On Not, or Kind of, Collecting Jackie Robinson

 

I have one undeniable card collecting truth.

            I will never own a Jackie Robinson card from his playing days.

            Okay, this isn’t set in stone.

            And it’s not undeniable.

            But it’s pretty damned close.

            I found myself perusing ComC the other day, as many of you might be doing right now, or after you read this post. I was doing what card collectors do: I was buying cards. My Henry Aaron post inspired me to actually begin building up my Aaron collection. I found a 1972 Topps Aaron, whose card condition I could live with. While on ComC I decided, for shits and giggles, to take a look at Jackie Robinson cards.

            That was a quick trip.

            For the record, whenever I’m on ComC I choose two filters. I choose “ungraded” and “buy now.” I don’t have any issues with people who choose to get cards graded. It’s just not my style. Nor am I a fan of “gambling” so I tend to want to buy my cards outright. I shouldn’t call buying cards on auction or bidding as being gambling. A lot of collectors get cards they want affordably by doing that. I tend to have a real Charlie Brown view of my life, and don’t view winning in most cases as being an option.

With Jackie Robinson cards from his playing days, it really didn’t matter how I filtered. Graded/ungraded. Buy now/auction. I wasn’t going to be able to afford one anyway. That ship has essentially sailed. The stuff I could remotely afford, even I wouldn’t want to buy the card in that condition.

And my standards aren’t too high.

A Clemente is a Clemente.

            And a pipe dream is a pipe dream, right?

            Still…

            I suppose I should answer as to why I’d want Jackie Robinson cards in my collection. Or maybe the question is, why wouldn’t a collector want Jackie Robinson cards in their collection? Jackie Robinson is baseball history personified. His statistics, historical documents of the times. His cards of that era, the same. This isn’t anything a baseball fan or a card collector doesn’t already know. Jackie Robinson is a cultural hero. He’s a hero to baseball as well. The sport retired his damned number! In a sport full of Ruths, Gehrigs, Aarons, Mays, and Clemente, Jackie Robinson still stands heads and shoulders above them all.

            Okay, maybe Babe Ruth is debatable.

            And I can’t afford his cards either.

            All the same because of his stature and talent, it be cool to have cards from Jackie Robinson’s playing days in my collection.

            But it’s not going to happen.

            It’s undeniable.

            At least right now it is.

            Maybe I’ll start playing the lottery today.

            If I want Jackie Robinson cards in my collection, I have to rely on cards like the one above.

            Or this.

            One of only two Project 2020 cards that I bought.

            I’ve said, more times than you want to read, how much I like post-career playing cards for players. I love seeing players like Henry Aaron, Jackie Robinson, or Roberto Clemente in the designs from my youth. I also enjoy seeing today’s young stars like Vlady Jr. or Yordan Alvarez on design from before their time. Their great in sets like Heritage and even more so in sets like Archives, that blend the past and present together on a number of designs.

            I even like seeing the old timers in Stadium Club.

            Like American Badass Eddie Murray.

            But I don’t collect a lot of post-playing day cards for old timers.

            I do with a few.

            Mainly Clemente, Willie Stargell and Henry Aaron.

            I won’t be adding this Will Clark card to my collection.

            Will Clark already had a 1987 Topps card.

            I do collect Jackie Robinson post-playing day cards, however. Or, if I don’t collect them, I at least keep all of the ones that I get as inserts in packs or in boxes, or I keep the doubles from sets like Stadium Club or Archives. The answer is obvious as to why. These cards are the closest I’m going to get to actual Jackie Robinson cards.

            And, yes, I do this for Babe Ruth too.

            But this isn’t a blog post about him.

            Admittedly my collection of Jackie Robinson cards is a modest one.

    

            My latest Jackie

            Yep, that’s almost everything.

            I even have some ephemera from when Jackie’s number was retired by Major League baseball.

            I forgot there was a reprint of Jackie’s 1948 Leaf card inside.

            I guess I own me a Jackie Robinson “rookie” card.

            July 12, 1997. That was when the Pirates officially retired Jackie Robinson’s number 42 in a pre-game ceremony in front of 44,000 fans. I didn’t attend this game, though I attended a good many in 1997. My old man did and figured maybe the items would be in good hands with me. I’ve held on to them for twenty-five years. The game was wild too. Francisco Cordova and Ricardo Rincon threw a 10-inning no hitter against the Astros, and won on a home run by Mark Smith.

            The 1997 Pittsburgh Pirates were dubbed “The Freak Show.”

            They almost won the division with a 79-83 record.

            1997 was the first season that I really got back into Pirates baseball after they broke my heart in the 1992 NLCS.

            I’d spent from 1993-1997 pre-occupied with college and women.

            I was probably having women troubles on July 12, 1997, if memory serves me correctly.

            But this isn’t a blog post about that either.

            Living in Brooklyn, there’s a lot Dodgers history still around. You can visit the one remaining wall to Ebbets Field at the Ebbets Field apartments. A number of homes that players owned are still around. One owned by Duke Snider is in the actual neighborhood where I live. The Mets jack Brooklyn Dodgers history whenever they can. And Jackie Robinson, himself, is buried in the Cypress Hills cemetery, here in Brooklyn. A long, long way from Pasedina.

            So, there is that aura that still surrounds him here in New York City.

