A Quick Sunday Post...but Non-Sports?

Every once in awhile, I need a short post. Today is one of those days. I'm in a sorting-cards/organization mood, but I wanted to get a post up.

About two months ago, Mark Hoyle drew my attention to a card I had never heard of but which I most certainly needed in my collection. In 1954, Topps issued a two-series set of 78 cards each called "Topps Scoops." As this Sports Collectors Digest article from August of 2016 mentions, Topps condensed about 3000 years of history into these 156 cards -- focusing on European and U.S. history, of course.

Damn Topps -- always leaving out the South Americans.

Anyway, Mark tweeted a photo of card #130, a card called "Braves Go to Milwaukee." That card definitely fits into my Milwaukee baseball collection, so I started looking for it on eBay.

Most times I found it, the individual card was going for about $20. Then, last week, I found a group of eight cards from the set in "rounded corner" shape for $14.95 with shipping included. That group included the card I was looking for, so I put in a bid at the opening level and waited.

No one else bid, so I now have the card I was looking for.  It's a little bit rough, but I can always look for an upgrade:

These cards are slightly smaller than the 1975 Topps Mini set. Whereas the 1975 minis measured 2-1/4 inches by 3-1/8 inches, these Topps Scoops measure 2-1/16 inches by 2-15/16 inches. The cards feature colorful artwork for the news story highlighted -- some of which are really weird artwork, to be fair.

For example, this is supposed to represent New York Governor DeWitt Clinton emptying a barrel of Lake Erie water into the Atlantic Ocean. It looks more like Clinton is skewering a barrel on the end of some sort of animal tusk.

Certainly, the art is colorful, yet a lot of it is very much the 1950s hokey art style.

Like, what are these red buildings here? The twin lighters?

Ben Franklin looks awfully chill here as the key on his kite glows as if it were radioactive. Of course, the first generation of Mythbusters proved that this was almost certainly an urban legend.

This would have been recent history when the cards were released. The back of the card notes that the Douglas D-588-II Skyrocket reached 1,327 miles per hour -- twice the speed of sound, or Mach 2. As of this writing, it appears that NASA still has the manned air-speed record with a Guinness-certified flight on November 16, 2004 hitting Mach 9.6 -- nearly 7,000 miles per hour.

For whatever reason, I somehow never heard about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 -- which is still known as the most destructive river flood in United States history. Oddly, though, the back of this card cites to The Atlanta Constitution as the source for the news story. Not sure why a New Orleans newspaper wouldn't have been more appropriate. As the Wikipedia article about this flood notes, over 200,000 African Americans were displaced from their homes due to the floods, and many joined the Great Migration to the north and Midwest. 

It being the 1950s, though, we get a hulking white dude holding on to trees and a white dude on a raft in a suit. Because that makes sense, somehow.

Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, is shown above. I have nothing to add to this.

Finally, this one is a weird one. It's almost certainly a story that would have been bigger news in 1954 than to any of us today. The U.S. Air Force -- a branch of the military created just five years prior to this card's date -- held a press conference to say that flying saucers were not real. Those post-war years featured a fair number of "UFO" (the term coined by the Air Force) reports. What seems possible to me is that many of these UFOs were airplanes, light reflections, and other objects that the general public was not used to seeing in the air. 

These days, we're much more likely to know what these things are. Or, at least we are more likely to brush them off as airplanes. It's also possible that some of these UFOs were actually espionage activities of other countries.

It's possible we'll never know for sure.

At any rate, if you see a Scoop you like, let me know. Thanks for reading.

COMC Black Friday #3: Joe Adcock

Yesterday I posted about the Warren Spahn cards that I picked up off COMC around Thanksgiving. I had intended to combine Spahn with Joe Adcock's cards because of their playing for the Milwaukee Braves together and all. As I wrote about the three Warren musicians, though, stopping with them made a ton of sense.

So, today, let me finish my thought, so to speak. We had Warrens introducing Warrens yesterday, and I was going to do the same for Adcock -- have Joes introduce Joes.  But, today it's time for a different tack. I am going to intersperse baseball cards with some serious history. Apologies for either "boring" you with history or making the trite decision to include baseball cards with much more serious discussion.

Adcock was born and raised in Coushatta, Louisiana -- about 45 miles south of Shreveport in a rural area with a checkered past and a pretty dire-sounding present.

