6 Uncorrected Baseball Card Errors. Can You Spot Them?

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Topps Made A Mistake

When you produce thousands of baseball cards over many decades you’re going to make some mistakes. Eagle-eyed baseball card collectors usually catch the errors. They would then write in to Topps baseball card company and sometimes the cards would get corrected.  Some mistakes were pretty obvious and could have been caught and corrected.

None of these were.

For a couple of these cards, if you are an old time baseball fan, you might recognize what the mistake is. For the others it takes a sharp eye. See if you can spot the mistake on each of these cards.

First our lead photo of the 1957 Topps Hank Aaron card. The mistake is not that his proper name is Henry, not Hank. Look closely.

Second, the 1969 Topps Larry Haney card. The Seattle Pilots lasted only one season before moving to Milwaukee and becoming the Brewers. Haney’s error is difficult to discern.

Third up is the 1959 Topps card of 1957 World Series pitching star, Lew Burdette. Lew looks pretty serious doesn’t he?

Fourth is the man who is probably better known for the surgery named after him rather than his pitching career. Tommy John won 288 games. This is his 1969 Topps card.

Claude Raymond’s 1966 Topps card poses him looking up at something. Should he really be looking up?

Before Billy Martin’s multiple managing stints with the Yankees, he was the manager of the Detroit Tigers and before that the Minnesota Twins. This is his 1972 Topps card.

So what are the errors that Topps didn’t catch and never bothered to correct?

The first card of Hank Aaron is probably the easiest error to spot. The print is reversed. Look at Aaron’s uniform number 44. Most people know the great slugger batted right handed, not left.

Next, you probably wouldn’t pay much attention to Larry Haney’s card. It shows the catcher posed ready to catch a ball.  Ardent students of the game know that almost no left handed catchers have ever played major league baseball. No, Haney is not the exception, once again, Topps reversed the negative. It is the same photo Topps used of Haney for his 1968 card except they got that one right.

With Lew Burdette’s card, one mistake is right in print and it is not a big deal. It is “Lew,” not “Lou.” But that is not the big error. Lew Burdette had a sense of humor. He asked his teammate and future Hall-of-Fame pitcher Warren Spahn if he could borrow his glove. That would be fine except that Spahn was a lefty and Burdette was a righty. Many children wrote to Topps in 1959 informing them of the “mistake.” Continue reading →

It Can’t Happen Here. Can It?

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Rainbow’s Apocalyptic Song 36 Years Later –

It’s Easy To Believe That Someone’s Gonna Light The Fuse

Hard rock band Rainbow’s lyrics, usually evoke the mystical or tongue in cheek double entendre imagery.

But one song, Can’t Happen Here from the album 1981 Difficult To Cure still resonates with issues that are as relevant today as the day the song was written in 1981.

With music by guitarist Ritchie Blackmore and lyrics by bass player Roger Glover, Can’t Happen Here asks the ultimate question: Is it possible someone will push the button and bring on Armageddon?

The lyrics:

Can’t Happen Here
(Blackmore, Glover © 1981)

Contaminated fish and micro chips
Huge supertankers on Arabian trips
Oily propaganda from the leaders’ lips
All about the future
There’s people over here people over there
Everybody’s looking for a little more air
Crossing all the borders just to take their share
Heading for the future

And we’re so abused and we’re so confused
It’s easy to believe that someone’s gonna light the fuse

Can’t happen here, can’t happen here, all that you fear they’re telling you, can’t happen here

Supersonic planes for a holiday boom
Rio de Janeiro in an afternoon
There’s people out of work but there’s people on the moon
Looking for the future
Concrete racetracks nationwide
Juggernauts are carving up the countryside
Cars by the million on a one way ride
Using up the future Continue reading →

New York City Apartment Building Names In 1904 – Part 3

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New York City Apartment House Names In 1904 (O-Y)

A survivor – The Vondel 171 East 83rd Street

We conclude our list of the named apartment buildings in New York city in 1904 with letters O-Y, there were no named apartment buildings beginning with a Z

The most popular name was the Washington, with eight buildings spread out across the city.

Walking across 23rd Street the other day I noticed an abundance of vacant lots and new construction.This is the trend all over the city. Old smaller (and sometimes large) buildings get demolished and glass-mirrored “luxury ” apartments take their place.