            During the initial quarantine stretch of the never-ending pandemic, when baseball was supposed to be happening, but wasn’t happening, I comforted myself by reading a number of books on baseball and biographies on baseball players. One such book was Arnold Rampersad’s excellent biography on Jackie Robinson.

            Not only does Rampersad do an excellent job of showing what Jackie Robinson went through breaking into the Major Leagues as the first player of color, the book does a fine job of detailing Robinson’s post-playing life as well. Jackie spent more years as an executive for Chock Full O Nuts than he ever did with the Dodgers, and he had contact and connections with everyone from Dwight Eisenhower to Malcolm X.

            The Rampersad book pushed me deeper into Jackie territory and was the catalyst for me beginning to pull his cards from my insert boxes, and to put them in a proper player place in my PC. If it is undeniable that I’ll never own a true card from Jackie Robinson’s playing days, then it is almost certain that the Topps Company has put an over-abundance of Jackie Robinson post-career cards out into the collecting world. Archive cards. Stadium Club cards. Base Set Short Prints.

            Even Panini has gotten into the act.

            I don't often buy Panini products, but when I do it's Diamond Kings.

            It’s true we don’t know what Topps is going to do going forward since they were acquired by Fanatics after the licensing debacle of last year. I guess as collectors we can assume Topps base product will still exist. But what of the others? Over the previous weekend I was listening to John Newman’s Sports Card Nation. His guest for that show was Joey “Dub Mentality” Shiver.

            It was a good show.

John asked Dub what his hopes were for Topps going forward after the acquisition by Fanatics. Dub was pretty impartial and willing to give Fanatics and honest shot. But he said one thing that stuck with me. And that was his hope that Fanatics would pay attention to the Topps legacy. Now, I guess this can mean whatever you want it to mean. That Topps continues to put creative ideas into the base cards. That they come up with something new and exciting for collectors that still feels very Topps. For me, I hope that Topps/Fanatics keeps some legacy products going. I hope Heritage stays. I hope Archives stays too.

And keep those cool inserts coming.

My Jackie Robinson collection can only grow from there.

2022 Topps Series 1:

            Despite all of my talk about quality vs quantity, it was inevitable that I was going to buy a box of 2022 Series 1 Topps base cards. I’m glad I did.  I actually bought it from this place.

            I was a pretty big fan of the MLB Flagship store when it opened in summer of 2020. Of course, in summer of 2020 I was a fan of anywhere that I was actually able to get out of my neighborhood and go to.  The MLB Flagship store was pretty egalitarian at the beginning. You could find merchandise for every single Major League Baseball team. That has, sadly, since changed, and the store caters more to the New York/L.A./Chicago/Philly/St. Louis brands.

            But they do have a Topps section that sells cards at retail prices.

            So I bought this.

            First off, I’m a big fan of the 2022 base design.

It might be my favorite base design since I got back into collecting in 2019. The borders are crisp. The photos are sharp. You can actually read the player’s names this year.  I love the team color lacing as well, and how it makes the photos really stand out.  Just top-notch base work.

As for the bells and whistles, or what others like to call the inserts.

This showed up.

These two showed up in the same pack.

I’ve never pulled an auto in a Hobby box. I was waiting for my requisite game-used fabric patch card, but the Mr. Ryan showed up. That said, I’m not an auto collector. If retail boxes came out the same day as hobby boxes I’d buy them instead. I’m in it for the fun in opening and enjoying base.  With the Ryan, and even the Tatis Jr., well, I don’t sell cards, so I’m probably going to see if I can trade with someone. The problem with that is, I tend to want vintage. Clemente. Aaron. That kind of stuff. So I’ll probably be holding on to the Ryan and Tatis for a while.

These inserts get my vote for least essential cards of the year.

Overall it was a fun rip

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

Speaking of the "Freak Show" the folks over at SABR have a fine little article about that July 12, 1997 game which you can read right HERE.

You can listen to the episode of Sports Card Nation with Dub Mentality right HERE

I actually found myself on a Podcast. I was on episode 190 of About the Cards. Thanks to Ben and Stephan for having me on! You can listen to that HERE.

NEXT FRIDAY: We're going back in time. I'm going to be talking about youth. Young love. Labor

disagreements. We're going back to 1994 Topps, baby!

Collecting (or trying to) Henry Aaron

 

Baseball has a lot of magic numbers.

            Or should I say milestone numbers?

            500 home runs.

            3000 hits.

            3000 strikeouts.

            300 wins.

            (But good luck seeing that one again.)

            Individual players have sent benchmarks that may never be reached again. Cy Young with his 511 wins. Nolan Ryan with 5,714 strikeouts. Pete Rose with his 4,256 hits. Rickey and those 1,406 stolen bases. Ted Williams being the last guy to hit .400 in a season. 60 home runs in a season. 61. 70* home runs. 73* home runs. 714 home runs in a career. 715.

            755.

            762?

            This is not a blog post about Barry Bonds.

            I’ve said it here before, but when I was a kid, like most of you other collectors out there, I wanted my collection to be not only made up of the current players, but peppered with players who came before my time. Being a kid from Pittsburgh, I obviously would give my left arm for a Clemente card back then. I did manage to get some, and thankfully, none of them cost me a limb. But there were other players I wanted. Willie Mays. Frank Robinson. Guys like Brooks Robinson and Lou Brock, both of whom played long enough that their cards actually were tangible to a kid using paper route/birthday/holiday money to purchase them.

