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Irving Arnold Noren
New York Yankees
Outfield
Born: November 29, 1924, Jamestown, NY
Signed: Signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers as an amateur free agent before 1946 season
Major League Teams: Washington Senators 1950-1952; New York Yankees 1952-1956; Kansas City Athletics 1957; St. Louis Cardinals 1957-1959; Chicago Cubs 1959-1960; Los Angeles Dodgers 1960
Died: November 15, 2019, Carlsbad, CA (age 94)
Irv Noren spent 11 years in the major leagues and briefly appeared in the professional National Basketball League, playing three games for the Chicago American Gears during the 1946-47 season. Drafted by the Dodgers, Noren won Pacific Coast League MVP honors in 1949, batting .330 with 29 home runs and 130 RBIs. With no room on the Dodgers' major league roster for him, the club sold him to the Senators before the 1950 season. Noren had a great rookie year in Washington, batting .295 with 14 home runs and 98 RBIs (both career highs) while finishing 15th in the league's MVP voting. He'd join the Yankees in 1952, playing all three outfield positions and seeing action in the 1952, 1953 and 1955 World Series against his original club, the Dodgers. (The Yankees would win Championships in 1952, 1953 and 1956.) His career year came in 1954, and as the Yankees' regular left fielder, he batted .319 with 12 home runs and 66 RBIs, while making the American League All-Star team.
Over the final four years of his playing career, Noren spent time with the Athletics, Cardinals, Cubs and finally the Dodgers, appearing in 26 games for the team in 1960. Noren was a career .275 batter with 65 home runs and 453 RBIs. Noren pivoted to coaching and scouting in the early 1960s, and he was a coach with the Oakland Athletics when they won World Championships in 1972 and 1973.
August 16, 1987 from Cooperstown, NY - Card #47
This was one of the first four cards we purchased in the summer of 1987, officially marking the beginning of us collecting the 1956 Topps set. As told now frequently in our set's origin story, and most recently with the post for the Walt Dropo (#238) card, I was essentially gifted with a shoebox of vintage Topps baseball cards in the summer of 1983 or 1984. Within the spoils were 44 cards from the 1956 Topps set – by far the most cards from any one set. I studied them, I sorted them, and I pretty much memorized every detail of those 44 cards.
A few years later, in the summer of 1987 while on a family vacation, I was giddy with excitement when we came across a few 1956 Topps cards in the Walker Gallery on the main drag in Cooperstown, New York. It was our first trip to Cooperstown, and details from that family vacation still make up several of my most important core memories from my childhood. My Dad and I studied the cards for sale and he casually asked me the question, “Why don’t we try to put together the whole set?” We bought four cards that day for $9.25, including this Noren card which was all of $2.50. Those cards, along with the 44 from the magic shoebox, became the basis for our 1956 Topps set.
That small but incredibly meaningful purchase meant so much to me that I tacked a Walker Gallery business card to my bulletin board in my bedroom on 12th Street, where it hung for years. I also felt compelled to clip the price tags from the rigid plastic sleeves in which each of these cards were originally purchased. I knew then I wanted to remember everything about the purchase, and these are included at the back of our 1956 Topps binder, along with other ephemera from baseball card shows, stores and special occasions when cards were added to our set.
The Card / Yankees Team Set
What's going on with the fielder in the action photo? That can't be a natural shadow due to the lighting of the photo, and it seems as if Topps purposely blacked out the player. This is Noren's first Topps card since his appearance in the 1953 Topps set. The back of the card celebrates his minor league MVP wins in both 1948 and 1949. It's crazy to think the Dodgers couldn't find room for him in their outfield, given the 1948 regulars were Gene Hermanski, Carl Furillo (#190) and Marv Rackley. In 1949, Duke Snider (#150) joined the group so maybe Noren's main competition at the time was Snider.
1956 Season
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First Mainstream Card: 1950 Bowman #247
Topps Flagship Set Appearances (9): 1951-1953, 1956-1960, 1973
Most Recent Mainstream Card: 2011 Topps Lineage Autographs #RA-IN
48 - Noren non-parallel baseball cards in the Beckett online database as of 6/2/23.
Sources:
Baseball Reference
Beckett Database
SABR
The Trading Card Database
The Trading Card Database
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Order Collected: #229 Harry Brecheen CO - Baltimore Orioles / #280 Jim Gilliam - Brooklyn Dodgers
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