Harry O'Neill (1917-1945)

This Memorial Day Weekend we honor one of the two MLB players killed during WWII, Harry O'Neill. The other was Washington Senator Elmer Gedeon.

O'Nelll's baseball career lasted one game, on July 23  1939 he came in as a defense replacement at catcher for the Philadelphia Athletics. The A's were down 15-3 when O'Neill entered the game, the deficit would expand by an additional run during his single inning of Major League play. 

O'Neill never batted in that game and his MLB career was over. 

In September 1942 O'Neill enlisted in the US Marine Corps. On March 6 1945 Harry O'Neill was killed in Action as a 1st Lieutenant at the Battle of Iwo Jima. He is one of an estimated 7,184 USMC deaths that occurred during the 36 day Battle.

The brief baseball career of Harry O'Neill does not appear to have yielded any cards during his playing days. 

As part of our #CupOfCoffee project honoring players with Short MLB Careers we created a cup for Harry O'Neill

Phungo Original: 1953 Topps Marines Harry O'Neill (2021)

We based our illustration off of one of the few photos we could find of Harry O'Neill. I turned around O'Neill's ball cap so that we can see the A's logo and added color to the B&W image. The stars and blue field are used as a background to give us a flag motif. 

On the nameplate we also added the shortened version of the Marine Corp Motto Semper Fidelis which is Latin for Always Faithful. 

Finally above and below the borders we have added #CupOfCoffee designation and the date of O'Neill's game 1939 July 23. 

The design is borrowed from the minimalist 1953 Topps Fighting Marines Set which features simple thin line frames of red and blue borders. For more on the 1953T Marines issues check out Cardboard Connection. 

1953 Topps #43 Iwo Jima! (tcdb)

To find out more about Harry O'Neill please read his SABR biography which can be found here. 

Sources and Links

Cup of Coffee Index

Harry O'Neill SABR Bio by BIll Nowlin, Gary Bedingfield and Frank Fitzpatrick

Pritzker Military Museum & Library

Marines.com

Cardboard Connection

On This Day in Sports

Philly Show 2014 09 28 - Vintage

Just gonna do some quick Show and Tell from the Philly Show this past weekend. I spent about 3 hours at the show. I was there on Sunday which is a football day in Philadelphia, consequently the floor didn't feel too busy. The autograph guests on Sunday were the weaker of the two days as well - In addition 1960s era Phillies infielder had to postpone his appearance.

I attended the event without a real plan but felt pretty good about the day. The bulk of my time was spent at two tables. If things go well this should be the first of four installments on the show: 1) Vintage, 2) Non-Sports Tobacco Cards 3) Recent AutoGamers 4) Dime Box

Vintage
Today we will start our series by looking at Team Phungo's favorite collecting areas, Vintage Cards.

1952 Topps #223 Del Ennis

The above Del Ennis card at $4 was my favorite buy of the show. Yeah it has some A-side writing, but I can live with that. Rest of card is a bit soft and creased, but good enough for the Phungo Checker.

I picked the 52T Ennis up from Uncle Dicks Cards - One of my favorite vendors at the Philly show. Dick has thousands of vintage cards in my favorite condition - Loved. He also has cards in more pristine condition, but for me his off-condition cards are just fine for my Phils Checker and set collecting needs. He also has an fun crew at his side and there is often humorous banter at his stand. In addition Dick has several collector friendly touches, there are plenty of chairs, he has paint sticks laid out to help as markers for perusing stacks. Everything in his booth is tagged bright green which makes his stand easy to spot.


I also picked up 4 other 1952 Mid-Number cards for $7-$8 each including #270 Lou Brissie.

1960 Topps Hi Number Phillies 

#541 - Tony Curry     
#549 - John Buzhardt
#511 - Ken Walters
#264 - Robin Roberts

Each of the 1960 Topps Cards above went for $2.

1954 Topps #2 Gus Zernial


I checked off five 1954 Topps commons which went for a combined $3.

1958 Topps #314 Dodgers; Boss & Power Duke Snider - Walter Alston

Picked up this manager/player card for my HoF collection. This card came in at $8 which was probably an overpay judging my recent ebay auctions.