            But there was one guys whose cards I wanted more than any other…even the great Roberto Clemente.

            This guy.

            I don’t know what it was about me and Henry Aaron. I’d obviously never seen him play. He went into the record books the actual day before I was born. I know I revered home run hitters as a kid. A player who hit 500 home runs was more impressive to me than a player getting 3,000 hits. This was obviously before I became aware of the how much of a daily grinder one had to be to amass 3,000 hits in a career. No, I was in it for the spectacle. The long ball. The walk-off to win the game.

            And no one seemed to do it better than Henry Aaron.

            At least that’s what the archive tapes showed me.

            As a kid I always lived in a world where Henry Aaron was the home run champ.

            He still is to me…despite my firm belief that Barry Bonds should be in the Hall of Fame.

            755 home runs not 762.

            And Henry did it never having it more than 45 home runs in a season.

            Take that Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire.

            I’ve even read a couple of really great books on him.

           When I was a kid, I wanted Henry Aaron cards. But with my cash flow I wasn’t getting Henry Aaron cards. I had to settle for cards like these.

            And those were cool...I guess.

            I was lucky enough that I still collected into my later teenage years, when the paper route job morphed into the job working sports retail at the mall. This would be 1991. Cards were the rage, only getting bigger, heading toward out of control and collapse. The mall I worked in (if you’re a George Romero fan you know the mall very well) did the occasional weekend card show. Because I was teen labor, I was always working the weekend. When these card shows happened, I’d get to the mall an hour or so before my shift and peruse what the dealers had.

            I got myself this as an impulse purchase.

...and yes, it’s certified.

            It was at one of those shows that I bought these two cards.

            They were the first and only Henry Aaron cards I ever owned during my original collecting years.

            In fact, they are the same cards I bought back then. I’ve often told the story on this blog about how when I quit collecting, I gave all of my cards to my younger brother, save my Pirates team sets. That wasn’t 100% correct. Or I simply forgot. Along with the Pirates team sets, I also kept my Roberto Clemente cards and the two Henry Aaron cards I bought at the mall card show. The Clemente and Aaron cards spent years in a storage box that I used for keepsakes like letters from friends (remember those?), physical concert tickets (remember those too?), and all the other sundry ephemera from my own life.

            Eclectic tastes, I have?

            They may have only been three Clemente cards and two Henry Aaron cards, but when I got back into collecting in 2019, it was nice to know that my new collecting would have a foundation in my old one. And in almost three years back to collecting, I’ve managed to add a couple of Clemente cards via trade, and a couple of Aaron cards via a trade and my delusions of grandeur that I was actually going to be build my birth-year set of 1974.

           Hahahahahahaha!

            Not that I don’t massively admire the folks who do that.

            But most of the Henry Aaron cards that I’ve attained since 2019 have looked more like these.

            Or these.

            Not a big A&G man....with a few exceptions.

            That said, I was super-excited to get this in a random pack of 2021 Update.

            And I’m coming for that 2022 SP.

            I’m not slouching off those Aaron insert cards, etc. I enjoy them very much. I guess I just thought at this point I would’ve added some more of his playing day cards (no, not league leader cards) to my collection. But I really haven’t. I know there have been factors like, I don’t know, a plague upon the earth. And NYC just doesn’t get too many card shows. The one we got this January coincided with a winter storm so…

            And, yes, I know there’s eBay, SportLots and ComC.

            It’s just…well…the cost.

            I might be an adult with a professional degree, but I’m still a thirteen-year-old paper boy when it comes to my purchasing choices. I’m also an idiot. I’ll sit there and buy two hobby boxes of current base cards, blow $200, get no inserts that I want, build a base set that I can eventually purchase for a third of the money, get PC guys that I can get on SportLots on the cheap, and then look longingly at Henry Aaron cards on ComC that I could’ve bought had I used common economic sense in the first place.

            But those days are coming to a close.

            This is the quality vs. quantity year, remember?

            I plan on slowing building a nice Henry Aaron PC.  Maybe 2-3 cards a year. A little less when I start getting into the early 60s/1950s cards. I know the ones I’m really interested in getting first. 

            For some reason everything 1964 is calling to me. 

            I don’t even expect to own a Henry Aaron rookie card, unless it looks like it went through a meat grinder.

But, hey, a guy can dream right?

Thanks for reading! Happy collecting!

NEXT FRIDAY: If there’s a chance I can get Henry Aaron playing day cards, there’s no chance in hell of me getting any for Jackie Robinson. So let’s talk Jackie Robinson cards, specifically the ones I do have, and maybe why cards made after a player’s playing day are kind of cool.

RUBE FOSTER AND THE PLAN TO INTEGRATE BASEBALL IN 1926 by Russell Streur

 

RUBE FOSTER AND THE PLAN TO INTEGRATE BASEBALL IN 1926

 

   

 

Left:  What Could Have Been, Card WCB5, Topps, 2001.

Right:  Father of Black Baseball, Stars of the Negro Leagues, Card 16, 1990.

 

 

Cy Young won 32 games and lost 11 in 1903.  Andrew Foster, better known now as Rube, pitched some ball that year.  He started out slow, losing his first decision—then won the next 44.

