Anniversary 60 Years ago: Rocky Colavito 4 Home Run Day

June 10th marks the 60th anniversary of an historic game between the Cleveland Indians and Baltimore Orioles. That Day Rocky Colavito became the 6th major league player to record a 4 Home Run game.

1964 Topps Jumbo #9 Rocky Colavito

The Indians won that game 11-8 with Colavito accounting for 6 RBI. Notice that the above card features Rocky as an Athletic not an Indian. Well that is because of the back of the card...

1959 Topps Jumbo #9 Rocky's Hot Bat (b-side)

As we can see the headline on this card is all about the 4 Homer game which is described in the cards first coupe sentences. The remainder of the text discusses Colavito's home run legacy all the way back to his minor league days.

Rocky Colavito's four home run game is also featured on the back of a 1964 Topps base card, #109. Colavito, however, does not appear on the front of that card, to find out more click here.

Sloppy Topps
The photo on the b-side of the card is also not with the Indians. Colavito wore three different numbers with Cleveland 6, 21 and 38 but never 7. The two squads for which he donned #7 were the Detroit Tigers and Kansas City A's. I am thinking that this photo is with the Tigers as Rocky Colavito didn't join the Athletics until 1964. The front appears to be an Airbrushed Tigers photo as well. 

1964 Topps Jumbo
I love this set and I have it on the back burner to build. They are referred to Jumbo or Giant cards because they are oversized at just over 3"x5". I go with Jumbo because when you search on "1964 Topps Giant" you get a bunch of Willy Mays cards, but not necessarily Jumbos. 

Colavito's Four Home Run Game
Baseball-Ref Box
1964 Topps #109 (Rusty Staub)

Sources and Links
Game Dated Cards Index
1964 Topps Jumbo Index
Baseball-Ref
ebay
Cardboard Connection

2016 Topps the Originals: Duos

Today we take a look at the rather random Dual Player cards of 1967 Heritage
 

1967 Topps #334 Twin Terrors Bob Allison and Harmon Killebrew
Four our cover card we picked this one because the Dual Player cards typically feature 2 players and it’s a Twins Card – get it?

However I am thinking Topps may dump the 'Terror' portion of “Twin Terror” for this cards Heritage counterpart.
 
Future Hall of Famer and 500 HR club member Harmon Killebrew was an obvious choice to represent the Twins. Bob Allison’s qualifications were a bit more wanting, he was coming off of a 70 game 1966 season in which he hit 8 Home Runs, well down from the 28 he averaged from 1959-65.

Flip

#334 Twin Terrors Allison Killebrew (b-side)

Nice bios of each players on the back of the cards. Although 2/3 of the text is dedicated to the lesser accomplished Allison. Regardless it is about twice as many words as I expected to see on the upcoming Heritage Card.
  
More Duos

 The Tigers card features a couple of mega prospects one of which is in the Hall of Fame. 

 

The White Sox came up with one of the weaker combos in the subset. Don Buford is acceptable but Pete Ward is coming off a 1966 season where he batted .219 with 3 dingers.

But for mre the Indians card is the worst of the 1967T Multi-Player subset. "Tribe Thumpers" is NOT alliterative!

Menke would spend some time as Hitting Coach for the Phillies, We probably should dedicate a post to him at some point.

Pretty strong one here - Donn Clendenon batted .299 with 28 Home Runs in 1966. He was just a step behind Willie Stargell (.315, 33 HR), but both were outpaced by teammate Roberto Clemente who won the MVP award in 1966.

We will Definitely be returning to this card in a future posting. 

Over at the 1967 Topps blog there is a write up on the #423 Giants Fence Busters Card that features Mays and McCovey.

Checklist
1967 is a decent edition of this subset, you may recall the 1966 duos were very random and consisted of just five cards. There is a great deal of Randomness in 1967 as well, but it's size (12 cards) and talent makes it a stronger set.

