Warren Spahn - Why No Hobby Love?
 

I've often wondered why certain players don't receive the hobby "Love" that many others do. Here is a case in point - the great Warren Spahn.

If we just take a cursory look at what he accomplished, it simply amazes me that the value of his cards, autographs, memorabilia, etc., pales in comparison with others.

From what I've read, he was a decorated war veteran from WWII having been awarded both a Purple Heart, Bronze Star, and a battlefield commission.

From what I've read he was always very generous with his time and autographs for his fans.

From what I've read he is the winningest left-handed pitcher of all time.

From what I've read he is the 6th winningest pitcher of all time with 363 wins.

I don't think it is because of the team he played on, primarily the Braves. I also don't think it's because of any sort of stain on his reputation.

It always makes me wonder why someone so accomplished just doesn't resonate with the public the way some others do/have.

If we only want to judge based on accomplishments, Warren Spahn was one of the best that ever took the field.

Here is an autographed scorecard from his 300th win on August 11, 1961.

Any thoughts from others?

I couldn't agree more. Great pitcher and man.

Absolutely!
Warren Spahn was The Man!

He is one of the all time greats.

I got his autograph on a trip to Cooperstown in 1991 when I was a teenager. He and Catfish Hunter were both at a card shop. Spahn was really nice, engaged me in a bit of banter while signing which was really neat for my 14 year old self.

I got his auto on a kind of tacky looking 8 by 10 and if I could go back in time I would have gotten him to sign a card instead…

Career win #363 (his last).

Also Mays HR #499 and Banks HR #401

I grew up watching baseball in the 80s but only more recently got into collecting vintage. Spahn is by far my favorite vintage player. What an awesome guy. His 48/49 leaf probably takes the cake for what I think is the coolest card ever made.

Grumpy side note: I had a type 1 photo he autographed. Bought it for a reasonable amount, and then sold it to someone when I didn’t think it fit well with my collection. That person took it to heritage and it was auctioned off as his earliest known photo in a baseball uniform and went for 7 times as much. Ooops.

Awesome scorebook, Doug! :cool:
Here is the corresponding ticket to Spahnie's last win #363. ;)

Thank you Scott, and that's a nice ticket

Thanks Doug!
It was a collecting long walk through the desert to find this SOB. :eek:
Net54 member Dewey St. Germain finally checked this box for me.

Thanks again, Dewey! ;):cool:

I love Spahny! https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...7a1575a7f6.jpg

I love that card also!

Spahn
 

Wondered about Spahn memorabilia as well. Not sure where I got this but Marasco was a Milwaukee Sentinel cartoonist. I've got a couple of these blank backed postcard sized cards. This one's for his 300th win...

Like so many of his time, he had the misfortune to have signed with the Braves instead of New Yawk.

Monster talent, his numbers a throwback to an earlier era. I'm on his right here, Kevin Keating on his left. Kevin got very close to Spahnie and would accompany him to Cooperstown every year. He was with Warren at his ranch the night he passed away.

Great picture. Seemed like a pretty humble guy for being a war hero and an all time great.

Just be glad his stuff can still be had for a relative bargain so that you can load up without breaking the bank.

I used to complain that Mays got no love due to his previous extreme discount to Mantle. Now that the gap has shrunk, it means that I can’t pick up a lot of the stuff that I covet, which is a major buzzkill.

I've heard that hearing bullets whizzing by your head and artillery shells bursting all around you makes you humble pretty quickly.

I think you hit on something there, in regard to collectibility status.

Warren was the Frank Robinson of pitchers.

"Spahn & Sain and pray for rain", or something like that :) Being a Braves/Giants collector I have quite a few Spahn's. Waddell & Koufax had unhittable stuff. Spahn had great stuff AND endurance. I really need to read the Spahn/Marichal game book, and they both had a huge leg kicks!!

I think there are many factors that come to play, though I'm not a big believer in the NY factor. There aren't exactly a ton of huge value pitchers from NY either.

