The Reach of Faith : 1953 Topps Card # 15 Bobo Newsom by Guest Blogger Russell Streur

 

 Bobo Newsom’s pitching career ended just as Topps was introducing its first baseball card sets in the early 1950s.  Card #15 in the 1953 set is the only card issued for Bobo by Topps during Newsom’s playing days.   

 

One afternoon in the summer of 1943, Bobo Newsom took the mound for the St. Louis Browns in a tilt against the Red Sox in Fenway Park. In the bottom of the fifth inning, his counterpart Oscar Judd came to the plate.  Judd got the better of the pitcher versus pitcher duel, launching a rocket up the middle in a trajectory interrupted by Newsom’s forehead.  The batted ball ricocheted high over second base and fell safely into center field for a hit.

 

The blow staggered Newsom but the tough right-hander refused to be taken out of the game.  Celestial music floated gently through his head and an enormous lump grew on his broad brow as the innings progressed.  In an angelic daze, Bobo mowed down one batter after another.  Newsom disclosed later that “old Bobo didn’t know nothing for a few innings afterward” but the temporary amnesia didn’t prevent the hurler from leaving the field with a complete game victory.

 

“It just goes to show you,” Newsom reflected that night.  “Old Bobo is a better pitcher when he’s unconscious than most guys are when they’re wide awake.”

 

So says The Bible of Baseball.

 

“It ought to have counted for two wins,” Newsom later suggested.  “I was seeing double every time a guy came up to bat.”

 

Baseball is a game of numbers.  Newsom has lots.

 

26 seasons in the game, 1928 to 1953.  Twenty years in the majors on a never-ending tour with most of the teams then playing.  The migrations included two stops each in Brooklyn and Philadelphia, back and forth three times with the St. Louis Browns, and five separate terms with the Washington Senators.  

 

His jersey numbers can fill a keno card.

 

Three times a 20-game winner and three times a 20-game loser, Bobo is one of only two players with more than 200 major league wins, and a losing record (211 – 222).

 

But in an era without any major league teams west of St. Louis or below the Mason Dixon line, a 30-win season for the Los Angeles Angels in the tough Pacific Coast League of the 1930s and 46 wins over three seasons in the Southern Association weigh more heavily in the old record books than they would today.

 

Bottom line:  951 games pitched.  951!  265 complete, 5,826 innings.  350 wins, 327 losses. 

 

A careful reader of box scores might discover a different tale of that game between the Browns and the Red Sox.  True, Judd’s line drive knocked Newsom loopy.  But he only finished the fifth inning, not the game, and he took a loss for the afternoon, not the win.

 

“That Newsom has a rubber arm,” said one player. “And a rubber head to match.”

 

But Bobo would pose the skeptic with an elegant question.  “Who are you going to believe?  The record book, or the guy what done it?”

 

The January 1949 hot stove issue of SPORT Magazine featured a poem by Ogden Nash titled “Line-Up for Yesterday: An ABC of Baseball Immortals.”  Nash assigned each letter of the alphabet to a baseball great.  Most were already in the Hall of Fame when Nash wrote the poem.  The rest got there later, except one:  Bobo Newsom.  Nash explained how Newsom ended up with the titans.  “He talked his way in.”

 

Baseball is a game of faith.

 

---Russell Streur 

Thank you Russell.....I added a few of Bobo's other cards to give readers a look, but that 1953 Topps is a wonderful gem.

If you'd like to learn more about Bobo Newsom you can do so HERE at the Society for American Baseball Research's page on him, written by Ralph Berger 

You can access Bobo Newsom's stats HERE

And you can read Ogden Nash's poem Line-Up For Yesterday right HERE

Next Friday I'll be back with a story about 1984 cards and the first time I rebuilt my baseball card collection...at the age of 10.