Card Shop Haul: Claude Osteen

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Congratulations to Barry Larkin, voted into the Hall of Fame yesterday. Also, nice to see CMC set members Jeff Bagwell and Edgar Martinez making progress and Bernie Williams getting enough votes to stay on for next year.

Claude Osteen got votes for the Hall of Fame, two of them in 1981, according to Baseball-Reference. I featured Osteen's playing days Saturday. It was a long-delayed feature. His coaching days came a year and a half ago.

I realized I hadn't returned to write about the other half of his career when turning to the Osteen cards I recently picked up for Christmas and elsewhere.

I actually referenced his 1960 Topps offering in that feature. The card back has a nice assessment of his time in high school, "one of the greatest high school athletes in Cincinnati history."

I didn't really mean to pick up two of Osteen's 1972 Topps offerings. I saw one, put it in the pile. I saw the second, put it in the pile, too. They're both in similar rough shape.

The card back includes Osteen's complete stats, majors and minors, back to 1957. The trivia question concerns the 1904 Tigers, how many tie games they played. I said eight. Apparently the answer is 10.

This 1967 Topps Rookie Stars card found its way into the stack because it included another Osteen, Darrell Osteen. I wasn't sure, but I thought he might be related to Claude, considering Claude's two sons also played baseball.

There appears to be no relation, though. Darrell Osteen ended up playing parts of four seasons in the majors, with the Reds and Athletics. Lee May, though, had a considerably longer career, 18 seasons. He played his last game in 1982.

This John Kennedy card is here for the same reason anybody picks up his card, the name. I also picked it up, though, because I thought it would be cool to have a Pilots card.

Kennedy actually played parts of 12 seasons in the majors. He was also, it turns out, a teammate of Claude Osteen's for five seasons. He was even involved in the same trade, sent with Osteen to the Dodgers.

Also, in 1962, Topps notes, Kennedy homered in his first big league at bat.

Finally, here's Von Joshua's 1980 Topps card. I include this here because he is included on Osteen's CMC card.

Also, it turns out, I was anticipating writing about Joshua's 10-season major league playing career at some point and I never have. Maybe I'll get to that this weekend.

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