From the back of the card: “He used to be the ball maker for his baseball team as a boy, but used to lose most of the balls by hitting home runs.”

Known as “The Kentucky Colonel,” Earle Combs (Goudey incorrectly spells his first name “Earl” – such errors were common in old-timey baseball cards and are not considered error cards) is the first Hall of Famer card that I have acquired from the 1933 Goudey set. He really shouldn’t be in the HOF, though. But that’s not a knock on Combs, who was an excellent player over 12 seasons with the New York Yankees.

As the Yankees center fielder from 1924-1935, Combs compiled a career line of .325/.397/.462, which equates to a career OPS+ of 126. These are great numbers, but not really HOF-worthy, in my opinion, especially when compiled over less than 150o career games. He was elected to the HOF in 1970 by the Veteran’s Committee, which is notorious for having elected many very good, but not great, players from the pre-war era.

Over his career, Combs played in four World Series, of which the Yankees won three; Combs hit .350/.444/.450 in 16 career World Series games.

At age 28, Combs batted leadoff and played center field for the famous “Murderer’s Row” 1927 Yankees team that went 110-44 and swept the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series. That season, he batted .356, led the league with 231 hits and scored 137 runs. That tends to happen when Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig are batting behind you.

He retired at age 36 after suffering a near-death injury crashing into the outfield wall in 1934, in which he fractured his skull. His 1935 attempted comeback season was cut short by another injury and he retired, paving the way for Joe DiMaggio, who would take over center field duties in 1936. He remained a coach in the major leagues for the next 18 years.

From the back of the card: “Eddie is a registered dentist, besides being a high grade major league baseball player.”

I’ll give Goudey a pass on the “high grade” player thing because it is pretty impressive that Doc Farrell was a dentist. One of the fascinating things about reading about old-timey players is how many of them had professions other than baseball. I’ve read about two that were lawyers (including Moe Berg, who was a lawyer and spy for the U.S. during World War II).

Farrell probably should have stuck with dentistry, though. Over nine seasons in the major leagues, he got into just under 600 games and posted a career OPS+ of 66 as an infielder for the New York Giants, Boston Braves, St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago Cubs, New York Yankees, and Boston Red Sox. In 1927, he placed 18th in the MVP voting by hitting .316 and driving in 92 runs, though he only slugged .389 that season.

Following the 1934 season, Farrell was traded by the Yankees, along with 4 other players, to San Francisco of the Pacific Coast League for Joe DiMaggio and players to be named later. Farrell refused to report to his new team and was eventually traded back to the Yankees as one of the players to be named later.

First off, the movie is a great watch for baseball fans. In fact, it could have been a miniseries, as there are too many interesting aspects of Mr. Williams’s life (tough childhood, multiple marriages, relationships with his children, fighter pilot, obsession with hitting, etc.) to cover in a two hour film (it actually inspired me to check out the 500 page Leigh Montville biography of Mr. Williams). And yet, with all of these angles to cover, the film decided to spend time rehashing the “Ted was a selfish player…only cared about his numbers…DiMaggio was a winner” story line. Courtesy of Dan Shaughnessy (actual quote…I had it on DVR):

All the stuff that he was great was individual stuff–hitting .400*, triple crowns, even his great moments like All-Star games…and thats not the reputation you want to have. You don’t want to be known as a great guy in All-Star games. You want to be great in the World Series.

Seriously, I have to respond to this? Well, I’m not even going to talk about sample size, I just can’t do it.

First of all, the Leigh Montville book and the HBO documentary both make the case that players actually cared a lot about All-Star games in the 1940′s/50′s, only slightly less than they cared about the World Series. So performing well in All-Star games actually seems like it meant a lot more to players and fans than it does today.

Second of all, Ted Williams had a career OPS of 1.1116 (OPS+ 191) in 7706 regular season at bats. And this doesn’t account for the fact that he missed his age 24, 25, 26 seasons for WWII, and the vast majority of his age 33 and 34 seasons for the Korean War. Because he had a lousy seven games in his only post-season experience**, he never helped the Red Sox at all.

Finally, the criticism of Mr. Williams caring a lot about his career statistics at the end of his playing career seems to be true. But the Red Sox, from 1954-1960 (Mr. Williams post-Korea career), finished a combined ten games under .500, and a combined 147 games out of first place. A competitive athlete has got to have goals to stay motivated in a situation like that, no?

It’s hard for me to tell if Williams reputation would have been better or worse with the 24/7 sports news cycle that we have today. His spitting/swearing at fans, staying in a different hotel at the end of his career, avoiding/cursing the media would have definitely gotten him the Bonds treatment, and possibly made the internet explode. But he also would have had a PR savvy agent, and his fighting in two wars, charity work, playing through injuries, etc. would have earned him the Eckstein treatment. Which angle would the current sports climate have adopted?

*One thing I didn’t realize until the Montville book was that in the 1941 season, in which Mr. Williams hit .406, sacrifice flies were counted as outs against your batting average. Had the current scoring system applied, the .406 would have actually been .420.

**Another thing from the Montville book–the Red Sox scheduled an exhibition series between the end of the regular season and the World Series to make sure their players “didn’t get rusty.” Williams was hit by a pitch on his elbow, causing him to miss most of this exhibition series, and play through the pain in the World Series.

Old Guy: Did you see that new Yankee Stadium?
Other Old Guy: Yeah.
Old Guy: Pretty nice – but the tickets are so expensive, no one will be able to afford to go.
Other Old Guy: Yeah.
Old Guy: If Mantle and DiMaggio were alive, they would never have let that happen!
Other Old Guy: You’re right.
Old Guy: Did you notice that the Yankees waited for them to die before they jacked up the ticket prices?
Other Old Guy: Yup.

I’ve heard some strange statements made by old guys regarding the greatness and superiority of old-timey baseball, but this one is particularly weird. The notion that two retired baseball legends were somehow keeping Yankees ticket prices in check is truly bizarre.

I was going to try to track down yearly ticket price data for the Yankees for the years before and after Mantle and DiMaggio died in order to debunk this nonsense, but it’s really not worth it. This theory is so goofy that I can’t justify responding to it at length.

Unfortunately for me, this strange conversation is not even close to the most disturbing thing about being in the locker room at the YMCA.