1978 TCMA The 60s I

1989 Swell Baseball Greats

Starting with Coushatta's dire present, well, how bad is it? Well, a population which has declined from a high of 2,299 in 2000 to an estimated 1,852 in 2015, caused almost certainly by the fact that nearly half the population -- 49.7% -- live below the poverty line. That includes 64% of the population in Coushatta who are below the age of 18. The median income for a household in 2000 was $18,958. That's the midpoint. Seriously.

W461 Exhibit

1982 G.S. Gallery All Time Greats

It is worth noting that the area today is represented by Republican Gerald Long -- a 72-year-old whose family history in Louisiana is long and quite checkered itself. Gerald's third cousin is the infamous Kingfisher himself, Huey Long. Huey was a populist demagogue whose platform was based around wealth redistribution under the "Share Our Wealth" program. Gerald, on the other hand, is the only member of the Long family to have been elected as a Republican. 

The area is a very conservative area and is noted as being the last parish in Louisiana to issue same-sex marriage licenses in 2015. Parish Clerk of Court Stuart Shaw had sided with then-Governor Bobby Jindal to defy the U.S. Supreme Court ruling. But that ended soon thereafter.

1963 Topps

1961 Nu-Baseball Scoops

Coushatta's checkered past came during Reconstruction, when the local White League got very active. Wikipedia informs me that the White League was "an American white paramilitary organizations started in 1874 to turn Republicans out of office and intimidate freedmen from voting and political organizing." What differentiated the White League from the Klan was the fact that it operated openly. People in the community knew exactly who they were and what their goal was -- the overthrow of the Republican Reconstruction governments in the south.

1956 Topps

1955 Bowman

In Coushatta, the White League forced 6 Republicans from office in August of 1874 and then killed all six before they could leave the state. These people included the brother and three brothers-in-law of Marshall H. Twitchell, a "carpetbagger" from Vermont who moved to the area after the Civil War and married a local woman. He became a successful cotton planter and was elected to the state legislature, and he appointed his family to the local offices in which they served.

The White League also killed between 5 and 20 freedmen (depending on what source you use) who had been escorting the Republicans from the state. This later became known as the Coushatta Massacre. President Ulysses Grant had to send in federal troops to pacify the Red River valley area where Coushatta is located, but the damage was done: voting by Republicans decreased and the Democrats took over the state legislature in 1876.

1982 TCMA Baseball's Greatest Sluggers

1978 TCMA The 1960s II

What followed? The Democrats took over in Louisiana for the better part of the next century and disenfranchised poor whites and African Americans to maintain control of the state. In fact, starting in 1876, it took until 1980 for Louisiana to elect a Republican governor. The chair of the Louisiana senate was a Democrat from 1877 until 2000. Both the State Senate and the State House of Representatives had a Democratic majority until 2011. That's how strong Reconstruction and its fallout were.

1962 Topps

1961 Topps Stamp...same photo (and same photo as used in 1962)

To be fair, Adcock and his family benefited from this. His family owned a farm and his dad was Ray Adcock -- the longtime sheriff of Red River Parish. His dad was sheriff starting in 1940 and ending in 1952.

To be fair to Joe, it wasn't like he got a ton of benefits. Joe grew up in a time where most people in the Parish did not have telephones -- as one source states, before 1950, only about 30 to 35 percent of parish households had telephones. Due to African American migration outward, population in the Parish declined steadily from 1940 onward. Adding insult to injury for the area, the Red River flooded at historic levels in 1945. By that point, though, Joe found himself at LSU on a basketball scholarship -- he clearly was a lucky boy to get out as he did.

2005 Upper Deck Classics

It's easy (at least for me) to forget at times where baseball and its players fit into the history of our country. This post originated simply because I was curious about the place where Joe Adcock was born, raised, and, in 1999, where he died. It turned into a history lesson for me -- and I hope you didn't mind coming along for the ride.

Updating Meet the Brewers #33: Ray Peters

My love of history compels me to write about Brewers history. As a kid and as I've mentioned in the past, one of my favorite "books" to read was the Milwaukee Brewers media guide. I pored over those guides, memorizing players' full names (like James Elmer Gantner, for example). 

The one section I especially loved was the Brewers all-time roster. In those days before I had access to a Baseball Encyclopedia -- you know, the old 8-pound behemoth that perhaps was last issued in 1996 by Simon & Schuster after first being published in 1969 by Macmillan -- I was left only with the name of a player and the notation of what year(s) he played for the Milwaukee franchise. Names like Bob Coluccio and Dave May jumped off the page, but even names like Dick Selma, Bruce Brubaker, and, yes, Ray Peters stuck with me.

