Finding A Magical Postcard

I’ve been a baseball fan and a postcard collector  for most of my life, and it’s fun when these two interests come together as they did a few months ago at a postcard show I attended at San Francisco’s Hall of Flowers in Golden Gate Park.

I was leafing through a group of postcards in a dealer’s “Baseball” section when one caught my eye. I immediately knew it was from the late 1950’s or early 1960’s. The price on it was only a few dollars. Yankee Stadium usually isn’t a source of excitement here at Grubby Glove, but given the price, I picked it up figuring I would give it to a pal.

Back at home later that evening, I started to look at my purchase at length. The postmark read October 2, 1963 and without going any further I immediately knew what I had. I closed my eyes and the memories started coming back. World Series games started at 2:05 pm back then, so unless you were sick, watching the game was out. One of the guys had secretly brought a transistor radio into Miss Cariello’s 7th period English class that day, so I got periodic snippets of information from him about how Sandy Koufax was striking out Yankee batters at an amazing pace.

I was already thinking record. Since I was a bit of a baseball historian even then, my mind started rummaging through the dust bins and I remembered that Philadelphia Athletics Pitcher Howard Ehmke had struck out thirteen batters against the Pirates in the 1929 World Series opener against the Cubs. No one had ever struck out that many batters in a World Series game before Ehmke’s accomplishment. I even knew the back story. Ehmke had been given the assignment of scouting the Cubs by his Manager, Connie Mack, with the intention of using him as a surprise starter. Although not the best pitcher on his staff that season, Ehmke, pictured on the left, so thoroughly familiarized himself with the Cubs batters that he knew exactly how he was going to go after them. It worked as the Athletics won that first game on the way to a World Championship.

But getting back to the postcard, I also knew that someone had broken it since Ehmke’s effort, and I recalled it was a Dodger. I was thinking it might have been Johnny Podres, who I knew pitched very well against the Yankees during the 1955 World Series.  I was certain that the number was fourteen, so if Koufax was going to set a new record for strikeouts in a World Series game, he would have to get at least fifteen. I couldn’t identify the guy at that time but now I know that it was Carl Erskine, who threw a complete game against the New York Yankees in-game three of the 1953 World Series, striking out fourteen in the process. By the way, one of Erskine’s best customers that day was Mickey Mantle, who struck out four times.

Postcard collectors frequently say that the back of the postcard is more interesting than the front, and in this case, it’s true. This postcard was written by one of the 69,000 fans who attended this historic game. The date of the game, the writer’s date on the postcard and the United States Post Office’s postmark all have the same date: October 2, 1963. If you look closely at the postmark you can see it reads 9 pm. This is the real deal. I stumbled across a piece of Americana and baseball history in one fell swoop.

So how does this story end? In a couple of ways. My classmate told me that Koufax struck out five Yankee hitters to start the game. That was the last report that I recall. Seventh period ended and I had one more class to go for the day. It is with a sense of irony and wonder that I recall having History in that last period. History was occurring that day, all right, just as I was sitting there in class. How’s that for timing?

By the time I got home the game was all over; so much for watching the final inning or two on TV. I read about the game the next morning in the papers, but that’s not exactly the same thing. Still, I felt pretty good for Koufax, who was other worldly back then.

My next postcard show will be held at the same location on April 21st and 22nd. I’ll be trolling through countless boxes and thousands of cards in search of more treasure. You see, going to a postcard show is a lot like attending a baseball game; you never know what’s going to happen.