Team	1967 Topps	2016 Heritage
Cardinals	#63 Card Clubbers Brock/Flood	#63 Stephen Piscotty - Matt Carpenter
Indians	#109 Tribe Thumpers Colavito Wagner	109 Francisco Lindor - Jason Kipnis
White Sox	#143 Sox Sockers Ward Buford	#143 Josh Reddick (Oakland Athletics)
Mets	#186 Mets Maulers - Kranepool Swoboda	#186 Curtis Granderson - Juan Lagares
Tigers	#216 Bengal Belters Cash Kaline	#216 Ian Kinsler - Miguel Cabrera
Pirates	#266 Pitt Power – Stargell Clendenon	#266 Starling Marte - Andrew McCutchen
Phillies	#309 Hurlers Beware Callison Allen	#309 Maikel Franco - Ryan Howard
Twins	#334 Twins Terrors Allison Killebrew	#334 Miguel Sano - Byron Buxton
Braves	#396 Altanta Aces Menke Cloninger	#396 Nick Markakis  (solo?)
Giants	#423 Fence Busters – Mays McCovey	#423 Brandon Belt (solo?)
Indians	#463 Hill Aces McDowell Siebert	#463 Josh Hamilton - Texas
Orioles	#521 Bird Bombers Powell Blefray	na
Orioles	#1 Robinson Bauer Robinson	#1 Moustakas Escobar Hosmer

Last week we got a glimpse at the 2016 Heritage Checker for comparison. We have added the list here for comparison. To me the originals win on almost every card - the exceptions are possibly #109 Indians, #216 Tigers (close call), and amazingly Phillies (2008 WSC puts Howard over Dick Allen). 

Quick note on the Mets card, Topps has a run of Rookie Pairs that run from 161-190 that they interrupted to match Granderson/Lagares with Kranepool/Swaboda. One may make the argument that the Heritage card should win the Met battle, for me the 1999 SI Greats of the Game card w/ Ed Kranepool eating the Fried Chicken Dinner gives the edge to 1967T.

Sources and Links
1967 Topps/2016 Heritage Index
Harmon Killebrew HoF Index
1967 Topps Blog
Cardboard Connection 
Terapeak
Baseball-ref
Pnilly Inquirer

1959 Topps Baseball Thrills #462 Rocky Colavito

Knocking out another one of the 1959 Topps Baseball Thrills tonight.

1959 Topps #462 Rocky Colavito

Despite Colavito's status as a loved Hall of Very Good player, this is one of the weaker cards in the Baseball Thrills subset. While the pix on the front does demonstrate some action especially with the young fan going for the ball, overall I find it a somewhat dull. Beyond my issues with the photo on the front the flip side goes into a lot of detail regarding the catch while giving it absolutely no frame of reference.

1959 Topps #462 Rocky Colavito (b-side)

All we find out is that the game was versus the Yankees and the go ahead run was on base. No mention of the pitcher or batter involved nor is the date or park cited.

I did some minor research on the photo in an effort to figure out what game this is from on my own. I came up empty. fortunately CommishBob had gone through some diligent effort which is summarized in this post. The game is from May 10 1956, The play occurred in the 6th inning, on a ball hit by Gil McDougald. Turns out that the game account on the card is almost a total fabrication. At the time of the AB, the game wasn't really close (4-0 Indians),  the bases were clear, and Lemon certainly wasn't tiring - He threw complete game.

1956 Rookie of the Year
The card captures Colavito during his rookie campaign. He finished 2nd in the 1956 RoY voting behind future Hall of Famer Luis Aparicio. Not sure what the voters were thinking here - Colavito batted 10 points higher than Aparicio and also won the Home Run Battle 21-3. Aparicio had a similar edge in stolen bases 21-0.

The big factors likely were Aparicio played a full season while Colavito played only 101 games, and the fielding postion edge - Aparicio was a shortstop while Colavito played right.

Colavito spent the bulk of his 14 year career with the Indians. He made 9 all-star teams across 6 seasons, but never made it to the World Series. Rocky placed in the top 10 of the MVP vote four times, the best of which was 3rd in 1958 When he led the league in slugging. The following season he led the league in homers (42) and Total Bases (301). In 1965 Colavito paced the AL in RBIs (108) and Walks (93)

Retired Rocky
Today Rocky is 81 and according to some TTM sites he lives outside of Reading PA in a town about an hour from Phungo HQs.

Sources & Links
1959 Topps Baseball Thrills
1959 Topps one f/g card at a time
SABR Bio by Joseph Wancho
Baseball-ref