Collecting 1955 Bowman Baseball: As Seen on TV

 Some behind the scenes before we go into this post. I typically use two sources for most of my information: Baseball Reference and Wikipedia. If I find something interesting in one of those two places, I will usually do some more research to try and tell a more interesting story. This time, I had to do research for the completely opposite reason.  As is the norm with these cards that people wrote on: Marshall wore neither #44 nor #28 By the numbers on Baseball Reference, Marshall had a solid career. He was a 3-time all-star over 11 seasons, and he never played in a post-season series. His Wikipedia page is 10 sentences long, and basically just summarizes his stats. So I had to dig a little bit more just to find interesting facts, but I did find a couple (thanks to SABR for a well-written biography). Marshall was born in Virginia, and went to college at Wake Forest in North Carolina. During his sophomore season, he began playing semi-pro baseball for the Atlanta Crackers. Even...

 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...