Doubting the Existence of a few Orioles Crown Autographs

Orioles autograph collectors are lucky that the Crown Gasoline card set was issued in 1991 to commemorate the final season that the team played in Memorial Stadium. The set included every single player who appeared in even a single game for the team from their introduction in Baltimore in 1954 through the early '91 season. In many cases, the Crown card is the only baseball card made of those players, and certainly the only Orioles card that exists for quite a few others.

The set can also be a bit of a curse to someone like me, who would be happy to have any autograph of many of these players if not for the Crown set picturing them as Orioles. As I can attest, it is much easier to find any random signature of a player as opposed to trying to find a specific card that is signed. Which leads me to this post.

As I said, the Crown set came out in 1991, so any player that passed away before that time and is included in the set obviously never signed their card; 32 former Orioles players died before the set came out so there are no signed Crowns of those guys. Another five died during 1991, and as the set was available for sale in four parts (May 18, June 29, August 11, & September 16) most of those five passed away before they feasibly could've signed their Crown cards.

Finally getting to the main point of this post, the list of Orioles autographs I have been chasing after is at a scant 15 players I have been trying to track down upgrades for; and of those 15, 8 are only pictured as Orioles on their crown cards, John Anderson, Stan Jefferson, Ed Lopat, Chuck Oertel, Carl Powis, Joe Taylor, Valmy Thomas, and Marv Throneberry. Of that group, Stan Jefferson is still alive, so I can hold out hope that one day he will sign his Crown card, or I will come across a signed copy. Of the others, I have seen signed copies of Taylor's Crown, and have been told of other collectors who have Lopat & Thomas in their collections.

Which leaves us with John Anderson, Chuck Oertel, Carl Powis, & Marv Throneberry. I recently came across the story of an older gentleman who has collected autographs of this set since it came out in 1991. And he doesn't have any of those four signed Crowns, among a few others. Which leads me to believe that those signed Crowns might simply not exist. And if that's the case, I'm going to remove them from my need list. 

If anyone out there owns, or has ever seen a signed Crown card of any of those four, please let me know, because I am at the point where I am seriously doubting their existence. Anderson and Powis largely fell off the map after their playing careers ended, and their autographs seem to be extremely limited. I don't know much about Oertel's post playing career, but his autographs are also quite limited. Throneberry was a Miller Lite spokesman after his career, but passed away in 1994 after battling cancer, so it's possible that he was too ill to sign once the set came out. 

Again, if anyone knows if these signed cards do in fact exist, please let me know. Because after almost a decade of trying to track them down, I think they might just not be out there.

Thank You Bleacher Report

I don't often pay attention to the stats that detail readership information about my blog, and I think that most of my fellow bloggers are the same way. We don't write to become popular, but rather because it's what we want to do, and we are going to write about what we want to write, when we want to write it.

That being said, I doubt that there is more than one or two other bloggers who can say that they have NEVER glanced at their stats. I mean, if zero people ever read what I wrote, I think that might have discouraged me to the point of stopping this whole crazy endeavor. Luckily for me, at least a few people pay attention to what I write (some even on a regular basis!) so that provides me with the drive to write on days when I'm not feeling it.

Well, when I was looking at my stats the other days, specifically my traffic sources, I noticed that I had an abnormally large number of references from BleacherReport.com; if you click that link, it will take you to this page:

And if you click that "All rich in content" linked text, where do you think it takes you? You guessed it, right to this little blog here. Specifically this post about Marvelous Marv. Which is cool and all, being that bleacher report certainly has a much, much larger readership than my blog, and it brought many people to my site that would never have otherwise come across it.

So that not particularly well-written (and this honestly could be said about most of my writings) post has more than twice as many pageviews (5,330!) as anything else I've written over the past four years. And I have to thank bleacher report for that.

Unpossible Autograph Friday- Marv Throneberry, Oriole #173

"Marvelous" Marv Throneberry played seven seasons in the Major Leagues between 1955-63 and is remembered for his occasionally inept fielding, especially during his time with the 1962 Mets, who were an all-time MLB worst 40-120 record. His nickname was a humourous knock on his play, but from all accounts, he took it all in stride, and even had a 5,000 member strong fan club.

Marv was one of the best minor league power hitters during the mid 1950's and made his MLB debut by playing in a single game for the 1955 Yankees. He returned to play for the Bronx Bombers in 1958-59 and was a part of their '58 World Series Championship team. He was traded to the Kansas City A's after the '59 season and was later flipped to the Orioles in the middle of the 1961 season. He made his Orioles debut on June 8, 1961 and played 65 games for the O's before being traded to the Mets in May 1962.

Many of the funny stories about Marvelous Marv come from his season plus with the Mets, and typically involved or were told by his manager, Casey Stengel. The most famous tale tells of a game in which Throneberry tripled but was called out for not having touched second base. When Stengel went out to argue the call, the umpire supposedly said "Don't bother arguing Casey, he missed first base, too." 

