Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

The New York Giants introduced their Ring of Honor at New Meadowlands Stadium early this month. The inaugural class included twenty-two players, plus eight coaches, owners, and executives. You can see the full list of inductees on the Giants’ Wikipedia page. (You can also see the full list on the Giants’ web site, but beware: the page automatically starts a video, and it’s kind of startling.)

Thirteen of the inductees appear as individuals on cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. You can search for them by choosing “Giants Ring of Honor” in one of the “Honor” menus on the Advanced Search page. At least one more inductee, coach Jim Lee Howell, does not appear on a card of his own, but you can find him on some of the team cards–see him on my interactive 1959 Topps Giants team card, for example.

Two of the inductees, Dick Lynch and Joe Morrison, first appeared on cards in the 1962 Post Cereal set, a minor issue. Their cards are pictured here. (For a description of the Post set, see W is for Wonder Bread–and Other Food Issues.) Lynch’s first card in a major issue–in other words, his rookie card–is a 1964 Philadelphia, and Morrison’s is a 1965 Philadelphia. Despite being stars, both players spent seven years in the league before appearing in a major set.

For more early Giants cards, matchbooks, etc., also check out revmoran’s Giants Football Cards page on the Giants web site. It’s great stuff!

Today I added another “interactive” team card to the Vintage Football Card Gallery: a 1959 Topps New York Giants team card. By placing the cursor over a player, you can see who the player is, and by clicking on him, you can see all of his cards. (It doesn’t work on the card pictured here–you have to go to the gallery page.)

Each time I do one of these, I find a surprise or two. This time it was Don Maynard, who was a rookie with the Giants in 1958, when the photo on this card was taken. Maynard caught only five passes in 1958, and in 1959 he did not play. In 1960 he joined the New York Titans (later the Jets) of the AFL, and he gained over 11,000 yards receiving in thirteen years with the team. He is one of six Hall of Famers on this Giants card.

One day, while scanning cards, I noticed that the cartoon on the back of Homer Jones’s 1968 Topps card said that “Homer defeated the Russians in the 1960 Olympics.” Hmm, I thought, that’s a good idea for a blog article. There was a problem, though: I couldn’t find a reference saying that Jones had ever competed in the Olympics. He was a star sprinter at Texas Southern, and he might have defeated the Russians in some competition, but it doesn’t appear to have been in the Olympic Games. (According to his Wikipedia page, however, Jones did invent the touchdown spike, which is “said to be the origin of post-touchdown celebrations.” While not quite beating the Russians, that’s still quite a legacy.)

In my research for Jones, I found a list of other pro football players who had competed in the Olympics. It’s a long list, so I narrowed it down to those who had won medals, and then to those who appeared on vintage football cards. That left six players, a number suitable for a blog article. I also added one more I knew of, Brick Muller.

Jim Thorpe

Jim Thorpe won gold medals in the pentathlon and decathlon in the Stockholm Olympics in 1912. In 1913, the International Olympic Committee took the medals away when they learned that Thorpe had played minor league baseball (and thus had been a professional athlete) before participating in the Olympics. In 1982, Thorpe’s family succeeded in having his medals restored.

Thorpe played professional football from 1915 to 1928, for six different teams. He was a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s inaugural class in 1963. Thorpe also played professional baseball–including seven seasons in the major leagues–from 1909 to 1922. Pictured here is his rookie card, from the 1933 Sport Kings multi-sport set.

Harold “Brick” Muller

Brick Muller took a silver medal in the high jump at the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp. He played and coached one season in the NFL, 1926, for the Los Angeles Buccaneers. (The Buccaneers lasted just one season in the NFL.) Like Jim Thorpe, in 1951 he was among the inaugural class of players elected to College Football Hall of Fame. Muller is shown here on his 1926 Spalding Champions card. He also appeared on a 1955 Topps All-American football card.

Clyde Scott

Clyde Scott won a silver medal in the 110 meter hurdles in the 1948 Olympics in London. He played four seasons in the NFL, as a running back and defensive back for the Eagles and Lions. He appeared on the 1950 Bowman card pictured here, and on a 1951 Bowman card. According to Scott’s profile on the Encyclopedia of Arkansas web site, the readers of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette named Scott the state’s Athlete of the Century in 2000.

Ollie Matson

Ollie Matson won a bronze medal in the 400 meters and a silver in the 1600 meter relay in the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki. He then had a fourteen-year, Hall of Fame career in the NFL. Matson appeared on a lot of cards. Pictured here is his 1962 Topps card.

Bo Roberson

Bo Roberson took silver in the long jump in the 1960 Olympics in Rome, missing the gold medal by a centimeter. He then played six seasons in the AFL, for four different teams. His 1966 Topps card is pictured here. According to a his profile at ivy50.com, after football, Roberson attended law school, earned a master’s degree at Whitworth College, and earned his doctorate degree at age 58. Wow.

