What set sealed Bowman's fate?

[Volod]

[quote=nolemmings;1109367]And one thing more--I may have ranted about this before either here or on another board. Suppose you're a young Cleveland Indians fan in 1954, your team is about to break the Yankee stranglehold of five consecutive World Series appearances in a big way, knocking off the Bombers and winning a record 111 games. Season to remember forever, and the bubblegum cards will help you relive it for all those years.

Your pitching staff includes Bob Feller, Bob Lemon, Early Wynn, Mike Garcia (19-8) and Art Houtteman (15-8), and future HOFer Hal Newhouser is in the bullpen with Ray Narleski and Don Mossi. Stud staff--and Topps gives you cards of exactly ZERO of these hurlers. None, nada, zip. The one Cleveland pitcher shown on a '54 Topps card is the world famous Dave Hoskins, who appeared in all of 14 games for the Tribe that magical year. Are you flippin kidding me? If I'm growin up in Cleveland I'd tell Topps to pi$$ on their cards--remember, no checklists, so you keep rippin those packs and coming up with.....Dave Hoskins?

I'm not an Indians fan, but a few years ago I thought about starting a '54 set. There clearly are some iconic rookie cards, two Teddie Ballgames and some cool shots of Berra, Ford, Mathews and Spahn among others. Still, for some reason I just didn't think the set deserved my attention given the lousy player selection and spate of old men, and I spurned it almost as an homage to those kids in '54 who had to endure it. quote]

Todd - Well, after all, Topps was and is located in NY, so no huge surprise that the good folks in that company did not appreciate the Cleveland Indians trying to stop their heroes from owning every title in sight. Kind of ugly, though, to let childish rooting bias govern their publishing judgement - did they feel that the nickels of kids in the midwest were not as important to their profit picture as their institutional grudge against the infidels? I wish I could say that as a kid, I boycotted Topps for giving short shrift to the Tribe, but at the age of seven or eight, I had no clue why the great Indian hurlers were left out of the 1954 Topps set. Not that I bought much of it - had moved on to building model airplanes after '53.