Vintage Fridays: Clint Courtney, 1954 Bowman #69

I mentioned a few days ago that bespectacled catcher Clint "Scrap Iron" Courtney hit the first home run in Orioles history, though thankfully he wasn't wearing a jersey guilty of apostrophe abuse when he did so. I guess the artists over at Bowman weren't big on grammar.

Anyhow, Courtney wasn't much of a power hitter throughout his 11-year career with the Yankees, Browns/Orioles, White Sox, Senators, and Athletics. He totaled 38 home runs in 946 games, with a season high of eight. In the Birds' inaugural 1954 season, Clint hit four in 397 at-bats.

Today, Chris Davis hit his fourth home run in his first 15 at-bats of the 2013 season. This one was the biggest yet, a first-pitch, tie-breaking grand slam in the bottom of the eighth inning in the O's home opener. "Crush" is now the fourth player in MLB history to go deep in each of his team's first four games, joining the formidable trio of Willie Mays, Mark McGwire, and Nelson Cruz. He also has 16 of the team's 29 RBI, and that's a modern record for the first four games of the year - at least since 1920, when they started keeping track of runs batted in as an official statistic. Since my sister and I attended today's game, Chris is also going to be taking the blame for my hoarse voice. I may have completely lost my fool mind with that one swing of the bat that wrapped up the Orioles' 9-5 win over the Twins. But that's a trade I'll make every time.

Vintage Fridays: Don Lenhardt, 1954 Bowman #53

Would you like to know some things about Don Lenhardt? Okay, here goes:

-He is still alive! As of this writing, Don is 88 years old.

-He had narrow feet, making it hard to find shoes that fit well. Accordingly, he was nicknamed "Footsie".

-Lenhardt served in the Navy for four years during World War II.

-Due partly to his military service, Don was 27 by the time he reached the majors with the 1950 Browns. As the starting first baseman, he led the sad-sack team (58-96 record) with 22 home runs, 81 RBI, 90 walks, and a .481 slugging percentage.

-He spent the next four years as a part-time player, until a broken leg ended his short career in 1954.

-Don played only 13 games for the Orioles at the onset of their inaugural 1954 season before he was dealt to the Red Sox. In those 13 games he managed just 5 hits (.152 AVG) and a single RBI.

-He scouted for the BoSox for several years and also coached and broadcast games for the club. He was responsible for the signing of major leaguers such as Dick Mills, Al Nipper, Scott Cooper, and Cory Bailey.

Vintage Fridays: Dick Littlefield, 1954 Bowman #213

Take a look at this very old, very classic card. Does anything strike you as odd? If you know your Orioles history, you'll recognize 1954 as the year that the St. Louis Browns moved east and became the O's. Of course, that meant that the card companies had a bunch of photos of guys in Brownie uniforms that needed some airbrushing. Topps chose to present mostly blank jerseys and caps, but Bowman got a little creative, approximating a design closely akin to the uniforms that had been worn in recent decades by the International League Orioles. It's a pretty neat look, but the birds-on-bat design had already become identified with the St. Louis Cardinals. Besides, if you look closer, Bowman's mystery artist was guilty of one of my greatest pet peeves: apostrophe abuse. What's really odd about this phenomenon is that some of the Orioles cards in this set have grammatically correct, apostrophe-free jerseys. If you click the previous link, you'll also notice that Don Lenhardt's cap shows a bird facing right, while Dick Littlefield's cap above seems to have a bird facing left. A little uniformity would be nice, but not nearly as interesting.

In the case of Littlefield, bothering to put him in an Oriole uniform at all would prove to be much ado about nothing. He pitched all of six innings for Baltimore, allowing seven runs. In May the Birds dealt him to Pittsburgh for outfielder Cal Abrams in a move that proved mutually beneficial: Dick won 10 games and posted a 3.60 ERA as a Pirate while Abrams hit .293 to lead an offensively-starved O's team.