the team as the "senators". "nationals" is technically correct, i suppose, but "senators" was the more popular name. at any rate, sima didn't appear in the majors at all in the 1952 season, but did pitch for the senators/nationals in 1953 before finishing his career the following year with stints in philadelphia and the south side of chicago.
and that's it for the american league. on to the national...
boston braves - roy hartsfield
this card was the last one i needed for the sampler. i traded away the 1952 braves card i had previously, and last month targeted hartsfield's card as its replacement due to the fact that he also appeared in the 1978 topps set which is my all-time favorite (he was the manager of the blue jays). i find synchronicity in the fact that hartfield, an atlanta area native, played for the braves in boston, but it makes sense as you read the back of the card and realize that atlanta was a minor league affiliate for the braves back in the late 40's/early 50's. hartsfield made his final big league appearances as a player for the braves in 1952 and then embarked on a long coaching and managerial career.
chicago cubs - john pramesa
cincinnati reds - ed blake
card #144
card #53
as with the browns up top, the dodgers slot in to the position they would eventually have following their move to los angeles. as the card back notes, van cuyk got another shot at the dodgers' rotation in 1952, following partial seasons in the majors the two previous years. he wound up with a record of 5-6 in 23 appearances, 16 of which were starts. he was back in the minors the following year, and never did make it back to the big leagues.
blake appeared in only two games during the 1952 season, but pitched three scoreless innings in those appearances. he did indeed study law, but his post-baseball career turned out to be as a plumber.
brooklyn dodgers - chris van cuyk
philadelphia phillies - connie ryan
card #107
here's our first horizontal card for the sampler. the design remains the same, which is a trait that topps hasn't always been consistent with when having both portrait and landscape formats in flagship sets. here, topps colored ryan into a phillies cap, as he spent 1951 with the reds as noted. it's not a bad job by the topps artists. ryan played in all 154 games for the phillies in 1952 as their everyday second baseman.
pittsburgh pirates - joe muir
card #154
st. louis cardinals - george munger
card #115
munger is listed in baseball reference under "red" rather than george, so topps knew what they were doing in the bio text. after a single appearance for the cardinals in 1952, munger was dealt to the pirates for whom he appeared in just a handful of games. he was winless on the season, and didn't return to the majors until 1956.
new york giants - don mueller
card #52
card #51
another dodger, and another black back, but this card was chosen due to it's "o-pee-chee-ness" with russell listed as a dodger but obviously wearing a boston braves' hat and jersey. the back tells us that russell had been with the dodgers organization since 1950, but i guess they didn't have an image. the "b" on the hat is close enough i guess.
larry jansen
card #5
this card is iconic thanks to jansen holding up seven fingers for his seven children. it's another example of a horizontal card, and a black back to boot.
in what is a bit of a theme with players in this post, muir made the final major league appearances of his career in 1952. he was 2-3 in 12 games for the pirates, and then retired to join the maryland state police.
the final card of the "teams" portion of the sampler gives us our first look at the black backs. topps gives dodger fans like me the business by commenting on mueller's success down the stretch against the bums, helping the giants win the pennant (the giants win the pennant). in 1952, mueller had another solid season as the giants' primary right fielder. the highlight of the season for him might have been a 13th inning walk off home run against the pirates on september 10.
that's the end of the "teams" portion of the sampler. 16 teams, two 8-pocket pages. for most of the sets in these samplers, there are obvious subsets to share, but that is not the case with 1952. still, there are some cards that align with future subsets or themes that i am including in these samplers, so this one spills over into a third sheet.
first, however, i decided to try to find a card from each set to include in the teams section that showed the yankee stadium facade in the background, and for the 1952 set, the yankee stadium facade card is frank overmire
representing the yankees. it makes sense to kick off this theme with a player from the bronx, even though his time there was short.
manager (and coach) cards show up in many of these vintage sets, often with a different design from the base. those are the cards that i really want to include in these samplers, but that was not the case in 1952. still, there were a few of these non-players featured and from what i could tell, the only coaches included were in the high numbers set so i am not chasing them. i did add a manager card...
paul richards
card #305
you may know richards for having one of the oddest cards in the 1951 bowman set, but his 1952 topps card (and all other cards of him, really), is more lifelike in their imagery. the card above seems to show him giving the sign for acid reflux. 1952 was his second year at the helm of the white sox, and they repeated their 81-73 record from 1951 but gained a spot in the standings, finishing third in the american league.
another theme i look for are what i call "o-pee-chee" type cards. these are cards that feature a player in a uniform different from the team that is designated on the card. these cards are quite prevalent in the mid-60's when updated photos were scarce, but not necessarily as plentiful or obvious in other sets. i mentioned a couple above that could fit the bill, but jim russell's card is a clear example.
jim russell
you will see in later samplers that i chose a couple of players to include so that i could claim to have their entire topps flagship runs. when i was discussing this project with brian of highly subjective and completely arbitrary at a card show last year, i noted that i realized that hoyt wilhelm's career spanned this 1952-1969 period and was immediately pleased to learn that wilhelm was lacking a 1955 topps card which then disqualified him. he has some expensive cards, some of which (1952 high number) are not easy to track down. brian told me i wasn't thinking big enough, and he reminded me that willie mays and mickey mantle both had a full run of topps cards from '52 to '69. thanks brian.
no mays or mantle in this sampler, but i did add the following six cards to fill out that third page:
gus zernial
dale coogan
card #87
i picked coogan's card for inclusion because of the red background, which is similar to that on jackie robinson's card. unfortunately for coogan, topps was wrong with their predictions for his 1952 season, and not only did he not stick in the majors, he never appeared in the big leagues after his debut season of 1950.
frank shea
card #248
shea looks like a yankee until you turn the card over and see that he was actually with washington after a trade in may of 1952. there was enough time to update the bio text, but not the team logo on the front. another reason i like this card is the addition of shea's nickname ("spec") in his facsimile signature on the front.
clyde vollmer
card #255
this card is just a space filler - there's nothing really special about it to me. it's just a '52 card that i had.
tommy holmes
card #289
all three are black backs
and the lot came with a second black back russell card that you see in the sampler above. so, this gave me a black back terwilliger and a black back van cuyk to go along with the red backs of those cards that i already had in my collection. still, i needed another duplicate to represent the dodgers, so i tracked down another van cuyk red back recently. collecting can cause one's brain to make weird decisions.
there are a couple of coaches in the 1952 set (high numbers only), so i didn't bother, but i did want a manager card. here, i was intrigued by the "ex-manager" moniker for holmes. as the back tells us, he was replaced as the braves' skipper in may of 1952 but he and his clipboard remained with the organization. the closest thing to this that i can think of in modern cards is the 1985 o-pee-chee jim fanning card.
and there you have my 24 card sampler of the 1952 topps set!
those of you who have been reading my posts for a while know that any dodgers in these sorts of mini-collections are duplicates, so that means that i have other copies of the van cuyk and russell cards. thanks to a recent purchase that netted me these three cards - wayne terwilliger, russell, and van cuyk
anyway, that's it for 1952. i'll go in chronological order, so up next will be 1953. stay tuned!
