First things first. If you came here “in pursuit” of the Mark Armour/Dan Levitt bestseller, you’ll want to head to this site instead. This article is strictly about Maury Wills. That said, Maury wasn’t a bad addition to a team in pursuit of pennants. In his first stint with Los Angeles (1959-66), the Dodgers won four pennants in eight years. He even earned a cameo in the first ever Topps World Series subset. (Fun fact: The “game five” action depicted actually occurred in game four.)
But back to the real topic of this article, there’s a reason the World Series card, issued in 1960, is Maury’s only Topps card until 1967. While at spring training with the Tigers in 1959, Maury was famously passed over by Topps scout Turk Karam, who was handing out $5 trading card contracts to just about anyone in cleats and a jersey. As the story goes, Karam was certain Wills, who had toiled in the minors since 1950, had no shot at ever making it to the Show.
While the oversight cost Maury $5 that spring, the real losers were collectors, who had to look to food issues, Fleer, and photo packs for cards of the National League’s most prolific base stealer since Sliding Billy Hamilton.
Wills was still an all-star caliber player by the time he signed with Topps for the 1967 season, but without a doubt his best years were behind him, as were his pennants. His two Pirates cards corresponded to a pair sixth place finishes, his Expos card was as a cellar dweller, and even his return to Los Angeles had him an also-ran three straight years.
Among the toughest across Maury’s late-career cardboard is his card in the 1971 Topps “Baseball’s Greatest Moments” test issue. As a Wills collector, it’s a card I’d been chasing for a while and finally received in today’s mail. It’s an attractive card that pays tribute to Maury’s single season stolen base record from 1962.
Particularly notable, however, is the “article” on the card back, which opens somewhat unexpectedly: “In a major league career delayed by nine years of wandering in minor league ball…”
There are certainly other ways to read that line, but at least one is that its author believes Maury was kept in the minors far too long. In other words, it should have been clear to the baseball people paid to figure out such things that Maury was ready for the big leagues far earlier than June 1959. By the same token, one would assume, it should have been clear to Topps that Maury not only had a shot at the majors but was overdue.
Here then is Topps publicly acknowledging the error of its ways and doing its best to right a wrong, or—as some might put it—in pursuit of penance. 😉
