Hall of Fame Auto - Travis Jackson

During my time away from blogging and as I prepped for and made my move half way across the country I still spent my typical monthly card stipend but instead of focusing on base cards and set building, I sought out some higher end cards.  One area I focused on was autographs of Hall of Famers.

I set up some eBay searches for some of the old time Giants Hall of Famers as a starting point and one of the first I picked up was this beauty of HOF SS Travis Jackson:

The cut auto here is a pretty nice representation of his signature - nice and bold, decent sized and pretty well centered.  I am curious as to the purpose of the "No pictures" written about his signature, maybe this was a note back to a fan after a request came in for an autograph and picture.  The card design is fine, allowing the auto to be the star with hand printed numbering right above the nameplate that also gives Jackson's birth and death years.  As you can see the card is encased in a one touch with a Panini sticker sealing it.

A little about Jackson's career.  He played his entire 15 year career with the New York Giants debuting in 1922 and retiring in 1936.  He was primarily a Shortstop playing 1326 of his career 1635 games at the 6.  He also played 307 games at Third Base and a game at Second Base and two in the Outfield.  Jackson was a career 0.291 hitter with 135 home runs.  His OPS was 0.770.  Based on some advanced defensive metrics that didn't exist during his day he seems to grade out as one of the better Shortstops in the league.  His HOF plaque starts off with "Premier defensive shortstop who swung productive bat, known for outstanding arm and exceptional range afield".  His defensive prowess earned him the nickname of Stonewall.  He received MVP votes in 7 of his seasons.

Jackson was enshrined into the Baseball Hall of Fame by a Veterans Committee vote in 1982.  He had never gotten higher than 7.3% of the vote by the Baseball Writers.  In reviewing his stats he seems like a borderline HOFer to me but when you see quotes like:

"The greatest bunter I ever saw. " - Casey Stengel 

and

 

 “In all the years I watched him, playing with him and against him, I never saw him make a mistake,” - Rogers Hornsby

 

when reading his HOF page, maybe there is something to this guy being in the HOF.  If you weren't aware, each HOFer has a page on the National Hall of Fame website and they usually contain some cool stuff.  In the case of Jackson, you can watch his 6 minute and 34 second induction speech from back in 1982. 

This is another great pickup for both my Giants and my HOF Auto collection.