Re-habbing my 1955 All-American Unitas

Without a doubt, the custom card with which I was the least pleased upon my first effort was my 1955 All-American style Johnny Unitas.

Obviously, no updating to that classic college football card set would have been complete without a Johnny U card, but my initial effort really fell short of the mark.

When I originally searched for a contemporary photo of Unitas during his college days I found only a few rather poor images. They were all too small or too fuzzy, but I chose the best of the bunch and did what I could to colorize it and sharpen it up for use on my card.

As if the photo wasn't bad enough, I somehow managed to "over expose" the black-and-white background action photo. washing out much of the detail and giving it a ghastly ghostly appearance that was not at all in keeping either with the original Topps cards or with my own latter-day reconstructions.

I even muffed the choice of school logo, picking the most insipid cardinal when I really should have gone with a more feisty bird. Like Topps did in 1955, I like to avoid using official school logos on my cards; it gives them more of my own personal touch.

I've known for a long time that I would someday replace my original Unitas effort, but had pretty much despaired of finding a better photo. Imagine my surprise then, the other day when I image-googled "Unitas Louisville" to find that the football Hall of Fame had acquired a much better college image. The photo on their site had the posed action shot outlined in white, indicating it was probably used as a newspaper photo some time in the past.

With a couple of hours of work with Photoshop, I was able to clean up and colorize the picture.

I dropped a new background photo into my existing Unitas card "frame," replaced the cardinal logo and had my new and improved Johnny Unitas All-American card. It is a great improvement to my set.

As with the other cards that I have replaced, I was able to use my original card back, so the new card was done in a releatively short time.

Now, if I could just find a really nice Jim Brown Syracuse photo . . .

Tales of T212 #26 : William (or Walter) B. Stevens

Back in the early 1980s I thought I'd combine my interests in minor league baseball and vintage baseball cards by assembling a collection of the Obak cigarette cards that were distributed on the West Coast in 1909, 1910 and 1911.I didn't realize it then, but those cards are so much rarer than most of the contemporary T206 cards from "Back East" that putting together complete sets of the Obak could take decades to accomplish -- and that's if a guy had more money than God to buy the cards when they became available.At about the time I started my Obak collection I also started researching the players who appeared in the sets. Over the course of several long Wisconsin winters I pored over microfilms of The Sporting News and The Sporting Life from the period several years before to several years after the Obak cards circulated, making prodigious notes on 3x5 file cards for each player in the set.I gave up trying to collect the T212s (that's the catalog number Jefferson Burdick assigned the three sets in the pioneering American Card Catalog in 1939), long ago, and have since sold off all my Obaks, one-by-one, first on eBay, then on the Net 54 baseball card forum. As I was selling each card, I included interesting tidbits about each player from my notes. The bidders seemed to like learning a little bit about these guys on the cards, so I thought I'd now begin sharing their stories here. Please excuse the lo-res nature of the card pictures; they were scanned for my auctions many years ago.

The evergreens in the background of Stevens' 1910 Obak card (it was his only year in the cigarette company's three years of issues) just scream Northwestern League. It is those backdrops that give the Obaks a unique look that attracts many collectors.

Now we just have to figure out who the guy on the card is. My file card indicates that it is William B. Stevens. The SABR Minor League Database thinks it is Walter B. Stevens. Could both be the same guy? Their records in the SABR database don't overlap, they were both outfielders and there is no biographical information about either Bill or Wally.

The player identified as Walter B. Stevens debuted with Duluth (Minn.) of the Northern Copper Country League in 1906, then took a big step from that Class C circuit to Milwaukee in 1907, My research failed to turn up the Duluth connection, but does note that Stevens was traded from the Brewers to Spokane of the Northwestern League for 1908. During the 1909 season he went from Spokane to Tacoma, for whom he also played in 1910. That's where the SABR data loses track of Walter Stevens and picks up the record of William Stevens.

Both SABR and I agree that Stevens (whether William or Walter) began the 1911 season with Helena in the Union Association (Class D). When the Boise Irrigators released Stevens, he went to Boise, from whom he was purchased by Rock Island of the Illinois-Indiana-Iowa League.

The 1912 season found Stevens back in the UA, with Ogden. His baseball trail ends there.