Spahn had an extremely impressive career and a more impressive life, but he isn't the profile of a pitcher who becomes highly collected. While he did league the league in K's for 4 of his 21 seasons, he never K'd 200 in a season and his career total is not 2583, which is nice but not crazy. His K/9 for his career is 4.4, which is extremely low.

Additionally, while he was often a very good pitcher, he was only rarely an elite pitcher. His ERA+ was consistently in the 115-125 range, which is solid but not special. He had 2 seasons (1947 and 1953) when he was absolutely elite. He won just 1 Cy Young award (in 1957 which ironically was one of his solid, but not great seasons) and much of his value is in the sheer number of innings he pitcherd. His 162 game avg BWAR is 4.4 which reflects a very solid, but not remarkable pitcher.

Spahn's consistency and longevity resulted in some incredible career numbers, but his 119 ERA+ is the same as Red Faber, Ron Guidry, Bobby Shantz and Bob Lemon, some very good pitchers, but not all-time greats.

The pitchers who get collected are those who put up elite, elite numbers and are 'must watch' baseball. Spahn was boringly very good for a very very long time.

GREAT analog.

Yep and/or his more contemporary Stan Musial

A BWAR here, an ERA+ there, and pretty soon...
 

I'm sorry, but if these "modern" metrics of yours add up to the conclusion that Spahn wasn't a LOT better than Red Faber, Ron Guidry, or Bob Lemon, you need to go back to the drawing board. The guy won 20 games or more 13 times, he pitched 5,200 innings despite missing three prime years for military service, he completed 362 games of 665 started, won 363 of them including 63 shutouts (both records for lefties) He was an All-Star 17 times, far and away the most for pitchers. Not enough Ks for you, ERAs not low enough? Maybe he just knew how to pitch, and didn't mind letting his fielders do some work or putting some runners on base until it was time to bear down. Not to denigrate the pitchers you named or any others you might want to lump him in with, but he was head and shoulders above them because 1) he was a prodigious winner for an incredibly long time, 2) his numbers are nothing less than staggering, especially considering he was already 25 when he came up, and 3) oh, by the way, he was a terrific hitter and fielder. Spahnie just "very good?" Give me a break.

Hi Jeff,
Although I agree with some of your analysis, I believe there are several noteworthy omissions that apply to Warren Spahn:

13 seasons with 20 or more wins
8 seasons leading the league in wins
363 wins is fifth All-Time in MLB
63 shutouts is #6 All-Time" in MLB
Two no-hitters thrown AFTER age 39
Lifetime ERA was a solid 3.09
Cy Young in 1957
Sporting News Pitcher of the Year 4 times 1953, 1957, 1958, 1961
.995 Fielding Average (One of best ever in the MLB)
14 x All-Star- He appeared in 7 of them
World Series Champion 1957

Hank,
Sorry, I missed your post. Exactly...

You need to double the All Star appearances to 14 lol. Plus, anyone focusing on things like strikeouts and whip need to look and see that he led the league in those categories several times. He wasn’t just some pretty good guy that could go out and rattle off pitching wins (as if that would be a bad thing).

I would like to also point out that the Cy Young Award was not given out until 1956. By this time, half of Spahn's career was over. Spahn had 8 seasons out of a 21 year career in which he was in his peak form for Cy Young Consideration from 1956-1963. In those 8 seasons he won the Cy Young Award once and had 4 additional Top 3 Finishes. That makes for a total of 5 times finishing in the Top 3 for the Cy Young Award. The more impressive part of that fact is that in those days, there was only 1 Cy Young Award presented. The award was not presented to a recipient from each league until 1967. He only hung around for 2 seasons after that 1963 season (he went 22-7 in 1963), so you can't even say he hung around too long.

Thank you, Carter08,
FYI, I corrected my bullet regarding All-Star games. I meant to state that he pitched in 7 games, although you are correct that he was voted in 14 times. ;)

The following is from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers website:

Less well known than his professional athletic feats, but also impressive, is Spahn’s record in World War II. Drafted in 1942 soon after making his major league debut that year with the Boston Braves, Private Warren E. Spahn was assigned to the 276th Engineer Combat Battalion. While in training at Camp Gruber, Oklahoma, he pitched the battalion’s team to the post championship. In Europe, at the Battle of the Bulge, he earned the Bronze Star. He likely became the only major league player to receive a battlefield commission.

