I was at home for the 1999 MLB All-Star Game.
I remember it vividly, because it was the last baseball game I ever watched my dad. It was a year that I felt like I spent more time in airports than at home. I was living in Dallas, working from home some days but on the road every week. Every Monday or Tuesday I would fly out of DFW to either Nashville or Denver. I worked for Collector’s Edge and their parent company, Shop At Home, based in Nashville. I alternated weeks between the two cities, with some shows like the National thrown in.
The 1999 All-Star Game was held at Fenway Park. I had never been to Fenway, as I had only ever been to Boston in the winter for hockey collectible shows and events. It was the first All-Star FanFest without my previous employer, Pinnacle, dropping a million or so bucks on a title sponsorship as they motored on toward bankruptcy.
July was a good time to go back to Canada for vacation. I took my then-wife and kids to her parents’ place for a few weeks. Petawawa, Ontario, is a military town near Pembroke, which is not a military town. You start in Ottawa, drive northwest, and just when you think civilization has ended, you get to Pembroke. If you have ever seen the comedy series Letterkenny, well, welcome.
My parents lived about a three-hour drive from there near the border town of Prescott, which is south of Ottawa straight across the St. Lawrence River from Ogdensburg, NY. Because WSLB in Ogdensburg carried Yankees baseball games and WWNY-TV in nearby Watertown broadcast weekend Yankees games, that town was all-in Yankees, all the time. It still is.
My dad had been fighting emphysema, lung cancer, a couple of heart attacks and strokes, and just about anything else you can think of. He started smoking when he was 12. He drank heavily. I never saw him without a drink in his hand, even when he was driving. I couldn’t figure out how he was still alive, but he was. So every time I went back to Canada I tried to squeeze in a day for a visit.
We watched the All-Star Game together in 1999. My mom had just bought my dad a big screen TV. A 48” screen does not seem like a big deal now, but in 1999, it was huge.
We sat together, just as we used to watch the Yankees games when I was a little boy. I remember seeing Mickey Mantle in his last year. He was old and beat up, but larger than life. But by this point, we joked that my dad would be the only person who would have made Mickey Mantle worse off if he had donated organs to him.
We sat their in awe watching Pedro Martinez. There are All-Star Game moments we watched together and I will never forget. Pete Rose crashing into Ray Fosse at home plate, Reggie Jackson hitting one of the longest home runs ever hit in the 1971 All-Star Game, and Gary Carter in the 1981 All-Star Game come to mind.
But Pedro took it to the next level. He became the first pitcher to ever strike out all three batters in the first inning in an All-Star Game. He then struck out another two in the second as he went six-up, six-down in his two innings of work.
On his big TV, we had never seen Pedro’s change up look so filthy. And as for the five strike outs, consider that he whiffed Sammy Sosa, Larry Walker, Mark McGwire, Jeff Bagwell and Barry Larkin.
I remember us talking about how easy it would be for Don West to be peddling Pedro Martinez autographed balls after that. After all, even though the hobby was on an overall decline in 1998, Shop At Home did big business in 1998 with anything signed by Mark McGwire and/or Sammy Sosa.
For the last game to ever watch with your dad and talk about the game, and collecting autographs and baseball cards, it couldn’t have been better.
The 1999 National
Two weeks after my visit home, I headed to Atlanta for the National. Collector’s Edge had a corporate booth at the show, and I was there for most of the hours that the show was open. The Shop At Home team were coming and going, sometimes for meetings or sometimes just to say hi and hang out for a bit.
There were two things I loved about big shows. The autograph guests were always amazing at the National, and I have always collected signed 8x10s. The other thing I loved was just talking to collectors. I loved meeting people and sharing the passion of collecting. The Collector’s Edge collectors were football collectors, but many collected baseball too. They seemed to be more hard core than the average collector. But like everyone at the show, they loved the hobby.
As the All-Star Game had been only two weeks earlier, I remember chatting with an older man. He was a World War II vet and had grown up in New York. He was a Giants fan in both football and baseball. The Football Giants and the Rangers, he said, are the only reasons Giants, Dodgers and Yankees fans can stand each other.
