What Is Your Rarest 20th Century Baseball Program?

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Posted By: Bruce Dorskind

Whilst the vast majority of the hobby's attention is focused
on rare and valuable baseball cards, and some attention is
paid to autographed balls and game used-bats, the program
market has remained relatively flat and "under the radar" for
the past 15 years.

We were wondering what you consider to be the most interesting,
(rare) 20th century program in your collection?

Two such programs grace our collection

1. East-West World's Colored Championship- first Negro league World
Series- 1924- photos of all the players, a few autographs- from
the Halper Collection (obtained in 1989)

2.Milwaukee Brewers- 1901 Program - from Tom Slater 1982- to our
knowledge only surviving program from the Brewers initial foray
into the fledging American League. Slater auctioned the program
after it obtaining it from infamous Atlanta collector, Dennis Goldstein

Tell us about your ultra rare 20th century programs


Bruce Dorskind
America's Toughest Want List

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Posted By: Max Weder

Not ultra rare, but a neat item nonetheless

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Posted By: Steve Murray

Not rare but it is a mix of several things significant to me. I was alive at the time . It's at Wrigley Field, my hometown park and it matched up several top flight major leaguers then in the military with the LA team of the PCL.

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Posted By: barrysloate

Bruce- good topic, because I also have thought about how little interest is paid to scorecards. Even on this forum we rarely have a thread. And besides the historical value of many key programs, the cover art in many cases is superb and equal to anything I've seen in the hobby.

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Posted By: Steve Murray

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Posted By: Rob D.

Slightly too big for the scanner:

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Posted By: CoreyRS.hanus

An interesting program I have is a 1904 Boston (AL). In it is an ad for the Horner AL composite which includes an illustration of the piece.

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Posted By: David Atkatz

Ya'all have seen it before, but what the hell.

This is the only known surviving program from Jack Chesbro's 10 October 1904 "Wild Pitch" game, which sent the 1904 AL pennant to Boston:

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Posted By: Greg Theberge

Bruces,

I won't bother asking for you to show these great pieces from your collection as I know you won't (despite everyone else graciously doing so), but I have a question for everyone on here.

We see the terms "scorecard" and "program" used for essentially the same article that was used at the ballpark. Is there a difference? Is it just terminology? It seems that the term "program" became more common during and after the 1930s, but maybe I'm mistaken.

Greg

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Posted By: CoreyRS.hanus

Greg,

That's a great question. I would characterize a scorecard as just that, essentially a single piece of paper folded over where the two inside pages depict the lineups of the two teams. The front outside will have the team name, year and usually some other info, and the back outside often will have advertising. A program, in contrast, has multiple pages, which not only include the lineups of the teams but other info (e.g., images of the players, biographical info).

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Posted By: barrysloate

I second what Corey said. The earliet mass produced scorecards first appeared around 1870, and were nothing more than single sheets of heavy paper folded in half, with the scoring grid on the inside and some plain advertising on the outside. By the late 1880's, it wasn't unusual to find 32 page yearbook style programs with engravings and biographies of all the team's players.

That said, the two words tend to be used interchangeably.

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Posted By: joe

I don't know how rare, but early 2 with Cobb. 1911 and 1913.
Plus the 1934 with maybe Babe Ruth batting.

Joe



Ty Cobb, Spikes flying!

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Posted By: Mark

I have two pretty cool programs:

--from the 1925 World Series, scored in, that shows shutout by Washington over Pittsburg with Walter Johnson pitching, and

--the memorial game program for Walter Johnson from 1947 against the St. Louis Browns...

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Posted By: Robert Klevens

1934 US All-Star tour of Japan program - Ruth on cover

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Posted By: Greg Theberge

It's probably just semantics, but now that I look at my stuff, I see that I have a "Scorecard" that is a single fold cardboard, a "Scorecard" with multiple pages, and "Scorebook"(s) with multiple pages. No "programs" per se, as all are before 1920.

By the way, I thought all of this subject seemed a heck of a lot familiar, as this was the exact same topic brought up by the same guys, back in December. You can see a lot of nice stuff, and some interesting dialogue, posted there.

http://www.network54.com/Forum/567138/thread/1199074903/last-1201221501/What+Are+The+Rarest+Programs+In+your+collection

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Posted By: Chris Counts

I can't believe there are too many of these floating around ... it's a 1905 program from the Pine Tree Athletic Association. Portland, Maine is hosting Lynn, MA. I collect Eddie Grant memorabilia, and he just happened to play in this game. Apparently, he didn't play in the league for long before he was signed by Cleveland later in the same season. By the way, that's Harry Lord, a Maine native and future Red Sox 3rd baseman, playing for Portland ...

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Posted By: Greg Theberge

Chris and others,

Those are great scorecards. My Sox materials are in the other thread. Here would probably be my "rarest" scorebook of defunct leagues:





1905 Scorebook for the Providence Baseball Club (Providence Grays/Clamdiggers). Doesn't get any better than Rhode Island Beer and Baseball. It's actually a booklet that would allow you to score the games for a full season. Each page is a seperate scorecard with an advertisement for a Rhode Island brewery.

And then there's my favorite little celluloid piece, which served the same purpose as the paper variety...




By the way, just got back from seeing the traveling Baseball in America exhibit from the BBHOF. Just incredibly awesome.

Greg
www.rhodeislandbreweryhistory.com

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Posted By: Paul Muchinsky

Bruce,

From an unenlightened member, why is the collector Dennis Goldstein from Atlanta "infamous"? Sounds like he played on the 1919 White Sox.

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

Steve, is your program for Wrigley Field in Chicago or Los Angeles?