#151 "Spook" Jacobs - Kansas City Athletics

Forrest Vandergrift Jacobs
Kansas City Athletics
Second Base

Bats:  Right  Throws:  Right  Height:  5'5"  Weight:  155
Born:  November 4, 1925, Cheswold, DE
Signed:  Signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers as an amateur free agent before 1946 season
Major League Teams:  Philadelphia Athletics 1954; Kansas City Athletics 1955-1956; Pittsburgh Pirates 1956
Died:  February 18, 2011, Milford, DE (age 85)

Prior to his baseball career, Spook Jacobs served in the U.S. Army during World War II, rose to the rank of sergeant and was awarded several prestigious medals for his service.  Jacobs played 14 seasons professionally stateside, and enjoyed his longest stint in the majors with 132 games for the 1954 Athletics in their final season in Philadelphia.  As the club's regular second baseman that season, he batted .258 with a career-high 26 RBIs.  Jacobs followed the Athletics to Kansas City where he was used sparingly in 1955 as a back-up second baseman or pinch-hitter.  Dealt to the Pirates in June 1956, he played his final 11 big league games in Pittsburgh.  In 188 games, Jacobs batted .247 with 33 RBIs.

Jacobs found his most success as a standout in the Cuban, Panamanian and Puerto Rican winter leagues.  He won two batting titles in Panama and helped the Carta Vieja Yankees to its only Caribbean World Series title in 1950.  He played a similar key role during the 1952-1953 season with the Azules de Almandares, contributing a game-winning walk-off hit during the Cuban championship series.  Jacobs was elected into both the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame and the Cuban Sports Hall of Fame, and to date he's the only American so honored.

Building the Set
June 22, 1993 in Ocean City, NJ - Card #112
Like the Bill Tremel (#96) card, this card is fairly beat up and there's no way my Dad was with me when this was purchased from Only Yesterday on the boardwalk in Ocean City, New Jersey.  My Dad would have rejected this card outright for our set given its condition.  Having gone through the first 150 cards from our set for this blog, I can honestly say this card is in the worst shape of any of them.  This Jacobs card was purchased along with the cards for Tremel and Dick Brodowski (#157) for $10.  Up until a few years ago, Only Yesterday was located on the Ocean City boardwalk and it was one of the few stops that was a must-visit for me whenever I'd walk the boards.  (The others being, and still being, Shriver's, Johnson's Popcorn, Manco & Manco's and the Surf Mall.)

I missed a chunk of my spring semester of my freshman year of college due to a bad bout of mono.  In the summer of 1993, after that freshman year, I was back at home.  June 22nd would have been a Tuesday, so that's a strange day to be visiting the Ocean City boardwalk given I would have had a summer job somewhere.

The Card / Athletics Team Set
I believe that's Tigers' catcher Frank House (#32) making a cameo appearance in the action shot and I think the play happened on April 16, 1955 in that game's first inning.  House wore #2 for the Tigers.  Jacobs had beat out an infield hit to lead-off the game and eventually came in to score on a Gus Zernial (#45) double play ball.  He's safe at the plate, but the Tigers would go on to win the ballgame, 8-3.

Jacobs only appears on three Topps cards, and all three cards use the exact same portrait photo.  His speed, both on the basepaths and as a defender, are highlighted in the cartoon panels on the back of the card.  This card was reprinted for Jacobs to autograph as part of the 2005 Topps Heritage Real One Autographs insert set.

1956 Season

Jacobs beat out Jim Finigan (#22) for the Athletics' starting second baseman's job in 1956, and he started the teams first 28 games before Finigan took over on May 21st.  Jacobs would play in only four more games for the Athletics before he was dealt to the Pirates on June 23rd for pitcher Jack McMahan and second baseman Curt Roberts (#306).  With the Pirates, Jacobs made 11 appearances (all starts at second base) and hit just .225 before a July demotion to the Hollywood Stars.  He finished out the season with the Stars, batting .341 over 81 games, and while he was among the September call-ups that season for the Pirates he never again appeared in a major league game.

Phillies Connection

In his final professional season as a player, and now 34 years old, Jacobs was a player-manager for the 1960 Chattanooga Lookouts in the Southern Association.  At the time, that was the Phillies' Double-A affiliate and Jacobs guided the team to a 60-93 record.  He appeared in 125 games as the team's regular second baseman and batted .306.  It was his only season managing the Lookouts as future Phillies manager Frank Lucchesi would take over the team in 1961.

1954 Topps #129

1955 Topps #61

1988 Chattanooga Lookouts Legends #15

Other Notable Baseball Cards
First Mainstream Card:  1954 Topps #129
Topps Flagship Set Appearances (3):  1954-1956
Most Recent Mainstream Card:  2009 TriStar Obak #48

22 - Jacobs non-parallel baseball cards in the Beckett online database as of 5/14/21.