 

The Bible of Baseball says that Babe Ruth could conjure up a homerun by simply pointing the head of his bat out toward the bleachers.  Rube Foster called a shot once.  The ball didn’t survive the swing.  Horsehide, thread and cork rained down on second base.

 

Managers, club owners and league presidents are in baseball’s Hall of Fame. 

 

Miller Huggins led his New York Yankees to three league titles and a .591 winning percentage. Rube Foster led his team to three league titles and .617 winning percentage.

 

Charles Comiskey owned one of Chicago’s historic baseball clubs.  Foster owned another.

 

Harry Wright built the National League and Ban Johnson built the American League.  Rube Foster built the Negro National League.

 

Henry Chadwick is often called the Father of Baseball.  The paternal ancestor of the game we play today is Rube Foster.

 

Until the 2020 Negro Leagues Legends set traced his career in fine art, Rube Foster wasn’t on many baseball cards.  He was Black, and his playing days were mostly over by 1915.  But no one ever played the diamond fields any better than Foster, and the legacy he left to baseball is as rich a gift as any man ever gave the game.

 

The son of a preacher, Andrew Foster was born, according to traditional sources, in Calvert, Robertson County, in east Texas, on September 17, 1879.  According to conflicting scholarship, Rube named LaGrange in Fayette County as his birthplace.  And one census document seems to place the nativity in the nearby Fayette County town of Winchester. It is without dissent that baseball took hold of Andrew in at a young age, made him a pitcher, and pulled him north out of the cotton lands.  In 1902, Foster took the mound in Philadelphia against Connie Mack’s Athletics.  Facing Rube Waddell, Foster won the contest 5 to 2, and is said to have carried Waddell’s nickname off the field.

 

 Clockwise from upper left:  with the Royal Poinciana of the Florida Hotel League, 1905, Negro Leagues Legends, Card 22, 2020; with the independent Philadelphia Giants, 1906, Negro Leagues Legends, Card 113, 2020; with the independent Leland Giants, 1909, Negro Leagues Legends, Card 144, 2020; with the independent Chicago American Giants, 1914, Negro Leagues Legends, Card 109, 2020.

 

For the next ten years, Foster ranked as one of the great pitchers of the game.  After his playing days, he took control of the Chicago American Giants together with John Schorling, son-in-law of Charles Comiskey.  Under Foster’s leadership, the American Giants became one of the top clubs in Black Baseball.  Foster was a visionary whose ability matched his ambition.  He dreamed of integrating baseball, and for that, he needed a league.  In 1919, he summoned a group of Midwestern independent club owners to Kansas City and hammered out the agreement that produced the Negro National League at the Paseo YMCA on February 19.

 

Foster wanted a showdown with the major leagues and set out to repeal ”the gentleman’s agreement” barring Black players.  His league’s slogan was “We are the ship…All else the sea.” It might just as well have been “we have to be ready when the day comes.”

 

 Remembering the Negro Leagues, Rube Foster and the 1919 Chicago American Giants, Card 7, Tuff Stuff Magazine, September 1992.

 

The owners elected Foster president of the league and placed teams in Cincinnati, Detroit, Dayton, Indianapolis, Kansas City and St, Louis.  Two teams were based in Chicago—Foster’s American Giants and Joe Green’s Chicago Giants.  Green was a tough customer in a tough town, and once had tried to score from third on a broken leg

 

The Negro National League also benefited from the robust owners C. I. Taylor of the Indianapolis ABCs and J. L. Wilkinson of the Kansas City Monarchs.

 

Left: Charles Isham Taylor, with the independent Indianapolis ABCs, 1916, Negro Leagues Legends, Card 67, 2020.  Right:  James Leslie Wilkinson, with the variously affiliated Kansas City Monarchs, 1920-1946, Negro Leagues Legends, Card 177, 2020. 

 

With the team still carrying the vestige of a past sponsorship with the American Brewing Company, Taylor joined the ABCs in 1914.  He may have been Black baseball’s finest manager.  He’s certainly the one of the few men to ever argue an umpire’s decision on a close play—after being called safe.  Taylor once declared himself out on a steal of third when the umpire’s safe call offended his Taylor’s sense of honesty and fair play.

 

Wilkinson was the only white owner in Foster’s circuit, and his Kansas City Monarchs proved vital to the success of the new league.  The Monarchs were the direct descendants of the All Nations team, which Wilkinson had established in Des Moines in 1912 and moved to Kansas City three years later.  The All Nations simply ignored the Jim Crow notions of the day by fielding a team of Black, Chinese, Cuban, Hawaiian, Italian, Mexican and white players.

 

Foster’s Negro National League began play in 1920, the same year Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was selected to become commissioner of the major leagues following the Black Sox scandal.  While the white leagues suffered the consequences of the thrown World Series, Foster’s league flourished.  Plunk Davis, pitcher with the St. Louis Giants, was one of the league’s stars.  He is credited with the responsibility for the invention of the batting helmet—not the invention of the helmet, just the need for it.  Some batters found Drake’s habit of throwing warmup pitches into the batting screen and yelling ‘Look Out!’ unnerving.

 

Bill “Plunk” Drake, Negro League Baseball Stars, Card 69, Larry Fritsch Cards, 1986.

Maintaining the Chicago American Giants year after year as one of the country’s best Black baseball teams as its chief executive and field manager would have been enough for most men in a workweek.  But not Foster.  He ran the Negro National League with the same commitment, settling disputes between the ball clubs and balancing books and roster strengths among the teams.  He was described as “the heart, soul and uncompromising guiding light” of the league.  It took long hours. 