The 276th played a conspicuous role at the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen, Germany. The retreating Germans failed to destroy this vital Rhine River bridge, allowing the Americans to pour across it in great numbers and drive into the heart of Germany. Enemy artillery severely damaged the bridge, and the 276th was engaged in making repairs under fire. A combination of German shelling, vibrations from American artillery, and heavy tank traffic caused the collapse of the bridge 17 March 1945, killing several officers and men of the 276th. Lieutenant Spahn was not among the casualties of the collapse, but while at Remagen he was wounded in the foot by shrapnel (“only a scratch,” according to Spahn), earning him the Purple Heart. The 276th received a Presidential Unit Citation for its actions at Remagen.

Here is a quote from Mr. Spahn in 2005, listed on the same website:

“After what I went through overseas, I never thought of anything I was told to do in baseball as hard work. You get over feeling like that when you spend days on end sleeping in frozen tank tracks in enemy threatened territory. The Army taught me something about challenges and about what’s important and what isn’t. Everything I tackle in baseball and in life I take as a challenge rather than work.”

So my conclusion is - What a career would he have had if not sacrificing his peak youth years in the Army?

Yes, Mr. Warren Spahn was one of the greatest baseball stars of all time AND a true patriot!

Amen! :cool:;)

You are missing my point. I have zero intention of denigrating Spahn, who was an excellent pitcher for a very long time. I was simply expressing why he does not get a ton of hobby attention.

To paraphrase a famous advertisement, "collectors dig the flash." Being consistently good for a long time does not make a player valuable in the hobby. Collectors prefer a brief fireworks explosion than extended consistency. Think Koufax over Spahn, even though for his career, Spahn was way more valuable.

The fact he did not have a huge number of K's is not an indictment of his pitching ability. It's a recognition that K's get attention. It's one of the reasons that Bob Feller finished higher than Thorton Lee in the MVP voting in 1941, despite Lee having a much lower ERA.

You refer to my use of 'modern metrics.' Don't get caught up in the metric. I'm using it to emphasize a point. ERA+ looks at how much better a player's ERA is from the league average. It is a metric that easily translates into attention. In 2002, when Pedro Martinez has an ERA of 2.22 and the league average was above 4, people paid attention. In 1968, when the average ERA was under 3, a 2.22 ERA was nice but not attracting a ton of attention.

I did not intend to compare Spahn to Red Faber, Ron Guidry, or Bob Lemon except to highlight that he was not generally a very dominant pitcher. This remains accurate, but when you look at his career, none of those are remotely good comps. I was highlighting that his actual dominance is in fact similar to players who are lesser players.

A different Braves pitcher is probably a better comp. Tom Glavine won 300+ games, won 20 or more 5 times in an era where that was much rarer. And had an ERA+ for his career of 118, almost identical to Spahn. I don't think there is anyone out there who believes that Glavine deserves way more hobby attention.

Additionally, the hobby is heavily biased towards players who started young, since fans can project their HOF trajectory from early on and jump on. Spahn started his career late and had just 108 wins by age 30. This does not make his career win total less impressive, it arguably makes it more impressive, but it was probably not until he was 37-38 that people viewed him as a HOFer. Again, not a statement about his value as a baseball player, but a factor in the hobby.

I'm trying to emphasize two points:
1) Spahn's value in the hobby is lower than his value as a baseball player, because he was quickly excellent for a long time, but was not flashy and did not have the factors (such as starting at a young age, K'ing a lot of poeple, having unworldly seasons like Koufax etc) that get attention.

2)Spahn was an elite pitcher, but he is not in the same league as Lefty Grove, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson or Tom Seaver. He never achieved their levels of dominance

Jeff, Jim Hoskins here. I need to comment a little - I for one didn't take your comments as derogatory. I actually enjoyed them because it gave me a little more insight as to why some people don't embrace Mr. Spahn more in the hobby. That was the objective for beginning the thread.

