1960 Fleer - Branch Rickey - Continental Baseball League

[rkrolewicz]

I just got the card and saw that his picture has sign for the Continental League in it. In the bio on the back it says he is starting the new league.

Does anyone know of any other card(s) referring to the Continental League?

(Ps, I want to load pictures of the card, but can’t. I always struggle with this.)

[Griffins]

[Exhibitman]

I have the card and never noticed it.

[rkrolewicz]

Griffins, Thanks for posting the pic

[ALR-bishop]

I had not noticed either. I think I read where Chuck Connors was discussing Branch Rickey and said Mr Rickey has ball players and he has money and does not believe they should be commingled

[G1911]

I don’t believe there are any other Continental League cards. This Rickey is my favorite of the Fleer cards for its unique connection. “Bottom of the Ninth” by Michael Shapiro is a great work on the aborted League if anyone is interested

[The-Cardfather]

Here's a brief synopsis of the Contenental Leage taken from a Mets blog (link provided below) after the passing of New York attorney Bill Shea (whom Shea Stadium was named for).


• Shea was a protégé of George McLaughlin, the banker whose Brooklyn Trust Company long ran the Brooklyn Dodgers. McLaughlin had installed Walter O’Malley to oversee business operations in 1933 and, Dodger fan that he was, ultimately felt personally betrayed by O’Malley moving the club to Los Angeles after the 1957 season.

• Shea was a friend and informal adviser to politicians from both parties, including New York City Mayor Robert Wagner. Wagner tasked Shea with leading a committee that would find a replacement for the Dodgers and Giants. After putting out unsuccessful relocation feelers to existing National League teams, Shea turned his energies to expansion.

• When rebuffed by baseball — “We don’t need New York,” huffed N.L. president Warren Giles — Shea concocted the Continental League, a third major league that would conceivably compete with the National and American for players and profits. It would play in New York as well as markets left out of big-time baseball to date.

• McLaughlin, who remained an upper-echelon power broker in New York, brought Shea together with Branch Rickey (another of his old Dodger hires) to give the Continental League scheme some oomph among baseball men. It was the threat of this new league and all its implications for baseball’s antitrust exemption that shoved the sport’s recalcitrant establishment to agree to expand.

• Shea’s trump card was attracting serious investors in markets like Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth for the Continental. Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth are in Texas, home to Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson and House Speaker Samuel Rayburn. They absolutely ran Congress and would not look kindly on a sport/business that arbitrarily blocked Texas from making the majors.

• It was an intricate plan, but it worked essentially as Shea wanted it to. Baseball caved.



http://www.faithandfearinflushing.co...hind-the-name/

[Griffins]

This was a pretty good history of the Continental League

[rkrolewicz]

Nice stuff folks. Thanks!