A lot of these daggers-to-the-heart of older Philly fans (complete with that painful note about refunds for “tickets for unplayed games”) still exist, as do copies of what would have been the cover of the Phils’ 1964 World Series Program. 

Speaking of which: Can you spot anything wrong with this cover?

That’s right: the Boston Red Sox did not play the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1946 World Series, certainly not at Ebbets Field. The Dodgers finished the season tied for first with the Cardinals, and lost to St. Louis in a best-of-three playoffs. But though they didn’t make it, the Dodgers’ World Series Program did. And not just the cover – the full contents with biographies and advertising and of course, the scorecard:

Hope you enjoy that triple-header of Perry Como shots there. 

Speaking of the Dodgers and history that never happened:

World Series Media credentials are one of the real niche items among collectibles, but it’s not because of their attractiveness nor history (the oldest I have dates to the 1911 Series). If teams used to print World Series Programs on the mere hope they would get in, obviously they had to prepare the credentials too. It was the Giants and not the Dodgers who issued the clubhouse passes for the ’54 games, yet there is a Dodger “phantom” World Series credential nonetheless.

And let’s finish it up with more familiar territory. Don’t know if you have any 1977 Topps baseball cards, but I’m willing to bet you don’t have these three:

These are unissued “proof” cards – the test printings of the planned designs for a set of cards. Today Topps produces these proofs on thin, glossy stock, but well into the ’90s the proofs were printed on the same stock as the regularly-issued cards. Usually they had blank backs, but occasionally the biographies were printed too.

None of these three cards made the ’77 set. Topps pulled the Jerry Grote card when, not long after the ’76 season ended, the Mets’ catcher declared his intention to retire due to a bad back (he changed his mind, but not until the eve of Spring Training, by which time the cards were already being shipped). The Reggie card is probably the most famous “proof”; people forget he spent the 1976 season with Baltimore, then joined the Yankees as a free agent that winter. The “issued” Jackson card shows him in an A’s batting helmet airbrushed to look vaguely like the “NY” logo. The saddest story is of the Danny Thompson card. The long-time Twins’ infielder was traded to Texas in June, 1976. He was already ill with leukemia, and he succumbed to the disease on December 10th.

The proof cards are very rare, but even among them there are relative degrees of scarceness. For instance there are at least eight copies of the Jackson/Orioles card known. But the Grote and the Thompson are unique, and there is some evidence that Topps pulled them so early that they made another proof sheet featuring the players that replaced them.