More September 2014 VF Show 
The Phillies Room (including Darren Daulton Autograph Session)
Brad's Blog (Lots o 1962-65 Topps Phillies Cards)
Allen Ginter's Originals
Phillies
Dime Boxes
Auto/Gamers


Sources  & Links
ebay 

Philly Show 9/28

The Phily Show is all weekend but Team Phungo has been to busy to pitch the event. Hopefully we will be able to make an appearance on Sunday.

1961 Topps #473 Bobby Shantz

For those of you that collect autographs there are a number of former players appearing on Sunday. These players include a number of folks that we have been featuring in our 1964 Phillies retrospective. Scheduled for Sunday are Art Mahaffey, Bobby Wine, Frank Thomas, Costen Shockley Tony Gonzalez and Bobby Shantz  

If you think you will be at the show let me know via email or twitter - would love to meet fellow collectors.

Reviews of Past Philly Shows
2013 December
2012 December
2010 September
2010 March
2009 December
2009 December (special 1959 Topps Edition)
2009 Septembe

Bobby Shantz Autograph Signing at Philadelphia Athletics Museum

1961 Topps #473 Bobby Shantz

This Saturday July 14th the Philadelphia Althletics Historical Society is  hosting an autograph session with Bobby Shantz.  Bobby Shantz was the NL MVP in 1952.  He also pitched in the World Series as a Member of the 1957 and 1960 Yankees.  Shantz is a member of the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame and was profiled here last August.

Recently a couple of really nice Bobby Shantz posting have gone up on card blogs including these. 

Cards by Sooz

Baseball by the Letters

Drews Cards

Bobby Shantz is scheduled to appear at the A's society from 11:00a till 12:30p on Saturday.  For more information on signing click here.

Phungo Hall of Fame Profile Bobby Shantz 1961 Topps MVP

The Hall of Fame Profile posts are not restricted to the Hall in Cooperstown.  I also try and hit the various other Halls with a heavy dose of the Philly Sports Hall of Fame.  When I originally ran the Hall of Fame Thursday feature I chronicled the entire Philly Sports HoF 2008 class.  Today I would like to feature a member of the 09 Class Bobby Shantz. 

Shantz played half of his 16 year career with the Athletics - including 6 while the A's were based in Philadelphia.  He finished his career pitching a handful of innings for the ill-fated 1964 Phillies. Shantz's Best year was his MVP season of 1952 which is memorably featured in the 1975 Topps MVP subset with a reprint of his card from the seminal 52 set.  Shantz also has eight Gold Gloves on his mantle - He appared on the losing side of two World Series matchups as a pitcher for the Yankees. 

Bobby Shantz is still kicking at 85 years old.  He lives in the Philadelphia area and I see his name pop up frequently for autograph and card shows.

For the Collector

One of the vintage subsets I really like is the 1961 Topps MVP series.     

1961 Topps #473 Bobby Shantz

The subset is 16 cards including Mantle, Aaron, Willie Mays, Roy Campanella, Roger Maris, Banks and Yogi among others.  It is one of the subsets I have considered building for a while and really needed to checklist - so I have finally decided to stop procrastinating on that.

471. MVP -- Phil Rizzuto
472. MVP -- Yogi Berra
473. MVP -- Bobby Shantz
474. MVP -- Al Rosen
475. MVP -- Mickey Mantle 
476. MVP -- Jackie Jensen 
477. MVP -- Nellie Fox 
478. MVP -- Roger Maris
479. MVP -- Jim Konstanty
 480. MVP -- Roy Campanella
481. MVP -- Hank Sauer
482. MVP -- Willie Mays 
483. MVP -- Don Newcombe
484. MVP -- Hank Aaron
485. MVP -- Ernie Banks
486. MVP -- Dick Groat

  

If you would elect to build this set the Mantle card will likely be about half of the battle.  Fortunately, I imagine several of the lower level MVPs can likely be had for under a dollar.   I have picked up a few of these cards at shows and in auctions without really building the set and already have 6 of the 16 cards.  The biggest one in my collection is this pock marked Willie Mays. 

1961 Topps #482 Willie Mays MVP

Can anybody explain this to me?

