The Story Behind One of the Most Oddball Cards of All Time - the 1976 Topps Bubble Gum Blowing Champ Card

Thanks to the magic of YouTube, we now have the video to go with one of the more interesting oddball baseball cards of all time - the 1976 Topps card featuring the 1975 Joe Garagiola / Bazooka Bubble Blowing Champ Kurt Bevacqua:


Anyone who has collected the 1976 Topps set or just enjoys oddball cards has probably seen this card before. The back of the card is just as odd as the front:

A card with brackets is definitely something you don't see every day!

The Bubble Blowing Championship was broadcast on "The Baseball World of Joe Garagiola"


which was the pregame show to Game 3 of the 1975 World Series:


The item you see behind the graphics is a fishbowl full of Bazooka Bubble Gum:


The show starts off with Joe introducing American League Champ Kurt Bevacqua and National League Champ Johnny Oates as they are digging into the bowl to get their gum:


Before the Championship gets started, Joe talks about the competition leading up to the big event, and we get to see some footage from a few players



including Hall of Famer Catfish Hunter


Bill Buckner


Tim McCarver, who talks about knowing the gum is ready when its "bubbleable":


and Andy Messersmith, who Joe says was a "one of the legends of bubble blowing". Andy talks about having a 10 year run where he was undefeated, and that he decided he would retire once he lost. He mentions having been defeated the previous season by Steve Yeager, which is when he knew it was time to hang it up.


After a commercial break, we're back to the Championship, with Kurt, Johnny, Joe and National League Umpire Dick Stello who will do the official measuring:


In the background, we see some uncut sheets of 1975 Topps cards as well as a full uncut sheet of the Joe Garagiola card that Topps made for Joe to use as business cards:




Joe makes a reference to this being at a National League Park and that Johnny Oates will go last, so presumably this was done at Riverfront Stadium before the start of Game 3 of the World Series.

Kurt goes first


and then Johnny


They both get three tries, and Kurt ends up being the winner. As a result, Kurt wins $1,000 for himself and an additional $1,000 for his favorite charity, and Johnny gets $500 for himself and $500 for charity.

Topps President Joel Shorin presents checks to each of the players after the competition:


Thanks to the great Topps Archive site with Dave's post on this classic card, we've got a copy of the rules (click to enlarge):

One of the more odd items in the rules is that for the judging during the preliminary team and league championship rounds, the measuring and judging could be done by an umpire or a clergyman.

In addition to the cash prize, one of the awards for both the AL and NL Champions is a giant sized baseball card of themselves. In this shot, you can see Johnny Oates' giant card behind Kurt:


This set of rules appears to be what Joe is holding in his hand in the picture below as at the beginning of the competition Joe reads some of the rules


The other interesting thing to note in this picture is that Kurt isn't wearing any shoes. We never see Johnny's feet, so I don't know if he was barefoot as well.

At the very end, we see Kurt out of uniform, and looking very 1975-ish as he stands with Joe as they talk about the competition:


You can enjoy the entire proceedings here in Part 1




and Part 2:




The great thing in watching these clips is how serious everyone is taking this competition. As Paul Harvey would say, "Now you know the rest of the story".

1986 Topps & OPC Box Bottom Cards / Panels

Using the same approach as they did for their 1985 Football box bottom cards, Topps issued 4 different panels of 4 cards each on the bottom of their 1986 Baseball boxes. And just like the 1985 Football cards, the cards on the bottom of the boxes replaced the regular black borders with red to help differentiate the cards:





The backs look just like the regular issue, except for the fact that the cards are "numbered" A through P:


Even though Topps did not publish a checklist on the back of some of the cards like Fleer, they did let collectors know which players were available on the back panel of the box:

Topps' strategy of multiple box panels worked well on me as I remember buying multiple boxes

and checking the bottoms of each one to make sure I completed the set.

OPC issued a similar set with the same design, with the only difference being the O-Pee-Chee name on the front of the cards:


and the English / French backs with the OPC logo:

1986 Fleer Box Bottom Panels

Fleer jumped on the cards on the bottom of the box bandwagon in 1986 by issuing 2 different panels on the bottom of their 1986 wax boxes:


Just as Donruss had put a small version of their insert puzzle on the panel, Fleer used one of the spaces on each panel to feature their insert specialty - team logos. In this case, Fleer featured the previous season's World Champion Kansas City Royals and NL Champion St. Louis Cardinals logos, although they did not note these achievements.

The logo cards served as checklists, although it appears that someone had trouble counting:



Both checklists mention this is a 6 Card "Limited Edition", and then proceed to list 8 cards. Presumably the logo cards must not be worthy enough to be considered "Limited". The cards are numbered C1 - C8.

