Consign Your Best Items with Lelands. We Also Pay Cash on the Spot! Learn More Here.
Rare 1951 Jackie Robinson Barnstorming Program
Presented is a rare 1951 Jackie Robinson All Star Barnstorming Tour program. For a number of years early in his Major League career, Robinson would head a barnstorming tour in the fall. The approx. 8.5x11", 16-page program shows that Robinson's team, the Major League All Stars (a team of African Americans, including five Major Leaguers), was bursting with top Major League talent. Leading the squad was Hall of Famer Robinson, at second base, who hit .335 with 18 home runs in the just completed '51 season. On third base was Hall of Famer Minnie Minoso, who hit .325, with 31 stolen bases, for the Chicago White Sox that year. On first base was big Luke Easter, who bashed 27 round-trippers for the Cleveland Indians in '51, with 103 RBIs. In left field was Sam Jethroe of the Boston Braves, who led the Major Leagues with 35 stolen bases that season, adding 17 home runs. In center field was Hall of Famer Larry Doby, the first African American player in the American League, who hit 21 home runs for Cleveland in '51, while batting .306. On tour with Robinson's Major League All Stars were the Negro League Stars, a squad that had three players under contract to big league organizations. The reason that the Negro League All-Stars didn't have more developed talent is that the Negro leagues had been declining since Jackie Robinson began to play with Brooklyn's Montreal Royals, one of their two top farm teams, in 1946, and fans flocked to see Robinson play in the International League and were attending fewer games in the Negro Leagues. Plus, more and more African American players were entering so-called "organized baseball." Robinson continued to tour with his All-Star team through 1953, adding white players such as Hall of Famer Gil Hodges, Al Rosen, and Ralph Branca to have a truly integrated team. As MLB employed more African American players, as the MLB players saw their salaries rise, and as television expanded and made fans less hungry to see players in the flesh, barnstorming declined. The program has individual one-page photos of the Major Leaguers, plus separate biographies of those Major League players, as well as their '51 statistics. Robinson's biography is extensive, at three pages. The cover of the program, showing Robinson at bat, is a very rare version of the cover. Included in the program is an attached two-page scorecard that has not been scored. The program exhibits some creasing and foxing, some tiny paper loss, and a few small tears at the edges. The offering provides a captivating look back at a barnstorming era when some of baseball's best stars, such as the tremendous players on Robinson's Major League All Stars, would earn needed extra money by touring the hinterlands after the World Series. The program has a vintage charm, one that evokes the imagination to place a reader at a site somewhere outside major metropolitan areas, in perhaps a minor league ballpark, watching Jackie Robinson, who changed the history of America, play and manage a team that had four other Major Leaguers who were now able to display their prodigious skills in the Major Leagues because Jackie Robinson broke down the "Color Line." The program will spark compelling interest in anyone.
Past Sports Card, Memorabilia, Non-Sports Card and Collecitble Auction Items
Other past auction items that may be of interest to you.
1950's Gil Hodges Game Worn Jacket
1940's-50's Montreal Royals Program Collection (13)
Circa 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers Signed Baseball with Campy
1915 Brooklyn Dodgers Team Photograph (14x19" framed)
1940's-50's Brooklyn Dodgers Pin Collection (4)
1955 Brooklyn Dodgers World Championship Celebration Photograph Collection (8)
1950's Gil Hodges Game Worn Jacket