Saturday, November 15, 2014

Completed Vintage Giants Team Set - 1960 Leaf

I am sure each of us has a story of the one that got away.  Maybe it was a card at a show that you passed on hoping to find it for a dollar or two left.  Perhaps it was an eBay auction that you would have paid more than your last bid and got sniped at the last minute.  Maybe you didn't pull the trigger on a trade that you later regretted.  I am sure all of these have happened to me at one time or another but when I think of the one that got away, this is the card that comes to mind:

This design simplistic black and white card of obscure former Giant Marshall Renfroe escaped my grips at my LCS several months.  It was the last card I needed for this team set after I had picked up the Orlando Cepeda.  Both Renfroe and Cepeda are high numbers that are more scarce than the lower numbers and this Renfroe rarely popped up on eBay.  Imagine my surprise when this card popped up on the bid board deep in the heart of Dodger land.  I knew there were a couple other Giants fans that frequent my LCS but thought nobody would be interested in this card.  It had a buy it now of about $10-12 but I decided to save a few bucks and put a $3 bid on the card.  Apparently someone sniped me on the last day and I lost out on the card.

I have been on the prowl for one since then and finally found one on eBay that popped up for a $15 buy it now and I had to get it.  I doubt I would have paid that much if it hadn't been the one that got away.

A little bit on Renfroe, this is from his baseball reference page:  

Marshall Renfroe was a left-hander who pitched for seven different major league organizations during the 1950s and early 1960s. He made his only big league appearance in a late season start for the San Francisco Giants against the St. Louis Cardinals on September 27, 1959, and gave up six runs in two innings but was not involved in the decision.  

Marshall was a veteran of the Korean War, and had a younger brother, Dalton, who was a minor league catcher for eight years in the Washington Senators organization. Marshall was originally sent from the Crestview Braves of the Alabama-Florida League to the Philadelphia Phillies in an unknown transaction in June of 1954. He would spend six years climbing up the minor league ladder before his one-night stand with the San Francisco Giants.

Renfroe did not have a winning year until the 1958 season, pitching for the Danville Leafs of the class B Carolina League, going 12-11 with a 3.62 ERA while pitching 204 innings. He also had his second-best season (in terms of record), going 8-8 with a 3.54 ERA in 168 innings for the Phoenix Giants of the Pacific Coast League before his late-season fiasco in September of '59.
Marshall would spend three more seasons in baseball, all in the minors, finishing out his nine-season run in 1962 with a split season between Charlotte and Syracuse. He finished with a 60-88 record and a 3.99 ERA while pitching 1,131 innings.

Renfroe died tragically on December 10, 1970, in Pensacola, FL. The 34-year-old former pitcher was driving home from his job as a welder for Westinghouse when he stopped on a bridge to come to the aid of a stalled vehicle, and was hit by a gas truck. 
 The photo on this card is the photo used on Baseball Reference.

This is one of only two cards listed on Beckett for Refroe, the other being a 1960 Tacoma Bank card which is a minor league release of 3" X 5" cards.

 The Giants team set is only 6 cards and here they are all together along with a cool decal:


1 comment:

  1. I love the '60 Leaf set. Congrats on finishing off the Giants.

    ReplyDelete