1936 Goudey Braves/Bees Team Set

Ok, so it's only two cards. Two cards that are 72 years old. And they sure do look it. The '36 Goudey set is a bit of an odd duck. It's black & white, has a baseball game on the back and has only 25 cards total in the set. Quite a big change from the 239 card '33 set. There is another Goudey set from 1936, the 178+ card "Wide Pen" premium cards that were given away as incentives in the store. Those are larger paper photos while these were sold in packs and are the same thick stock as their other card sets. The photos for the two sets look very similar to each other, and have the same style script lettering for the name on the front. The checklist is really weak for such a small set, the only superstars in the set are Hank Greenberg, Mickey Cochrane and Lefty Gomez. The lack of unobtainable stars would make it an easy set to complete if the set itself weren't so scarce. I recently got a lot off of eBay with three of the cards, including both Boston Bees players.

This is the card in the lot that was not a Bee. Bill Brubaker was a third baseman for the Pirates. He had a ten year career in the majors, but played in more than 45 games in only three of those years. The year this card was released was his only season playing full time for the Pirates. He finished his career with a few games with the Braves in 1943. If you look very closely on his card (I should have scanned it at a higher resolution in retrospect) you can see that the card was originally printed as "Paul" Brubaker, but Bill was later written over the error. One more interesting tidbit about Bill: he's Dennis Rasmussen's grandpa.

Ok, now for the Braves, er, Bees. Joe Coscarart played only two years in the bigs, one in 1935 as a Brave and one in 1936 as a Bee. His brother Pete was a bit more successful and played 9 years with the Dodgers and Pirates. There is not a whole lot of info out there about Joe. Basically he was a weak hitting infielder for the Braves/Bees (who will from now on be referred to as the Brees in this post) who somehow managed to get into the 1936 Goudey trading card set. Since he's a Bree, I had to have it, and this card was the sole reason I bought the lot.

The last card in the lot and the second Bree in the set is of Brees slugger Wally Berger. Wally is a forgotten star of the 30's. He held the record for most home runs by a rookie with 38 in 1930 until Mark McGwire smashed it. A four time All Star, Berger hit 199 home runs for the Brees from 1930-37. Injuries derailed his career but not before getting to play in a couple of World Series with the Giants and Reds. I already had a card of Berger, but as you can see the one in the lot (on the right) is a slight improvement on the one I already had. It also allowed me to see for my self one of the back variations in the set.

The backs of the card have a short biography of the player, but most of the back is taken up by a baseball game. There are various balls, strikes, outs and hits that can be used to play a game by flipping over cards. There are apparently multiple backs for each player so the game would be more entertaining. It also makes a master set with all the back variations insanely difficult. I'm not even sure if there is a definitive list of back variations out there. I don't plan on chasing down any more Bergers, two are enough for me. It would have been nice if he had gotten a hit though instead of just a sacrifice fly. Sure it's only two cards, but finishing a team set from the 1930s is pretty dang satisfying.