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.

Oriole #75- Angie Dagres

Almost exactly five years ago, I very briefly wrote about Angie Dagres. Not that there is a ton to say about him from a baseball perspective, as he appeared in just eight games for the Orioles during the 1955 season. But since he was nice enough to sign and personalize my recent TTM request, I figured I would dig a little deeper about his time in baseball.

Angie was one of the bonus babies the Orioles signed in 1955, and while I still don't exactly understand the process completely, more or less you could sign a handful of amateur players for a large signing fee with the stipulation that they had to immediately join the MLB club. It was clearly not a good idea and I think the process was only used in a single season before being changed. Essentially, he was signed right out of college and was on the field the same day he signed. Can you imagine if that's how the MLB draft was done these days?!?

So Angie signed with the Orioles and made his debut for the team on September 11, 1955 to become the 75th player to appear in a game for the Orioles. Over the following two weeks, he went on to appear in a total of eight games for the O's, and had four hits over fifteen at-bats. Apparently, Angie had some attitude problems, from what I read "uncoachable" seems like a good way to describe him, which led to his demotion to the minors in 1956. That only further soured his attitude and he apparently also began to drink too much, a combination of which kept him from ever returning to the Majors. After seven seasons in the minors, Angie was out of baseball by 1962.

The Baltimore Sun caught up with him in 2010 for a more in-depth article about him if you want to learn any more about him.

Thanks for signing Angie, and at least you had a cup of coffee for the O's!

TTM Success- Grady Hatton

Grady Needs An Orioles Hat-He Would Be Smiling If Wearing An O's Hat

Grady was nice enough to sign and return my TTM request in only 28 days.  He has an amazingly smooth signature for an 87 year old guy, my handwriting is nowhere near that clear and I'm 60 years behind him. 

Mr. Hatton spent approximately 40 years of his life around the game of baseball as a player, coach, manager, scout and executive.  To list all of the positions he has filled and responsibilities he held could certainly be the start of a whole new blog, possibly "The Baseball Life of Grady Hatton" or "Grady's Baseball Memories".  But as a quick rundown, Grady played for the Reds, Red Sox, Cardinals, Cubs, Orioles & White Sox over his 12 year playing career.  His best years came at the start of his career as a member of the Reds from 1946-54, when he received MVP votes in '46 & '48, and made the '52 N.L. All-Star team.  He also spent about two and half seasons as the Astros manager from 1966-68.

He appeared in only 27 games for the Orioles during the 1956 season, and somehow no pictures seem to exist of him in an Orioles uniform.  That must be the reason that his "Orioles" Crown card pictures him in a Reds hat.  And yes, if you've followed this blog for any amount of time, I've had this complaint before.  I mean, it's not like players still had to sit for daguerreotypes in the 1950's! You mean to tell me that there's no pictures of Hatton in an O's hat that could've appeared in this set?!? Someone must have one somewhere!

Sorry for the rant, but that's how I feel.