Merson-ary

Back the to 1952 Bowman Phantoms today campers, as we look at another obscure player in this set that never was, Jack Merson.

Born in 1922 in Elkridge, Maryland, Merson would ultimately become an unlikely big league player even after being a stellar all around high school athlete, earning 15 varsity letters.  An infielder in the majors, he made a name for himself as a pitcher in high school but preferred playing the field. Showing  prowess in a semi-pro game in 1940 against a US Navy team (likely from nearby Bainbridge Naval Training Center) he was spotted by a Senators scout and signed with them.  He made it into 12 nondescript games with their Newport, Tennessee D-level club, hitting a paltry Ray Oyler-esque .135 to close out the season.  He wouldn't sniff another professional game until 1947, presumably being released after his low output debut.

Returning home he found a job in Elkridge, joined the local fire department and then enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1944. After completing basic training he was home on leave when he accidentally shot himself in the knee. He recovered from that and after his 1945 Army discharge found himself in semi-pro ball again for 1946 at the age of 24, although he shaved two years off and was thought of as a 22 year old. 

The Pirates liked what they saw and signed him; he debuted with their Class C Uniontown, Pennsylvania Middle Atlantic League team for 1947, playing Second and knocking the cover off the ball to the tune of .388 for the year. He remained in PA for the 1948 season, toiling for York in the Class B Interstate League and hitting a respectable .321 albeit with minimal power.

1949 saw him join New Orleans in the Southern Association but his average dipped 74 points and he may have suffered an injury that affected his swing. He was stellar in the field though and played some Third and Short as the Bucs tried to make him into a useful utility man. It seems to have worked as he was added to the Pirates 40 man roster in 1950 but he remained in New Orleans the entire year, getting his stroke back and hitting .290.

Triple A beckoned in 1951 and he spent most of the year with the Indianapolis squad in the American Association and quite puzzlingly, played only Second Base before being called up to Pittsburgh and debuting on September 14th.  He was 29 years old at the time but made the most of things by hitting a quite impressive .360 over 50 at bats. 

The verbiage on the back of his 1982 TCMA card was sparse:

He made the 1952 Pirates as their starting Second Baseman, occasionally playing Third and he was on the ball early in the year but came back down to earth as the season wore on. He was hitting .246 when an errant pitch broke his right wrist in mid-August and was done for the year.  As you can imagine, this did not help his career but he was playing well enough (and more importantly was a warm body) to earn a spot with Topps, appearing in the high number "second series" that year, which must have spiked his Bowman card:

I swear, those trees and sky got the Bob Ross treatment and his even image looks painted to me, although likely over a B&W photo with some Flexichrome:

His fudged birthdate got by the Topps fact checkers, no surprise!

The Pirates traded him to the Hollywood Stars in the Pacific Coast League after the season but the PCL was subject to a major league draft and the Red Sox selected him. After playing exactly one game for Boston in 1953 he was optioned to back to the PCL, joining the San Diego Padres. He played there until he hung up his spikes after the 1956 season, earning a championship ring with their 1954 squad.

Merson returned to Elkridge thereafter and started up a couple of local businesses before becoming a prison guard. He died in his hometown in 2000.

With baseball back, I'll probably pause these profiles until the hot stove picks up again.

Cookie, Cookie, Bring Your Man Home

This week's entry in the 1952 Bowman Phantom biographies is not a player but rather a coach. Yes, Bowman included a handful of managers and coaches in the set, as they had in 1951 but by no means did all 16 teams get their field staff represented on a card.  Four coaches and three managers made the cut and Lavagetto would have upped the coach count to five but his appearance in the 1952 Topps high numbers (#365) looks like it precluded that.

I'll dispense with the reproductions from BHN now and henceforth, so here is Cookie in all his 1952 glory, as reproduced thirty years later:

As noted on the reverse, he broke up Bill Beven's no hit bid in the 1947 World Series with a pinch hit double that plated two and won game four but the Dodgers ended up losing to the Yankees in seven, the second installment of a World Series skid against the Bombers that would reach five Fall Classic losses before they finally prevailed in 1955. If not for Cookie's smash, it would have been one of the ugliest no hitters in baseball history, although that would have been overshadowed by it being the first ever in the postseason.  Bevens walked 10 Dodgers but obviously had massive movement on his pitches. He did give up a run prior to Lavagetto's double, so it would not even have been a "no hit, no run game" but I am being pedantic.

