Baseball Cards + Monsters

Big Daddy meets Big Papi

October is easily the best month. Playoff baseball. Halloween. Sweater weather (sometimes). Second-guessing managers. Haunted houses. Kershaw meltdowns. Scary movies. Costume parties. The Fall Classic.

It’s inevitable that we here at TTSS would find the confluence between monster season and baseball season:

MONSTER BASEBALL CARDS. Look at these magnificent mother fuckers.

How the hell did these two autumnal institutions collide? A little history. And lots of pictures.

Baseball cards go back to the 1880s, as a way to sell cigarettes, then moved to selling gum in the 1930s. Topps entered the market in the 1950s and soon dominated. Baseball card popularity took off.

About the same time, Universal horror movies were licensed for TV syndication, starting a chain reaction through the 1960s: late night horror hosts, Munsters, Addams Family, Roger Corman’s Poe adaptations, Hammer horror films, “Monster Mash,” Famous Monsters of Filmland, and a generation of monster-obsessed kids. The craze even made it into a Leave It To Beaver episode.

These kids knew how cheesy the old monster movies were. And loved them anyway. It was the first age of ironic fandom.

But also rebellious fandom. The 1950s also saw EC Comics usher in a whole new comic book art style: the grosser (and more repulsive to your parents), the better!

In was in this environment of pop culture self-awareness and artistic outrageousness that Topps (and others) created monster trading cards. 1961 Leaf Spook Stories. 1961 Nu-cards Horror Monsters. 1963 Topps Monster Laffs.

And our first monster baseball card set: 1966 Fleer Baseball Weird-Ohs.

This 66-card set was a spin-off from the hugely popular Weird-Ohs model kits created and illustrated by Bill Campbell.

Topps, in 1967, produced the mother of all gross-out cards, Wacky Packages. Without them, the history of monster baseball cards probably ends and this post never gets written. Over the next ten years, sixteen series were released (448 different cards in all). School notebooks, lockers, and bathroom stalls would never be the same.

Wacky Packages became so popular in the 1970s, they outsold baseball cards for Topps, despite the company being the only baseball card manufacturer in the US. Their monopoly lasted from 1965 to a 1980 lawsuit that allowed Fleer and Donruss to finally compete. 

Donruss had been producing gum and cards for entertainment properties since the 1950s. Addams Family, The Monkees, Six Million Dollar Man, The Osmonds, and KISS we just a few of their card sets.

In 1969, Donruss released the Odd Rods Sticker packs. Monsters and hot rods! Brilliant! The packs sold so well that they spawned nine more series of car, motorcycle, and truckin’ packs.

We’ve entered the pinnacle of western civilization: the era of “Big Daddy” Ed Roth, Rat Fink, and Mad Magazine.

The artist that designed the entire run of Odd Rods, and the spin-offs, was B. K. Taylor. 

You’ll guffaw at his resume: National Lampoon comic strip writer/illustrator, covers for Sick Magazine, staff writer on Home Improvement, and Muppet character creator (including Dr. Teeth). Talented guy, to say the least. 

After Odd Rods, Donruss then tapped Taylor to create the reason for the season, as far as this newsletter goes: Baseball Super Freaks. Series one came out in 1973, with 44 cards. A second set of 42 cards was released later that year.

Amazing designs, great color, funny concepts, plus individual card-backs for every monster-player with punny factoids. I could not love these more. Posting every single card seems a tad overkill. Instead let’s build a starting nine, plus a few supporting characters.

Starting Pitcher, Paul The Pitcher

Catcher, Gavin The Goof-Off

First Base, Tom The Tooth

Second Base, Charlie The Chomper

Third Base, Spider Smith

Short Stop, Shecky The Short Stop

Left Field, Handy Harold

Center Field, Sylvester the Center Fielder

Right Field, Long Arms Larson

Designated Hitter, Hank the Hitter

Relief Pitcher, Sperry The Spit-Ball

Utility, Elbert the Eyes

Vibes/Bench Guy, Sammy Springer (no relation)

Manager, Zap Zorfoff

Play-by-Play Announcer, Henry The Horrible

Taylor was brought back in 1988 for two more sets of monster baseball cards under the Leaf brand, Baseball’s Greatest Gross-Outs and Awesome All-Stars. There are some recycled designs from Super Freaks, but so much goodness/grossness here. Another starting nine:

Starting Pitcher, Righty Whitey

Catcher, Long Arm Lenny

First Base, Glen The Glob

Second Base, Sean The 2nd Sacker

Third Base, Joker Joe 

Short Stop, Ratface Robert

Left Field, Orville The Oozer

Center Field, Lips LeRoy

Right Field, Mark The Maniac

Designated Hitter, Gordie The Ghoul 

Closer, Skinny Vinny

Pinch Runner, Matt The Mole 

Analytics, Billy The Brain

Umpire, Eyeball Edwin

Play by Play, Artie The Announcer

In a 2022 podcast, Taylor talked about his early career:

“I designed a lot of monsters and I had been doing these gum cards for a company, one of my first commercial jobs. And I had these characters and I showed them the Jim [Henson] and he said, ‘Oh wow I need monster drawings,’ so I did a lot of those too.”

I’m not sure which phrase is the bigger understatement, “these gum cards” or “I did a lot of those too.” Without B. K. Taylor, the world has fewer Muppets and no monster baseball cards. If that’s not a hero, I don’t know what is.

More recent baseball work by B. K. Taylor.

Thanks (?) to Ebay, these cards are fairly easy to collect. If you’re looking to grab some yourself, leave a comment on substack, and I will HOOK YOU UP. Being the completist nerd that I am leads to acquiring oodles of duplicates.

Be forewarned: there’s really no good reason to collect cardboard squares with baseball faces and/or monster art. Clutter is the enemy of sanity, if you ask me. 

And yet, I have EVERY CARD from EVERY SET you’ve seen today. Flipping through them, organizing them, they make me happy. 

My desk is a constant cycle of piling up baseball Ebay ephemera, writing about it, then moving ALL THIS SHIT THAT’S IN MY FUCKING WAY into a closet.

I contain multitudes.

But wait, there's more. Monster-baseball cards didn’t end in the 1980s. In 2021, Artist Alex Pardee joined Project 70, commemorating the 70th anniversary of Topps. 

A new set of monster baseball for a new generation. 

In a self-interview for Medium, Pardee talked about his inspirations. 

“I collected baseball cards in the mid 80s, but once I saw Topps’ GARBAGE PAIL KIDS, my life was changed. ‘I WANT TO DRAW LIKE THAT!’ I think I screamed that inside Longs Drug Store when I got my first pack of stickers. But those Garbage Pail Kids were a gateway to discovering all of these other TOPPS cards, some older sets that were all monster-based, as well…”

What’s old (and gross) and is new (and gross) again. May the cycle never end!

Puzzle backs assembled into even more astounding monster art by B.K. Taylor.