The Mighty Detroit Lions (of the 1950s)
December 27th, 2008 | Published in error cards, Football Card Trivia | 2 Comments
Well, it appears that the poor Lions will go winless in 2008. Because the team has been so bad recently, whenever I look through 1950s football cards, I marvel at all of the great Lions players from that era. The great players made for great teams: in a span of six seasons, the Lions played in four league championship games, and they won three of them–all against the Browns. The last time the Lions won a championship–51 years ago, in 1957!–there were six future hall-of-famers on the team, and they beat the Browns 59-14 in the championship game.
Five of the future Hall-of-Famers–Bobby Layne, John Henry Johnson, Lou Creekmur, Jack Christiansen, and Yale Lary–appeared on cards in the 1957 Topps set. This page in the Vintage Football Card Gallery shows those cards. The sixth hall-of-famer, Joe Schmidt, whose rookie card is in the 1956 Topps set, did not appear on a card in 1957.
Pictured at the top is John Henry Johnson’s 1957 Topps card, which incorrectly says he played for the Browns. Topps even took the trouble of recoloring the picture to put Johnson in Browns colors. Below the 1957 card is Johnson’s rookie card, a 1955 Bowman, which shows the same picture of Johnson, except in 49ers colors.
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July 12th, 2009 at 6:12 PM (#)
[…] Lou Creekmur, a hall-of-fame offensive lineman, died last week. He played on the stellar Detroit Lions teams of the 1950’s. […]
February 23rd, 2011 at 8:54 AM (#)
[…] as a Brown. Topps even recolored Johnson’s uniform to put him in Browns colors. You can see this recoloring in a previous article. Tags: 1957 Topps, Gino Marchetti, Lenny […]