![]() Recognizing that as the last of the World War II veterans are passing, their heirs are often saddled with determining the disposition of the accumulation more than 70 years since their family member returned from the war. Scarcity due to production, handling, transportation and storage are only part of the story to consider. Locating and acquiring a military scorecard, scorebook or program in excellent or better condition is next to impossible solely based on the the aforementioned factors. ![]() ![]() Due to these factors, the surviving military items are far outnumbered by their wartime major and minor league counterparts. There is a notable difference in the quality of paper used by professional teams and the very rudimentary medium used to produce the service team pieces, especially for those printed in the overseas theaters. Survivability of military baseball ephemera (just as with those from the professional game) can vary dependent upon a few factors such as paper quality, modes of transporting the pieces home or just general handling (folding or being stuffed into a pocket). In contrast, the pieces printed for a military game would number in the hundreds at best, resulting in far fewer surviving examples. Despite these production factors, the sheer numbers of those individual-game scorecards that were printed increase the odds of having more surviving pieces to collect. By WWII, teams employed the practice of limiting printing runs to a handful of editions throughout the season (changing only the actual scoresheets and specific rosters pages inside the booklets to reflect the current visitors and lineups). One would have to assume that scorecards and programs printed for each game numbered in the range 30-50% of the capacity for each game, if not more. During the 1940s major league ballparks had seating capacities that ranged from the mid-30,000s in the smaller markets to 57,000 for the crown jewel of the big leagues, Yankee Stadium. In terms of scarcity or rarity of items, those that were distributed at a major league game are of the most common by comparison to items distributed at a wartime service league or exhibition game. Just as most parents can’t choose a favorite among their own children, none of the scorecards, programs or scorebooks within our collection receives such prized status, though there are some genuine stand-outs among the pack.Ĭollecting historic baseball military ephemera is far more rewarding than similar pieces from the professional game (or, at least that is our admittedly biased opinion). In that span of time, three separate Chevrons and Diamonds articles have documented some of our recent acquisitions of noteworthy scorecards or programs originating from rather historic service team games that were played during World War II. That's a matter of a small sample as much as anything, but it was also a nice bit of course correction.Taking stock of the past three months’ worth of Chevrons and Diamonds articles, it is easy to discern a few emerging content trends that reflect the types of artifacts that are continually being added to our collection. Previously, Lester's teams had been 0-2 in elimination games in which he started - the 2014 Athletics and the 2008 Red Sox. Yet, unbelievably, Game 5 marked the first time Lester had won an elimination game. Lester then became the first National League starter to strike out the first three batters in a World Series game since John Smoltz in 1996, per the Fox broadcast. Those numbers made him one of the better postseason performers of his generation. He entered Sunday's game with a career 2.60 ERA and 3.60 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 20 career playoff appearances (18 of which were starts). Speaking of Lester, he only added to his postseason mystique. Lester retains, improves big-game reputation Give Maddon credit for being aggressive with his closer, just realize this could've gone left before Chapman entered. ![]() didn't give up the lead Chapman was highly effective and so on - but it was questionable managing to allow anyone but Lester or Chapman to throw a pitch in this game. ![]()
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