5 Christmas (Baseball) Cards to Help You Warm Up for Santa

Settle in for a long winter's ... sorting session

Hey, it’s Christmas Eve. So … Merry Christmas!

And even if that’s not your bag, you can still enjoy the sights and sounds of the season.

Around here, that means baseball cards with a Christmas theme, like these … and these … and these.

And, of course, like these…

1952 Topps Jim Turner (#373)

I can hear you groaning now. “What in the name of all that’s holly and ivy does Jim Turner have to do with Christmas??”

Well, for starters, Turner didn’t make it to the major leagues until he was 33 years old. But he made the most of his debut, leading the National League with 24 complete games, 5 shutouts, and a 2.38 ERA as a rookie for the 1937 Boston Braves.

He also won 20 games that summer, which turned out to be his high point as a player pretty much across the board.

But after ending up with a four-year run for the always-winning Yankees, it was a short hop to the other side of the Bombers’ management line. In 1949, Casey Stengel made Turner his pitching coach, a role the righty would hold through 1973, save for a five-year exile with the Cincinnati Reds (1961-65).

Still …

What does all this have to do with Christmas?

Well, Turner worked on his family’s dairy farm in Tennessee during the offseason, which prompted fans to dub him Milkman Jim.

And you can’t have a Christmas Cookie without milk, or vice versa…

1960 Topps Cookie Lavagetto (#221)

The 1960 Topps Cookie Lavagetto was the first “really old” baseball card I ever owned, an impulse purchase that could not be denied once I knew such a creature existed.

It’s a sparkling red, white, and blue card of a craggly old skipper who’s actually not all that old in this picture — about 47 by my calculations.

More importantly than any of that, though, Cookie was 1) a 10-year major league veteran, 2) a four-year World War II Veteran (with a capital “V”), and 3) a 5-year major league manager who made the trip with the Senators to Minnesota when they became the Twins.

And, most important, at least for our purposes, he’s a Christmas Cookie.

1965 Topps Bobby Klaus (#227)

If you ever find yourself in the company of an aged North Pole elf, maybe over at the Snowy Pines retirement workshop — and if you ply him with just the right amount of adult-style egg nog — you might get a few whispered rumors about Santa’s past.

As the lore goes, Kris Kringle was once something of a rabble-rouser who took full advantage of the delights afforded to a young, strapping man out on the town in the Big Apple.

You know, courtesy of his having latched on with a certain expansion team, where wins were neither expected nor welcomed, judging by how stringently they were avoided.

Of course, it took ol’ Nick a few games to get warmed up after being dispatched from the milquetoast Cincinnati riverfront. But he got there.

Also of course, all good things must come to an end, and the hair-tousling life of a ballplayer on the move wears thin.

Eventually, a man wants to settle down, put his wild days behind him. Eat a few good meals, grow out the beard.

Maybe even change his name, just a smidge, to divert suspicion.

And if he has a snappy baseball card to help him remember his 123 major league hits by while he’s pounding the milk and cookies, all better.

Oh, and get this — Klaus was born on December 27.

Because, of course he was. And also because you can’t hit it right on the nose if you’re trying to divert attention. A couple days one way or the other oughta do it.

1981 Donruss Jesus Figueroa (#556)

This was one of the hobby’s first gifts to me when I started opening baseball cards, courtesy of my mom, back in 1981.

Well, not then exactly, since I didn’t care a whit about the game or its cardboard, and I wouldn’t know the difference between a Giant and a Cub if one smacked me with a beanstalk and the other lost a game in my name.

But in 1983, when I started collecting, Jesus Figueroa provided endless hours of fascination.

Why was he wearing a Cubs uniform but also wearing a Giants card??

Young me soon figured it out — it was because Donruss was so sloppy about making baseball cards that they just slapped together whatever photo-border combination they had close at hand.

It would take years — years, I tell you — for me to realize that Donruss was actually right. The Cubs had traded Figueroa to the Giants in December of 1980.

Turns out, he’d never make it to the diamond in San Francisco, or any other big league city again. He spent 1981 at AAA Phoenix, 1982 in Mexico, and 1983 with the Knoxville Blue Jays.

Then he was done as a player, though he did spend several seasons as the Jays batting practice pitcher.

And Jesus did leave behind this confusing career-capper that always comes to mind when his name starts popping up everywhere this time of year.

2017 Topps Heritage Gift Ngoepe (#519)

When it comes to Christmas cards, it’s tough to avoid one that is not only a throwback to one of the most recognizable designs of the first Topps Monopoly Era, but also a true (ahem) Gift to collectors.

And Ngoepe has a great story, too, signing with the Pirates in 2008 and then working through their minor league system for parts of nine seasons before debuting in the bigs in 2017.

That made him the first player from continental Africa to make it to the major leagues.

He made the cardboard rounds that same year, including this burlap beauty that features not just a young player full of hope but also the goateed Pirates logo and a lush outfield stretching out behind Ngoepe. Makes you want to step into his cardboard world and stay for a few hours, or for the summer.

Ngoepe would make just 41 big league appearances in his career, but he made it.

When Gift retired in early 2023, he stepped right into a coaching gig in the Arizona Diamondbacks system.

—

Thanks for sticking with the silliness through this note, and through this year. I hope you have a very Merry Christmas (or at least a Merry Sunday), and I’ll “see” you next week.

That’s when we’ll give 2023 one last go, then kick it to the curb like a case of 1991 Donruss.

—Adam

P.S. I’ve been playing around with my old Baseball Cards Daily postings the last few days. Not sure how long the experiment will last or how “daily” the musings will be, but there a few new ones out there if you’re interested. You can find those posts right here.