Tales of T212 #25 : Bobby James, Anson Mott

Back in the early 1980s I thought I'd combine my interests in minor league baseball and vintage baseball cards by assembling a collection of the Obak cigarette cards that were distributed on the West Coast in 1909, 1910 and 1911.I didn't realize it then, but those cards are so much rarer than most of the contemporary T206 cards from "Back East" that putting together complete sets of the Obak could take decades to accomplish -- and that's if a guy had more money than God to buy the cards when they became available.At about the time I started my Obak collection I also started researching the players who appeared in the sets. Over the course of several long Wisconsin winters I pored over microfilms of The Sporting News and The Sporting Life from the period several years before to several years after the Obak cards circulated, making prodigious notes on 3x5 file cards for each player in the set.I gave up trying to collect the T212s (that's the catalog number Jefferson Burdick assigned the three sets in the pioneering American Card Catalog in 1939), long ago, and have since sold off all my Obaks, one-by-one, first on eBay, then on the Net 54 baseball card forum. As I was selling each card, I included interesting tidbits about each player from my notes. The bidders seemed to like learning a little bit about these guys on the cards, so I thought I'd now begin sharing their stories here. Please excuse the lo-res nature of the card pictures; they were scanned for my auctions many years ago.

Two of the emptiest note cards in my file box of Obak cigarette card subjects are those of Anson Mott and Bobby James. Other than their names, their positions and the teams on which they appeared on these baseball cards, there is nothing of note to report.

Digging into the SABR Minor League Database helps flesh out their baseball careers, which, while undistinguished, were still such as to earn them each two baseball card appearances.


Bobby James was born Robert E. James in Seattle, though the date in not found in baseball records. Naturally enough he began playing pro ball for the Seattle Siwashes in 1904, as a first baseman. He started the 1905 season with Seattle, but after hitting just .225, he was sent down to Bellingham.

His one baseball job off the West Coast came in 1906 with Indianapolis, who tried him at third base. He batted a modest .244 and was returned to the Northwest League, where he spent 1907-1909 with the Spokane Indians as their second sacker.

The 1910-1912 seasons were spent with the Vancouver Beavers, also in the Northwest League. He played secodn base in 1910, third in 1911 and was tried out on the mound in 1912. Despite a remarkable record of 29 wins and only seven losses, he returned to Seattle to end his pro career in 1913-1914, again at third base. The fact that he appeared in only 69 games in 1913 suggests that an injury to his throwing arm may have forced him off the mound after the 1912 season.

The date and place of James' death are not found in baseball records.


Anson Mott appeared in both the 1909 and 1910 Obak sets; in the former he was with Vancouver, in the latter he is pictured as a Tacoma Tiger.

Over a seven-year minor league career, Mott played at first, second and third base, and in the outfield. He was born in 1882, but when and where are unrecorded. He began his pro career at second base with Dallas and Corsicana of the Class C Texas League in 1904. He split 1905 with Oskaloosa in the grandly named Iowa League of Professional Baseball, a Class D circuit, and Colorado Springs/Pueblo in the Western League.

Mott reached the pinnacle of his career in the Pacific Coast League with Seattle (1906), Portland (1907 and 1909) and Vernon (1909) , never hitting above .250. In 1908 he played for Fresno in the outlaw California League.

His last engagement in professional baseball appears to have been with Tacoma in 1910, at the age of 28.

Tales of T212 #24 : Jimmy Wiggs

Back in the early 1980s I thought I'd combine my interests in minor league baseball and vintage baseball cards by assembling a collection of the Obak cigarette cards that were distributed on the West Coast in 1909, 1910 and 1911.I didn't realize it then, but those cards are so much rarer than most of the contemporary T206 cards from "Back East" that putting together complete sets of the Obak could take decades to accomplish -- and that's if a guy had more money than God to buy the cards when they became available.At about the time I started my Obak collection I also started researching the players who appeared in the sets. Over the course of several long Wisconsin winters I pored over microfilms of The Sporting News and The Sporting Life from the period several years before to several years after the Obak cards circulated, making prodigious notes on 3x5 file cards for each player in the set.I gave up trying to collect the T212s (that's the catalog number Jefferson Burdick assigned the three sets in the pioneering American Card Catalog in 1939), long ago, and have since sold off all my Obaks, one-by-one, first on eBay, then on the Net 54 baseball card forum. As I was selling each card, I included interesting tidbits about each player from my notes. The bidders seemed to like learning a little bit about these guys on the cards, so I thought I'd now begin sharing their stories here. Please excuse the lo-res nature of the card pictures; they were scanned for my auctions many years ago.

The back of Jimmy Wiggs' 1911 Obak card (he was also in the 1909 set) describes him as a "giant in statute," and at 6' 4" and 200 lbs., he was much larger than the average ballplayer at the turn of the 20th century.

Wiggs was born in Norway in 1876, but he was not the first Norwegian to play major league ball in the U.S. That was John Anderson, who debuted with Brooklyn in 1894.

