Remember how we said the 1959 White Sox were team of yesterday. of today. of tomorrow.
Well the 1959 Los Angeles Dodgers who vanquished them in the World Series were also a team similar to that.
Just two years removed from their final season in Brooklyn, the Dodgers have begun to evolve and the Brooklyn players were for the most part nearing the end of their career.
Among those were future Hall of Famers Duke Snider and Gil Hodges. Damn, it feels right to finally be able to say Hall of Famer Gil Hodges.
A few other veterans such as Carl Furillo were still with the Dodgers as well.
However, the real strength of the Dodgers were players in their "peak" years some of whom had been with the team in Brooklyn and some had not been.
Jim "Junior" Gilliam is a good example of a player still at his peak who had also been a star in Brooklyn
And a player who had not been in Brooklyn but learned how to hit at the then home in Los Angels, the Coliseum which had been used for the 1932 Olympics. Moon became famous for his "Moon Shots' Which were homers over the shorter but higher left field fence. Moon was a really good all-around player and had good speed since he won a gold glove award and had 11 triples that year as well.
While he is well known for the "uni-brow" look, I prefer to think of him as the great autograph signer he was at several of my shows. We always treated him with respect and the proper admiration for a great player of his time. One of my friends regaled me with a story about how he got hurt in a play involving Jackie Robinson. Yes, first person discussion about how it was to play against Jackie. He was like that and friendly with all of the fans who wanted to meet him and get his autograph.
But the real future of the team would be in a couple of their younger pitchers who had not yet developed into the future Hall of Famers they would become.
And while there are other youngsters who would be important to the Dodgers in the 1960s such as Ron Fairly, Tommy Davis and Frank Howard no player who had an impact on the 59 Dodgers and beyond had a more interesting card history than Maurice Morning Wills who we know better as Maury.
In the White Sox section we talked about the 1960 World Series card in which he is the fielder. No, he would not be on another Topps card for seven more years but he has several cool cards between 1960 and 1967.
Here is a 1963 Fleer card in which he is noted as the 1962 NL MVP
And here is a 1960 (rookie year) Bell Brand Maury Wills. Isn't it nice to find a somewhat difficult to find card of his first year on being on cards
I talked about how he would not have a card until 1967 and here is that tough to acquire Topps card
To me, the biggest shame is it took until 1970 for him to get a proper Dodgers card
But maybe someday Wills will join many of his Dodgers teammates in the Hall of Fame. The only thing I wish is although he was not going to play in 1973 after a terrible 1972 season I still wish he had a career capper card that year. This was an example of a card which could have existed in 1973.
And with all that, our tour of 1959 yesterday today and tomorrow comes to an end.
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