While Clevenland is still in town to face the Phils, I wanted to put together one more Indians related post.



2010 National Chicle Trips Speaker w/ original artwork - thetoppsvault auction

This auction for the above card/artwork from thetoppsvault just concluded for $83.75.

The pricepoint of the auction is not really my concern here, but my question is what the heck is with Tris Speaker in a Phillies uniform. He never played for the the Phils - he is primarily known as playing with the Indians or Red Sox , but did finish his career with the Philadlephia A's.

Has anyone seen this card in the "original' form as a Phillies player - I think I have only seen the Indians version. I could almost see Chicle putting out an Athletics version of the card, as Speaker likely was never issued a A's card way back in 1928.

I know folks have had various issues with the Topps Baseball-Chicle cards. Just add this one to the Sloppy Topps list.

Hall of Fame Thursday - The 1929 Philadelphia Athletics

1979 TCMA #58 Al Simmons
1931 W517 #17 Jack Quinn
1979 TCMA #55 Lefty Grove

For Hall of Fame Thursday we have another post from the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame, It must be A's week here at Phungo as today we salute the 1929 Philadelphia Athletics.

The 1929 A's won 104 games and broke a string of three consecutive pennants won by the New York Yankees. The A's bested the Cubs 4-1 in the World Series. Hall of Famers Lefty Grove, Mickey Cochrane, Jimmy Foxx, and Al Simmons were all members of the 1929 Athletics who were led by Hall of Fame manager Connie Mack.

Phillies fans may be familiar with Jack Quinn's name. He is the pitcher mentioned by commentators when discussing Jamie Moyer as the second oldest pitcher to appear in Post Season and World Series games. During the '29 series Jimmy Foxx became the first player to homer in his first two World Series games. In game 4 the A's overcame an 8 run deficit to win the game with a 10 run 7th. This remains the largest comeback in playoff history. The A's would go on to win the 1930 World Series and the '31 AL Pennant, but after that Connie Mack would break up the team. Afterwards the A's would struggle until their rebirth in Oakland during the early 1970s.

As mentioned earlier this week the Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society is located outside Philadelphia and their site has a lot of interesting items about the Athletics and Baseball history.

STS - Round 1 Spotted - Huston Street

UD 2007 Star Signings SS-HS Huston Street

The first Spot The Sig! auto was penned by Huston Street formerly of the Oakland A's and now the newest member of the Colorado Rockies. The first person to identify the Auto was Mark of Stats on the Back, who may have the best banner in the Card Blogoshpher. Joe over at Cardboard Addiction correctly figured out that I have never seen Huston Street pitch. Apparently this card was a little easier to figure out than I thought as it took Mark all of 13 minutes to ID the auto. Mark gets a double and Joe gets a walk.

Star Signings are part of the 2007 Upper Deck Series 1 and Series 2. Huston Street is one of 63 subjects in Series 1. The most desirable auto in the set is likely the short printed Albert Pujols card.

I picked up this card off of ebay, most likely while I was looking for something else, but thought it was a pretty good deal. I have an ongoing project to collect autos representing every major league team. I may have targeted this card for that reason. Since Street was the closers for the A's who don't get a ton of national recognition his autos tend to come pretty cheap. According to my records the card went for $3.41 incl shipping.

I try and see as many different teams play as possible, with the intention of seeing every major player of the era at least once. But catching the AL West teams in Philadelphia is pretty tough. The A's have only visited Philadelphia once that I remember. When the A's came to Philadelphia it was a big deal because not only was it an inter-league match up but it meant the return of the A's to the city where they originated as the Philadelphia Athletics. There are still some A's fans in the area, because of the teams former affiliation with the city. There is even a Philadelphia A's Museum located in a city suburb. At some point I plan making time to visit the museum, but have not yet.

Save The Sig! Scoreboard
No one has any runs yet but...
Stats on the Back - Representin those stinkin Mets no doubt - Has a man on 2nd.
Cardboard Addiction - posting for 'The Nation' - Has a man on first.

Everybody else is On Deck.

For further information regarding the Phungo Spot the Sig! contest click here and join the party - you just may find yourself with a stack of cards come spring training!