I hope you enjoy your visit. Please pass along this URL to others who may be interested. 

 99% of these images have never been published before.  Professional quality prints are available of almost all of the images on this site.  These images are not scanned photos from my collection, they are scans of the original negatives and transparencies. I ask that you respect me and the copyrights I hold under U.S. Copyright law.

I'm doing my best to help fans of 1960s-70s baseball improve their photo collections.  Please contact me if you have any questions. I also sell on eBay under the ID "thatsmyboy03"

 Please be sure to check out the "archives of front pages" on the left hand side. There are some fantastic images in those pages and 99% are not in any other gallery.

07.04.2008

Happy 4th of July to all!  Here's a mega-update for you.

Mudcat Grant was a very effective reliever during his final two seasons (1970-71), spending parts of both seasons with the A's and Pirates. Unfortunately the Pirates sold his rights to the A's in August of 1971 and he missed out on the Pirates successful World Series run. After pitching so well for the A's and also helping a young Rollie Fingers make the transition to the bullpen he was released in Spring Training of 1972 because Charlie O. thought his $60,000 salary was too steep. I thought I read somewhere that  he then auditioned for the Cleveland Indians after his release but didn't catch on. Perhaps one of you could verify my memory for me?

What better player to display on the fourth of July than the all-around All-American Steve Garvey? I can't say I'm a huge fan of  his but I certainly respect his glovework and the fact that he missed only 8 games during the period from 1974-82.

Here's a couple of Curt (Clank) Blefary that I'm really excited about having. After a great start to his career unfortunately his performance went downhill rather quickly. One interesting thing about Blefary is that the Orioles attempted to convert him into a catcher in 1968 since they were loaded in the outfield with Paul Blair, Don Buford, Frank Robinson and the promising rookies Dave May and Curt Motton. He caught 40 games and threw out 18 of 37 runners attempting to steal. Despite leading the AL in E.R.A. in 1968 the Orioles traded Curt to Houston for Mike Cuellar and with the 1969 return of Jim Palmer the Orioles proceeded to win 109 games in 1969. Blefary traveled from Houston to NY, Oakland, and SD before his career ended in 1972 at the age of 29. Unfortunately he passed away in 2001 of pancreatitis.

Stay tuned for my next update and I'll post 3 great new images of Curt Blefary with the A's in 1971.

07.03.2008

I've finally taken all of the new images from March and April of 2008 and broke them off into a separate page which can be accessed from the ARCHIVES OF "FRONT PAGES" link on the left side of the page. This should make this page load much faster. In the coming weeks I will be uploading a substantial amount of images. At that point I will be transferring the new images from May and June into a separate page.  I'm sorry if my navigation system is a bit cumbersome. If you really want to see some good stuff please take the time to check out the previous "front pages".

 Here's a look at a couple of my favorite players whose careers cover essentially my whole period of interest in baseball photography. Born six months apart in the mid-south (Rick Monday in Arkansas and Bobby Murcer in Oklahoma) these two were good fielding left handed hitters whose statistics are remarkably similar.

 Murcer, I'm sure, is perceived as the bigger star but the stats show that they were essentially equally productive as batters and also in the field. This perception is probably because of Murcer's 5 straight All-Star appearances (1971-75) and also because of being considered the heir apparent to Mickey Mantle in centerfield for the Yankees. Monday's difficulties against lefty pitching also play into it as went from being sat down against some lefties early in his career to becoming a strictly platoon player by the time of his trade to the Dodgers in 1977.  \

BTW, the Cubs road uniforms during this period were some of the dreariest of the 70s.

07.02.2008

Hondo! The Capital Punisher!

06.29.2008

06.28.2008

Fritz Fisher's career was the shortest among this group of lefties. He faced a mere 5 batters in one game in 1964. After striking out Harmon Killebrew he walked Zoilo Versalles and Bernie Allen before giving up a single to light-hitting Twins catcher Jerry Zimmerman and a double to pitcher Camilio Pascual. Fritz was then pulled by manager Chuck Dressen for Ed Rakow in the April 19th game.

Pete Richert was a promising lefty for the Dodgers who was traded to the Senators as part of the huge 1964 which involved Claude Osteen, Frank Howard, and Ken McMullen among others. He then blossomed into an all-star pitcher for the Washington squad in 1965 and 1966 until faltering a bit and being traded to the Orioles in 1967.