 

By the end of the 1925 season, Foster’s contributions to baseball equaled any man’s accomplishments, white or Black, before or since.  Foster had succeeded in each of his roles as player, manager, owner and league president.  But Foster’s dream of achieving equality between the white and the Black game was unfulfilled.  One way or another, he was going to force baseball to find the common ground.

 

 

Rube Foster, with the Philadelphia Giants circa 1905,  The American Game, Card 31, Upper Deck, 1994.

 

 

It wasn’t going to be easy. Landis, the game’s Imperial Wizard himself, stood in Foster’s way.  Landis’ standard reply to the question of Blacks in baseball did not permit further discussion: “The answer is no.”  When Landis laid down law, few argued.  Make no mistake—the law was specific to Blacks.  It did not exclude other American minorities or foreign nationalities. The door was wide enough for Big Chief Bender and Jim Thorpe and other Native Americans, and for Cuban and Mexican players.

 

But Landis had no sympathy for Blacks.  The Judge even banned white major league players from wearing their team uniforms when playing exhibitions against Black teams.  Landis tried to eliminate Black-white exhibitions throughout his reign as commissioner, but the barnstorming circuits were too lucrative an opportunity for players to surrender to the Judge. 

 

A lot of the country was outside the bounds of Landis’ authority anyway.  Half of Landis’ clubs were concentrated in a narrow corridor running up the Eastern Seaboard from Washington D.C. to Boston.  Major league baseball reached no further south than the railroad tracks running west from the nation’s capital to Cincinnati and on through to St. Louis. 

 

Semi-pro circuits paid little attention to Landis’s ban.  During the early 1930s, the Berkeley (CA) International League began to field Black, Chinese, Japanese, Mexican and white teams drawn from the multi-cultural neighborhoods of the Bay area.

 

In 1934, the Denver Post’s baseball tournament dropped its restriction against participation by Blacks, and the newspaper invited the Kansas City Monarchs to play.  The Monarchs finished second to that year’s mixed zealots of The House of David, whose congregation Satchel Paige joined long enough to win three games in five days at the event.  The tournament remained open to Blacks.  The Pittsburgh Crawfords won the tournament in 1936, as did the Black barnstorming Trujillo All-Stars in 1937.

 

The Wichita Tournament, sponsored by the National Baseball Congress, opened its field to Black players and teams in 1935.  The American West had a history of tolerance on its diamonds.  In the early 1900s, Black players dotted lineups alongside white players across North Dakota.    In 1915, the civic leaders of Brinsmade hired Plunk Drake off the touring Black Tennessee Rats team to help the city compete against local competition and the all-star teams that toured the plains.

 

Also beyond Landis’ reach was the California Winter League. For decades, some of the finest players in the country—Black and white and Mexican—toured up and down the California coast.  Others played winter ball on freely mixed teams in the Caribbean liberty of Havana’s Tropical Stadium, a showcase of desegregated talent sure to have given Judge Landis nightmares.

 

Clearly, the opportunity existed to break the major league color line years before Jackie Robinson stepped across the chalk in 1947.  Foster thought it could happen in 1926.

 

 

Negro National League President in his rocking chair, 1921.

Right: Rube Foster, Negro League Baseball Stars, Card 18, Larry Fritsch Cards, 1986

Left:  Rube Foster, Greats of the Game, Card 111, Fleer, 2001.  

 

 

The general idea of the time was that baseball would be integrated not by an individual, but by an entire black club joining one of the leagues, if the right team could prove its worth.  Foster had been down this road before.  The Leland Giants, for whom Foster managed and pitched, was a charter member of the integrated Chicago City League and won the Windy City championship in 1909.  The Leland Giants were also the first Black club to join the California Winter League, during the 1910-1911 season.  Foster undoubtedly believed his perennially powerful American Giants fit the present bill, and Foster had friends in the major leagues who he thought might help.

 

One was American League President Ban Johnson, the man who broke the National League stranglehold on major league status and one of Foster’s best friends in the game.  Foster thought Johnson might approve a plan for the American Giants to play exhibitions against clubs on their off dates during road trips to Chicago. A kind of associate affiliation for the American Giants would open the door to full major league status for the rest of the Negro National League down the road. 

 

Foster also counted New York Giants manager and National League hothead John McGraw as a friend.  The two had known each other for more than 20 years. McGraw once had tried to sneak a Black player—second baseman Charlie Grant—across the color line by passing him off as a Native American.  McGraw’s attempt wasn’t based on the pursuit of social justice.  He wanted Grant for his glove. 

 

On February 11, 1926, Foster met with Johnson and McGraw.  It’s a testimony to the high regard his white peers had for Foster that the meeting took place at all.  Johnson and McGraw had been blood enemies for nearly a quarter-century, ever since McGraw jumped the American League ship to take over the helm of the National League New York Giants in 1902.  Fred Lieb, who knew a thing or two about the subject, said that Johnson carried his anger toward McGraw from that summer to the grave.  “The pair never spoke again.”

