1971 Kellogg's Printings - What Was the Order for the Frank Howard Variations?

Recently I read a few things about the 1971 Kellogg's baseball printings.  Some of the cards have Xograph on the back and some have 1970 Xograph on the back.

I read that the Xograph back was printed first, then it was switched to 1970 Xograph.  After that corrections were made to cards and there was another print run using 1970 Xograph on the back.

Generally that made sense.  Based on most of my variations that makes sense too.  For cards with statistical changes I have one Xograph back and two different stat lines with the 1970 Xograph back.  I still don't know if that is correct.

The reading also mentioned that there are five variations of cards with Xograph backs.  That means they printed Xograph backs in two different print runs and 1970 Xograph backs in at least two print runs.

The 1971 Frank Howard card doesn't seem to fit into this.  The correct card (1968 Washington AL) is shown with an Xograph back and the incorrect card (1968 Washington NL) has a 1970 Xograph back.  The similar Felipe Alou error followed the pattern of being incorrect with the Xograph back.

Does anyone know more about this?  Does anyone have other Frank Howard variations?

Pee Wee Baseball Standings that I Couldn't See From Right FIeld

I've mentioned before that I played on the Tigers in Pee Wee baseball.  That was four years.  We didn't have a re-draft each year.  Every team started out having whatever players were left over from the previous year's team.  Any kid who didn't move up to the 9-11 year-old league always new what team they'd be on the next year.

That certainly helped me become a fan of the Tigers.  It helped that Al Kaline was playing for them still.  It was nice of my brothers to let me know when I was 5 or 6 years old that he played right field.  We all know why I was put there and it wasn't for my throwing arm.

Where I live now every year is different.   My kids end up on a different team each time.  And there have been years where MLB didn't allow their team names to be used without con$ent or something like that.  I'm not going to look into any of those rules/meetings/decisions/court cases but I know it was an issue at some time.

Back to my Pee Wee Tigers.  Unlike today's leagues where one can find out the scores and standings on a website and via Twitter, we had limited access to this information.  Almost every day that there was a game, which was every day but Sunday, we'd want to see the updated standings.  The solution was as simple as it was beautiful.

The person in charge of the park district league had a great way to display the standings.  Outside of his office at the park he had hooks that resembled something an elementary teacher would use.  He used a series of team names and numbers on metal hooks.  I spent lots of time checking out the standings since the park was near my house.

The league was separated into AL and NL with six teams in each league.  Just like the big leagues at that time, my Tigers never played NL teams unless we made it to the World Series.  We never made it there either so I never played against my neighbor who was on the Cardinals.  More about that neighbor and an umpire in a future post.

Back to the standings board.  The board was a shrine in our eyes.  I imagine kids of today might walk up and change Cubs to Crud and mess with the standings but that wasn't even an option for us.  Looking at that board and the upcoming schedule to see how the Tigers could move up in the standings was an important part of the day.

If anyone has a picture of that board from inside the old Scottsdale Park I'd love to see them.   There were great memories there including a 22-0 game where the winning team got no hits.  There was no coach pitching in these days.

Let's Get a Kellogg's Card of Willie Mays Hayes and Willie Mays Johnson?

Sometime after Willie Mays Aikens and before Willie Mays Hayes I worked with someone named Willie Johnson.  I think that was his last name.  He was a big guy, probably at least 6-foot-3.  He supposedly was a 16-inch softball legend around the Northside of Chicago.  I don't doubt it all as he was one of the strongest people I'd met up to that point.

Mr. Johnson, probably a kid during WWII, and my boss (Joe Burton) would supervise me during my summer employment during two hot Chicago summers.  While watching the Cubs together my boss would tell the legendary tales of Willie Johnson.  

Johnson was a power hitter of course.  In his early 60s (maybe?) he probably weighed in at at least 250 pounds so that wasn't a surprise.  He worked in construction and when he shook the hand of a skinny runner like me I just tried not to get injured.  What was a surprise was that the stories also told of his gazelle-like efforts in the outfield.  

My next move could have gotten me into lots of trouble, but instead it kind of endeared me to the authority figures.  We all got along well so I started calling him Willie Mays Johnson.  Lucky for me that both Mr. Johnson and Mr. Burton enjoyed everything baseball so they saw that as a good thing to be compared to Willie Mays.  

I rarely ever think about my two summers working at the college I attended.  I've mentioned watching the games but not much about my bosses.  I wish I could have been an adult when I worked with these two guys because I bet we'd have had a lot of good conversations.  I probably wasn't ready for that as a college student but we sure were able to bond with the day baseball on WGN.  

Thanks to Mr. Johnson and Mr. Burton for some great memories.  I wonder if there will ever been another player tagged with Willie Mays as part of his name.        

