Vintage Fridays: Bob Mabe, 1960 Topps #288

Sometimes I have to pull a card out of the vintage binder and blog about it because I have no idea who the guy actually is. In the case of Bob Mabe, with his crew cut and hastily airbrushed uniform, I feel like I can't be blamed. He didn't debut in the majors until age 28, when he went 3-9 with a 4.51 ERA for the 1958 Cardinals. He was traded to the Reds the following year, and allowed a whopping 28 runs (18 earned) in 29.2 innings in a relief role. The O's picked him up for the 1960 season, and it did not go well. Two games, eight batters faced, only two retired. The other six all scored, though only two were earned runs, thanks to a crucial Jim Gentile error. That still left him with a sky-high 81.00 ERA as an Oriole, and brought an unceremonious end to his MLB career. The B-R Bullpen wiki tells me that Bob spent his post-baseball life working for K-Mart as a sporting goods district manager, serving the tri-state area of West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina. He retired to his hometown of Danville, VA, where he passed away at age 75 in 2005. Bob Mabe can say one thing about his brief time with the Orioles, though: it produced a better card than he got with Cincinnati.