#286 Joe DeMaestri

#286 Joe DeMaestri
Progress: 1st of this card
297 of 407  73% complete
How acquired: $5.00 on ebay
Condition: Good

It's taken me about 300 cards to make this connection, but some of these bright backgrounds, particularly this shade of pink, remind me of paint jobs I've seen on old classic cars.   Maybe I need to watch Back to the Future a few more time, I just never made the connection that these bright colors were probably fairly popular at the time.

Nicknames are a common theme on the back of these cards.  This card labels DeMaestri as "Oats."  However his wiki page identifies his nickname as "Froggy."  I'm no historian, but if I recall, I feel like I'm supposed to defer to the more contemporaneous evidence, and as such, I'm going to go ahead and assume he was probably more well known as "Oats."  The flip side of course, is that in 1952, DeMaestri was coming off his first of what would be eleven major league seasons, so it's not a stretch to think he picked up a new nickname in the decade that followed.  

Stats: 11 seasons, All-Star, 813 hits, 49 home runs, .236 avg.

Best Hall of Fame Showing: N/A