Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Jim Keane, a receiver for the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers from 1946 to 1952, passed away this morning. His obituary on the Bears web site includes a summary of his career and a recent photo.

Keane was a member of the Bears NFL Championship team in his rookie season. The next season, 1947, he led the league in receptions, and he finished second in receiving yards and receiving touchdowns. Despite his stellar performance in 1947, Keane did not have a card in the 1948 Leaf and 1948 Bowman football card sets. To my knowledge, he appeared on only one card, the 1950 Bowman card pictured here.

• See Jim Keane’s stats at pro-football-reference.com.

Most NFL fans have heard by now that George Blanda passed away today. The first notice I read was on the San Francisco Chronicle web site. The news is sad for me: I was a Raiders fan in the late 60s and 70s, so I watched Blanda play on many Sunday afternoons. I remember well his heroics in 1970, especially the game against the Browns, which I watched with my grandmother. She jumped out of her seat when he kicked a 52-yarder in the waning seconds to win the game.

The sports pages and TV shows will undoubtedly cover Blanda’s career in detail over the next few days, so I won’t attempt to do that here. Instead I’ll just show you his cards. He played for 26 years, so he appeared on a lot of them. I have most of them, but I am missing a couple from the end of his career. Pick any thumbnail image to see a larger version.

Steve DeLong, who played defensive end and defensive tackle from 1965 to 1972 for the San Diego Chargers and Chicago Bears, passed away on Wednesday. DeLong made the Pro Bowl once, in 1969, with the Chargers. Prior to his pro career, DeLong was a standout at Tennessee, and he was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1993. His obituary at knoxnews.com includes some nice photos from his college days.

DeLong appeared on a lot of football cards for a lineman. Pictured here is his rookie card, a 1965 Topps “tallboy.” Topps apparently liked this image, because they used it on his cards for the next four years, also. On one of them, his 1966 card, Topps airbrushed DeLong’s left shoulder off, making for a strange picture.

You can see all of Steve DeLong’s football cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

Last week a reader asked me why there aren’t any Chicago Bears in the first series of 1959 Topps football cards. My expert answer was, “Huh, I never noticed that.” But the reader was right: the 1959 Topps first series cards are numbered 1 through 88, and the Bears cards are all numbered 90 and higher. Topps compensated by putting eleven Bears in the 88-card second series, but, over the whole set, the Bears are still outnumbered by every other team.

Imagine being a young Bears fan, spending all of your paper route money on a stack of wax packs, and not getting any cards of your favorite team! Why might the Bears have been omitted? Did they send their photos to Topps too late to make the first series? Did Topps forget that Chicago had two teams? My guess is that Topps and the Bears had some sort of contract problem, but that’s only a guess. If anyone else has more information, please let me know.

Ironically, the Bears team card is one of the three easiest 1959 Topps cards to find in high grade, the others being the Giants and Steelers team cards. All three cards are in the second series, which appears to have been printed in greater quantities than the first series. (This is unusual: Topps typically printed the earlier series in greater numbers.) All three were also in the interior of the full sheet (see my virtual uncut 1959 Topps sheet), so they were less susceptible to damage in production than cards on the edge of the sheet. And, finally, I think that the team cards’ oval interior design makes them more forgiving of cutting problems. The other cards in the set–namely the player and team pennant cards–have rectangular interiors, making off-centering and diamond cuts more obvious.

Stan Jones, Hall of Fame lineman for the Chicago Bears and Washington Redskins, passed away on May 21. According to his page on the Pro Football Hall of Fame web site, Jones played on the Bears’ offensive line for eight seasons, from 1954 to 1961, and he was selected for the Pro Bowl in seven of those seasons. In 1962, he played both guard and defensive tackle, and the following season he became a full-time defensive tackle. He played his last season, 1966, in Washington.

Though linemen in the 50s and 60s did not typically appear on many football cards, Jones appeared on at least eight. The card pictured here is his rookie card, a 1956 Topps. You can see all of Jones’s cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

Andy Kozar, the fullback on the Tennessee Volunteers 1951 National Championship team, passed away today. He was named the Most Outstanding Back in the Vols’ win over Texas in the Cotton Bowl that year. An article on the Knoxville News Sentinel web site includes a great photo of a leaping Kozar.

Kozar was drafted by the Chicago Bears in 1952, and he appeared on the 1953 Bowman card shown here. According to the News Sentinel article, he served from 1953 to 1955 in the Army, and he reported to the Bears in 1955. He apparently did not see playing time, though, since he does not appear on a page of his own at pro-football-reference.com.

Steve Romanik, who quarterbacked for the Chicago Bears and Chicago Cardinals from 1950 to 1954, died on September 16. He was the Bears’ leading passer in 1952, sharing duties with George Blanda and Bob Williams.

Pictured here is Romanik’s 1952 Bowman Large card, one of the divisible-by-9 short prints. (See B is for Bowman.) He also appeared on a 1952 Bowman Small card, identical except for its size.

In a post last month I showed that the image on Bill Wade’s 1960 Topps card is reversed. Looking at my Beckett’s catalog this week, I found that the image on Doug Atkins’s 1960 Topps card is reversed as well. It’s not obvious when you look at that card by itself, but it is when you put it alongside his 1961 Fleer card. It’s funny how you can look at a card a hundred times and not notice an error like this.

I did a little ‘net search to look for bits of trivia about Atkins, and I found that he has an official site. The quotes by John Unitas and Jim Parker are worth a look.

• Search Nearmint’s Football Cards for: Doug Atkins, 1960 Topps, 1961 Fleer
• Search eBay for: Doug Atkins, 1960 Topps, 1961 Fleer