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Saturday, June 22, 2013

1949 Bowman Ken Venturi

Geez, nothing like posting every six months or so....

Anyway, I was just watching the Feherty show with the late great Ken Venturi, who had a short ten year PGA golf career (1956-1967), and was the revered broadcaster for CBS for so long before his retirement in 2002.  Venturi passed away on May 17 of this year.
At one point in the interview, Venturi mentioned he had been offered a contract by Lefty O'Doul of the New York Yankees in 1949 at the age of 18.  He turned them down when he “ found out they live a lot better at country clubs than they do in dugouts.”


That gave me the inspiration for the card above.  What might his card have looked like had he forsaken golf for baseball?  I merged an old picture of Ken and Phil Rizzuto.  Then colorized the face and cropped it to size.  Had to cull the nameplate and PSA label name from a few different cards.