As we pointed in the first of these articles, almost none of the named buildings in 1904 are extant today (either by name or location).

If humanity does not destroy itself, how many of the buildings that are here in New York City today, be around 113 years from now?

This list is only comprised of apartment buildings in Manhattan and the Bronx.

Apartment – Hotels are denoted by an asterisk.

Oakdale, 36 W. 25th st.

Oakhurst, 2139 Seventh ave.

Oakland, 152 W. 49th st.

Oakley, 212 W. 14th st.

Ohio, 200 W. 79th St.

Olga, 44 W. 120th St.

Olympia, 501 W. 125th st. Continue reading →

Bad Luck Baby Katie – In 1904, Katie Reed Had 3 Accidents In One Week

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Baby Katie and Irresponsible Parenting In 1904 

Depending upon how you look at life maybe this article should not be titled “Bad Luck Baby,Katie” but “Good Luck Baby Katie,” because Baby Katie didn’t die.

Today if you leave a young child unattended for any extended period of time and somebody reports you to the New York Office of Child and Family Services, they may eventually come around to pay you a visit.

That was not the case 100 years ago. Parents would frequently leave their children alone and bad things would happen. Generally no one interfered with poor parenting.

So if a child accidentally fell down a 20 foot flight of stairs not once, but twice within a week, you might think the child is accident prone and that’s not the parents fault.

Falling out a fourth story window is another matter altogether.

If what happened to sixteen-month-old Katie Reed in 1904 were to happen today, there would be a public outcry to remove her from her home.

This is the report from the July 30, 1904 New York Times:

” BABY KATIE ” FALLS 4 STORIES
Only Breaks a Leg—Fell Down stairs Twice Last Week.

Continue reading →

New York City Apartment Building Names In 1904 – Part 2

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New York City Apartment House Names In 1904 (G-N)

Graham Court Apartments Seventh Ave 116th – 117th St

We continue our list of New York City apartment building names and their addresses in 1904 with part two, building names from G to N.

Researching a building at random, I came across this interesting aside. The fully occupied Marlborough Arms, a seven story apartment building at 57 West 10th Street was offered for sale at auction in 1895.

The sale price was $89,407.

The building stands today, though the name Marlborough Arms is nowhere to be seen. The current managing agent lists the building as being built in 1915, but they are wrong. According to real estate records, the same 19th century Marlborough Arms apartment building was sold in 1919 to A.A. Hageman.

This list is only comprised of apartment buildings in Manhattan and the Bronx.

Apartment – Hotels are denoted by an asterisk.

Gainsboro, 2 W. 120th st.

Gainsborough, 112 Riverside ave.

Galathea, 51 W. 106th st.

Galena, 101 W. 89th st.

Ganoga, 35 E. 27th st.

Garden, 164 St. Nicholas ave.

Garfield, 338 W. 56th st.

Garrick, 101 W. 126th st.

Gedrin, 525 W. 123d st.

Genesta, 448 W. 57th st.

Genevieve, 51 E. 12 2d st. Continue reading →

Hiroshima And The New York Times – Let’s Rewrite History Two Subversive Words At A Time

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On The 72nd Anniversary Of The Dropping Of The Atomic Bomb On Hiroshima – The New York Times Tries To Innocuously Rewrite History Two Subversive Words At A Time

Maybe you didn’t notice but It seems like every day The New York Times tries to pass off several pieces of propaganda as articles. There’s always something to infuriate any free thinking person.

Enola Gay Crew who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima Aug 6, 1945

If you read the Saturday, August 5 Op-ed pages of the New York Times you may have seen a contributed piece by Ariel Dorfman, author and emeritus professor of literature at Duke University. The op-ed was entitled The Whispering Leaves of the Hiroshima Ginkgo Trees. The inconsequential article is not what disturbed me. It was one line slipped in to make an almost subliminal  impression upon the reader. Referring to a Mr. Takahashi, a survivor of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Dorfman writes, “By then middle-aged, his body was a testament to that war crime and its aftermath.”

War crime? The dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was a “war crime”?