Sources:  
Baseball Reference
Beckett Database
The Trading Card Database

Wikipedia

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Set Order: #150 "Duke" Snider - Brooklyn Dodgers / #152 Billy Hoeft - Detroit Tigers

Order Collected: #96 Bill Tremel - Chicago Cubs / #157 Dick Brodowski - Washington Nationals

#69 Chuck Tanner - Milwaukee Braves

Charles William Tanner
Milwaukee Braves
Outfield

Bats:  Left  Throws:  Left  Height:  6'0"  Weight:  185
Born:  July 4, 1928, New Castle, PA
Signed:  Signed by the Boston Braves as an amateur free agent before 1946 season
Major League Teams:  Milwaukee Braves 1955-1957; Chicago Cubs 1957-1958; Cleveland Indians 1959-1960; Los Angeles Angels 1961-1962
As a Manager:  Chicago White Sox 1970-1975; Oakland Athletics 1976; Pittsburgh Pirates 1977-1985; Atlanta Braves 1986-1988
Died:  February 11, 2011, New Castle, PA (82)

Better known as a long-time manager, Chuck Tanner played in parts of eight seasons in the Majors with the Braves, Cubs, Indians and Angels.  Serving mainly as a backup outfielder, Tanner appeared in 396 games, hitting .261 with 21 home runs and 105 RBIs.  In his first big league at-bat in 1955, pinch-hitting for Warren Spahn (#10), Tanner hit a home run off the very first pitch he saw becoming the seventh player in major league history to accomplish that feat.  His best season came in the 1957, spending time with both the Braves and Cubs, and hitting .279 with career highs in home runs (9) and RBIs (48).

As a manager, Tanner broke in with the White Sox at the end of the 1970 season, replacing interim manager Bill Adair who had replaced regular manager Don Gutteridge.  He managed the White Sox to a 401-414 record over six seasons, finishing as high as second place in 1972.  Following one season in Oakland in 1976, the Pirates worked out a deal with A's owner Charlie Finley to acquire the home-town Tanner to be their new manager.  All-Star catcher Manny Sanguillen and $100,000 were sent to the A's in exchange.  Tanner spent nine seasons at the helm for the Pirates, guiding the team to their 1979 World Series title.  He finished his managerial career with the Braves, fired by then general manager Bobby Cox at the start of the 1988 season after getting off to a 12-27 start.  Overall, he managed in parts of 19 seasons and compiled a career record of 1,352-1,381.

Building the Set
April 9, 1988 from Millville, NJ - Card #56
We bought this card for $4 from a local card shop called Brokell's in Millville, NJ back in 1988.  My Dad and I frequented this store, and this was one of four cards for our 1956 set we purchased from Brokell's that year.  April 9th was a Saturday so if I had to guess, we most likely acquired this card before or after enjoying a few burgs from Jim's Lunch.  At the time, I knew Tanner solely as a manager and I had collected his cards in Topps sets throughout the 1970s and 1980s.  Little did we know when we purchased this card he'd be fired by the Braves a little over a month later in May 1988.

As an eighth grader in 1988, I realized the need to start tracking these cards as my Dad and I added them to our set.  I wanted a record of where and when and how much we had paid for each card, and so I created a tracking schedule using our very sophisticated Commodore 64.  This was a complicated process, involving typing out the checklist, printing the checklist, taking those pages to the library and using the photocopier to shrink the size of the pages, and then rubber cementing the pages to another piece of paper.  I have two pages similar to the one below for this tracking exercise, which I seemingly quickly abandoned after we had added the Tanner card to the set.  Eventually, my tracking got even more sophisticated as I graduated to a word processing document on our new Commodore 128.

A few years ago, I featured the Ted Kluszewski (#25) card we had purchased from Brokell's, and I tried to find the building on Google Maps.  The photo above is the building I believe was Brokell's, and it appears to be a Tae Kwon Do studio today.

The Card
This is Tanner's second Topps card, and this uses the same portrait photo as his 1955 Topps rookie card.  On the back, his birth year is a year off from the actual date of 1928.

The minor league notes on the back are accurate, and Tanner did in fact hit over .300 for eight seasons in a row in the minors between 1947 and 1954.  The only year he missed the mark was his first professional season in 1946 when he hit .247 in 25 games (20 for 81) for the Evansville Braves and the Owensboro Oilers.

1956 Season
Tanner couldn't crack into the Braves' starting outfield as it was successfully already manned by Bobby Thomson (#257), Bill Bruton (#185) and Hank Aaron (#31).  In 60 games, mostly coming off the bench, Tanner he hit .238 with a home run and four RBIs.  The Braves finished second in 1956, only a game behind the pennant winning Brooklyn Dodgers.

1955 Topps #161

1960 Topps #279

1971 Topps #661

1982 Donruss #150

1988 Topps #134

Other Notable Baseball Cards
First Mainstream Card:  1955 Topps #161
First Topps Card:  1955 Topps #161
Last Topps Card (as a player):  1960 Topps #279
First Topps Card (as a manager):  1971 Topps #661
Last Topps Card (as a manager):  1988 Topps #134
Most Recent Mainstream Card:  2001 Topps Archives #428
Topps Flagship Set Appearances (23):  1955-1960, 1971-1981, 1983-1988

63 - Tanner non-parallel baseball cards in the Beckett online database as of 10/11/19.

