Baseball History Through Cards

 Hello Friends!

I'm sure I'm not the first or the last to wax poetic about baseball cards and really, what they can teach us about the timeframe the card was from. 

On cards that show the stadium, you can see the advertisements at the time. You get a glimpse at the stadium itself. The giant wall in the Baker Bowl, The Ad Monster that became the Green Monster.. The giant cigarette ad in centre field Polo Grounds. 

You also get a chance to follow a team's history. Cards available for the Boston, Milwaukee and Atlanta Braves, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Oakland, and Orphaned Athletics. Washington Try 1, Try 2, and Try 3.. The Pilots. 

Also slipping in are possible moves. I can only remember one such instance actually occurring with the Padres supposedly moving to Washington a mere 5 years after starting in SD... 

You also get to see the different companies/ad tie-ins there have been over the decades. We know of cigarettes, gum, and stickers being used as enticements, though really the cards were the enticement for the particular brand of cigarette... 

Companies like Hires, Wonder, Hostess, Squirt, Kelloggs, Post, and others using cards as incentive to buy their products. 

Now, I could probably make this an hours long presentation, but.... Nobody's going to read that, right?? 

I pulled some examples from teams off the TCDB, as I don't have many cards from the 30s-70s... 

So when the Oaklamento Athletics finally make it to Las Vegas, the Athletics franchise will have relocated the most of any team in modern history. Philadelphia to Kansas City to Oakland to Sortamento and eventually Vegas.. 

One thing that strikes me every time I actually sit to think about it is that the A's were in Philly until the mid 50s.. Kansas City was their home for 14 years before moving to Oakland for the 1968 season. Those changes are captured on cards.. Of course, a year after the A's moved to Oakland, Kansas City got the Royals. 

Now, this is a rebrand, really.. The Houston Colt 45's.. Honestly a team name that would never fly today. We all know the story about how the Colts became the Astros with the opening of the Astrodome. 

One of the food tie-ins I mentioned. Tip Top Bread. I cursory search tells me it was a bread sold in the Eastern Seaboard and the Midwest.. I feel it had a stronghold in the Brooklyn area based on the Brooklyn Tip Tops Federal League team. 

Rodeo Meats.. Fitting for a Kansas City regional promotion, no? 

Pepsi has had many tie-ins over the years. 

This was an early OPC/Butterfinger card.. 

This whole post was inspired by the Open Binders app through Blue Sky. It got me thinking about some of the teams that are no longer around and seeing them represented in cards. As I mentioned, these are just a few. Obviously there's the Pilots, The Senators Mk1, Senators Mk2, Boston Braves, Milwaukee Braves, and New York Giants.

I think this may be a big draw towards vintage cards. Yes, some can be insanely expensive, but they're a window to the past. A look back at a "simpler" time. (and honestly, if any of us were suddenly transported to 1950, we'd be so disoriented that we might not function properly) Definitely a time where there weren't 5000000 parallels and inserts for a set. Or one company churning out 50 sets a year..