You Never Forget Your First

Before I had ever seen my first Fleer cloth patch or sticker, the very first place I ever saw baseball team logos was in a comic book.

When I first started collecting baseball cards in the mid '70s, baseball cards didn't carry team logos. Topps had not put team logos on cards since 1965, and it wouldn't be until 1983 when they would show up on Fleer cards, and then the following year on the back of Topps cards. So for my first year or two of following baseball, I wasn't familiar with team logos.

At the same time I was getting started on following baseball and collecting baseball cards, I also started reading comics. For Christmas one year (probably 1975), I received some old comics from the late 60's - early 70's. A few of those comics carried an ad like this:

For a 10 year old just starting to follow baseball, this was a really great ad. While I had seen some of these logos on uniforms from my baseball card collection, many of these were new to me.
Here's a closer look at the logos:

As the Mets have "World Champ" above their logo, its pretty easy to determine this was from 1970 following the Mets World Series win in 1969.

The ad above appeared in the September 1970 issue of Green Lantern # 79. It undoubtedly appeared in many other issues as well as I remember seeing it many times in different issues, and I even remember cutting out the ad for the logos to keep with my baseball card collection.

I recently came across the ad, and seeing it reminded me that this was the first time I remember seeing all the MLB team logos in one place, so I thought I'd post it, and see if anyone else remembers the ad as well.

As for Fleer logo stickers, it wouldn't be until a year or so later that I would first come across Fleer Baseball "Grand Slam Hi-Gloss" Stickers in 1977


and get started on what 30 years later became The Fleer Sticker Project, but I'm jumping ahead a bit. I'll cover these in due time as I've still got much to cover from the early to mid '70s first.

Just for fun, the first reader to identify which team is missing from the T-shirt offer will get 10 Fleer Stickers of their favorite team (excluding any teams that joined the league after Fleer stopped producing stickers in 1992). The first person to leave their comments with the correct answer is the winner!