Collecting 1955 Bowman Baseball: As Seen on TV

 Today's story has a twist that you do not hear about very often. Jim Hearn's career started off like many of his era. He was signed by the St. Louis Cardinals as an amateur free agent just before the 1942 season. He spent 1942 in Columbus, Georgia, with the Red Birds of the Southern Atlantic League. He then spent 1943-46 in the Army. He came back late in the season to the Cardinals farm system, and in 1947 he made the major league team. He had two decent seasons as a starter for the Cardinals, but in 1949 he bounced between AAA and the Majors. In 1950, he only appeared in 6 games and compiled a 10.00 ERA before the Cardinals put him on waivers. He was signed by the New York Giants, and something really clicked in for him. Between 1950-1952, Hearn compiled an outstanding 42-19 record and was a key part to the Giants winning the 1951 pennant. Hearn was elected to the All-Star Game in 1952. Then it all turned south. He stayed with the Giants for four more seasons, but never had w...

 Jim Greengrass' card is our first encounter with one of the more notable printing irregularities Bowman had with the 1955 set.  This is one of the "Light Wood" cards which make up the first 64 cards of the 320 card set. If you look at the Bill Klaus card I shared before, you can clearly see the difference. There has never been a reason I've found for the color shift. Jim Greengrass was first signed by the New York Yankees at the age of 16 in 1944. He spent the next 7 seasons bouncing around in the Yankees farm system (mostly in A level ball) as well as spending two years in the military. It would seem that it was challenging to break into an outfield that had Joe DiMaggio or Mickey Mantle.  Finally, in 1952, he got his break. He was traded with three other players and $35,000 to the Cincinnati Reds (going by Redlegs at this time to ease fears during the "Red Scare") for Ewell Blackwell. Considering Blackwell only pitched in 13 games over the two seasons he ...

The first card I'm going to write about is one of the most recent that I have come across. I have never heard of Bill Klaus before I came across this card. Before I get to his career, let's take a look at the card itself. First of all, yes, this is the condition a large number of the cards I've come across for this set are in. At some point in the future, I might care more about the condition, but right now, I kind of like the roughness. It let's me know that people handled, traded, and played with these cards. Many of the cards from this set I've come across have has names written on them. A lot of them have creases running right down the middle. You know, where the rubber bands that held them together lived. Maybe this is my little form of protest against the world of grading cards and slabbing them in plastic, never to be held again. Bill Klaus' professional career started in 1946 at the age of 17 when he was signed by the Cleveland Indians as a free agent..A...

When I picked up trading card collecting as my COVID-19 Pandemic Hobby (TM), I was thinking it would be an inexpensive way to reconnect with a hobby I had as a kid, and finally get a hold of some of the cards I could never get way back then. Well, I was wrong on both counts.  While things were cheap when I started, I ultimately wasn't finding a lot of stuff I really enjoyed. I mean, "Santas Around the World" sounds like it could be interesting; however, the reality was that most of the cards I was finding were cheaply made cash grabs. I quickly got disillusioned. So, I decided to focus more on baseball cards. It was something I collected as a kid, but now, I had more money to sink into the hobby. Unfortunately, again, I found that the baseball card hobby had become a warped and twisted version of the hobby I once knew. In many aspects, it was closer to a lottery or flat out gambling than it was about collecting cards of the best players in the game. Then I decided that wh...