Rubbed The Right Way

A little while back on the Net54 Baseball Forum, there was a neat little thread in the postwar section started by Larry Tipton, who so far as I know, is the only person to ever have a card grade named after him ("Tipton" or "Tipton Mint" signifies a real beater).  Larry posted an alternate back to a 1961 Magic Ruboff, which I have to confess I had never seen before. What's even cooler though is that it turns out this alternate back reveals the Ruboffs were issued in two series, or perhaps more correctly, two sets.

You know these, the paper inserts (the first ever in Topps Baseball actually) show humorous caricatures of ballplayers with colorful nicknames and fanciful team emblems:

The typical reverse is textual:

Alternatively though, there was a back that looked like this:

Those are all Larry's. This graphical variation is a lot harder than the text based reverse but finding out that the emblems came in one "set" or another is an intriguing bonus.  Were both 18 emblem sets issued together? I tend to doubt it after seeing this. Here's the same graphic but it's the other set:

(courtesy Cliff Bowman)

Now compare to the 1965 Football Ruboffs where the pinking shears must have been lost by Topps!

These also came in a set of 36 (8 AFL and 28 College teams) but note there is no "set" distinction:

Four years after the fact, Topps resurrected the instructional artwork-only in Brooklyn!

Rub-A-Dub-Dub!

I thought I would take another look at the 1961 Magic Rub Offs Set today. Inserted in one or two of the middle series cards in '61, this humorous set keys in on nicknames, with a player from each of the then 18 MLB teams represented along with a fanciful team logo that stuck with the theme.

Since it's not a well documented set, as well as one where the images are reversed on the original inserts, I thought a visual checklist would be in order, with each subject mirrored to make life easier for all of us.  And now, without further ado...

The Orioles logo shows the good and bad of the set.  The artwork is pretty good to great, with a lot of subjects illustrated (I'm sure) by Jack Davis. Unfortunately roller marks from wax pack sealing mar the images on many of these and browning, curling, miscuts and misalignment of colors all conspire against these fragile pieces of paper.

I never knew "Bingo" was one of Ernie Banks' nicknames until I researched it while preparing this post. According to this old Ebony article, it gave way to the much more well known "Mr. Cub". "Bingo" may actually be a corruption of "Bango", which makes more sense given the pop in his bat and what was once a double play call for the Cubbies by their announcer Bert Wilson: "Bingo to Bango to Bilko" (Gene Baker and Steve Bilko filling out the trio), although the only season all three were together was 1954.  I guess Double Play combo nicknames were always a thing on the North Side. Fun Fact, Phil Silvers' character Sgt. Bilko was named after "Stout Steve". 

No comment necessary about ol' Yogi. The bed of nails is a nice touch!

Man, he smoked that one!

Jackie Brandt's nickname was actually "Flakey" and he was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska which is about 500 miles from the Ozarks. I have no idea why Topps dubbed him "Ozark".

The erudite Jim Brosnan was certainly well-monikered. He wrote two well known books about the game, which were well received by the public but not his fellow players.  He was a Cubbie in 1954 so would have seem Bingo-Bango-Bilko up close and personal.

Is it me or does that look more like a wombat?

They were still the Go-Go Sox in 1961, as shown here. To me this is the most "Jack Davis" of all the artwork in the set.

I'm going to go on record and say I have never liked the mustachioed-baseball logo for the Reds (or Red Legs in the post McCarthy era). This version does nothing to change my mind.

What once was a socially acceptable caricature most definitely no longer is.

This might be my favorite team logo in the set. Too bad this insert is so off register.

Dotterer was a backup catcher in the late 50's and early 60's and once caught a baseball dropped from a helicopter hovering feet 585 above Crosley Field and he once hit a grand slam off Sandy Koufax. Fun Fact, his son Mike played for the Oakland Raiders and won a Super Bowl with them in 1984. "Dutch" was once a common nickname for players of German descent, being a corruption of "Deutsch".

Definitely my favorite human image from the set. He's the only manager depicted. 

His resemblance to Harry "The Cat" Brecheen gave Harvey Haddix his nickname. Frankly, that is a frightening human/feline body meld...

Pancho Villa re-imagined as a mediocre infielder.

I'm not sure if this was actually a nickname for Howard but it was likely a shortening of "Tower of Power" if it was. He was also called "Hondo", then picked up "The Washington Monument" and, my personal favorite, "The Capital Punisher", when he played for the Senators.

Two men nicknamed "Sad Sam" Jones have pitched in the majors. The first and more well-known Sad Sam debuted prior to World War 1 and won 229 games over 22 seasons for half a dozen teams. The one pictured above pitched a dozen years for 6 teams and won 102 games.  There is no record of which "Sad Sam" was the saddest.