 

Johnson and McGraw were big names in the game, but Johnson didn’t have the kind of pull he used to have.  Loser of a half-dozen knife fights with Landis, Johnson would be pushed out of the American League presidency by club owners in mid-1927.  McGraw didn’t wield the clout of his younger days, either.  And while McGraw often lauded the ability of Black players and bemoaned the unwritten law that prevented him from signing any, there may have been less to his quotes than met the ear.  New York Daily News sportswriter Jimmy Powers conducted an informal poll of baseball executives in 1933 to measure support for integration, and Powers reported that only McGraw was openly opposed to the idea.  

 

Little of substance is recorded about Foster’s meeting with Johnson and McGraw.  There isn’t even agreement on where the meeting occurred.  One account states the meeting was held in Philadelphia during a conference between the Negro National League and the Eastern Colored League.  A different account places the meeting at the Chicago Beach Hotel.  But even as a young man, Foster claimed equality with white baseball.  He spoke his mind in 1902 when he joined Leland’s then-named Chicago Union Giants.  “If you play the best clubs in the land, white clubs you say,” Foster told a club backer who warned the Texan of northern competition, “it will be a case of Greek meeting Greek.  I fear nobody.”

 

In Foster’s mind, the color line was a door that swung both ways.  If he couldn’t come through one way with the American Giants, he would break the color line the other way by finding a white player to enlist on his team. Foster always told his players to never let the last pitch pass by without a swing.  He believed that a baseball game was won by getting the one right hit at the one right time.  In 1926, Foster was going to swing away and get that hit off Landis.  One way or another, the color line was going to break in 1926.  Rube Foster was going to see to that.

 

Except, to put it bluntly, Foster went crazy.

 

A diagnosis is impossible from this distance.  What’s certain is that Foster was almost asphyxiated by a gas leak while drawing a bath at an Indianapolis boarding house in May of 1925.  It is also certain that Foster overworked himself for years keeping the Negro National League afloat.  “Oft times I have felt that the task was hopeless: I felt ready to give up,” Foster wrote in an article for the Chicago Defender early in the 1923 season.  “The strain placed upon me has proved great almost beyond endurance.” 

 

Rube’s son, Earl, said that McGraw turned him down at that February meeting, and Earl said the refusal broke his father’s spirit.

 

Some say Rube’s health began to fail as early as 1924.

 

Rube took his usual seat on the bench as manager of the American Giants to start the 1926 season but he clearly wasn’t well. Third baseman and Foster acolyte Dave Malarcher took over managing the club in mid-summer.  In September, Foster was arrested after brandishing an icepick and chasing a friend.  He was committed to the Illinois state asylum for the insane in Kankakee that same month and spent the last four years of his life in the hospital.

 

Urging an invisible team toward a distant flag, the last ball got by Foster on December 9, 1930.  A cold rain fell in Chicago and turned to snow as funeral hymns were sung over Foster’s casket.  Eulogies were spoken and thousands of mourners attended the final services. With his passing, baseball lost a singular man, the likes of which the long, green seasons of the game have only seen once.

 

 

 

 

 Rube lived 51 years.  An equal lifetime passed from the date of his death to his induction in the Hall of Fame in 1981.

 

 ---Russell Streur

Collecting Ben Roethlisberger Cards : A Personal Dliemma

 

December 10, 1983 to September 26, 2004.

            That’s 7,596 days.

            Or 20 years, 9 months and 16 days.

            In Pittsburgh Steeler time that’s the amount of time in between the final start of Terry Bradshaw in a football and the first start of Ben Roethlisberger in one as well.

            Over 20 years in between franchise quarterbacks for a legendary team.

            And a lot of names came in between them.

            Cliff Stoudt. Mark Malone. David Woodley. Scott Campbell. Bubby Brister. Steve Bono. Todd Blackledge. Neil O’Donnell. Mike Tomczak. Some guy named Jim Miller. Kordell “Slash” Stewart. Kent Graham. Tommy Maddox.

            Granted a couple of guys only started one game. But it does go to show that for some NFL teams, even one as storied as the Pittsburgh Steelers, franchise quarterbacks don’t grow on trees.

            Not everyone can move from Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers.

            20 years, 9 months and 16 days.

            Let’s go back to December 10, 1983 for a moment, shall we?

            Like Willie Stargell, I don’t remember a lot about Terry Bradshaw’s playing days. His legend was already sealed by the time I got into cards and into football. I liked him because of his legend. Wanted Terry Bradshaw cards because of those Super Bowls, and the local pride associated with them.

It’s funny to tie civic pride with a football team. Or it used to be to me. I used to shun the collective group-think on football Sundays. As I’ve aged, as I’ve spent almost 20 years away from Pittsburgh myself, I’ve had a chance to think on this and have grown to love and appreciate the special relationship between football team and city. I’ve actually missed being a part of it to some extent, although I still contend that a Steelers win or loss should not be the top news story the following Monday morning.

            And I wish I was old enough to really remember Terry Bradshaw’s heyday.

            But I do remember December 10, 1983.

            That was the last time Terry Bradshaw put on a Steeler’s uniform and started a game.

            I remember the game. Kind of. I remember the Steelers played the Jets. I remember that it was a big deal, Terry Bradshaw coming back this late in the season. He’d missed the first fourteen weeks yet somehow the Steelers found themselves at 9-5. I remember being excited. I remember the game being on loud at home. I don’t remember the two scoring drives. The first one a 17-yard pass to Gregg Garrity. The second score on a 10-yard touchdown pass to Calvin Sweeney. The second drive where Bradshaw felt a pop in his surgically reconstructed elbow.