Wiggs began his pro career in 1902 with Helena, in the last season of the Class B Pacific Northwest League. His record at Helena in unrecorded, but it was good enough to gain the big right-hander a trial with the Cincinnati Reds at the start of the 1903 season. With no won-loss record and a 5.40 ERA, he was quickly returned to the minors, where the PNWL had expanded and moved up to Class A status as the Pacific National League. Wiggs returned to Helena, then moved on to San Francsico and Portland/Salt Lake City. He won 23 games that year, losing 18.

When the Pacific Coast League was formed in 1904, the PNL lost half its teams and returned to a Class B circuit. Wiggs remained on the staff for Salt Lake City, then went to New Orelans, where he finished the season with a 14-5 record.

That earned "Big Jim" another call-up to the major leagues, with Detroit. Through '05 and into the first half of 1906, Wiggs was 3-3 for the Tigers. When Brooklyn owner Charlie Ebbets bought Wiggs from Detroit, and offered him less money than he had been making, he left Organized Baseball to pitch for Altoona in the outlaw Tristate League. When the TSL joined the official minor leagues in 1907, Wiggs was removed from the blacklist and won 15 games.

He jumped (his other nickname was "Grasshopper") back to an independent league, the California State circuit, with Fresno for 1908. In 1909 he joined Oakland in the PCL. Wiggs had a couple of memorable outings for the Oaks against the San Francisco in 1909. He no-hit the Seals in May, then on June 8 went the distance in a 24-inning 1-0 loss. He won 19 games that season, and lost 24.

The 1910 season found Wiggs with Montreal, for whom he was 8-16. He was back on the Coast in 1911, again with Oakland. When he started the season at 3-5, he was sold to Seattle of the Northwest League, where he won 19, losing seven.

Wiggs went back to the independent California League with Tulare in 1912, and if he played pro ball after that, it is unrecorded.

In the off-seasons, Wiggs was an accountant for an insurance firm. He died in Xenia, Ohio in 1963 at the age of 86.

Do-overs on my first custom cards

I don't remember now what convinced me to try my hand at creating custom cards. It was probably the fact that a computer I bought three or four generations ago came with a Photoshop Elements program in its software package.

I do know that since a was a childhood collector in the 1950s I had wanted to make my own cards. Like many of you, I suppose, I tried my hand at creating my own cards with crayons, pictures cut out of magazines, etc.

Once I was armed with a computer graphics program and a " . . . for Dummies" book to get me started, I was on my way to a fun new hobby.

My first card was created in the late summer of 2003. It was a Peyton Manning card done in the style of one of my childhood favorite sets, the 1955 Topps All-American college football cards.

To get the photo I needed, I google-searched Peyton Manning and found what at the time I thought was a suitable photo; it's the bare-headed chest-up portrait shown here. After years of creating cards and refining my processes, I now realize that the original Manning photo was too low-resolution.

The background I chose for my first card was that used on the original '55 card of Bowden Wyatt. I had to touch up a few of the black-and-white figures once I had dropped my Manning picture into the frame. If you looked closely at that first custom card, you'd notice that I added a left arm to player #98 at the left end. I doubt you can see the touch-up on this scan, but by my current standards, it was a clumsy attempt. I was more successful in removing some typography from the area of Manning's left shoulder; if I deidn't mention it, I doubt anyone would notice.

After studying more of the original All-American cards over the years as I worked on completing my set of the 1955s, I later realized that I had erred in not extending Manning's left arm and elbow into the green inner border. Regardless, by the time I was done with that first card in my "update" All-American set, I was pretty pleased with myself.

A couple of years after the first Manning card was completed, I saw a college football magazine for sale that had a great cover photo of Manning in a posed action shot. It dawned on me that since I was the creator of my custom card series, I was free to revise my work. The result was the version you see here, with the L.A. Coliseum background. I had to do more touching up on the background photo, but by that time I had gotten better at it and the improvements are seamless.

I'm still not 100% satisfied with my second-edition Manning card because the borders came out a bit more "aged" than I would have liked. On most of my custom cards I avoid using snow white borders, adding a bit of tint to give them a look more befitting what we commonly think of when we think of 40-50 year old cards.

I have also done a second edition of the card I numbered 102 in my "Second Series" of All-Americans.

As a teen-ager I had enjoyed countless times listening to one of Bill Cosby's comedy albums on which he recounted his days of playing college football at Temple.

From early on, I knew a Cos card was going to be part of my set. I had to wait quite awhile to find a photo of Cosby that I could use, and when I did, it was a picture that would take work. The black-and-white photo that I purchased on eBay pictured Cosby is a sweatshirt, but it was a portrait of the actor in his earlier years, so it seemed appropriate for a football card picturing him in his college days.

To put Cosby in uniform, I copied the picture of Johnny Luljack from his 1955 Topps card and substituted Cosby's head. I had colorized the portrait and changed the color of the jersey to the Temple colors.