06.23.2008

06.22.2008

06.15.2008

06.11.2008

Pedro Borbon apparently borrowed Bill Plummer's glove for this shot.

Earl Battey was a great catcher for the Twins for several years. He languished in the White Sox farm system until being traded away along with other future stars Norm Cash, Johnny Callison, and Don Mincher by the apparently short-sighted Pale Hose in the 1959-60 off-season..

I should have included Bob Arnzen in my June 9th update. He looks a bit worn out in this shot.

I love the classic posed shot of Jimmy Stewart. I wonder if the Topps photographers ever suggested to Reggie Jackson or Frank Howard that they pose in the "I'm gonna move that runner over"  bunting fashion, ala Tito Fuentes and J. Stewart.

06.09.2009  "Close, but no cigar"

  All six of the players below never made it to the big leagues. I know nothing about all of them except that Greg Arnold (an Orioles third round pick in 1967) was rumored to be the inspiration for the character Ebby "Nuke" LaLoosh in the movie "Bull Durham".

I must say that the three Oriole pitching prospects sure had an uphill climb in attempting to make the Orioles roster at that time. The Orioles were stacked with pitching at the major and minor league level (Rochester) for many years.

06.08.2008

In search of a theme for the day I have chosen to select a few players that have died too young. Cap Peterson unfortunately passed on in 1980 at the age of 37 due to some sort of kidney problem. Here he is featured during his final major league season in 1969.

Clint Courtney was managing the the Richmond Braves when he was stricken with a heart attack at age 48 while playing ping-pong with a player during a road trip to Rochester, NY. Clint was the first to use the Paul Richards-designed oversized catcher's mitt in an attempt to better catch knuckleballs from Hoyt Wilhelm.

Chico Salmon was a super-sub for most of his career, playing all positions except for catcher and pitcher. He was the main backup infielder for the 1969-71 Orioles mini-dynasty. He didn't get much playing time of course since Powell, Johnson, Belanger, and B. Robinson were pretty set in the Baltimore infield. Chico was the subject of the famous quote by an Oriole teammate...."If Chico's hands get any worse, we'll have to amputate." Bruce Markusen recently did a nice write up (as usual) of Chico on his blog. A heart attack in 2000 ended Chico's life at age 59.

Dave McNally had a splendid run with the Orioles, especially from 1968-74 when averaged 19 wins a season. ESPN.com has a nice article which explains McNally's important role in the creation of free agency. Unfortunately Dave died in 2002 due to lung cancer.

06.07.2008

06.06.2008

06.05.2008

06.04.2008

I understand this page is probably ridiculously overloaded and may be slow-loading. I'll take care of that in the next few days.

Before I starting doing some research on today's players I thought it was an uninspiring bunch. Was I ever wrong.

Norm Bass' story is a fascinating one. Stricken with meningitis at age ten, driven from a promising major league career (with also a short stint in the AFL) by rheumatoid arthritis he turned to table tennis and played in the 2000 Paralympics in Sydney.

 Please take the time to check out these links. Here's a link to a CNN/SI article on him and also a link to a website created by his son, who also written a book about his father.

Dave Roberts was a well-traveled lefty who changed organizations 11 times in his pro career. His best season was perhaps 1971 when he finished second in the NL with a 2.10 era but with a poor Padres team he managed only a 14-17 record. Here's an interesting bit of info from his wikipedia entry.

"He was initially signed in June 1963 as an undrafted amateur free agent by the Philadelphia Phillies because they reportedly wanted to have a player of Jewish faith in the organization to attract the Jewish fan base."

Steve Hamilton would be considered a "situational lefty" if he played today. At 6'7" he played 2 seasons in the NBA with the Lakers as power forward/center in the late 50s. Later in his career he was one of few practitioners of the "folly floater", also known as the "eephus pitch". Here are his stats and his wikipedia entry. Unfortunately he died of cancer at the age of 62 in 1997.

He obviously had a sense of humor based on the writing on his glove...."A Genuine Steve Hamilton Model"

06.03.2008

Unfortunately 2 of these original Padres are no longer with us. Roberto Pena died in 1983 of "accidental alcohol poisoning" and Ron Davis died in 1992.

