The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book

Neither Boyd nor Harris had published a book nor possessed any special expertise in the field of sports or sports memorabilia when they decided to write The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book.^[3] In 1970, while working at a Boston bookstore, a customer inquired about books on baseball cards. Surprised to learn that there weren't any books on the subject, Harris told Boyd, "We should write one."^[5] So they pored over the cards they had collected in their youth and wrote The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book. Although the book doesn't indicate which author contributed which parts, generally Boyd (from Boston) covered American League players and Harris (from Philadelphia) covered National League players.^[6] In the introduction to the 1991 edition, Boyd writes that several publishers declined to publish it: "an editor at McGraw Hill turned it down as 'too flip.' (Get it?baseball cards? Flip?) We weren't just getting rejections now, we were getting cute rejections."

"Then Roger Kahn intervened (inadvertently, I'm sure.) He wrote The Boys of Summer. It quickly became a bestseller. We submitted our proposal to Little, Brown, detailing the resemblances between Kahn's book and ours. 'Baseball nostalgia is the next big thing,' we lobbied shamelessly."^[7]

Brendan C. Boyd wrote another book, published in 1993, titled Blue Ruin: A Novel of the 1919 World Series.^[8] Fred C. Harris owns the Great American Baseball Company.

The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book, presents a humorous and usually irreverent account of the baseball cards that were distributed during the authors' youths and of the players depicted on the cards. The basic format consists of an image of a card of a player, or in a few instances a manager or umpire, accompanied by a short characterization of the card and the player. The commentary for each card ranges from a single sentence to a few hundred words. Unlike most sports-related books, the vast majority of players featured in this book possessed mediocre talent and had been largely forgotten by 1973.

The book is not a baseball card guide in any respect and makes no pretense of being one—there's no indication what a card is worth or even that it has any intrinsic value other than the memories it invokes. Baseball card collecting in 1973 was primarily a childhood activity and usually abandoned by young adulthood. The authors' stated assumption is that the cards one collected in his youth are all gone, as revealed in the book's closing comments, "We know, your mother, your own mother, threw them away." Instead, the authors present a nostalgic look at the part of their youth that involved collecting, trading, and flipping baseball cards.

The book is divided into four sections:

• Where Have You Gone Vince DiMaggio (Some Reflections On a Baseball Card Childhood)
• This Kid Is Going to Make It
• Profiles
• Some Final Observations on Trading, Hoarding, Collecting and Other Aberrations of the Baseball Card Life

The first section reminisces in a rapid-fire stream of consciousness flow about growing up and eventually coming of age in 1950s suburban America with Pez, cap-guns, Jujubes, and baseball cards. The second delves into the Topps trading card company and its pioneering executive Sy Berger circa 1973. "There was Topps and then there was Topps," Harris says in the introduction to the 1991 reissue.

The bulk and the heart of the book is the section called "Profiles," containing the card images and player biographies. Usually one or two players are featured per page and the biography is by no means meant to be complete or unbiased, but rather a quick snapshot of what the authors remembered most about the player. n all there are 221 baseball players featured^[8] with no stated or apparent reason for their selection, although it can be gathered that many were picked for the humorous potential in some aspect of the player or the card itself. Most of the cards were issued from 1951 to 1963 with a few later ones included.^[9]

The last section of the book offers a short discourse on things to do with cards, from hoarding, trading, to finally collecting. The ending foreshadows the adult hobby of collecting baseball cards that was about to explode, although it is unlikely the authors predicted this.

Summarize Timeline Fact Check

The book is not written in a linear fashion. Each card and its accompanying commentary, with a few rare exceptions, stand alone and are not categorized, such as by team, league, era, position, etc. The ultimate effect of the seemingly scattershot arrangement is that the reader can start most anywhere and jump about without any loss of comprehension. That said, there are unstated themes that run through the book, or they could be described as threads that hold the story together.

Unlike most every other sports book, and specifically those covering baseball players of the 1950s and early 1960s, The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book does not focus on the stars and legends of the game but rather on the lesser and forgotten players. Probably more than anything else this is what defines the book and gives it a unique perspective.

The great players, however, are not ignored; in fact, of the 221 presented, 15 are in the Baseball Hall of Fame.^[9] Among the stars mentioned are Sandy Koufax (seen on his rookie card which is dubbed his “Bar Mitzvah picture” because he looks so young), Ernie Banks (remembered for having played on bad teams and being loved by everyone), Stan Musial (because of the unsolved mystery of why there was no card of him in 1950 and 1951) and Yogi Berra (because he's Yogi Berra). Those who didn't get mentioned include Hank Aaron, Warren Spahn, Harmon Killebrew, Frank Robinson, Whitey Ford, and Roger Maris. Mickey Mantle is mentioned, but not only is his card not shown, it's belittled for having been so abundant one year.

It can be said that the book "is about players who have long since been forgotten by everybody but those who grew up collecting their cards and thinking them important simply because they were Major League ballplayers.^[3] The primary reason many of these players have been forgotten is because they weren’t very good, and that is how Boyd and Harris have remembered them: Some because they couldn’t field well, such as Dick Stuart and Marv Throneberry, quite a few, including Doug Camilli and Eddie Miksis, because they couldn’t hit, or Casey Wise, who really couldn't hit; and of course those who couldn’t pitch, like Dave DeBusschere and Eli Grba (of whom the authors report, "In addition to having the hardest name to pronounce in the big leagues he also had just about the worst stuff.")

Several players are recalled because they had confusing or unusual names: Wayne Terwilliger, Calvin Coolidge Julius Caesar Tuskahoma McLish, Coot Veal, "Cot" Deal, Whammy Douglas, and Foster Castleman. The book has this to say about Foster Castleman, “Of course a ballplayer with a name like this is never going to amount to anything. If you have a name like an orthodontist you’re going to play like an orthodontist. The guy never really had a shot.” One item amusing to the authors was the player named Boyd Gail Harris, whose full name coincidentally matches the two authors' last names plus one of the authors' wife's name.

A good many of the capsules in the profiles section are more about the baseball card itself than the player depicted. In some the authors remark about the prevalence or difficulty in obtaining the card: "Toby Atwell has to be remembered by any serious collector of baseball cards in 1952 as having been one of the most difficult cards to acquire," the authors write. "The career of Toby Atwell as player was secondary to the career of Toby Atwell as baseball card, and if you needed him to complete your set too, you'll know what I mean." In many others, Harris and Boyd point out some absurdity, such as slipshod graphics, an absurd remark about the player, or the player's silly pose or expression. One example is Bob Cerv's 1958 Topps card, where it looks as if he's whacking himself in the head with his bat. Another card fitting this category is that of pitcher Harvey Haddix, who is best remembered for once having pitched 121⁄3 innings of perfect baseball only to lose the game in the 13th inning after allowing one hit. He is shown with a forlorn smile. The bio tells us that it “is the reluctantly self-deprecating smile of the perennially dumped-on, the wry smile of the universal victim, the man who expects very little of his peers and knows secretly that he’s going to have to settle for quite a good deal less.”