I never really thought about doing a second version of my Bill Cosby college card until I was perusing the eBay offerings of a New York dealer who regularly has stellar offerings of great vintage sports and celebrity photos. Among his pictures was what was probably a Temple athletic department publicity photo of Cosby in his playing days.

From my perspective as a custom card creator, the right-click, "Copy Photo" function is one of the greatest things about the internet. While I was outbid in my attempt to buy the original black-and-white print, I had taken the precaution of copying the image from the auction, so I had access to the new, more contemporary, photo. A little bit of colorization and I had what I feel is a nice upgrade to my Cosby card.

Standard Catalog Update #36a : 1954 A's stickers checklist update

We have an update to our posting of Nov. 28 concerning the 1954 Philadelphia A's player stickers.

Nothing new to report as to who issued them or how they were distributed, but thanks to reader Bill Bareuther, we can add four more players to the checklist.

Bill reports the existence of Charlie Bishop (pitching pose), Tom Giordano (fielding), Carl Scheib (pitching) and Bill Upton (pitching).

That brings the number known to 24.

Tales of T212 #23 : Harl Maggert -- Bad-ass Ballplayer

Back in the early 1980s I thought I'd combine my interests in minor league baseball and vintage baseball cards by assembling a collection of the Obak cigarette cards that were distributed on the West Coast in 1909, 1910 and 1911.I didn't realize it then, but those cards are so much rarer than most of the contemporary T206 cards from "Back East" that putting together complete sets of the Obak could take decades to accomplish -- and that's if a guy had more money than God to buy the cards when they became available.At about the time I started my Obak collection I also started researching the players who appeared in the sets. Over the course of several long Wisconsin winters I pored over microfilms of The Sporting News and The Sporting Life from the period several years before to several years after the Obak cards circulated, making prodigious notes on 3x5 file cards for each player in the set.I gave up trying to collect the T212s (that's the catalog number Jefferson Burdick assigned the three sets in the pioneering American Card Catalog in 1939), long ago, and have since sold off all my Obaks, one-by-one, first on eBay, then on the Net 54 baseball card forum. As I was selling each card, I included interesting tidbits about each player from my notes. The bidders seemed to like learning a little bit about these guys on the cards, so I thought I'd now begin sharing their stories here. Please excuse the lo-res nature of the card pictures; they were scanned for my auctions many years ago.

Of all the bad boys to be found on the checklists of the 1909-1911 Obaks, perhaps none was badder than Harl Maggert. He's not as well known because, unlike future Black Sox Chick Gandil and Buck Weaver, Maggert confined his transgressions to the minor leagues, where he had a long and productive career.

Maggert was born in 1883 in Cromwell, Ind., and began his pro career close to home at the Class C level in 1906, at age 23, with Ft. Wayne and Sharon (Pa.) A speedy outfielder, he had decent power with the bat and for 1907 moved up to the Class B Central League at Wheeling, from whose roster the Pittsburgh Pirates picked him up in September.

Maggert was hitless in six at-bats for the Bucs and was turned back to Wheeling to open the 1908 season. In mid-season he went East to join Springfield of the Connecticut State League, where he hit .313. He was batting .307 for the Ponies in 1909 when Springfield sold him for $1,500 to Oakland of the Pacific Coast League . . . at the top of the minor league ladder.

With the Oaks in 1910 he led the PCL with 58 stolen bases. After batting .314 with eight home runs in 1911, the Oaks sold Maggert to the Philadelphia Athletics for the 1912 season. He played the full year with the A's, batting .256 and filling in as a fourth outfielder.

Maggert was returned to the PCL for 1913 and spent the next five years with the Los Angeles Angels. His last year (1917) with the Angels was turbulent. Manager Frank Chance fined and suspended Maggert for beating up the club trainer. On July 28, at Sacramento, he fought with umpire Red Held, accusing him of betting on the game. Maggert's accusations prompted an investigation by league officials, who cleared him, causing the president to threaten a $100 fine and suspension to any player, "who ever mentions the betting scandal."

Maggert was dealt to San Francisco for the war-shortened 1918 season. In 1919 he went to Salt Lake City for two years -- his last in pro ball. Ironically, Maggert was suspended in late 1920 for fixing ballgames during the pennant race of 1919. Blacklisted by Organized Baseball, Maggert went into the coal business. In the off-seasons he had worked in his father-in-law's coal business un Berkeley. Maggert died in 1963 in Fresno.

A son, Harl W. Maggert played briefly with the Boston Braves in 1938.

Maggert appeared only in the 1911 Obak set, though he can be found on many other PCL issues of the 1910s.