Random Topps Card of the Day: 1963 Topps #291 Don Rudolph

It's Retro Sunday!!! Thanks to the Topps Card Randomizer, introducing the Random Topps Card of the Day for Sunday, July 25, 2010:

• Official Card Set Name and Card Number: 1963 Topps #291.
• Player Name, position, team: Don Rudolph, pitcher, Washington Senators.
• Major League Debut: September 21, 1957.
• Last Line of Statistics: 1963 stats (Indians-Senators): 35 G, 177 IP, 8-10, .444 PCT, 68 SO, 42 BB, 3.61 ERA.
• Any special information about player: Signed with the White Sox before the 1952 season. Traded by the Indians to the Senators 05/03/1962. Bats: left, Throws: left.
• Any special information about this specific card: Rudolph's fourth regular Topps card. Here is the pioneer...the set I always mention almost every time a 1983 or 2003 Topps card shows up on the randomizer. The famous 1963 Topps set. Featuring two pictures, one main large on, and the second a smaller picture in a frame. If Topps continues this 20-year pattern, the next time a design similar will appear will be in 2023. Don Rudolph, based on the back of this particular Topps card, must have been some heck of a pitcher in the minors. The cartoon above the stats says that he won 28 games in the minors in 1951. The bio on the back reads that the "Indians drafted Don from the PCL (or at least the Reds' minor leage team) in 1961 after he posted the best ERA in the league." Sadly, Don died on September 12, 1968 in a truck accident. But he did leave his mark in cardboard history. On the back of his 1959 Topps card, there is a cartoon drawing of a baseball player at a restaurant table watching a dancer high-stepping. The caption read "Don's wife is a professional dancer." How odd would that have been to the youth of 1959 America to see that little blurb. His wife was dancer Patti Wiggin, and I do recall reading somewhere about this interesting tidbit and something about a book being written about it. I can't find it anywhere. If anybody knows what I'm talking about, please lead me to it. Thanks.
• Lo-Hi Beckett value: $2.00-$5.00.
• How many cards of this player do I own?: 0 cards.

In case you're actually wondering, I don't own this card, but was able to get a crystal clean copy of the image from the from the Baseball Card Cyber Museum. So thank you Joe McAnally and the folks at the BCCM.

Well, it's back to normal on Monday. Tomorrow's card will be: 1987 Topps #432. Post will arrive at 1:00 PM CST. Come on back then to see what the Topps Card Randomizer gets us to look at then.

Sincerely,

JayBee Anama