1955 bowman complete through 256!

it's time for the next installment in my sheet by sheet posting of my 1955 bowman set as i work to complete this 70 year old release.

sheet 31, cards 241-248

right away this sheet is prompting questions for me, like johnny pesky played for the orioles? and, why is there a blank spot? bear with me.

here are the backs:

none of the eight cards shown go with the non-bio text, but i am somewhat relieved to find that pesky did not, in fact, play for the orioles. he signed with them after the 1954 season, but was released prior to the '55 campaign. i suppose this makes for a final tribute or one of nick's zero year cards. another card of note here is dutch leonard's card. this is the dutch leonard who pitched for the dodgers, senators, and cubs (primarily) and not the dutch leonard who had a 0.96 era for the red sox in 1914 and appeared on a 1979 topps card as a result. the leonard featured in this set was a knucleballer turned pitching coach for the cubs after retiring from his playing career following the 1952 season. and no, i don't mind the small bit of writing on the back of his card. 

here's the reason for the blank spot on the page:

card number 242 belongs to ernie banks!

banks is one of the big four in the set (hank aaron, mickey mantle, and willie mays are the others) and i decided on graded versions for each of their cards. here's the back:

banks gives another "vote" to robin roberts as the best pitcher. it's pretty exciting for me to have a second year banks card in my collection. i remember how happy i was when i landed his 1971 topps card back in 1984 while i was treating my cubs fever by completing topps team sets of the northsiders back to 1970. good times and ernie banks cards always make me smile.

sheet 32, cards 249-256

a couple of the roughest cards in my set on this page, with umpire larry napp and the senators' pete runnels bearing the brunt of previous ownership. 

here are the backs:

you can tell that with some of these later subjects there is less to say, and so the font is larger - particularly on billy gardner's and owen friend's cards. there are some interesting statements here - gardner is called "snappy" and jim wilson is noted to be "one of the most courageous fellows in baseball" but there is no explanation for either claim. a quick review of wilson's sabr bio reveals that he was hit in the head by a hank greenberg line drive early in his career and suffered a fractured skull. he returned to pitch in the big leagues for 11 more seasons after recovering from that injury. courageous, indeed.

napp is the lone umpire featured in this post. we are again presented with his ancestry (italian), plus some fun facts. he was also apparently a licensed boxing referee in the state of new york. seventy years later, we have some more intel on napp, including the fact that he was part of the umpiring crew for two perfect games (don larsen's and catfish hunter's), making him one of just seven umpires to see that feat twice. he also sat out two games during a 1972 series in detroit due to death threats stemming from an ongoing feud with tigers manager billy martin. 

more umpire stories to come - stay tuned!