2019 Sportlots purchases: Let Me Tell You 'bout Kell

Everybody, be it Tigers fans or those that root for other teams, remembers Ernie Harwell as the voice of Detroit baseball, but those who caught Detroit games on TV from the '70s to the '90s will brag about the great PBP/color pairing of George Kell and Al Kaline.  The two were together for so long that I naturally associate their names when I hear either mentioned.

Today we're going to be focusing on Kell, a HOF 3B whose almost 40 years as a broadcaster bolster a less obvious induction case.  The Arkansas-born infielder originally signed with Brooklyn in 1940 but the released him a couple years later, and it was only in 1943 that he ended up with the team that gave him his start, the Philadelphia A's.  They flipped him to Detroit in May of 1946, and that's where he had his longest tenure, six-plus seasons, before stints with the Red and White Sox and finally the Orioles.

A very good hitter for average, if not power, Kell won the 1949 AL batting crown and was named to 10 All-Star teams.  He wasn't able to compile the kind of counting stats Hall voters prefer as he played in under 1800 games over parts of 15 seasons, leaded to a 37.4 bWAR and a JAWS number that puts him way below many players at his position.  Still, the Veteran's Committee elected him in 1983, and we Tigers fans are happy that they recognized a guy who enjoyed a solid playing career before finding his calling in the booth.

Kell isn't as popular among collectors as a guy like Kaline, so I hadn't received many of his cards in trades, and a smaller number of cards with the Tigers means I didn't pick up many myself in the past.  Fortunately it was Sportlots to the rescue once more with these 22 new items for my collection:

Once again there's lots of familiar sets from this series in today's post while a few stand out a bit.  Up top is the oddball-ish trio of '88 Pacific Legends, '93 Action Packed, and '93 Ted Williams.  You see those every once in a while but not terribly often compared to a lot of the other stuff coming up.  After those we have retro themed cards from '94 Upper Deck All Time Heroes and '98 Sports Illustrated Then & Now.  Then we keep up the black & white/sepia party with 2002 Greats of the Game and 2003's Flair Greats, SP Legendary Cuts, and Sweet Spot Classic.  I don't get sick of looking at these beautiful designs so I hope you don't get sick of my singing their praises.  What a great bunch of vintage photos on classic looks!

Compared to the last scan, this one is full of some fairly mainstream brands, though that doesn't dim their excellence.  Up top we finish off 2003 with the beautiful Topps Gallery HOF and then head into 2004 with strong offerings from Greats of the Game and SP Legendary Cuts.  The latter isn't quite as nice as other designs in the series but Fleer Greats kills it as always.  Down the middle are another gorgeous Sweet Spot Classic look, from 2004, plus 2005 Donruss Greats and the same year's Sweet Spot Classic, with a design I don't love quite as much as the previous two, but a terrific vintage photo.  At the bottom are one more SP Legendary Cuts appearance (2007) and a pair that used the same photo:  2013 Panini Cooperstown and Topps Tribute, another spiffy high-end set specializing in HOFers.

Now here's the scan where I get to mix things up a bit.  Kell's 2018 Topps Archives base is fairly standard, with its '81 Topps design.  And we've seen SP Legendary Cuts a bunch today, but this is our first horizontal version.  Then get into the unorthodox a bit with George's 2013 Panini Cooperstown Colgan's Chips disc insert, which is my fifth from the product.

But perhaps the most interesting item today is up last, a vintage throwback from a more modern time out of 1993 Upper Deck's All-Time Heroes.  Baseballcardpedia helpfully explains that these are done in the style of a 1912 set called Hassan Triple Folders (T-212), and this is indeed a tri-fold card, with the three distinct sections pretty clear in the scan.

Here's what the back looks like:

I'm kind of amused that the left panel is a photo of Kell with the Tigers while the excellent play at the plate photo is from a game he played while with Boston.  But that's the kind of thing you can do with an oddball item like this!

This nice bunch of Kells bumps his collection up to a more respectable 40 cards, and this series has me inspired to continue to add to it along with many of the players I've already featured or will be soon.  On that note, stay tuned for three more all-Tigers Sportlots posts!