Card of the Week: 1933 Goudey #9 Dave Harris

Posted by Andy on May 22, 2010

Images courtesy of Condition: Poor

The 1933 Goudey set is one of the grand-daddies of baseball card collecting. Goudey had been around as a chewing gum company for a while and became the first company to ever package baseball cards with bubble gum with this 1933 240-card release. The design might look quite familiar to modern-day collectors, as Upper Deck released a set a couple of years ago under the name Goudey that closely resembled this set.

The Dave Harris card shown above is quite typical of cards from this set. It's common to find cards that have been written on as back in 1933 kids were far more interested in the cards as a mechanism for learning and remembering modern-day players than as collectibles. As you can find on the source blog the L and F on the front were probably written by a kid who noted that Harris played left field. There's also a W in the lower right that at first looked to me like it was written on there, but it's actually the W on the sleeve of Harris' jersey.

On the back of the card (see scan below) we see "200", which might actually be a price of $2.00 written on the card sometime in the 1960s. (Amazing to think that somebody would write a price directly on a card, but that's the way it used to be.) It also appears that someone wrote "MAN." but I can't guess what that refers to. Harris was never a manager. Maybe he was just a man plain and simple?

In this condition, this card is worth at most a couple of bucks. There are numerous examples on eBay that are in better condition--similarly rounded corners but no writing, for example. Such cards go for $20-30.

One other thing--I am very surprised to see Harris' first name listed as "Dave." I was under the impression (mistakenly, obviously) that the nickname of Dave didn't come into common use until much later.

Harris had himself a nice career. He played parts of 7 seasons finishing with a 111 OPS+ in just under 1,700 plate appearances. His 1931 season was particularly good.

Rk	Player	Year	PA	RBI	OPS+	Age	Tm	Lg	G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	Pos
1	Jose Canseco	1989	258	57	147	24	OAK	AL	65	227	40	61	9	1	17	23	69	.269	.333	.542	.875	*9/D
2	Carlton Fisk	1988	298	50	155	40	CHW	AL	76	253	37	70	8	1	19	37	40	.277	.377	.542	.919	*2
3	Johnny Grubb	1986	243	51	170	37	DET	AL	81	210	32	70	13	1	13	28	28	.333	.412	.590	1.002	*D79
4	Oscar Gamble	1980	229	50	158	30	NYY	AL	78	194	40	54	10	2	14	28	21	.278	.376	.567	.943	79D
5	Carlton Fisk	1975	294	52	150	27	BOS	AL	79	263	47	87	14	4	10	27	32	.331	.395	.529	.923	*2/D
6	Willie McCovey	1962	261	54	154	24	SFG	NL	91	229	41	67	6	1	20	29	35	.293	.368	.590	.957	739
7	Jerry Lynch	1961	210	50	167	30	CIN	NL	96	181	33	57	13	2	13	27	25	.315	.407	.624	1.031	7/9
8	Johnny Blanchard	1961	275	54	168	28	NYY	AL	93	243	38	74	10	1	21	27	28	.305	.382	.613	.995	*2/79
9	Dusty Rhodes	1954	186	50	182	27	NYG	NL	82	164	31	56	7	3	15	18	25	.341	.410	.695	1.105	7/89
10	Ron Northey	1948	288	64	149	28	STL	NL	96	246	40	79	10	1	13	38	25	.321	.420	.528	.949	*9
11	Don Padgett	1939	257	53	160	27	STL	NL	92	233	38	93	15	3	5	18	11	.399	.444	.554	.998	*2/3
12	George Selkirk	1937	293	68	157	29	NYY	AL	78	256	49	84	13	5	18	34	24	.328	.411	.629	1.040	*9
13	Dave Harris	1931	283	50	145	30	WSH	AL	77	231	49	72	14	8	5	49	38	.312	.434	.506	.941	*9/7
14	Ben Paschal	1925	275	56	160	29	NYY	AL	89	247	49	89	16	5	12	22	29	.360	.417	.611	1.028	978
15	Reb Russell	1922	250	75	175	33	PIT	NL	60	220	51	81	14	8	12	14	18	.368	.423	.668	1.091	*9
16	Smoky Joe Wood	1921	229	60	151	31	CLE	AL	66	194	32	71	16	5	4	25	17	.366	.438	.562	1.000	*98
17	Earl Smith	1921	261	51	147	24	NYG	NL	89	229	35	77	8	4	10	27	8	.336	.409	.537	.946	*2

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 5/21/2010.

