The 30-Day Baseball Card Challenge: Day #29

Tony, the wonderful writer of the “Off Hiatus Baseball” blog, started a fun activity based off the “30-Day Music Challenge” that Twitter users were taking. The list of challenges looks like this:

Today, we’ll continue with Challenge #29: A favorite card from before 1950, whether you own it or not.

When I wrote the post about my favorite cards from the fifties, I mentioned that I didn’t have very many of them. I reasoned that those cards were too old to depict any of my favorite players, but too new to be considered “cool.” A random card from 1954 didn’t hold the same allure as a random card from the 30’s. Which became obvious as I looked for a card to fill today’s challenge. I had more cards in my collection from 1910-1919 than I did cards from 1950-1969. For my habits, tobacco cards are “vintage” while cards from the 50’s are just “old”.

Although, I didn’t go quite as far back as tobacco cards for my selection. With his recent passing, when I saw this card I knew I wanted to write about it.

Maybe it’s just me, but whenever I see an old card like this, I always wonder what stories it has to tell. Who pulled it originally? Why wasn’t it thrown away in the last 50 years? Did the person have others? Did the original collector have other Red Sox cards? Was this ever bound together in a stack with the Ted Williams RC? 

The card itself is pretty plain. Just a black and white photo in a white border. The front doesn’t even have Doerr’s name. But there, clear as day, is the silent captain of the Red Sox.

I’ve mentioned Bobby Doerr on this blog before. When I took my first trip to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown as a kid, it was the year of his induction. He was pictured on the cover of the yearbook I bought that day. I didn’t know who it was, or when he played. But, it was pretty cool to have a Red Sox happen to be inducted that year. (As it happens, I’ve made four trips to the Hall of Fame. A Red Sox player has been inducted each of those years. Only with Pedro last year was that intentional. The rest just happened to coincide with trips I was making.) So there was always that “awe’ factor with the mysterious Hall of Famer.

Since then, I obviously learned a lot more about Doerr. I was even at Fenway at least once when he made an appearance. He was always a cool connection to the “old” Red Sox. It was like a link through history. Which is why it’s too bad that link has now been cut. Red Sox history is now identified more with objects than with people.

Objects like this card here.