So, thank you for your perspective! I would actually like to hear from other readers that may also have reasons why Spahn doesn't receive the love.

We all don't have to agree with someone's opinion because that's what it is - their opinion.

No, I didn't miss your point, I just disagreed with it. Nowhere did I accuse you of denigrating Spahn, you made that up. But your intention in stating that "Spahn's consistency and longevity resulted in some incredible career numbers, but his 119 ERA+ is the same as Red Faber, Ron Guidry, Bobby Shantz and Bob Lemon, some very good pitchers, but not all-time greats" is unmistakable. I just disagree with you, that's all. Trying to turn his "consistency and longevity" into some kind of case against his inclusion with the all-time greats is laughable since those are among the prime criteria. Say what you will, he merits discussion in the same breath as those you name, IMO. As for why he doesn't get the hobby love to go with that, your guess is as good as mine. Small market, no flash, his schnoz, who knows? Maybe the hobby will catch up to his record one of these days. Just to try to wrap up this up, the guy had more wins and shutouts than any other lefty in baseball history. That alone should merit his inclusion with the elite few at the top, shouldn't it?

Fair enough. I did not realize you want to put him in the same category as guys like Grove, Maddux etc. If so, we disagree. I see him as a tier lower than that. Still slam-dunk HOF and better than many pitchers in the Hall, but not on the short list (say top 10) best pitchers all-time.

Regarding, "denigrating"... I thought you were taking me to say that Spahn was a similar pitcher to Red Faber, Ron Guidry, Bobby Shantz and Bob Lemon, which I definitely was not meaning to say.

He’s the best lefty of all time in my opinion and at the very least he’s top 3. Randy Johnson might be close. After all, he did win four Warren Spahn awards!

I am sloughing away at two sets: T206 and the 1950 Bowman. I really just accumulated the 1950 Bowmans. I don't have Spahn in my set yet and went to look on eBay. He's pretty reasonable. Might have to take the plunge...

Top five lefties, pick your order: Grove, Spahn, Koufax, Carlton, Johnson.

I'd have him top 15, if not top ten, that's the truly elite considering how many great pitchers there have been. Even his K's, which you cite as a negative: Where was he when he retired--#3, 4, 5? Not too shabby. Of course,they didn't strike out as much during his time. Where do the big boys like Bill James have him? They might be in your camp with the new metrics, but my God, the guy could win and suck up a ton of innings and do it year after year after year. If I'm a manager, I'd want Spahnie on my staff!

Joe Posnanski has him as the 59th best player of all-time (although he stresses that he is not really trying to put people in an absolute position).

59th includes hitters and pitchers, and includes Negro League players.



His top 20 pitchers (I pulled this from the book and could not find a straight list, so I may be overlooking someone)

1) Walter Johnson
2) Satchel Paige
3) Roger Clemens
4) Lefty Grove
5) Grover Cleveland Alexander
6) Randy Johnson
7) Greg Maddux
8) Cy Young
9) Christy Mathewson
10) Pedro Martinez
11) Tom Seaver
12) Bob Gibson
13) Warren Spahn
14) Nolan Ryan
15) Bob Feller
16) Smokey Joe Williams
17) Steve Carlton
18) Gaylord Perry
19) Sandy Koufax
20) Bert Blyleven

I think his placement is reasonable. I'd probably move a few around on his list and would have Grove, Mathewson and Seaver a bit higher. I think Ryan is too high. And I struggle with Clemens and how to consider him, but generally think it is a pretty good list.

In my mind, the top 8-10 or so are in their own category, and then the rest come after. But looking at this list is informative. During his career, Gaylord Perry reached #2 all-time in K's, but did not strike out many batters per game. Guys like Bob Feller and Bob Gibson are more valuable (hobby-wise). Pedro Martinez, Sandy Koufax and Greg Maddux are very valuable. They each had transcendent peaks, where even fans of other teams felt they needed to tune in when they were pitching.

The list of pitchers who have real value is very short. Few care about Bert Blyleven and Gaylord Perry from a hobby perspective. Steve Carlton won 300 games and 4 Cy Youngs and is not particularly valuable.

