Mondays with Hoyt, Episode VI

2001 Upper Deck Hall of Famers #88 Hoyt Wilhelm HR

After a one-week hiatus, "Mondays with Hoyt" is back on the air.

Tonight will be the second graduation I've attended in as many Mondays. I didn't have a chance to get one of these posts up last week, but I'm pleased to bring you the first June installment of this series this afternoon.

At the moment, my Hoyt collection is hovering at just above 100 different cards. Save for one of my game-used cards, this is the only card I have that features an action shot of the knuckleballer.

I find that amazing.

This card says that Hoyt ranks third on the all-time list for games played, with 1,070. (I'm not sure if that's still true.)

You'd figure with all those games, there'd be a ton of action shots out there. But even a Google search for "Hoyt Wilhelm" results in almost all posed photos.

Hoyt isn't the only one, though. Of the fifty-three Ernie Banks cards I own, for instance, only three are action shots.

I'd guess that photographers get a lot more work nowadays than they would've in the 1950's, but I know there's still a ton of great old baseball pictures out there. 

And yet, almost none of them have found their way onto baseball cards for whatever reason. I'm sure there's a ton of other great photos of Jackie Robinson, but Topps still gives us the same two over and over again.

This particular shot of Hoyt is featured on a dozen of my cards of his.

Because of the art of repetition that has become common in baseball cards these days, this is one of my favorites of my Hoyt collection. I've never seen this shot of him anywhere else, baseball card or not. It's one of the more unique cards in my collection.

That's something to be treasured.