In 2005 I attended an exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. The exhibit was commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Enola Gay mission in World War II.  There was a video presentation about the Enola Gay’s mission which included interviews with the crew before and after the mission including  pilot Col. Paul Tibbets. To say it was a powerful exhibit would be an understatement.

For those too young to remember or do not know their history, the Enola Gay was a B-29 bomber plane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. Three days later another B-29, Bockscar, dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki.

Before deciding to use an atomic bomb the Allies insisted that Japan unconditionally surrender, as their defeat was inevitable. Japan refused.

Over 145,000 people died in the initial blasts. Thousands of Japanese civilians died of the injuries they sustained in the years that followed.

The end result of those bombings? Japan surrendered to the Allies the following week on August 15, 1945 and World War II was over.

There was a comment book at the end of the exhibit where visitors could record their name age, address and comment on what they had seen. Walking over to that book and thumbing through it I read to my surprise quite a few people had written essentially the same thing: the United States was wrong to drop the bombs. Others went so far to say that we never should have used the weapons and fought it out until the Japanese surrendered. The people who wrote these comments were all under the age of 40.

I wrote a short comment. I’ll say it again here for the edification of Mr. Dorfman, the editorial staff of the New York Times and any history revisionists.

Killing civilians in war is a byproduct of the wickedness of war. But it was a good thing the United States used those bombs. We didn’t start this war, but we ended it.

Let me correct Mr. Dorfman (born 1942) and the seriously uninformed, mostly those who were not alive during the conflict, the use of those bombs saved hundreds of thousands of lives and was not a “war crime.”

The Japanese unprovoked, surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was a war crime. The Japanese torturing of POW’s was a war crime. The Bataan Death March was a war crime. The Japanese sinking of hospital ships was a war crime. The conscription and rape of over 200,000 civilian women for Japanese army brothels was a war crime. Continue reading →

New York City Apartment Building Names In 1904

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A Good Name Is Hard To Find – New York City Apartment House Names In 1904 (A-F)

Demolition and new construction: the old landmarks vanish, new ones takes their place. It’s a practice that has been celebrated and lamented in New York City for more than 200 years..

As New York City accelerates its destruction of past places, it is important to note what was previously there.

The naming of apartment buildings in New York City goes as far back as 1870 when the Stuyvesant Flats, the first modern apartment building in the city was constructed.

Of course many people are familiar with The Dakota, The Beresford and The Osborne: grand apartment buildings with high prices and famous residents.

But in the 19th century, hundreds of relatively nondescript apartment buildings were given names too.

Real estate developers generally did not trademark the names they gave to their building. Therefore you will find multiple Augusta’s, Berkshire’s and Cambridge’s and other not so unique building names.

So why compile this list? If you are reading an old news story, doing genealogical research or are just curious for the exact address of a named apartment building from turn-of the-century New York City here it is. We thought this list would be helpful.

On the handful of addresses I checked on, the building was gone or the name had been removed from the facade. I would estimate fewer than half of these apartment buildings remain standing today and of those that do remain, less than one in ten retain their original name.

Because of the number of buildings involved in this list we will be breaking this up into three separate stories.

This list is only comprised of apartment buildings in Manhattan and the Bronx. It is also almost certainly not a complete inventory, because there were many tenement buildings on the Lower East Side and elsewhere that were given names, but do not show up on these lists.

Apartment – Hotels are denoted by an asterisk.

Below is A – F

Abelard 1887 Seventh ave

Aberdeen 249 W 107th st

Abington 44 E 79th st

Acacia 142 W 103d st

Acadia 1889 Seventh ave

Ackerly 241 W 101st St

Acropolis 519 W 123d st

Adela 228 W 25th st Continue reading →

Classic Hollywood #62 – A Gallery Of Claudia Cardinale

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11 More Photos OF The Enchanting Claudia Cardinale

Since June 2016 the most viewed story on this site has been Classic Hollywood #53 Claudia Cardinale.

Born in Tunis on April 15, 1938, Claudia Cardinale won a beauty contest in the late 1950s. After much resistance she began her film career with three films all released in 1958.

By age 26, the five foot six inch, 123 pound knockout with the curvy 37 ½ -24 – 37 ½ figure was on her way to becoming one of the world’s most popular movie stars.

Give the people what they want. Obviously the people want more of the alluring Claudia Cardinale.