 Danny Breeden, was the brother of Expos first baseman Hal Breeden and accumulated a mere 73 at bats over 2 seasons (1969 Reds and 1971 Cubs) for his major league career.

Ron Slocum is an interesting case in that while he is pictured here in 1969 with his catcher's gear he did not play catcher for the Padres in 1969, instead he played 2b,ss, and 3b. In 1970 he played those three positions and played 19 games behind the plate for the Pads.

Out of these 4 players two of them, Ron Davis and Danny Breeden never appeared in a major league game with the Padres.

06.02.2008

Here's a study in contrast. Denny Doyle wearing what appears to be a Casey Jones-style engineer's hat and looking as green as can be in a shot taken 2 years before his ML debut and Bo Belinsky looking a bit more worldly as he gazes off-camera, no doubt pondering some very deep thoughts.

I really love the early Padres....I've got only about 5 more of these and I'll put them up for Tuesday's update.

06.01.2008

From Bobby Del Greco's wikipedia entry  "Del Greco played his last major-league game for the Phillies in May 1965 and remained in the minor leagues through 1967. Following his retirement from baseball, he went to work as a delivery driver for The Pittsburgh Press. Del Greco threw batting practice for the Pittsburgh Pirates until the early 1990s."

Chuck Dobson was the benefactor of perhaps the greatest run support in ML history during the 1971 season. The A's batters averaged 5.96 runs during his 30 starts, allowing him to post a record of 15-5 while sporting a relatively high ERA of 3.81.  Unfortunately arm/shoulder/elbow problems prevented him from playing any kind of role with the 1972-74 A's dynasty.

05.31.2008

I've already got tomorrow's update ready to go so be sure to check back on Sunday morning.

A big thank you to those who responded to my questions about some mystery Angels from my last update. I've corrected the post from 5/26.

Perhaps most of you know this already but I just found out that Dock Ellis is gravely ill with cirrhosis of the liver. That's not good at all....Dock was a big favorite of mine. The 1971 World Series was the first one I remember watching and the Pirates were MY team. Maybe it was because of the cool uniforms or maybe it was because my brother's favorite team was the Orioles.

05.26.2008

?? A little help please in ID'ing the Angel? Fred Newman, probably taken on 8/12/64 when the Indians visited Dodger Stadium. Newman bested McDowell to run his record for the season to 10-5.  Coincidentally, Kevin of the 1965 Topps blog recently had a post about Fred Newman.

Minnie Rojas? Of course not....it's Rudy May sans glasses.

05.25.2008

I love this shot of Gene Tenace. I remember the first re-entry draft in late 76....I believe teams drafted the right to negotiate with a player. I don't know how many teams could select one player though or how many players one team could draft.

Here's the list of players involved in that draft....lifted straight from retrosheet.org

Bill Campbell was the first player signed. Nate Colbert and Willie McCovey were not selected by any team.

A slick-fielder with a decent bat, I wonder why Willie Montanez spent his whole career being traded from team to team. Rodney Scott was a dangerous baserunner and a decent 2nd baseman but his low batting average prevented him from being more valued. Upon being released by the Expos in 1982 Rodney's friend and Expo teammate Bill Lee staged a one-game walkout in protest....and was promptly released. Lee claims he was blackballed and never played in the majors again.

Here's a few "fan shots" from an 1976 exhibition game that the Reds played in Indianapolis (I believe).

05.24.2008

Vicente Romo was a pretty good relief pitcher for the Indians, Red Sox, Padres, and Dodgers. I find it interesting that he's from Baja California, I'm sure there aren't too many players from that Mexican state besides Vicente and his brother Enrique. After playing for the Padres in 1974 he didn't appear in the majors until 1982 with the Dodgers.

Felix Millan was one of the NL's best second baseman for about a decade until a shoulder injury suffered in an August 1977 brawl ended his major league career. He played in Japan after that for 3 seasons. Here's some great memories of him from the Ultimate Mets Database.

Dave Ricketts' playing resume is not all that strong (213 at bats over 6 seasons) but he later spent 19 seasons as a well-respected coach for the Pirates and Cardinals and was a member of the 1967 World Champion Cardinals.

  Gary Peters was an outstanding pitcher for the White Sox who had lost much of his effectiveness by the time he was traded to the Red Sox for the 1970 season at age 33.

05.22.2008

 I hope to get back on my regular schedule of daily updates again this weekend so hang tight there's some more great stuff on the way.

