The final card to be featured in the "Santa Brings Way to Many Awesome Baseball Cards to Jim" series of posts is the final Bowman card I needed of one of my Dad's favorite players -
Del Ennis. For the better part of the past year, this card sat atop my Ten Most Wanted list until my Mom added it to my collection for Christmas. One of my long-term collecting goals is to eventually have full runs of the Phillies cards featured in Bowman's sets between 1948 and 1955. This fantastic card gets me one step closer.
To celebrate the fact that I now have all of Ennis' Bowman cards in my collection, I present below a mini-gallery of his 1950 through 1955 Bowman cards.
Thanks again Mom!
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| 1950 Bowman #31 |
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| 1951 Bowman #4 |
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| 1952 Bowman #76 |
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1953 Bowman
Color #103 |
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1954 Bowman
#127 |
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1955 Bowman
#17 |
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That card looks vaguely familiar....
ReplyDeleteBut congrats on getting all of Del's Bowman cards, by the way!
I met Ennis one time, at a show in 1994 or 1995. He was definitely sickly at the time, and he would die of diabetes in 1996. I was getting signed three 1950 Whiz Kids items--a color team photo 8x10, a ball, and that 1950 Bulletin (or is it Inquirer?) team photo that is about 3 feet long and a foot high with the players photographed all lined up along a baseline. On the first two I didn't care where anyone signed, but on the big photo, I wanted each player to sign over his picture. Del signed the three items nicely (or as nicely as he was signing at that late stage in his life), but he signed _under_ his picture on the big one, the only player to have done so. I thanked him and shook hands, but as I walked away, I thought, when am I ever going to get him to sign this correctly? So I showed it to the promoter, who told me just to go back up there, try to cover the errant signature, and ask him to sign it above the photo. I did exactly that, and Del sort of looked at me, then looked at my hand where I was sort of covering his signature, and he said, "Oh, I see." Then he signed it above his photo and smiled, as if to say, "You didn't have to try to trick me." He didn't actually say that, but that was the look he gave me--and I felt a little sheepish about not just saying to him, "Would you mind signing it above your picture?"
In retrospect, it reminds me a bit of meeting Muhammad Ali around the same time, who also was similarly affected in the body but still had (and presumably still has) a sharp mind. I guess you can't assume that just because someone isn't moving around all that well, the he isn't comprehending everything around him.
By the way, I have heard that he had a tremendous memorabilia collection from his playing days and that he loved to let people walk around his basement and look at it. I wish I had known him and gotten the tour.
Anyway, kudos to your mom for getting you those cards! I should show your blog to my mom--maybe she will take up a new hobby in her retirement....
Steve - Great story and thanks for sharing. I would have loved to have toured Del Ennis' basement. Had I known he was doing that, I would have definitely figured out a way to make it happen for my Dad and me.
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