I asked him if he had seen the All-Star Game, and he had. I mentioned something about Pedro Martinez turning in the best pitching performance in All-Star Game history. He stopped me in my tracks.
“Carl Hubbell,” he said.
I had heard of Carl Hubbell, but I didn’t know much about him other than that he had pitched for the Giants in the 1930s, and he was known for perfecting the screwball. I also had a Carl Hubbell card as he was in the 1991 Conlon Collection set I bought at the National years earlier. I still love that set.
The veteran recalled Hubbell striking out five batters in two innings of work in the 1934 All-Star Game, played at the Polo Grounds in New York. My new friend listened to the game on the radio. Like Martinez did in Boston, Hubbell sent down the most feared hitters in the game. He fanned Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons and Joe Cronin. All went on to be Hall of Famers.
He also told me how Hubbell and Mel Ott, his two favorite players growing up, both died in automobile accidents The hair on the back of my neck stood up when he told me that both were killed in car crashes on the same day, November 21, 30 years apart (1958 and 1988). While Hubbell was a pretty good signer through the mail, neither man ever really got to make autograph appearances and talk with fans.
Which Card Is Hubbell’s True RC?
I left that conversation curious about Carl Hubbell cards. I talked to some vintage dealers on the floor that I knew to find out more. What I found fascinating is that nobody could agree on what Hubbell’s actual rookie card was.
Hubbell pitched in the Majors from 1928-43, and was voted into the Hall of Fame in 1947. His career stats bleed greatness. He was a nine-time all-star, a two-time NL MVP, led the NL in wins and ERA three times, won a World Series, had five straight 20-win seasons, and pitched a no-hitter. He finished with a 253-154 record with a 2.98 ERA and 1,677 strikeouts.
But which card is his rookie card is a little more complicated as to whether or not he should be in the Hall of Fame.
The vintage purists, I learned on the floor of the 1999 National, consider his R315 card from the winter of 1929-30 to be his true rookie card. It was his first card. That card is notable as it is an uncorrected error card, with his first name spelled ‘Karl’. It is one of nine uncorrected errors in the 46-card set. Clearly proofreading was not a thing yet.
That set was featured black and white cards that are oversized compared to today’s standard cards. They were 5.25” tall by 3.25” wide. The backs are blank and the set is not numbered. Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig are the headliners in this set that includes most of the big stars of the late 1920s.
Here is where the controversy sits with Hubbell in the hobby. The purist collectors were saying that his R315 card was his rookie card. The hobby media and price guide editors, however, considered the 1933 Goudey cards his rookie card.
And notice that it’s cards and not card, just in case it wasn’t confusing enough.
Goudey introduced the baseball cards to promote their new bubble gum, Big League Chewing Gum. Many of the stars were featured with more than one card. Babe Ruth actually has four cards in the set. Of the 240 cards, 140 feature images of Hall of Famers.
I asked one dealer which Hubbell card of the two would be his rookie. He explained that both were. Not only that, he said, but because of the way that Krause and Beckett had labelled the cards in their catalogues, every card in the 240-card set was a rookie card.
He told me that when he talked to some vintage collectors, he learned a lot from them through this set. If they referenced the R315 set as rookie cards, he knew the collectors were serious and not new to the hobby.
One of the interesting Hubbell items I saw on the show floor was a Hubbell postcard from 1932. The Giants issued postcards of their various players with the team’s schedule on the back. When I asked the dealer about them, he said that they were not even considered to be cards, let alone rookie cards. That sentiment has largely changed in the 21st century.
Since his death, there have been a lot of Carl Hubbell cards that have been produced. Some include autograph swatches. The 1933 Goudey cards might be out of your price range if it has a high grade, but there have been more than 500 different Hubbell cards produced.
So if you are trying to put some sort of collection together with All-Star Game heroes, don’t forget about Carl Hubbell. In an era and a decade dominated by hitters, few hitters in the 1930s had any level of success against the Giants legendary screwballer.
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