Bob Hayes

“Bullet” Bob Hayes won two gold medals in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, in the 100 meter sprint and 400 meter relay. Hayes then played wide receiver for eleven years for the Cowboys and 49ers, and he was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2009. Hayes appeared on many football cards; the one pictured here is a 1971 Topps Game card.

Henry Carr

Henry Carr also won two gold medals in the 1964 Tokyo Games, in the 200 meter sprint and 1600 meter relay. The New York Giants, according to an article at pe.com, then signed Carr primarily to cover Bob Hayes. Carr spent three years with the Giants, the highlight of his career being a 101-yard interception return for a touchdown in 1966. His 1966 Philadelphia card is pictured here.

• Search Nearmint’s Cards for: Jim Thorpe, Clyde Scott, Ollie Matson, Bo Roberson, Bob Hayes, Henry Carr, Brick Muller.

Art Faircloth, a back for the New York Giants in 1947 and 1948, passed away on April 1. In his two years with the Giants, Faircloth played in a total of five games, doing a little of everything: he had eleven career rushes, three passes, three interceptions, four punts, and two kick returns.

Though his career was short, Faircloth appeared on a football card, the 1948 Bowman pictured here.

Cliff Livingston, who played linebacker twelve years for the Giants, Vikings, and Rams, died on March 13. He played in four NFL championship games with the Giants, and they won one of them, in 1956. Livingston was an All-Pro in one season, 1961.

Though he had a long, successful career, Livingston appeared on only one regular issue card, the 1962 Topps card shown here. He also appeared on a 1962 Post Cereal card.

Livingston’s brother, Howie Livingston, also played in the NFL.

Judging by his football cards, Y.A. Tittle seldom took off his helmet. From 1953 to 1964, the only Tittle card I know of that shows him bareheaded is his 1961 Topps card. Here he is in his many helmets:

I think it must have been Tittle’s preference to wear his helmet for photos, since I can’t think of any other player who appeared helmeted on so many cards. As I’ve written before, I usually don’t like images of players wearing their helmets, because the helmets cover too much of the players’ faces. But Y.A.’s many appearances in his helmet made him look natural in it, like Doonesbury’s B.D.

Ralph Starkey, who appeared on this 1954 Bowman football card, passed away on January 24. Starkey played college football for West Virginia University and was drafted by the New York Giants in 1954. Pro-football-reference.com doesn’t have a page for him, so I assume he didn’t see playing time for the Giants.

At West Virginia, Starkey played in the 1954 Sugar Bowl, which the Mountaineers lost to Georgia Tech. Joe Marconi, Bruce Bosley, and Sam Huff, who all became Pro Bowl players in the NFL, were also members of the 1953 West Virginia team. Ironically, they didn’t appear on their first cards until years after Starkey.

Randy Johnson, the first quarterback of the Atlanta Falcons, died on September 16. Along with Tommy Nobis, Johnson was a first round draft choice for the Falcons in 1966. Johnson played for five years with the Falcons, then went on to play for the Giants, Hawaiians (of the World Football League), Redskins, and Packers. In his last professional game, Johnson started for the Packers and led them to a win over his first team, the Falcons.

Pictured here is Johnson’s rookie card, a 1967 Philadelphia. You can see all of his cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

Steve Liskey, from The Cowboys Guide, recently asked me if I planned to add scans of the backs of the cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. My first thought was “Are you out of your mind, Steve?” But then I told him that scanning just the fronts has taken an enormous amount of time, so I will probably never get to the backs. (Another visitor had a more modest suggestion: providing a single example of a card back for each set. Now that sounds like something I can accomplish–someday.)

It turned out, though, that Steve was particularly interested in the backs of 1966 Philadelphia cards. Why? Well, because as shown on the Dennis Claridge card to the right, each card in the 1966 Philly set has a player pictured on the back who is not the player on the front. (That’s Roman Gabriel on the back of the Claridge card.) Steve collects Dallas Cowboys cards, of course, and he wanted to know which cards have a Cowboy on the back.

Now that’s a serious collector, and I understand completely the desire–no, the need–to get every one of whatever type of cards you collect. If you collect a certain team, of course you want the cards that picture your team’s players on the back. So what I will probably do–again, someday–is note which players appear on the backs of the 1966 Philly cards so that the cards show up in searches for the players and their teams.

It had occurred to me even before Steve wrote that a player collector might want any cards on which his player was pictured, whether the player was identified on the card or not. That’s why, for each 1966 Philadelphia team play card, I have added the names of all the players appearing in the action on the front of the card. For example, for the Cowboys play card shown here, I included all five players pictured–three Cowboys and two Giants–in the list of players appearing on the card.

While adding players for the team play cards, I noticed that some of the players don’t appear on cards of their own. For example, to my knowledge, the Cowboys play card above is the only card on which Jerry Rhome appears. (Jerry is the holder for the kick.) I sell a lot of cards to players’ friends and relatives, and I suspect that this extra information will someday help a player’s grandson find his granddad on a card he didn’t know existed.

Search for 1966 Philadelphia cards on: eBay, Nearmint’s cards.