            But I remember Terry Bradshaw on the sidelines with his head in his hands.

            I remember Cliff Stoudt coming in.

            I remember it feeling like an era was over.

            Topps even immortalized the game in Bradshaw’s last card.

            Or that was the day their photographer was in New York.

            Fun Fact: December 10, 1983 was also the final game the Jets ever played at Shea Stadium.

            Bradshaw played one final game in 1983 and he was the QB card in the 1984 set.

            No one wanted a Cliff Stoudt card.

            It didn’t seem inevitable at the time I got back into card collecting, though it should’ve been, that I was eventually going to start collecting football cards. But I have. Sort of. I’ve been buying cards of Pittsburgh Steelers, off and on, for almost a year now. The legends I grew up hearing about, or seeing the tail end of their careers. Terry Bradshaw, obviously. Franco Harris. Jack Lambert. John Stallworth. Mel Blount. Mean Joe Green.

            You know, all of those guys.

            I’ve managed to get the bulk of Terry Bradshaw’s playing day cards.

            Although his rookie card will allude me until I’m willing to cough up a few bucks.

            I bought some cards of the legendary players I remember best.

            I don't care what people say, I always liked this kid.

            I started collecting the present.

            (A little crooked, sorry...I need to invest in a good scanner if I'm to keep doing this)

            And I started collecting the future.

            But there are a lot of gaps in my Steelers collection. I have yet to buy any Hines Ward, Jerome Bettis or Troy Polamalu cards. Though I plan on it. I’d like to have a Steelers collection that’s pretty representative of the key players who came through the organization. All those great defensive guys. The running backs. The wide receivers. Some Heath Miller cards as I hope to see the second coming in Pat Freiermuth.

            Ah…but there is one guy though.

            And I just don’t know how I feel about collecting him.

            20 years, 9 months and 16 days.

            Okay, maybe 20 years, 9 months and 7 days.

            Let’s visit September 19, 2004, shall we?

            It’s week 2 of the 2004 NFL seasons, and the Steelers are in Baltimore playing division rivals, the dreaded Ravens. Tommy Maddox was starting at quarterback for the Steelers. Tommy Gun as us Pittsburghers called Maddox. Tommy Maddox was a journeyman quarterback who managed to put together two solid starting seasons in Pittsburgh. Us Pittsburghers love guys like Maddox. They become local folk heroes. We give them cool nicknames like Tommy Gun.

            Or The Big Nogowski anyone?

            Anyway, Tommy “Gun” Maddox gets knocked out of the game in the second quarter on a sack fumble. His replacement was 22-year-old Ben Roethlisberger, the Steelers 11-th overall pick, drafted just a few months earlier. After a shaky start, an incomplete pass, an interception, the rookie Roethlisberger managed to put together an impressive two touchdowns and 176 total passing yards, in a 30-13 loss.

But Ben Roethlisberger would get the start the following week, our fated September 26, 2004, against the Miami Dolphins. It would be his first NFL win. The first of the next 14-straight. The Steelers would end that 2004 season 15-1, losing in the AFC championship game to the New England Patriots, 41-27.

It would later be revealed after that September 19^th game, that Maddox had a torn ligament and tendon damage in his elbow, and would be out for six weeks.

But by then it didn’t matter.

The Big Ben era had begun in Pittsburgh.

I had my own franchise quarterback.

My own Terry Bradshaw.

And having Ben Roethlisberger at quarterback was everything a Steeler fan could imagine. They won the Super Bowl is in his second season. And then another in 2008. The Steelers went to another Super Bowl in 2010. Ben Roethlisberger, in 18 seasons in Pittsburgh, has never had a losing one. He’s a 6-time pro-bowler. A 2-time Super Bowl champ. Big Ben ranks 5^th in all-time passing yards, ahead of Dan Marino. He’s 8^th in passing touchdowns. Ben Roethlisberger is a Steeler legend. And in 5-years he’s Canton bound.

But then…

There was Nevada.

And then there was Georgia.

Ben Roethlisberger was accused of sexual assault. Not once. But twice. The first was from a worker at a Nevada hotel who claimed Roethlisberger had her come to his room to look at a broken TV. He grabbed the women and tried to kiss her. Blocked the door when she tried to leave. Then threw her on his bed and raped her. Roethlisberger denied the claim. The woman was discouraged from filing a criminal complaint. The NFL never punished Roethlisberger and the case was settled in court in 2012.

The second instance involves a 20-year-old college student, who claimed that Ben Roethlisberger raped her in the bathroom stall of a Georgia nightclub in 2010. The woman said that Roethlisberger had been buying her and her friends shots all night. A bodyguard later grabbed her and took her to a waiting Roethlisberger in a hallway. The woman fled to the first door she saw, which happened to be a bathroom. It is alleged that Roethlisberger followed her into the room and raped her in a stall. A medical examination showed the woman to have “superficial laceration and bruising and slight bleeding in the genital area.”

The victim didn't want to go forward with her case.

But the NFL suspended Roethlisberger for 6-games for that one.

But then they reduced it to 4 games…for good behavior?

WTF?

This is still a sports card blog right?

