Sometimes this blogging stuff just bowls me over. I sat down on a Friday evening earlier this month to do this entry on Charlie Secrest's '59 Rookie Stars card. I googled his name and didn't get much. When I searched for info on him I came up just about as clean as his the blank jersey shown on his Rookie Stars card.

I found his entries on Baseball Reference and SABR, both of which had his minor league numbers, vitals and not much else (nothing else in fact). His SABR bio consists of  "Charles Secrest was a professional player." That's it. Thanks.

But I found two additional items, both of them were references to Secrest in Baseball Digest issues from early in 1959. One was in the April issue and consisted on a single line in a team by team  prospects article that mentions Secrest might "edge into the outfield" for the Kansas City A's.



The other one was better. It's from the March '59 issue and is a small bio and prospectus of Charles Secrest:




Secrest never made it to the majors, at least not long enough to get into a game. So it looks like the scout that wrote Part 2 was correct. But something struck me. The little paragraph listed his nickname, "Buckwheat".  So it got me to thinking, and I googled 'Buckwheat Secrest'. Bingo!! I found a great feature story written about Secrest that appeared in his hometown newspaper in 1987. And another entry in the same paper from 1958 (about halfway down the left column) that mentions his participation in an upcoming major league All Star exhibition in the area.



Secrest began as an Orioles prospect playing in Ada, Oklahoma in 1954. Seems that he sure had the tools to make it to the majors but, according to Secrest in that article, a series of missed communications, bad breaks and sheer stubbornness kept him from receiving his due. It's a pretty fun article if you care to read it. He moved to the A's chain in '55 and worked his way up the ladder to the AAA level before hanging up his glove following the 1963 season.

As his cardback says Secrest was a prospect with some power. He was coming off a 21 homer season in 1958 at AA Little Rock.

With a bit more research I found that Charlie Secrest is alive and living in Lewistown, Pa., which happens to be where my Mom was born and raised and where I spent a lot of summer nights hanging with my cousins and their friends back in the early 60's. Turns out Secrest lives less than two miles from my Mom's youngest sister. Imagine that.

I sent Secrest this card and a note asking him a couple of questions, principally how he got his nickname. I received my autographed card back a week later. I like how he added "A's" under his name. I bet he still holds a grudge against the Orioles! But while Charlie hadn't answered my questions I was glad to get an autograph from a guy whom I'd learned much about anyway and with whom I felt a connection. Here's hoping Charlie is in good health.

So Brewer says to Sisler: "OK, I'll pose with you for this guy but there's no way you belong on a card that's going to be called 'Batter Bafflers'. I've got 68 wins in the majors and I'm going to get 23 more before I quit. And I've been over .500 nearly every year with these lackluster Boston clubs. And I even won 19 in '56 made the All Star team! Frankly I'm 'baffled' as to why the hell you're here at all."

"Well' Sisler replies,'I've got an engineering degree from Princeton and...and...and my father is in the Hall of Fame!! So there!"

"Point taken' Brewer says, 'but wait till you see the job Topps does cropping your head for this card."

Riddle me this, Batman... why does the Cubs team card say 'Chicago Cubs Team' when nearly all the other team card/checklist merely give the team name without the 'Team'. There are a couple like this and I plan to get to the bottom of it. That kind of detective work is a lot more interesting than researching the '59 Cubs themselves.

The '59 Cubs finished fifth in the NL with a 74-80 record by the way, better than I thought. Glen Hobbie led the staff with 16 wins. Ernie Banks won his second consecutive NL MVP. He drove in 143 runs, hit 45 homers and batted .304. Nobody else had numbers that were remotely close. Ernie must have gotten tired of carrying that club by himself.

Pale green and yellow with rounded corners. Yuck. I like that scheme on the Braves' card. Just looks wrong here. ::shrug:: At least it's unchecked on the back.

Back in May I featured this card and I tried to figure out what game that Rocky Colavito's catch occurred in.  I set out wandering the 'Net looking for the original picture hoping to get the info from a caption or from a site itself. I found the original b/w shot but it wasn't accompanied by any info. Using the clues that Topps included I tried to track down the box score on Retrosheet or Baseball Reference.

Here is that card again:



I wasted a lot of time. And I came up empty. I'd googled the picture every way I thought possible. I double and triple checked every likely box score of Indian games at Yankee Stadium during Colavito's time with the Tribe. I had some games I thought to be possibilities but they never completely matched up with the scenario the cardback provided. I was able to narrow the range because of the uniform Colavito had on.

Then, today, I hit paydirt while I wasn't even really digging. I was searching for a picture (a sequence actually) of a Duke Snider catch that's shown on another of the Baseball Thrill subset cards. A link to Corbis turned up dozens of Snider shots from the mid to late 50s's. Then it hit me. Try searching 'Colavito' within Corbis. Bingo. I found the picture again, and this time it had a caption:

 Portrait of Rocky Colavito  Original caption: Despite the efforts of a youngster wearing a baseball glove and trying to make the catch himself (right), Cleveland outfielder Rocky Colavito dashes along the right field, stands to make a one-hand catch and rob Gil McDougald of a home run in the 6th inning of the Yankee-Cleveland game here May 10th. Behind the strong hurling of veteran pitcher Bob Lemon, the Indians topped the Yanks, 7-2, and moved into second place in the league standings.

© Bettmann/CORBIS

Photographer: Unknown Creator: Unknown Date Photographed: May 10, 1956 Location Information: New York, New York, USA

Whoopee! I had the game nailed now: May 10, 1956.

But how had I missed it before? Let's go back to the card itself, look at the back and see what 'clues' Topps gave me:


What the card claims:

a) It was late in the game.....
b) the Cleveland starter was tiring fast and....
c) he had already given up two hits..
d) the Indians led by one run.

What the facts actually were according to the original caption and the boxscore:

a) It was the 6th inning, I wouldn't consider the sixth to be 'late' but I'll concede that point to Topps....
b) Bob Lemon had allowed two singles and two walks. Thats four runners total at this point (one out in the sixth) and he went on to pitch a complete game. It was only his fifth start of the year and he was on four days rest. He was one of the most durable pitchers of his era and he led the league in complete games five time including 1956! How tired could he have been at this point?
c) he'd given up two hits alright, 2 hits total. Topps makes it sound as if they were in that inning when in fact McDougald was the second hitter of the inning after Bauer led it off with a ground out, and...
d) the Indians led 4-0, not by a single run. In fact, the only one run lead came in the middle of the Indians three run third inning. They were never even challenged after that.

It's no wonder I couldn't find it. Hell, Topps damn near made it up! Actually, as I noted in the original May post, the previous day's game, a 6-5 Indian win seemed more likely since Colavito had made the final out in rightfield in the last inning of a one run game.

I realize that nobody in the world cares about any of this except me, but I'm going to go celebrate!


I don't normally do this but I wanted to point out a nice interview that was posted on Dinged Corners a few years back with two of Moe Drabowsky's daughters. I just found it the other day while hunting for other stuff and thought I'd link to it given the Drabowsky post of a few days back.