Here is a look at the front of the 1986 Fleer Wax Box:


Also following Donruss' lead, Fleer expanded the box bottom card idea to another product that year as well - their 1986 Star Sticker Wax Box:


All Star Sticker boxes have the same panel, which has 3 cards which use the 1986 Fleer Star Sticker design along with a logo card for the 1985 NL West Champion Dodgers:


Fleer used a different numbering system for the Star Sticker box cards, as they are numbered S1 - S4


In this case, the Dodgers logo card IS considered one of the Limited Edition cards since the checklist reads "4 Card Limited Edition". Nice job of inconsistency!

UPDATE 2/2012:

It looks like Fleer also included cards on the bottom of the 1986 Fleer Baseball's Best Sluggers vs. Pitchers display box:


Here is a slightly larger shot of the panel:


This box would have contained 24 of the Sluggers vs. Pitchers sets:

1986 Donruss Box Bottom Panels

Getting back to our look at the trend that Donruss started in 1985 with putting cards on the bottom of their wax boxes, Donruss continued the practice in 1986:


Once again Donruss created a card of the completed puzzle that was used as the insert in 1986 Donruss packs with this year's puzzle featuring Hank Aaron.

The numbering on the cards actually picks up from where the 1985 set left off (PC1 - PC3) as the 1986 box features cards PC4 - PC6


with the puzzle card being unnumbered (because Donruss wanted kids to "carefully cut along the lines to form your special Hank Aaron puzzle").

Apparently Donruss thought Kirk Gibson and Doug DeCinces were the key stars of the day since not only were they on the box bottom, they were also on the box top:


All Donruss Baseball boxes featured the same 4 cards.

However.... not being content to just put cards on the bottom of their base brand, Donruss extended the box bottom card idea to their other major offering that year - the 1986 Donruss All Stars / Pop Up set:


These boxes feature a different set of cards on the bottom (although they once again feature the Hank Aaron puzzle)


and they continue the numbering system with cards PC7 - PC9:


One thing I find interesting about these panels is the player selection. You would think that either Don Mattingly or Daryl Strawberry would have shown up on one of the panels as those were two of the players that were driving the card market around this time (until everyone starting going crazy looking for 1986 Donruss Jose Canseco rookies shortly after these cards were issued).

1967 Dexter Press Photos - Behind the Scenes with the Photographer!

Shortly after my post on the 1967 Dexter Press Photos / Coca Cola Caps promotion, Jeff Williams left comments on the blog indicating that his grandfather Joe Capicotto was one of the photographers who took the pictures of some of the teams that were part of the promotion. I followed up with Jeff and found out quite a bit about his grandfather and this particular photo assignment.


According to Jeff, Dexter Press contacted Joe Capicotto in early 1967 to arrange for him to photograph 4 teams - the Atlanta Braves, Baltimore Orioles, New York Yankees, and Washington Senators.

Jeff's mother Carole Schacher (who is Joe Capicotto's daughter) has been kind enough to provide a number of scans of her father's correspondence with Dexter Press regarding this photo assignment which gives us a great behind the scenes look at how this set was produced.

First we have a letter from Dexter Press to Joe listing the teams he is to photograph, as well as confirmation of the $75 fee he is to receive for each team he shoots and information about the sales rep that he will be working with (click on the letter to see a larger version):


The next letter from Dexter Press to Joe outlines what is needed from each photo shoot. Each player is to be photographed in proportion to a 5 1/2" x 7" post card and each photo is to have a name plate showing the player's name for identification with the name plate being out of the cropping area for the photo.



So when you see this picture of Joe Torre that Joe Capicotto took

Joe Torre is most likely holding a name plate just below where the photo is cropped, which explains why all the pictures appear to have the players in the very same pose with their arms down by their sides and not showing their hands as we see in the complete set of Senators photos that Joe also shot:

They are all holding a nameplate down around their waist which is why they all have the same pose.

The other part of Joe's assignment was to get 3 autographs from each player in black ink to be used on the cards.

The next letter tells Joe that his sales contact from Dexter Press is John Cryns, or "Johnny from Holland" as he is known to the trade!


Next, we have a letter from Mr. "Johnny from Holland" himself to Joe outlining the dates that have been set up with each team for the photo shoots:


Apparently at this point Joe Pepitone had not signed his contract according to Johnny, but it looks like they were able to get things resolved:


The American League Office was even involved, as letters like this went to each team introducing Johnny Cryns to each team's PR director to explain the promotion and asking for their full cooperation:

There is great irony to the line from the AL Office asking the teams to help Mr. Cryns with his assignment "which is of benefit to us all." Actually, it ended up being just the opposite in terms of the owners. The Players Union was the group that signed the deal with Coke through Marvin Miller, and the money from this agreement was used to help get the union on its feet financially which ultimately led over time to the union gaining significant bargaining power which eventually resulted in doing away with the Reserve Clause and ushering in Free Agency.

