Actual Trading Card History - 1948 Swell Sport Thrills

I love the Trading Card History set from Topps, but they really dropped the ball by not describing what these designs are on the back. I can get factoids about Grady Sizemore from about 1000 of his other cards, but info on just what the hell this black & white design is on the card is a lot harder. It doesn't help that on the back it simply says "1948 Baseball Card". So now we know it's from 1948 and it has "Sport Thrills" on the front. Thanks, Topps. When I watched Chris Harris' 2008 Topps box break and both he and the shop owner were perplexed by the card I knew something had to be done. When the Dean of card blogging and someone who makes a living off cardboard didn't recognize what that card was, what hope was there for all the casual collectors out there? Heck, I recognized the design but it took some searching in my SCD to actually find out what set it was from. Since I like the set so much, I'm going to post all the ones I have and give a little actual trading card history on the designs to give Topps a helping hand.

This design is from Philadelphia Gum's 1948 Sport Thrills set. I don't have one of these cards in my collection, but Chris Stufflestreet has a good picture of one along with a better writeup than I'll be able to write. Philadelphia is best known for their NFL card sets from the mid 60's, but in 1948 they put out two baseball sets. One was a set that tied into the William Bendix film The Babe Ruth Story. They also released the Sport Thrills set which is distinctive for featuring action shots from famous moments in baseball history. The set is packed with stars and features moments like Jackie Robinson's debut, Johnny Vander Meer's no hitters and Babe Ruth's called shot. The cards are not the standard modern size, but are a little shorter at 2 1/2" by 3". A gallery of the cards can be seen here, thanks to Dan Austin. These cards are pretty scarce but they are not prohibitively expensive despite the star power. Philadelphia Gum is still around today with their Swell brand, which could be why the back avoids using the proper name of the set.