Are There Other Minor League Kellogg's Cards?

I saw this sheet available recently on ebay.  Does anyone know anything about this?

Do other teams have minor league Kellogg's cards?  Are there any future major leaguers in any of these sets?

Can Baseball-Reference.com Compare Their Kellogg's Cards?

Larry Bowa was in the Phillies organization from 1965 to 1982.  At that point he was traded to the Cubs for their shortstop Ivan DeJesus.  The Cubs also received Ryne Sandberg in the deal.  

Bowa was a big part of the Cubs 1984 team that managed to self-destruct in the playoffs.  It sure was a fun team to watch.  This was a few years before lights existed at Wrigley Field and before the 3:05 pm starts became common.

My summer job was tied to the schedule.  If the Cubs were home we worked hard until 1:20 pm and then spent lots of time watching the game until work ended at 4:00 pm.  If the Cubs were off or on the road lunch time was used to eat and probably spend some time in the gym.  Either way, summer work was never dreaded.

One of my favorite things about baseball-reference.com is the Similarity Scores.  For each player it compares him to other players.  For Bowa he is considered to be most similar as a batter to long-time Cub Don Kessinger (Baseball-Reference.com).  I like that because I think Bowa was always rated well and Kessinger seemed a bit under-appreciated.

Let's see how their stats compare.   Both played 16 years.

Batting average - Bowa .260 - Kessinger .252
Homers - Bowa 15 - Kessinger 14
RBIs - Bowa 525 - Kessinger 527
2B - Bowa 262 - Kessinger 254
3B - Bowa 99 - Kessinger 80
OPS - Bowa 626 - Kessinger 620

I can see why the Baseball-Reference.com algorithm rates them as extremely similar.  Nice work on their part.

Both Bowa and Kessinger ended up being managers too.

Is George Sisler the Only St. Louis Brown with a Kellogg's Card?

Watching the Bing Crosby classic "Going My Way" from 1944 last night inspired today's post.  In the movie Father O'Malley (Crosby) is a big fan of the American League St. Louis Browns.  He mentions practicing with the team and that the team gave him a jacket and hat when he leaves town for a new position.

I found out that only two Hall of Famers spent the majority of their career with the Browns who had a long history of losing.  Those two were Bobby Wallace and George Sisler.

Sorry, I'm having problems getting photos uploaded so I'm copying stuff from the internet lately.

Father O'Malley mentions that before hie became a priest that he was a member of a singing group called O'Malley's Orioles.  That's quite an interesting choice of names for his group.  Ten years later the St. Louis Browns moved and became the Baltimore Orioles.

Bill Veeck, known well by those of us from Chicago, became the owner of the Browns in 1951.   Attendance doubled and the team was on the rise in 1952.  According to baseball-reference.com Veeck knew that St. Louis could only support one team so he hoped to run the Cardinals out of town.

When the Busch family purchased the team in 1953, Veeck certainly lost any financial advantage over the Cardinals.  

Before the 1953 season Veeck planned to move the team to Milwaukee, where he had previously owned a minor league team, but the league moved the Braves there from Boston which ruined Veeck's plan.  He then targeted Baltimore and Los Angeles but both possibilities failed to materialize. 

Fans knew of Veeck's plans so attendance dropped.  The team suffered on the field too since Veeck was out of money and the team had to unload players.  After the season the AL once again denied Veeck's plan to move the team to Baltimore.  Once Veeck sold the team to a Balitmore lawyer, Clarence Miles, the AL allowed the move.  Veeck seemed to correctly understand that the AL rejections to his moves were personal - the other owners wanted him out.

Father O'Malley would certainly have been hurt by the move of his beloved Browns, but what would his take be on the nickname of Orioles?

In the 1944 movie what would Father O'Malley have thought of the Los Angeles Browns?  Two days after Pearl Harbor, after initially approving the move, the AL denied the move of the Browns to L.A. since the USA was entering World War II and travel restrictions would be quite an issue for all of the teams.  

Batting Gloves in 1970 Kellogg's Baseball Cards

This is some confusion as to when batting gloves began being used in games during the 1960s.
After reading about Hawk Harrelson and his batting gloves I decided to check all of the 1970 Kellogg's cards for batting gloves.  Harrelson is shown with his glove, but who else is shown?

The following players are shown with one glove:

Tommy Agee

Frank Robinson

Curt Flood

Bill Freehan

Boog Powell

Lou Brock is shown with with two batting gloves.  That looks great with his Cardinal colors.

Ollie Brown has a visible top-hand glove, so I assume that he's got one on the bottom hand.

These sure look like golf gloves.  When did companies actually begin making batting gloves?  More on that later and when those gloves showed up on a Kellogg's card.