Random Topps Card of the Day: 1951 Topps Blue Back #11 Johnny Groth

It's Retro Sunday!!! Thanks to the Topps Card Randomizer, introducing the Random Topps Card of the Day for Sunday, May 16, 2010:

• Official Card Set Name and Card Number: 1967 Topps #114.
• Player Name, position, team: Johnny Groth, outfielder, Detroit Tigers.
• Major League Debut: September 5, 1946.
• Last Line of Statistics: 1950 stats (Tigers): N/A (no statistics found on the 1951 Topps cards).
• Any special information about player: Signed by Tigers as a Free Agent 08/06/1946. Bats: right, Throws: right.
• Any special information about this specific card: Groth's first regular Topps card. The second regular baseball card set in Topps' history, the blue-colored backed cards made up a separate set to the red-colored backs. The idea was for kids to use these cards and play a game of baseball using the plays or calls on each of the cards (drawing Groth's card would give you a ball). Johnny Groth would play fifteen seasons in the majors, most of those years with the Tigers. He did make stops with the Kansas City Athletics, Chicago White Sox, Washington Senators, and St. Louis Browns. He finished fourth in the AL Rookie of the Year voting in 1949, thanks to a .293 average with 11 homers and 73 rbi's. He did even better the following year, hitting .306 (as indicated on the front of the card) and driving 85 runs.
  
• Lo-Hi Beckett value: $15.00-$30.00.
  
• 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. It's great that they added the 1951 Topps Red and Blue backs to the museum. Made it easy to use the image (I was torn between stretching it or leaving it alone...let me know if it would have been better to leave it at the normal size).

Well, it's back to normal on Monday. Tomorrow's card will be: 2006 Topps #472. 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