I didn’t collect cards when all of these stories about Ben Roethlisberger came out. If I had, well, I’m not sure what I would’ve done. My inclination is always to believe women in sexual assault accounts. In both of these cases, I believed the women. I stopped being a Ben Roethlisberger fan almost immediately. Yes, I still admired his talents on the football field. I still got excited when he did something amazing. Then the hollowness hit. Nevada. Georgia. I got rid of my #7 jersey. I couldn't honestly support this. And, for years, I watched The Steelers from afar.

I did not have my own Terry Bradshaw.

But here’s where it gets contradictory.

            If our card collections tell a story, then what kind of story would my budding Steelers football card collection tell? A simple blast from the past? One full of some of the best Steelers to play the game? A collection of black and gold with one gaping hole? The decision came down to whether or not I was going to add Ben Roethlisberger cards to my collection.

            My answer?

            I did.

            I even have a couple of favorites.

            

        I don’t believe in cancel culture. Cancel culture is something made up by disgruntled white men

who do not want to cop to the wrongs they’ve done, the people they’ve hurt; and they do this with a 

little help from white women who stand by them, and certain media outlets who act more like right-

wing propaganda  rather than actual news. Personally, I don’t cancel authors. Or actors. Or 

musicians. Or anyone else that has been revealed, in such a fashion, to be a general d-bag. Hell, if I did, 

I’d have no books, movies, or music to listen to.

            I exaggerate…but you get the point.

            I've always made it a point to separate the artist from the art.

            And, I guess, the man from what he does for his sport.

            That said, I do believe in inclusiveness. Instead of cancelling someone, right your damned wrongs. Have more authors of color out there telling their own stories. More Transgendered authors, or actors instead of cis person playing the role. Make your music roster at your big record company more diverse. Don’t just remove someone and move on.

            This is easier said than done in sports.

            At least it was over a decade ago.

            Had Ben Roethlisberger been accused of sexual assault now, he may very well have been booted from the NFL, instead of given a 6-game suspension, I’m sorry, reduced to 4-game, for good behavior. Trevor Bauer anyone? 

               Or maybe he just had to take a stand against systematic racism for that to happen?

             Hmmmmm.....

            The culture is different now. But it’s hard to be more inclusive in a sport that is gendered. The Steelers couldn’t very well replace Roethlisberger with a woman, or add more women to the team. Sports aren’t books, movies, or music.

            I fear I’m getting off track here.

            My point is, if I have a point as to why Ben Roethlisberger cards are in my Steelers collection, is that I want my cards to tell a story. The story. Not including Ben’s cards is an erasure, which, as I’ve stated, I don’t believe in. Having Ben’s cards in my collection works on various levels. One the one hand, the very base hand, I have a collection of cards of one of the greatest Steelers quarterbacks of all-time. On the other hand, having Ben’s cards in my collection remind me of what he did. What men often do. And how they get away with it.

            They remind me of losing my personal franchise quarterback.

            I don’t know how deep into collecting Ben Roethlisberger cards I’ll go. For now, I bought his base Topps cards. And I have his rookie card coming, though it should’ve been here by now. Thanks ComC! I don’t believe I’ll become a Ben collector beyond his base cards. Ironically, I just want some representation.

            Maybe I’ll collect T.J. Watt.

            Like almost all Steelers fans, I paid pretty close attention to Ben Roethlisberger’s final season. I watched the team when I could. While there wasn’t much to be excited about, even though the Steelers somehow managed to secure a Wild Card spot in the playoffs, I found myself cheering at each Fourth Quarter comeback. Excited when the sparks of the old Roethlisberger showed up. I found myself mesmerized by the old clips of Ben Ben in the pocket. I raised my arms and cheered that Super Bowl pass to Santonio Holmes back in Super Bowl XL III. I clapped with everyone else during Roethlisberger’s final game at Heinz Field.

            But I also felt sad.

            Sad because of what happened to those women.

            Sad because we live in a society that allows that to happen to women.

            Sad because men get away with it. Or they get slapped on the wrist.

            4-games for good behavior?

            WTF.

            Least importantly, I felt sad for myself because, Ben Roethlisberger’s actions, made me miss out on being close to all of those years of greatness.

            Mostly I felt glad that Ben Roethlisberger was gone, and it was time to turn the page. The next guy behind center for the Steelers might not be the franchise quarterback. Hell, I can almost guarantee that he won’t be. And we may never see another Ben Roethlisberger in Pittsburgh. It took 20 years, 9 months and 16 days just to get from Terry Bradshaw to him. But I do hope that the next Steeler’s quarterback is someone whom I can root for without feeling a dark pit in the center of my stomach.

            That would be nice.

            But I’m going to put those Ben Roethlisberger cards in my collection. I’m going to put them there and I’m going to use them to remember. Because I can’t think of Ben Roethlisberger without thinking about that woman in Nevada. That coed in Georgia.

And if I’m a true fan, I shouldn’t want to.

Thanks for Reading! Happy Collecting!

In doing research for this I came across a great podcast called Special Teams which actually has an episode on Terry Bradshaw's last game. It looks like it was their actual LAST episode. You can find it right HERE.

The Guardian published a pretty good article on the complexities of cheering on a retiring Ben Roethlisberger, which you can read right HERE.

NEXT FRIDAY: Russell Streur will be back on Junk Wax Jay, discussing Rube Foster, the founder of the Negro National League. I'll be back on February 20th, talking about my Henry Aaron cards, and revisting my quality vs quantity conundrum.