Whitey Ford in My Collection

I don't have many cards of the legendary 1950s Yankees teams; I've shown what I have of Yogi Berra and Casey Stengel before.  For them, I have one good card each, a 1950s Red Man card; I've discussed those a few times.  I don't have as old a card of Whitey Ford, but I do also have one "good" card of him.  I define a good card to be from his playing days, rather than things issued afterwards, like Baseball Immortals.  I do have a Baseball Immortals and two Seckeli Superstar cards of Ford, but I won't focus on those here.

1966 Topps Whitey Ford.

1966 Topps Whitey Ford card back.

This "good" card of Ford is only so good, being from the end of his career and being in somewhat rough condition.  His last season in the majors was 1967, so this 1966 Topps shows almost his whole career stats.  The record shown is 232-97, and his career record turned out to be 236-106, so his last couple of seasons he went 4-9.  Until I bought Lee May's rookie card a few months ago, this was the only 1966 Topps card in my collection.

1961 Topps World Series Game 6 card, graded PSA 7.

This 1961 card of the 1960 World Series commemorates Game 6, in which, as the card says, Ford pitched a second shutout. I recently acquired this card for the PSA-graded portion of my collection.  I have a goal of commemorating the 1960 Pirates and their victory over the Yankees with a number of PSA-graded cards: the entire World Series subset, as well as a few key Yankees and a few key Pirates.  For the whole project, this is the only card I've got so far. 

Like the card says, this was Ford's second shutout of the series.  He pitched them to a 10-0 win in Game 3, and then to a 12-0 win in Game 6.  In the seven games, the Yankee wins over the Pirates were all blowouts, and the Pirate wins over the Yankees were all close.  It's not clear that the Pirates were the better team, but they did just enough to win.

Whitey Ford autographed picture.

Dad and I attended a number of card shows where we could get autographs.  Whitey Ford was at one.  I didn't have any Whitey Ford cards, and they probably commanded a hefty premium at the show, so we bought this picture to get signed.  I can still hear my Dad saying, "Could you sign it to David, Mr. Ford?"  Dad didn't ask me about that, he just asked Whitey Ford to do it.  I think he wanted to have a reason to say something to him.