These are the only players since 1901 to have at least 50 RBI and an OPS+ of 145 in a season with no more than 300 plate appearances. I would think that most of these players were injured for part of the season as it would be tough to sit a guy powering to an OPS+ of 145 or better. As you can see, it's a list of impressive players.

8 Responses to “Card of the Week: 1933 Goudey #9 Dave Harris”

TheGoof Says:
May 22nd, 2010 at 9:55 am
As for MAN, maybe they thought that was Bucky Harris, who managed the team in that era. I'm pretty sure I saw some old card from that time with "George Ruth," so it wouldn't be that odd to see the real name instead of the one you know them by.
Frank Clingenpeel Says:
May 22nd, 2010 at 10:23 am
I think the Goof might be right, especially since "MAN" has a period at the end of it.
Johnny Twisto Says:
May 22nd, 2010 at 11:39 am
Actually, I think a lot of these players were just part-timers and not injured. Grubb, Gamble, McCovey, Blanchard, Rhodes I'm pretty sure were all just super-subs in those seasons. Not as sure about the older guys without checking them.
DavidRF Says:
May 22nd, 2010 at 12:43 pm
McCovey was famously blocked by Cepeda in 1962, which led to him being on of the most overqualified platoon subs in history. Looking at the game logs, it looks like there was something else sidelining him in April. He appeared only sparingly as a pinch hitter that month and it wasn't until the Giant's 22nd game that he settled into his LF-RF-1B rotation. Was he hurt that month?

Fun to see Reb Russell and Smoky Joe Wood on the same list. Both were 20-game winning pitchers making career comebacks as position players.
Kahuna Tuna Says:
May 22nd, 2010 at 3:58 pm
I think a lot of these players were just part-timers and not injured. . . . Not as sure about the older guys without checking them.

Your servant. For each player on the list, total games played minus sum of games in which player appeared at a fielding position or at DH (plate appearances per game played in parenthesis):

Lynch, 1961: 52 (2.19)
Rhodes, 1954: 45 (2.27)
Blanchard, 1961: 30 (2.96)
Northey, 1948: 29 (3.00)
Padgett, 1939: 25 (2.79)
Paschal, 1925: 23 (3.09)
Harris, 1931: 17 (3.68)
McCovey, 1962: 17 (2.87)
Smith, 1921: 11 (2.93)
Grubb, 1986: 10 (3.00)
Selkirk, 1937: 9 (3.76)
Gamble, 1980: 9 (2.94)
Canseco, 1989: 4 (3.97)
Fisk, 1975: 2 (3.72)
Fisk, 1988: 2 (3.92)
Wood, 1921: 2 (3.47)
Russell, 1922: 0 (4.17)

Hardly a perfect method for determining pinch-hitting appearances, but it gives a rough idea of which players were injured regulars and which were super-subs. McCovey in 1962 started only 64 of the 91 games that he appeared in; he came in as a pinch-hitter 22 times and as a "defensive replacement" five times (twice in left and three times at first base). I haven't been able to find anything about McCovey being injured in April, although this site posts the following for the 1962 season (under "Minor injuries and illness"): "Willie McCovey pulls right thigh muscle on 7/29. Limited to pinch hitting & occasional start at first base until 8/19."

The players with more than 3.1 PA per game are the ones who made frequent appearances off the bench, while those with more than 3.1 PA per game are the starters who were injured for part of the season. The lone exception to this rule of thumb is Earl Smith, who platooned with Frank Snyder at catcher for the 1921 Giants.
Gerry Says:
May 22nd, 2010 at 7:34 pm
I don't know if Johnny Blanchard was injured in 1961, I think he just had to compete for playing time with Yogi Berra, Elston Howard, and Bill Skowron.
DoubleDiamond Says:
May 22nd, 2010 at 8:19 pm
The back of the card says that although "he is listed as an outfielder, but he does most of his work as a pinch hitter." Maybe he was not a good fielder. I'm also intrigued by the fact that he served as a sheriff in his hometown.
steven Says:
May 23rd, 2010 at 7:09 am
Lynch and Rhodes were mainly known for their pinch-hitting skills.

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