If I'm not mistaken, that's a pink elephant and he is drunk.

Expansion team gets Topps logo, reminds blogger of Quisp.

The Brooklyn Bum, reborn. I doubt the kids in Brooklyn who got this insert in 1961 were too pleased about seeing this image.

His Wikipedia entry says "Turk" was so nicknamed due to a fondness for turkey.  I ain't buying it, given his Turkish descent.

As far as I'm is concerned, the nickname "Duke" should only be assigned to one Mr. Snider.

I know he played briefly for them, but imagining Billy Martin as a member of the Braves is just impossible for me. Seriously, there's no way this ever happened.

It appears Mr. Maxwell lived (and lives) in Paw Paw Michigan and has done so for quite some time, hence the nickname. He was honored with a monument by the town in 2010.

This logo is just as racist as the one for Cleveland.

The poor color registration makes it seem like there are twin Twins! A pretty neat logo if you ask me. The Twins name was new to the AL, although they had been the Washington Senators until 1961. Washington got an expansion team to replace them, which I'm sure pleased nobody except Calvin Griffith.

Ray Moore, a swingman pitcher for a few teams throughout the 50's and early 60's, actually grew up on a farm. Fun fact, his parents met at an insane asylum.

Like Ray Moore, Moryn debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers and had a fairly unspectacular career, although he showed some pop in the late 50's when he played for the Cubs. His nickname reflected his burly appearance, according to a couple of websites I checked. At 6' 2" and 205 lbs, I can't argue with that.

That resembles a mortician more than a Yankee methinks, but the top-hatted team logo is referenced here on what looks like a Jack Davis drawing.

I'll admit it; I'm scared...yikes!!

Is it me or does that pirate look like the offspring of Alfred E. Neuman and a space alien?

Nicknamed "Honey" by an uncle (no comment) John Romano was a catcher with some pop who was about to embark on his best season in the majors.

Pete Runnels had the given names of James Edward so he was double nicknamed here; oddly enough I can't find any attribution of "Pistol Pete" for him so it was just a convenience for Topps. He sandwiched two AL batting titles around the 1961 season, when he would go on to hit .317 and finish well off the pace in an expansion year.  He was a heckuva fielder too. 

Nice dress.

Probably my second least favorite logo from the set.  I dunno, it's just kind of boring.

I don't know how you feel about it, but this would be more appropriate if he was chasing a dollar sign.

With only two, the Magic Rub Off set has the lowest number of Hall of Famers of any Topps insert set from the classic era.

Magic Men

The first modern inserts in baseball packs came not from Topps but rather from their arch rival Fleer, in 1960, although the Fleer issue that contained them was not contemporary but consisted of all time greats and the like. Topps did follow suit later that year by including a series of metallic looking football stickers in the fall's football card packs (see also the the Fleer Sticker Project's overview here) but it wasn't until 1961 that they issued their first baseball insert sets.

The 1960 Fleer effort (cards and inserts both) was somewhat austere and only included team logos for the sixteen extant teams that year. A year later Topps had two different inserts: an elaborate series of 208 drab stamps and a fun, colorful 36 subject ruboff insert. The stamps will be addressed here at a later date; today's quarry is the fun one.

Since they were ruboffs, the image on the paper thin, serrated insert was reversed:



Here is a mirrored image of Banks:



You can see the nickname of Bingo, which illustrates the main theme of the set: amusing nicknames. Of the 18 players included (one per team), all but one had a nickname inserted between his first and last name. The odd man out was Yogi Berra, who apparently was so well known by this time that his given name of Lawrence was ignored. I'll bet they could have ignored his last name too!

Those little black blocks I believe were used by an optical, semi-automated cutting machine. The machine was imperfect, sometimes wildly so.

The instructions on the reverse were to the point:



The ruboffs also had 18 team-themes. Interestingly, the set is alphabetized by the first letter of the team's city and the first letter of the player's last name. Bizarre to say the least.

The team ruboffs had stylized designs, as you can see here despite the out-of-register blue process dye:



The player backgrounds were also pretty snazzy:



As you can see above, miscuts were common. I see however, the graceful hand of Jack Davis in some of the artwork. He did some projects for Topps in the 60's and the illustrations mostly look like his work to my eyes.

The wrapper in 1961 came two ways, one type advertised the stamps:



(courtesy of www.obaks.com)

The other flavor of wrapper was non-specific about the ruboff that lurked within:



Penny packs were immune from inserts and it appears not even the cellos had an insert inside in '61. I believe the stamps were issued first based upon such a timeline in 1962, when another stamp set was issued. The ruboffs likely started around series four.

They are a neat little set that, based upon what is happening to my little pieces of paper, look like they might disintegrate someday, alas!