Spahn may be a top 15 all-time pitcher. I'd probably have him in that range. Possibly a little lower, but likely still top 20. I might move Steve Carlton above him. Possibly Bob Feller due to his incredible peak, (there was no Cy Young Award during his peak, but he would likely have won at least 4 Cy Young Awards and possibly more), though I may be biased because I collect barnstorming items and Feller was a legend in that arena.

Of course that's my personal list based on my preferences and my knowledge of baseball, which is of course, not all-encompassing.

All these Spahn items are fantastic. Definitely one of the best LHP of all time.

From my view, I see two sizeable reasons he doesn't get the love he probably should:

1) He played in an era with so many iconic players, he never seemed like the biggest name in the game. Some of his best seasons were overshadowed by guys like Mays, Mantle, and Aaron. Each of them had seasons where they could be viewed as the best player in the league, while Spahn always seemed to fall a few notches down (whether fairly or not) even in his greatness.
2) He was a genuinely incredible guy who generously signed a lot of items. I think there is a pretty large supply of authentic Spahn pieces out there. When supply is high and there's nothing driving demand higher, price/value will remain low, sadly.

But hey, I've got a few great Spahn pieces that I'll enjoy in my collection for a long time, regardless of where the hobby leans.

Hard to argue with that list! Somebody said that Spahn was the Frank Robinson of pitchers in terms of hobby interest and respect. I'd say more like Stan Musial, whose career Spahn's enveloped completely. In fact, they faced each other more times than any other duo in history, barely edging out Cobb and Johnson, whose careers also paralleled entirely.

At one time, Warren Spahn owned this diner on Commonwealth Ave in Boston across from the Braves field Stadium.


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Love the old diners! Tough business, though. He ended up a cattle rancher in Oklahoma.

As someone from Milwaukee, I LOVE all of the love you guys are giving him! I used to live near his house in Milwaukee and was told that the spindles of the railing to the second floor were made out of baseball bats.

I think the amount of time he spent in Milwaukee didn't help his case a ton as guys who play here are often overlooked. I also think he didn't get as much attention because he wasn't flashy, on or off the field, and he wasn't the best looking guy in the majors, something which I think influences the prices of the stuff we collect whether people acknowledge it or not.

Here's a super sharp picture of him in 1954 that I love.

The braves have fans far and wide, in strange places. I've heard their games were the only ones broadcasted publicly for free. I believe if you lived in Hawaii your only watchable team was the braves. This is before my time, but I'd love if somebody could chime in and elaborate.

To tie this into the thread, it confuses me even more that Warren isn't more popular.

Here's a super sharp picture of him in 1954 that I love.[/QUOTE]

The 54 picture is fantastic. Here is my 1964 Sport Magazine (sorry, I have a picture of the PSA letter - not the magazine & too lazy to dig it out). The cover looks like your 54 pic, only he looks 10 years older! I also love the Headline on the cover page: "Is Warren Spahn the Best Ever?"

I guess it falls right in line with this thread!

Great thread!

Warren Spahn was everything right about baseball and humanity.

My favorite quote of his was when he was asked if he had ever felt more pressure than when he pitched in the World Series, and he said "Well, there was the Battle of the Bulge."

Here is a link to him talking about his WWII experience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3pVuXHiaD8

As a kid in 1971, we moved from San Francisco to Miami, FL, bye bye Giants :(, hello ? Of course there was no MLB team in Miami in 1971, but the Braves broadcast games on radio, and then TV, to Miami. I quickly became a Braves fan, think Aaron, Murphy... Fast forward to 1980, I moved to Georgia. Ted Turner (TBS/TNT) soon broadcast games, to what seemed like to everywhere, sometime in the early 1990's, I believe. I bet that is when Hawaii received those broadcasts. So you are correct, the Braves became America's team because of Ted. I think I got most of that right. It sucks getting old :)

Has anyone ever seen a GU lineup card from a game that Spahn pitched? Been collecting lineup cards for years and have searched past auctions from many auction sites and have never seen one.