Joe kept the original list of players to be photographed not just from the 4 teams he was assigned to shoot, but from some of the other teams that were scheduled to be photographed as well:

Its interesting to note that they added special notation for "outstanding players" on each team.

This list includes the California Angels, who ended up not being photographed except for one player - Paul Schaal who was photographed as a personal favor to Paul.

As the teams are listed alphabetically, it appears a page is missing as we jump from the Chicago White Sox to the Minnesota Twins (since Joe didn't photograph any teams from that page its likely he wouldn't have kept it):

I'm not sure why most of the Yankees were crossed out (other than perhaps Joe crossed each one out after he shot their pictures), but it is interesting to note that Mickey Mantle doesn't even rate as an "outstanding player" at this point.

The St. Louis Cardinals are also listed, but ultimately were not photographed. The total number of teams that were included in the promotion ended up being 18 of out the 20 teams that existed at the time.

Joe also has the list of the players that were going to be used in the 12 card All Star set:


Joe's files include information on the Spring Training locations and hotels for the AL teams he was shooting


which I'm guessing came out of the 1967 American League Red Book


as well as the information on the Braves (likely from the National League Green Book):


When Joe's work was completed, he received this letter from Dexter Press thanking him for his efforts:


These letters provide a fascinating glimpse into what seems to have been a somewhat rushed job to get these photos taken in order to get the cards ready in time for the Coke promotion. For example, this ad ran April 5, 1967 which was just about a month after Joe's last photo shoot:

so it looks like this all came together very quickly, with the end result being a great looking set of cards covering almost every team.

About the Photographer:


Joe Capicotto was born in 1919 and got his start in the photography business in the late 1930s working for a studio in Newburgh, NY. Enlisting during WWII in 1942, Joe was assigned as a Combat Photographer in the 8th Army Air Forces, Europe.


His primary mission was to fly in B-17s and take reconnaissance photographs of the German targets to be bombed by allied forces.


After the war, Joe settled in Miami, FL where he went to work for Valence Photography.

In 1955, Joe bought Valence Photography and started Color Ads Productions (a play on the first three letters of his last name).

Joe had a reputation for being a good photographer with Dexter Press during his Valence days, and that relationship continued with his own business. The majority of his work with Dexter was in the form of post cards. Joe did shoots of everything from hotels to the Seminole Indian Reservation in Southern Florida:

(note the photo credit in the bottom left and the publisher info for Color-Ads in the middle of the postcard, as well as the Dexter Press Logo on the bottom)

Joe’s relationship with Dexter prospered through the 50’s and into the 60’s; he was even named color photographer of the month by Dexter, and several of his postcards were featured in Dexter catalogs.

As Joe kept everything he had ever done, there was lots of his work which he shared with his family. Joe was especially proud of the Dexter baseball shoot and more so that he got Mickey Mantle’s autograph during the shoot. Joe worked in the business into the late 1970’s when he finally decided to retire and move to Denver, CO, although he did continue to work for Dexter in sales and reproduction on a part-time basis until 1984 when he retired completely. Joe enjoyed his retirement as he went back to school first to get a degree in Art and then to teach Art at Denver Community College. Joe passed away in 1996.

To give an idea of some of Joe's work outside of the Dexter Baseball photos, Jeff sent me a few examples of some of the post cards that Joe's company produced for some Florida restaurant chains which are fun to look at:

The Burger Castle Giant sign is a classic!

I would like to thank Jeff Williams for originally contacting me and for his generosity in sharing the information about his grandfather and allowing me to share his story on the blog, and Carole Schacher for scanning and sharing her father's documents which really provide some great background about how this set ended up being produced. Thanks to both of you for your time and for providing this great material.

I would also like to thank Joe Capicotto himself for taking such great photos (especially of my favorite team the Orioles!), and for keeping such great files so that we can look back at how this all came about over 40 years later.

Finally, I'd also like to acknowledge the great Uni Watch site, and in particular Phil Hecken who published the post about Uni Watch contributor Jerry Adams (The Taxman) who was reminiscing about the "wonderful 5 x 7 glossy MLB photos" from 1967 that got this whole project started with Jerry's comment wondering about where these came from when he asked "Maybe our friends at the Fleer Sticker project would have a clue?" Thanks for asking the question Jerry, as its been a lot of fun tracking down the answer!