Friday, February 3, 2023

Vintage equipment: 1963 Topps

Here's another one of those bats which just have the #1. Obviously it's not Al Smith's number. Jim Landis was #1 on the White Sox, so it could be his bat.

There's not doubt that this is Jack Fisher's glove, though. Most players write their name on the outside of the glove once, it at all, but he's got FISHER prominently above the fingers and along the thumb.
And this is definitely not Paul Foytack's glove. I saw a name written on the glove that didn't look like it started with an F or a P.
Zooming in close it looks like it starts with a B. The only pitcher for the 1962 Tigers with a B name was Hall of Famer Jim Bunning?

Could it be? I decided to look online for more photos of Foytack with a glove. That's where I found this Topps original photo, much clearer than what is on the card. You can clearly see here that the name is Bunning. This came from a Flickr account called tibob1. He has hundreds of these kinds of photos that I guess are from the Topps archives. Lots of cards I recognized from photos, and lots of obscure players and zero-year uniforms for notable names. Is there a full repository of these somewhere?




4 comments:

  1. Just mailed you a package today, should be there Monday, we'll call it MISC. You'll see why.

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  2. I'm envious of your sharp eyes. Even zoomed in, I had trouble seeing Bunning on that glove.

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