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Here we have a 1963 Fleer card featuring Roger Craig. I knew Fleer as only the card company from the 1980s and 1990s so I asked dayf from Cardboard Junkie to explain a bit of the history to me. Here's what he had to say:

"Basically, Fleer is the company that first developed a good quality bubble gum back in the '20s They'd been a long time confectioner before that and put out a cheap 'strip card' set that included Cobb and Ruth back in 1923. They had dabbled in bubble gum cards in the '30s but didn't really jump on the baseball card bandwagon until the '50s. By the time they got in, Bowman and Topps were already in huge legal battles over exclusive contracts and they had no good way of getting their foot in the door. They signed Ted Williams to a big exclusive contract in1959 and put out an 80 card set of all Ted which flopped. Then in 1960 and '61 they tried doing Legends sets of retired ballplayers and they didn't do much better. In 1963 they did a real baseball card set with a stale cookie instead of gum to skirt Topps' trademark of cards+gum, got sued and had to lay low through the rest of the '60s and '70s doing oddball sets and stickers. They sued again in the '70s and won, partly because Marvin Miller wanted to sell more card licenses to make the union some money. They sued again, won the case and got the right to put out a set in 1981. Then the card market exploded, they got in over their heads with some bad entertainment licenses, went bankrupt and are now a subsidiary of a failing card company.

So basically, yes, the '60s Fleer cards are the same company as the '80s Fleer cards with some stickers in the middle. Check out the fleer sticker project if you want to know what they were up to in the '70s."

The photo on this card is interesting and looks like it was taken late in the day. I like the silhouetted stadium in the background and the overall dark aspect of the card really highlights Craig's face.

From a design standpoint this card is a bit unusual. The yellow diamond depicting Craig's position is awfully large, especially given that it's a generic drawing (not of Craig specifically). The off-white area featuring the name, team, and position is also large given the amount of information it contains. Still, these features give the card a simple, clean look which is certainly welcome in comparison to some modern-day cards packed with all kinds of colors, marks, foil, chrome, and other nonsense.

The back of the card is equally simple and clean. Unusually, it features the card number near the center of the card.

Within the years we have box scores, the 1963 season by Roger Craig features the most losses where the starting pitcher allowed at most 1 earned run. These are tough-luck losses.

As you can see, there are a number of good pitchers on this leader board

What's odd is the text on the back of Craig's card (see below.) It may sound like it refers to the 1963 season but of course the card was released before the season and instead refers to Craig's 1962, in which he also lost a bunch of games in which he didn't allow many runs. That year, the expansion Mets scored only 617 runs in comparison to the 948 they allowed while on their way to a 40-120 record. Craig actually lost only 1 game that year that he started and allowed no more than 1 earned run. In his entire career beyond 1963, he had only 7 such games, as compared to the 8 in 1963 alone.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 12th, 2010 at 7:18 am and is filed under Card of the Week. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.