This says something about me for sure but out of today's three additions I'm most interested in this shot of Ron Brand. Doing a little bit of research uncovers a couple of interesting things about Ron.

He was primarily a catcher but it wasn't until his last two seasons (1970 and 1971) that he played shortstop. Gene Mauch must have really been desperate for offense so Brand played 41 games at ss over those two seasons, often starting at ss and then being relieved later in the game by the light hitting but slick fielding Bobby Wine.

Ron is one of relatively few Mormons who have played in the big leagues. He also played for Sacramento in something called the MSBL from 1989-94. It appears it's some kind of over 35 or over 40 amateur baseball league. Many other former major leaguers have also played in the league. Here's the roster.

Jay Johnstone's time spent with the Yankees was pretty short (June 14, 1978 to June 15, 1979) so this is a pretty rare shot from Spring Training 1979.

A nice shot from early in Bob Boone's long career. I did not know until checking his baseball-reference page that he went to Stanford. I don't know if he graduated but I'm still impressed.

05.19.2008

As some of you may know the first baseball card set that I really remember well is the 1971 Topps set.  Angel Bravo's card was among many of my favorites way back then. The diminutive Venezuelan had a decent 1970 season with the Reds as a pinch-hitter deluxe but after being traded to the Padres in April of 1971 he failed miserably in the same role for the lowly Padres and his major league career was over. I find it interesting that Angel is posed as a righty in this shot when everybody knows he was a lefty swinger.

After winning 20 games for the AL West Champion 1969 Twins, Dave Boswell lost a 1-0 duel to Dave McNally and the O's in the 1969 ALCS while pitching 10 2/3 innings. His career was cut short by an arm injury suffered while pitching to Frank Robinson in the 10th inning of that game. Here's a good interview with Dave.

Dave Boswell will forever be remembered for being throttled by his manager Billy Martin in a Detroit bar in 1969. Here's a good account of the incident.

Tommie Reynolds' best opportunity  in the big leagues was with the 1969 A's playing left field alongside future stars Rick Monday and Reggie Jackson. He didn't perform badly but his OPS+ of 88 (relative to the league) was not good enough for Oakland's management so the A's traded Jim Nash to the Braves to get Felipe Alou to play LF in 1970 while Tommie's contract was sold to California in May of 1970.. Ironically Alou performed no better than Reynolds and also posted an OPS+ of 88 in his lone full season with the club.

05.17.2008

A sincere thank you goes out to all of you who have contacted me offering condolences for our family's loss. I didn't intend to take this much time off from updating the site but now I'm rested and have recharged my batteries. Stay tuned for some great changes at SBPP......a new searchable website is coming very soon and I hope to be displaying perhaps 1000 new images over the summer months.

I'm sure you are all aware of the tragic story of Lyman Bostock.

A tribute page can be found here and a great article from the LA Times from April 22, 2008 can be found here.

Free agency rules were different back in 1977 and Bostock was allowed to leave via free agency after just 3 full seasons in the big leagues. Larry Hisle also left the Twins that November and the squad was devastated as they went from leading the AL in runs and batting average in 1977 to being 8th in runs and 4th in batting average in 1978. Their replacements in the outfield were the not-quite-ready-for-prime-time-players Willie Norwood and Hosken Powell and Bombo Rivera.

Don't know much at all about Gary Boyd except that his career consisted of 11 very long innings for the Indians in 1969.

 Rob Gardner was a well-traveled lefty who's best season was 1972 with the Yankees when he notched 8 wins in spot starter duty. I primarily

 remember him from his really bad Topps cards from 1971 and 1973. 

05.05.2008

My mom passed away suddenly yesterday at the age of 77. Even after 44 years she still called me her "baby". I didn't always like that but I came to understand.....that's why my 4-year old son will always be my "baby boy". 

Here's a few of Lucy Dewing's favorite ballplayers.

At about age 11 I remember waiting with mom in the pavilion area beyond centerfield at Met Stadium for Larry's autograph. He signed a pennant for me and I remember her commenting about how nice he was to the swarm of kids around him.

 I'll be taking a couple days off from updating this week.

05.04.2008

OK, OK so it's not a double-sized update. Maybe tomorrow.