Marv's defense at first base was also an issue, and his .981 fielding percentage in 1962 was not equaled by another other Major Leaguer until Cesar Cedeno matched it in 1979. 

He retired after the 1963 season at just 29 years old, and later went on to star in commercials for Miller Lite that poked fun at his troubles on the baseball field. Here's one if you would like to check out his acting skills.

Marv's only Orioles card was his inclusion in the 1991 O's Crown set, which came out a few years before his death. It's possible that he signed a few copies before passed away, although I have yet to see one. For now, I'm pretty happy with my Orioles signed postcard/Mets baseball card combination, but I will hold out hope to come across a signed Crown card one day. 

He died of cancer on June 23, 1994; he was only 60. RIP Marv, thanks for the memories! 


To briefly explain the misspelled/made up title of these weekly posts: Every Friday, I profile a former Oriole who has passed away. I've substituted the word unpossible for impossible as an homage to a line from "The Simpsons". Young Ralph Wiggum, who is a few pennies short of a dollar, says "Me fail English? That's unpossible."

Pol comes through again! 2 of 2

Here are the rest of the Orioles autographs that Pol sent me.

Johnny "Bear Tracks" Schmitz 1956

This is the second time that Johnny has been featured on my blog. I had previously received a Dodgers autographed card from Aaron but since Johnny is wearing the black and orange (in black and white) on this Crown card, it immediately slides into my collection. The Dodgers card is now up for trade if anyone is interested.

Johnny pitched in 18 games for the O's at the end of a fairly long career. He had led the NL with 135 strikeouts in 1946, been elected to two All-Star teams and received MVP votes after three seasons. He earned his nickname due to the combination of his shuffling gait and size 14 feet.

Lou Sleater 1958

Lou pitched for 6 teams over 7 seasons of his career and threw his last pitch in the majors for the '58 O's. Lou hit a walk-off HR in 1957 while pitching for the Tigers, a very uncommon feat for a pitcher.

Hal Smith 1955-56

Hal started his career for the O's and later played for the same 1960 World Series Champion Pirates team that Gino Cimoli played for. Hal hit a HR to give the Pirates a short-lived lead in the 8th inning of game 7 of that series but is overlooked since Bill Mazeroski hit his famous blast in the next inning to win the game and the series. Another interesting fact is that during the 1960-61 seasons, Hal was one of two NL catchers named Hal Smith. That's even more confusing than keeping track of the catching Molina brothers!

Gene Stephens 1960-61

Gene patrolled all three outfield positions for the Orioles for almost exactly one season between June 9, 1960 and June 8, 1961. He was traded to the O's by the Red Sox for Willie Tasby in 1960 and was later flipped to the Royals for Marv Throneberry in 1961. On June 18, 1953 while on the Red Sox, Gene was the first player since 1900 to have 3 hits in one inning, a record that has since been duplicated by Johnny Damon in 2004.

Jerry Walker 1957-60

Jerry started his Orioles career at age 18 without ever having thrown a pitch in the minor leagues, one of a very few players to have ever accomplished that and also was one of the youngest of that exclusive group. He was one of the "Kiddie Corps" Orioles pitchers of the late 50s and, at 20 years old in 1959, was the youngest pitcher ever to start the All-Star game for the AL. He was out of baseball by age 26 but has stayed involved with the game up until this day. He served as the Tigers general manager for one season in 1993 and is currently a vice president and special assistant to the GM for the Reds.

Pete Ward 1962

Pete only played in 8 games for the O's in September of 1962 before being traded to the White Sox as part of the Luis Aparicio deal the following off-season. He had a great '63 season for the White Sox coming in second, to teammate Gary Peters, for the Rookie of the Year award and finished ninth in MVP balloting. He had an even better year in 1964 when he had the sixth most MVP votes, but the rest of his career wasn't quite as successful. Pete is in the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and both the Oregon & Chicagoland Sports Halls of Fame.

Wally Westlake 1955

Another player that was an Oriole at the tail-end of his career, Wally only amassed 24 at-bats for the O's over 8 games in the '55 season. He was on the NL All-Star team in 1951 when he played for the Pirates & Cardinals.

Dallas Williams 1981

As the Orioles first-round draft pick in 1976 (20th overall) Dallas was initially a highly-regarded prospect but never was able to live up to his lofty draft status. He appeared in only two games for the O's in the 1981 season. I saw Dallas in Norfolk recently as he is the Tides field coach.

George Zuverink 1955-59

George pitched in 197 games for the Orioles, appearing in all but five of those games as a reliever. During the 1957 season, along with Frank Zupo, he formed the only "Z" battery in Major League history. To clarify, he is the only pitcher, whose last name begins with Z, to throw to a catcher, whose last name also began with a Z. And that is some hard hitting news that you won't find almost anywhere else.