Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Bill “Tiger” Johnson, a center for the San Francisco 49ers from 1948 to 1956, passed away on January 7. Johnson was a Pro Bowler for the 49ers in 1952 and 1953. After his playing days, Johnson went on to a long coaching career, including three seasons as the head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals. An article on the San Francisco Chronicle web site provides a nice summary of Johnson’s career.

Pictured here is Johnson’s rookie card, a 1950 Bowman. He also had a 1955 Bowman football card, and he appeared on numerous 49ers team issue photos, both as a player and a coach. You can see several of Johnson’s cards and team issue photos in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

• Bill Johnson‘s playing record
• Bill Johnson‘s record as head coach

Woody Peoples, a guard for thirteen seasons with the San Francisco 49ers and Philadelphia Eagles, passed away on Tuesday. Peoples made the Pro Bowl twice for the 49ers, in 1972 and 1973, and he was a member of the Eagles’ 1980 NFC Championship team. A tribute to Peoples at lehighvalleylive.com includes a nice photo of him warming up for Super Bowl XV.

Peoples appeared on a few cards during his long career. The card pictured here is his rookie card, a 1970 Topps. He also appeared on a 1973 Topps card, a 1981 Topps card, and a 1972 Sunoco stamp. His 1981 Topps card, his only card with the Eagles, was actually issued the year after he retired.

Today I added 1958 49ers Team Issue Photos to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. There are forty-four 4-by-6 black-and-white photos in the set, including players, coaches, the head of personnel, and even the 49ers announcers. Pictured here are my two favorites, Bill Stits and Jerry Mertens, both making (or faking) spread-eagle receptions.

Some of the players in the 1958 set also appear in the 1955 49ers Team Issue set. The team reused the images for those players, but they updated the text on the backs of the photos. Pictured here is the text from the back of Matt Hazeltine’s 1955 photo, along with that from his 1958 photo. (I added the years in red.) In three years he gained ten pounds, a wife, and a daughter!

Several players in the 1958 photo set never appeared on cards of their own–at least not to my knowledge. They are Gene Babb, John Gonzaga, Bill Herchman, Bill Jessup, Jim Pace, Lou Palatella, and John Wittenborn. As always, it’s good to add new faces to the Gallery. The set also includes a photo of John Brodie, issued three years before his 1961 Fleer and 1961 Topps rookie cards.

I have always loved this photo of Carroll Hardy, and yesterday I did an eBay search to see if I could find him on any more 49er team issues. To my surprise, a bunch of baseball cards popped up! Not being a baseball card collector, I didn’t know that after a short NFL career, Hardy had played eight seasons in the major leagues. Perhaps, conversely, most baseball card collectors don’t know about his short NFL career?

According to his Wikipedia page, Hardy spent just one year with the 49ers, 1955, when this 49ers team issue photo was released. He gained 37 yards rushing and 338 yards receiving for the season, and four of his receptions were for touchdowns.

He went on, after two years in the minor leagues, to become a backup outfielder for the Cleveland Indians, Boston Red Sox, Houston Colt .45s, and Minnesota Twins. He was the only player to pinch-hit for Ted Williams, and he also pinch-hit for Roger Maris and Carl Yastrzemski.

You can see the rest of the 1955 49ers Team Issue photos in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

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.

Tom Wittum, who punted for the 49ers from 1973 to 1977, died on January 22. Wittum made the Pro Bowl his first two years in the league. In 1973 he also had a 63-yard run–I presume on a fake punt–but it did not go for a touchdown.

The card pictured here is Wittum’s rookie card, the 1973 Punting Leaders card from the 1974 Topps set. Oddly, he did not appear on a regular card in that set. His first appearance alone on a card was in the 1975 Topps set.

There is a nice tribute to Wittum on dailyherald.com; it includes a picture of his 1976 Topps card. An article at suburbanchicagonews.com has a photo of Wittum in his high school uniform. (Select the photo in the article to enlarge the image.)

A couple of weeks ago, when I wrote that I had added 1955 49ers Team Issue photos to the Vintage Football Card Gallery, I neglected to point out that Clay Matthews Sr. is in one of the photos. Clay Sr. is the father of Clay Matthews Jr., who played 19 years for the Cleveland Browns and Atlanta Falcons, and of Bruce Matthews, the Hall of Fame lineman for the Houston Oilers and Tennessee Titans. He is also the grandfather of Clay Matthews III, the Packers rookie linebacker. Clay III had 10 sacks in 2009, a record for a Packers rookie.

Clay Sr. played offensive tackle and defensive end for the 49ers in 1950 and from 1953 to 1955. To my knowledge, he did not appear on any regular issue cards, and this is his only appearance on a team issue photo.

Yesterday I added 1955 49ers Team Issue photos to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. The photos are bigger than cards, at just under 5×7, and I had to order extra-large toploaders for storing them. They came in the original envelope, pictured below. The photos, amazingly, are in much better condition than the envelope.

The photos are sharp black-and-whites, and each includes a facsimile of the player’s signature. On the back of each photo is a glowing biography of the player on the front. (Hardy Brown‘s bio calls him “the most feared linebacker in the game because of his fantastic ‘shoulder tackle’ which uncoils like a pile driver and causes many fumbles”!) Most of the images of the well-known players are familiar, since they also appear in color on 1950s Bowman and Topps cards. Being a team issue, though, the set also includes numerous players who never appeared on cards. In the 50s and 60s, the major card companies printed cards of only 10-12 players from each team, and most linemen and defensive players were left out. I love team sets for this reason: I get to see players I’ve never seen before.

There are 38 photos in the set, and it includes photos of the 49ers’ coaches and their TV and radio announcers. I imagine that in the 50’s, the announcers for each team were as familiar to fans as the players, so it was natural to include them in a team set.

The set includes six Pro Football Hall of Fame players, including the four members of the 49ers’ “Million Dollar Backfield”: Y.A. Tittle, Hugh McElhenny, Joe Perry, and John Henry Johnson.