The quotes below the photographs are from interviews with Cardinale.

“When I was 15 it was fashionable to dress like a beatnik – you know with the black pull-over, black skirt, pony tail, and all that. But Mother refused to buy me black things, so I solved the problem by secretly dyeing a plaid skirt black and wearing it with a pull-over which I also dyed.” 1963

“I never wanted to be an actress. I wanted to teach in Africa. People offered me film contracts and I kept saying no. I thought they were crazy. They thought I was too. ‘This funny girl from Africa,’ they said. ‘She refuses to make money She is stupid.'” 1965

“I don’t think everybody can be an actress, it’s a strange kind of life. You have to have a mind very clear. The love scenes are always the most difficult.” 1967 Continue reading →

New York In The Late 1940s As Seen By The Saturday Evening Post’s Cover Artists

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Five Classic New York City Saturday Evening Post
Magazine Covers

A magazine with great cover art? The New Yorker fits the bill with every issue having an illustration adorning the covers since beginning publication in 1925.

Over the course of the 20th century photography eventually replaced magazine cover art. But if there was a magazine that could give The New Yorker a challenge in the cover art department, it would be The Saturday Evening Post.

If The New Yorker was the quintessential representative for sophisticates, then The Saturday Evening Post represented the rest of America. The covers of The Saturday Evening Post mirrored America, the same way The New Yorker echoed New York.

Arguably no New Yorker cover artist past or present is widely known to most Americans. The Post fostered the career of a legendary artist, Norman Rockwell. From the late teens until the 1960s Rockwell drew an astounding 321 covers for the magazine. Rockwell’s name and work is still recognized by millions of people nearly 40 years after his death.

But what of the hundreds of other talented artists who illustrated magazine covers? There were only a few artists who worked for both the New Yorker and The Saturday Evening Post. Each magazine wanted exclusivity considering the illustration style was at times somewhat similar.

Every now and then, the Post would feature a New York City scene on its cover.

Here are five examples from the 1940s.

John Falter (1910-1982) drew over 120 covers for the Saturday Evening Post. The April 30, 1949 cover shows Central Park and the skyline of the upper east side. The original cover Falter submitted had a lightning bolt and a rainbow simultaneously, which concerned the Post’s editors. They consulted the weather bureau asking if it was possible to have both lightning and a rainbow appear at the same time? The weather bureau replied they had never seen the phenomenon but where weather was concerned “anything could happen.”

The Post’s Art Department decided to remove the lightning and the illustration appeared as seen here.

Constantin Alajalov (1900-1987) was one of those few artists who worked concurrently for The New Yorker and The Saturday Evening Post. The February 12, 1949 cover has  a young lady in a travel office dreaming of getting away from the cold as she’s surrounded with posters advertising sunny locales. Note there is something never seen in New York City anymore: clotheslines connected from building to building. Alajalov originally drew snowflakes falling in the courtyard, but then decided to remove them when he thought: would anyone be drying clothes in a snowstorm? Probably not. So either remove the clotheslines or the snowflakes. Alajalov chose to remove the snowflakes. Continue reading →

Old New York In Photos #78 – Fifth Avenue & 42nd Street 1903

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Fifth Avenue & 42nd Street c. 1903 – Crowded Street On A Cold Sunny Day

This bustling scene was captured by a Detroit Publishing Company photographer around 1903. The view is from the southeast corner of 42nd Street looking north up Fifth Avenue.

It is obviously a cold and sunny day with most people wearing warm coats. Enlarging our photograph the first thing you may notice is that everyone is uniformly dressed. All the women have the same dress length, just past the ankle. Every man wears a suit or overcoat.  Take a look around. There is not a single person hatless.

Let’s zoom in on some of the details.

On the northeast corner of 42nd Street an elderly man stops to take a look at the work going on inside an open manhole.

As usual, at all very busy intersections, a policeman is on duty to help direct the flow of traffic both vehicular and pedestrian.

This gentleman on the left with the gold watch fob and chain looks to be a prosperous fellow, possibly on his way back to his office after lunch.

Of course other people look spiffy without being wealthy. This sharp looking mustachioed hansom cab driver holding a whip is dressed immaculately. Continue reading →