Sources:  
Baseball Reference
Beckett Database
SABR
The Trading Card Database

In some cases, the first and last cards listed above are subjective and chosen by me if multiple cards were released within the same year.  Most recent mainstream card may also be subjective and does not include extremely low serial numbered cards, buybacks or cut autograph cards.

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Set Order: #68 Chuck Stobbs - Washington Nationals / #70 Jim Rivera - Chicago White Sox

Order Collected: #269 Jack Meyer - Philadelphia Phillies / #1 William Harridge - A.L. President

#34 Tom Brewer - Boston Red Sox

Thomas Austin Brewer, Jr.
Boston Red Sox
Pitcher

Bats:  Right  Throws:  Right  Height:  6'1"  Weight:  175
Born:  September 3, 1931, Wadesboro, NC
Signed:  Signed by the Boston Red Sox as an amateur free agent before the 1951 season
Major League Teams:  Boston Red Sox 1954-1961
Died:  February 15, 2018, Cheraw, SC (age 86)

Tom Brewer played college ball at Elon College, was named to the All-Army team in 1952, and went on to pitch in parts of eight seasons with the Red Sox.  He won 19 games in 1956 and 16 games in 1957, the two best seasons of his career.  Slowed by arm troubles, Brewer retired following the 1961 season at 29 years old.

Building the Set
August 29, 1988 in Millville, NJ - Card #61

1988 Topps #8

We were about a year in to officially collecting the 1956 Topps set when I added four cards to the set through a trade with a friend of mine.  Now my friend probably has no recollection of this, but I'm going to omit his name to protect the innocent.  In the summer of 1988, I was aware of a few different baseball card collectors from my school.  Most of them were busy accumulating as many "Future Stars" cards from the 1988 Topps set as possible, convinced these cards would be worth hundreds of dollars in a matter of a few short years.  The Kevin Elster card was a particularly hot commodity, as was anything with a Topps Rookie Cup on it such as the cards for Mark McGwire, Mike Greenwell, Ellis Burks and Casey Candaele.

My friend had four 1956 Topps cards set aside in an "oldies" pile, and I'm guessing he had added these to his collection by accident or maybe through an older relative.  In any event, I went over to his house this late summer day in August, equipped with my 1988 Topps doubles, and ready to deal.  I don't remember the specifics of the trade, but I ended up with four 1956 Topps commons and he ended up with a small stack of 1988 Topps rookies.  We were both happy with our respective hauls, so in our minds it was a fair deal.

I've lost track of this friend over the years, but his name lives on in my official records of how each card in our 1956 Topps set was obtained.

The Card
I'm embarrassingly bad at identifying old ballparks, but I believe the facade visible right below the blue position/team box indicates this picture was taken at Yankee Stadium.  It looks like infielder Milt Bolling (#315) is loitering in the background of the card, as Bolling wore #2 for the Red Sox between 1953 and 1957.  There's a man in what looks to be in street clothes (a member of the grounds crew?) also standing behind Brewer.

The "Hi-Tom" referenced in the middle panel on the back of the card is the Class D High Point-Thomasville Hi-Toms, which would have been a Rookie level equivalent in the minor league system today.  Brewer pitched in Rookie-level baseball in 1951, went into military service in 1952 and 1953, and made the Red Sox club in 1954.  That's incredibly impressive.  Granted, he played baseball while in the military, but that would be like someone today spending a year with the Williamsport Crosscutters, entering the military for two years, and then joining the Phillies starting pitching rotation in year four.

1956 Season
Brewer enjoyed a career year in 1956, earning a place on the A.L. All-Star team and finishing the season with a 19-9 record and a 3.50 ERA.  His big year netted him some A.L. MVP votes, and he finished 22nd overall in the voting.  He was the ace of the Red Sox pitching staff that season, with only Ted Williams (#5) having a higher WAR on the club.

1955 Bowman #178

1955 Topps #83

1961 Topps #434

2010 Topps Heritage Real One Autographs #ROA-TB

Other Notable Baseball Cards
First Mainstream Card:  1955 Bowman #178
First Topps Card:  1955 Topps #83
Last Topps Card (as a player):  1961 Topps #434
Most Recent Mainstream Card:  2010 Topps Heritage Real One Autographs #ROA-TB
Topps Flagship Set Appearances (7):  1955-1961

33 - Brewer non-parallel baseball cards in the Beckett online database as of 2/10/19.

Sources:  
Baseball Reference
Beckett Database
SABR
The Trading Card Database

In some cases, the first and last cards listed above are subjective and chosen by me if multiple cards were released within the same year.  Most recent mainstream card may also be subjective and does not include extremely low serial numbered cards, buybacks or cut autograph cards.

Previous Card / Next Card

Set Order: #33 Roberto Clemente - Pittsburgh Pirates / #35 Al Rosen - Cleveland Indians

Order Collected: #174 Glen Gorbous - Philadelphia Phillies / #58 Ed Roebuck - Brooklyn Dodgers