He sure seems like he enjoyed having his picture taken:

Cookie was originally named Enrico, then when a teacher told him that translated to Henry or Harry, Lavagetto liked the Anglicized version so much eventually had it legally changed to the latter.  The son of an Oakland trash hauler, he got a seemingly late start in pro ball when he signed with the Oakland Oaks of the PCL in 1933 after a disastrous tryout with the San Francisco Seals was redeemed by a big pinch hit (hmmm....) off former big leaguer Pudgy Gould in an ad hoc charity game of semi-pros and professionals.  He ended up having an excellent season and was known as the protege of "Cookie" DiVencenzi, the owner of the Oaks after he signed, shaving a couple of years off his age in the process.  The sobriquet "Cookie's Boy" got shortened to plain old "Cookie" pretty quickly.

The Pirates picked him up for cash and a player to be named later in mid-September but remained with the Oaks until the 1933 PCL season wound down in early October. The Bucs were probably surprised to learn he had shaved not two but three years off his age; before that got revealed during spring training, some thought he was still a teenager. Primarily a Second Baseman who played a little Third, he got off to a quick start with Pittsburgh in 1934 then faded by midseason after an early June illness spelled him for a week.  He was a part-time player for the rest of the season and his final two years in Pittsburgh but was shifting to full time play at Third as Pie Traynor seemingly lost it overnight at the end of the 1935 season.

The Dodgers picked him up after the 1936 season in a trade that involved a couple other players, neither of whom distinguished himself for his new team.  The pungent Brooklyn air proved to be exactly what Cookie needed.  Moving back to Second, Lavagetto had a solid 1937 season for the Bums and then, after shifting to Third again in '38 made four straight All Star teams. Along the way he picked up his pilot's license, much to the displeasure of the Dodger's brass and skipper Leo Durocher as well. 

The Dodgers won the NL pennant in 1941 but for Cookie the next four years were spent in the Navy, where he enlisted and put his flying skills to use in service of his country as a aviation machinist's mate. He spent the war years in California, first in Alameda and then Oakland and played a lot of Navy baseball. He was transferred to Pearl Harbor just after war ended and managed a Navy team there that featured one Stanley Frank Musial.

After his discharge he returned to Brooklyn for two part-time seasons, having lost the balance of his prime years to World War 2.  The Dodgers released him after his World Series heroics but not until early May of 1948, suggesting a possible injury. He returned to the PCL for three more seasons, playing under Casey Stengel (it seems as part of an early platoon experiment) and Charlie Dressen, no doubt soaking up their wellspring of managerial wisdom. He returned to the Dodgers as a coach when Dressen was named manager in 1951 and quit when Chuck was bounced in favor of Walter Alston after the Dodgers lost the 1953 World Series.

Dressen and Lavagetto exiled themselves in Oakland for 1954 and then the Senators hired Dressen as manager in 1955 and he brought Cookie with him.  Three weeks into the 1957 season Dressen got fired and Lavagetto took over as manager.  He became the last manager of the original Washington Senators and first manager of the Minnesota Twins as a result.  

Yeah, that's the same shot!

Twins owner Calvin Griffith then had Cookie take a sabbatical (possibly due to mental strain) in early June then fired him after another few weeks once he had returned.  Sam Mele managed the games Lavagetto didn't and there must be a good story there but I can't suss it out.

He was a Mets coach under Casey Stengel in 1962-63 and then headed back to the West Coast after a health scare in early 1964 and coached for the Giants until 1967 before retiring from the game.  He passed away in 1990.

Vanishing Van Cuyk

More 1952 Bowman extension set action campers!  Today's quarry is Chris Van Cuyk, who toiled quite unspectacularly for the Brooklyn Dodgers over a three year period from 1950-52.

Here's his original 1952 Bowman painting, as seen previously:

His TCMA extension card from 1982 is #255:

As noted, he debuted in 1950 with Brooklyn:

The neat thing is his brother Johnny pitched from 1947-49 for the Dodgers, so the Van Cuyk brothers managed 6 consecutive years of big league activity between them, albeit sporadically; John's major league career was even more nondescript than Chris's.  Take a look:

Johnny

1947: 2 Games 5.40 ERA

1948: 3 Games 3.60 ERA

1949: 2 Games 9.00 ERA

Chris

1950: 12 Games 4.86 ERA

1951: 9 Games 5.52 ERA

1952: 23 Games 5.16 ERA

Johnny's major league career ended after a mere 10.1 innings pitched and resulted in no decisions at all. As you can imagine he was in the minors most of those three seasons, all with AAA Montreal and with the exception of 1947, all quite meh. He had debuted in 1940 with Appleton in the D-level Wisconsin State League. After the 1941 season he was in the US Army through 1945 and then picked things up again with Fort Worth in the Texas League for 1946. He spent 1950 and 1951 with St. Paul (the Dodgers other AAA team) before heading to the open classification PCL for two seasons with Oakland before hanging up his spikes.