Here's the "Hawk", Ken Harrelson , in a nice shot taken during Spring Training 1967. He spent just the latter half of 1966 and the early part of 1967 with the Senators before being traded back to the KC A's. Of course, he was subsequently released by the A's for referring to owner Charlie Finley as a "menace to baseball" and caught on with the Red Sox as a replacement for the injured Tony Conigliaro during their 1967 pennant season.

I seem to remember Adrian Garrett one of those guys whose minor league numbers on the back of their "rookie stars" baseball card looked really good but couldn't translate that success to the big leagues. He spent at least 15 years in organized baseball and had only 276 at-bats (and 11 homers)  to show for it.

I guess I'm at a loss to comment on Russ Gibson. I don't know much about him except that this is a cool shot.

Ernie Bowman was a utility infielder who played parts of three seasons with the Giants (1961-63). He hit his only major league HR in 205 at bats on August 23, 1962 at the Polo Grounds against Mets lefty Al Jackson. This photo is from 1966.

05.03.2008

Stay tuned for a double-size update for tomorrow.

"3-Dog" was a 2-time all-star and 3-time gold glover while playing centerfield for the Dodgers from 1960-1973, Montreal in 1974, Tex-StL in 1975, SD in 1976, and the Angels as a backup in 1979. After being released by the Padres in January 1977 he spent two years playing in Japan. Had he been able to stick around as a regular in 1977-78 he would have approached 3000 hits for his career, as is stands he ended up with 2561 hits along with 398 stolen bases and 138 triples.

In the span of two days (Dec 5-6,1973)  the Dodgers made 3 interesting trades. Firstly they traded Willie Davis for Mike Marshall. This gave them a good reliever but created a hole in CF. They then traded Pete Richert to St Louis for Tommie Agee. Lastly they traded Claude Osteen to the Astros for Jimmy Wynn.

Agee was released in March 1974 (thus ending his career) but otherwise worked well for them since Wynn had an outstanding year in 1974 and of course Mike Marshall ended up winning the Cy Young award while pitching an astounding 106 games (208 innings) in relief. You could make a strong argument that Wynn should have won the MVP award rather than teammate Steve Garvey.

Here's a couple of interesting items from his wikipedia entry.

"a Buddhist convert, he nonetheless irritated teammates by constantly fingering his prayer beads and chanting before games."

"Off the field, Davis had substance abuse problems. Eventually, with the help of teammate Tommy Davis and friend Tommy Hawkins, Davis recuperated."

Brant Alyea was one of many players to have "career years" in 1970. Others that come to mind are Jim Hickman, Bernie Carbo, Clarence Gaston, Dick Dietz, and Tommy Harper. After a poor 1971 season he was drafted from the Twins by the A's and performed poorly in limited duty with the A's and Cardinals in 1972 to end his career.

from Bud Harrelson's wikipedia entry.

"Harrelson is currently the co-owner, Senior Vice President for Baseball Operations and first base coach of the Long Island Ducks, an unaffiliated minor league baseball team.'

05.02.2008

John Gelnar saw limited duty with the Pirates during the 1964 and 1967 seasons and performed poorly. He was purchased by the Royals but was traded along with Steve Whitaker on April 1st, 1969 in the infamous Lou Piniella trade. His next tour in the bigs proved much more successful as the appeared in 39 games (107 innings) and posted a 3.31 era for the lowly Pilots. After a decent season  in 1970 with the Brewers and a couple of appearances for Milwaukee in 1971 he was traded to the Tigers and never made it back to "the show". He's also one of Alan Johnson's favorite players.

Orlando Pena was such a well-traveled pitcher that it's easy to forget that he spent some time in the O's organization. He appeared in 5 games for the Orioles in 1971 and another 11 in 1973 before being sold the the Cardinals. He's wearing #62 in this Spring Training shot.....below he is shown wearing #27 in the "Johnny Pro" card from 1973.

05.01.2008

Gary Geiger was a good player for several years. Most of his success came as a centerfielder with the Red Sox from 1959 to 1965, although his last two years with the team were marred by injuries. Sadly enough he died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1996 at the age of 59. Here's a link to a very touching article about him

Gary Gentry was a good young pitcher whose career was ended by what is described as "ruinous elbow injury" during his first year with the Braves. After his injury, which I believe happened during a June 5th, 1973 game against the Expos, Gary pitched just another 32 1/3 innings at the major league level.