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Philadelphia A's

An odd find in a dig of The Sporting News archives photos
It's been a busy day on The Buzz for headlines in the here and now of today -- you know, modern cardboard and sports business -stuff -- so I'll work from left field on this quick and simple vintage item with a story.
Call it a Buzz Buys (it is), call it afternoon/evening filler (yeah, it is), call it whatever you want depending on your collecting tastes ... I like to call this one interesting.
I recently found this old, semi-mangled print from the archives of The Sporting News from a dealer of other non-card materials and the simplicity of that clean pose got me to stop and look. Why? Well, a lot of photos just don't look like that from back then -- where, for example, you can see plenty of details on the fabric of Bill Connelly's Philadelphia Athletics jersey. (Yes, Philadelphia ... that's the Oakland A's two cities ago where they made plenty of MLB history from 1901 to 1954, winning five World Series and nine American League pennants.) This one just felt really different, though. That just felt like a superstar kind of pose, or at least somebody of note who needed a portrait taken by a major publication, and yet ... I didn't know his name.
Who's in the background? I dunno. When's it from? Based on what's scribbled on the back of this one -- a patchwork of handwriting from a few uses over the years -- I'm not that sure. So that's when I headed over to Baseball Reference to learn more and that's where this one got interesting to me. I learned plenty more.
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This entry was posted in Baseball, Vintage and tagged Chicago White Sox, Detroit Tigers, MLB, Topps, 1953 Topps, Connie Mack, Hank Greenberg, New York Giants, The Sporting News, TCMA, Philadelphia Athletics, Bill Connelly, Philadelphia A's, The Sporting News archives, 1979 TCMA Baseball History Series The 1950s, Clint Courtney, Dick Williams, 1991 Topps Archives, Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh on March 6, 2024 by BlowoutBuzz.

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