It's what led me to my "Meet the Brewers" posts. When I started them, I guess I did not think that any of the players I was writing about would actually read the posts. Why would they? I mean, it's just some Brewers fanboy writing, right?

And then I wrote about Ray Peters. If you have not read that installment, the short story on Ray is that he was drafted five times before he finally signed a professional contract. That happened because Ray was finishing up his degree at Harvard. He debuted the very next season in the major leagues -- 1970 -- and made two starts. But after suffering injury problems and being traded to the Phillies organization, he called it quits after the 1971 season. 

Writing about Ray was a very fortuitous undertaking. It led to Ray and me exchanging multiple emails and my getting to hear great stories about walking Al Kaline, meeting Arnold Palmer when Arnie redesigned Ray's local golf course, and his dinner with Jorge Luis Borges, the famous Argentine writer, poet, and essayist.

Oh, and a few stories about his classmates at Harvard -- Al Gore, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Wallace, and the late Gram Parsons.

And, did I mention his internship with G. H. Walker & Sons brokerage firm on Wall Street? G.H. Walker, Jr. -- a/k/a Herbie -- was the second generation leader of the firm at the time, and Herbie was the one who told Ray that the Mets had drafted him in 1968. That led to Ray going to Shea at the All-Star break and meeting Gil Hodges, Yogi Berra, and later teammate Greg Goossen, among others. Herbie's nephew ended up doing pretty well for himself, what with getting elected as Vice President in 1980 and President in 1988.

There's tons more that I've learned about Ray. He's an incredibly interesting guy to correspond with -- and one who even has ties to one of the guys who is a player collection for me. Indeed, one of Ray's roommates in Clinton is the Brewers all-time leader in victories: Jim Slaton.

But I'm rambling now.

Ray also was incredibly kind enough to indulge me a bit. He sent me some great custom cards of him.

Let's start, though, with the photo of Ray with Bob Lemon:

Next, in honor of his time in major league camp in 1969, Ray has this 1969 Topps-style card:

The back of this card is awesome. Rather than describe it, let me show it to you:

For whatever reason, I've always like those sleeve cuffs. Because they carried over to the early years of the Brewers -- along with the color scheme, which Bud Selig had wanted to change to red and black to mirror his old Braves -- many of the early Brewers photos show players with those same sleeves. After all, ole Bud wouldn't get rid of all those uniforms that the team had paid for already!

Like this one, on a 1970 Topps-style card:

I guess this card looks strange to me because it is literally the first 1970 Topps card of a 1970 Brewers player that I have ever seen in my life. Sure, the style was resurrected by people like Baseball Cards Magazine in the early 1990s and had Robin Yount and Paul Molitor on it, but having Ray is just better. 

Of course, the 1971 design -- with the bold black borders that are nearly impossible to find in perfect condition -- are still a big fan favorite. It appears that Ray agrees, having two different cards in that style:



The one on the right is especially cool, since that 1971 set featured the facsimile signatures on them. I think, though, that the card on the left is closer to the actual fonts used. Both of them are awesome.

They are not my favorites though. My two favorites are based on completely different card sets altogether:

The 1956 Topps cards were such a well-designed card. An action shot along with a portrait is just a great look. This one is particularly cool because the action shot featured on the card is from Ray's minor league season in Triple-A Portland in 1970, and it is the photo of his teammates congratulating him on hitting a grand slam (using Floyd Wicker's bat, in fact!). This is a Bobw card, of course.

But, my absolute favorite is this one:

This card is in the style of a set from which I actually still have most of the cards. In 1983, Renata Galasso issued a Seattle Pilots set. For a couple bucks extra, you could get card #1 autographed by "infamous" author, Jim Bouton. I had read Ball Four twice by the time this set came out, and I talked my mom into buying it for me along with the complete sets from Topps, Donruss, and Fleer from that year. It wasn't a cheap buy -- probably $50 or $60 for all of those together -- but considering how that year's rookies turned out, it was worth it. 

Still, because of that purchase, I love this set. It's weird, it's strange, and it's perfect for the 1969 Pilots. 

Ray is a great guy, and he is willing to sign cards or possibly send you a thing or two about him. He even said I could share his address -- he truly loves the game of baseball! Here's his address:

Ray Peters
11013 Southerland Drive
Denton, TX 76207

And, since no post would be complete without a little music, how about "Return of The Grievous Angel" by Ray's departed classmate, Gram Parsons:




Many thanks to Ray for indulging my curiosity about him, for sending me cards, and for being so giving of his time.