Chris, a flamethrower, managed a 7-11 record record in the bigs across 160.1 innings and his professional debut came in 1946 with Cambridge in the D-level Eastern Shore League, after a hitch in the Navy. He returned in 1947 then moved up to Fort Worth for two seasons and then put together a stellar beginning to the season there before the Dodgers called him up for his debut on July 16, 1950.  His career highlight was probably getting four hits in one game, on a day when the Dodgers exploded for 15 runs in the first inning on May 21, 1952, sending nineteen (!) men to the plate against Ewell Blackwell and a parade of increasingly hapless Reds pitchers. Van Cuyk registered two hits in the first frame alone and picked up the win in a 19-1 blowout.

You have to wonder if that caught the attention of the folks at Bowman but they may have been stymied by his being a Topps signee that season and he's #53 in the landmark 1952 set.  This might be the best centering you will see of his Topps card, it's often found horribly miscut:

At a guess Bowman thought his Topps rights were not exclusive (or perhaps expiring) and was planning his high series card but he tossed his last game in the majors on August 15th. He followed Johnny's path to St. Paul in 1953 and then Oakland in 1954-55 but I don't think the brothers ever played together despite their affinity for being on the same teams throughout their careers.

Chris wore #25 with the Dodgers and I had hoped he inherited his brother's number but alas, he did not as Johnny wore nos. 37 and 43 in his cups o'coffee.   Johnny never made it to a Topps or Bowman card but his PCL stint got him a 1953 Mother's Cookies appearance:

Save for an alleged  minor league card in 1949 (and also possibly a 1950) when he was with Fort Worth that I'm struggling to find information on, his '52 Topps was the only appearance Chris made during his career. Pretty good way to have only one nationally issued card!

Chris died in 1992 and his older brother Johnny in 2010.  

Florida State Of Mind

I'm going to start a sporadic series on some of the phantom subjects that were the focus of a post I wrote late last year that examined an old hobby article about a find of original Bowman paintings.  I was reminded by Keith Olbermann of a 1982 TCMA issue that is commonly referred to as a 1952 Extension or Update Set, picking up with card no 253.  Comprised of 15 cards that never were, I actually bought the extension set fresh 40 years ago and somewhere during the past few decades forgot I even had it!  

Here is the set, freshly dug out and still in my small Bowman sheets from a long, long time ago:

While 16 would have been a nice Bowman-esque number, I am advised the number of cards matches what was available at the time to TCMA. You will see some familiar faces above, plus some scrubs and the like.  The backs are finished and I plan to show them one-by-one as I get deeper into things.

First up is #258 Bob Thorpe.  We last encountered him in a 40 year old newsprint image:

As it turns out, Keith Olbermann owns the original!

Here is the "update" card from 1982:

And now the reverse:

Thorpe's career, which was fairly long, was mostly spent in the minors.  He was a Topps high number in '52, which might explain his being pulled by Bowman but he also was what would be termed a "4A player" today. 

He was a described as a Navy vet and I'm sure that's correct but Topps blew his debut year:

As it turns out he started in the Florida International League in 1946, playing as a 19 year old with West Palm Beach, which I think was a Cleveland affiliate. He may even have been a local signing for WPB as he played for two other teams in Florida (Gainesville and Pensacola), his state of birth, until 1950. He was acquired by Boston after that season.

It wasn't unusual to be discharged from the Navy so quickly after the war, it happened to my father, who enlisted as a high school senior in 1945 then had to wait until he graduated to get sworn in and was in the Navy all of four months before he got his discharge, although he re-enlisted for a 4 year hitch.  After Japan surrendered, ending World War 2, military service was curtailed very quickly for many men, Thorpe included it appears.

Appropriately, the FIL was C-Level (*groan*) in '46 and then it looks like he got demoted, possibly without any at bats, to Gainesville in a D-League where stayed until 1948 before progressing up the long minor league ladder. He had a cup of coffee with the Braves in 1951, as noted on his TCMA card, then spent 1952 with the big league club (and apparently getting injured) before making the move to Milwaukee with the team in '53.  He flamed out and went back to the minors in 1954, never to return to the big leagues again.  Fun fact:  He was a Boston Brave but he played in both Atlanta and Milwaukee from 1950-51 before debuting with Boston. He played for a variety of minor league teams through 1961 and then retired, passing away in 1996.

I'll pepper in looks at the players from the 1982 TCMA set and the Bowman phantoms here and there as I want to broaden my scope a bit for 2022.