John Nisby, who played guard from 1957 to 1964 for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Washington Redskins, passed away on February 6. Nisby made the Pro Bowl three times: twice with the Steelers, and once with the Redskins. Nisby’s obituary at dignitymemorial.com includes a recent photo of him, plus a nice photo gallery of him and his family.
For a lineman, Nisby appeared on a surprising number of football cards. His rookie card, a 1960 Topps, is pictured here.
Today I added 1963 IDL Steelers photos to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. These resemble the team issue photos I have been adding recently–1955 49ers, 1960 Eagles, and 1958 49ers–and I wouldn’t really call them cards. They are about 4 inches by 5, and they are printed on thin stock, approximately the thickness of a magazine cover. The backs are blank, or at least they were when they were printed. All of mine but one have “URBANI’S PHARMACY” and its address stamped on the back.
I learned from Wikipedia that IDL stood for Independent Drugstores League, and that the IDL “was a cooperative of independent drugstores that disbanded in the late 1960s.” I also did a web search for “Urbani’s Pharmacy,” and I found an obituary for Mr. Arthur Urbani, who owned the drug store that my photos came from. He sold his store to Rite Aid in 1984.
The images in this set are action shots cropped such that only the players’ faces and upper bodies are showing. The players are clearly exerting themselves, but you can’t see what they are doing, so many of them appear to have odd expressions on their faces. The Buddy Dial photo shown above is one example. Cropping action shots this close is not a good idea.
As is common with team sets, the IDL Steelers photos include a few players who, to my knowledge, never appeared on cards. Those players are Frank Atkinson, John Burrell, Lou Cordileone, and Glenn Glass. As I’ve written before, the thing I enjoy most about team sets is getting to see a few new faces.
I was looking through some 1968 and 1969 Topps football cards yesterday, and the Steelers’ “Batman” jerseys caught my eye. Looking at the Steelers cards together, I wondered if the Batman jersey photos had all been taken in the same session. It’s possible: I did some Googling and found that the Steelers wore the jerseys for only a season and a half, from the middle of the 1966 season to the end of 1967. My guess is that the photos were all taken before the 1967 season.
An article on team’s web site recounts the full story, but the gist is that, in the midst of the 1966 season, the Steelers decided they wanted their uniforms to be more distinctive. To achieve this, they incorporated a “golden triangle” into their jerseys. This was meant to represent Pittsburgh’s downtown, called the Golden Triangle because it sits between two rivers that give it a triangular shape. (A nice photo I found on Wikipedia shows the triangle.) According to Wikipedia, the players didn’t like the uniforms, because they thought the jerseys looked like Batman’s bat-suit. In 1968, the team reverted to a more standard uniform design, which you can see on 1968 KDKA Steelers cards. Too bad, I think. I kind of like the caped look.
Oddly, though the Steelers were wearing the Batman uniforms going into the 1967 season, the uniforms appear on only one 1967 Philadelphia football card, the Giants Play card shown here. This card shows the Giants and Steelers in their December, 1966, game in New York. All of the 1967 Philadelphia cards of individual Steelers, however, show them in older uniforms. The Batman jerseys didn’t appear on cards of individual Steelers until the 1968 Topps set, after the team stopped wearing them. The jerseys also appeared on several 1969 Topps cards, and on one 1970 Topps card, Chuck Hinton.
Along with the 1969 Topps Andy Russell card above, here are all of the cards I found that picture players wearing Batman jerseys. Click on any card to get the details about it. There are also a few photos of the Batman uniforms–including a great team shot–on UniWatch’s 1966-67 Steelers flickr page.
Bill Dudley, Hall of Fame back for the Steelers, Lions, and Redskins, died this morning. Dudley was a star in all parts of the game, leading the league in rushing twice, interceptions once, and punt return yards twice. He was the Steelers’ leading passer in 1942 and 1946, and–in addition to his other duties–he was the kicker for the Lions and Redskins in his last four seasons. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1966.
Pictured here is one of Dudley’s rookie cards, a 1948 Bowman. His other rookie card is a 1948 Leaf. Most of Dudley’s vintage cards are pictured in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. He also appeared in several recent Hall of Fame sets.
Jerry Shipkey, who played for the Pittsburgh Steelers from 1948 to 1952 and for the Chicago Bears in 1953, died on November 28. Shipkey was an All-Pro at linebacker for his last three years with the Steelers. Before joining the Steelers, he had the distinction of playing in the Rose Bowl for both UCLA and USC.
Shipkey appeared on football cards in all five of the Bowman sets issued from 1950 to 1953. The images on his cards, however, all appear to be from the same photo session. Pictured here are his rookie card, a 1950 Bowman, and his last card, a 1953 Bowman. As you can see, Bowman used the same images on both cards, but they recolored his helmet on the 1953 card. (I don’t know why. Maybe they thought the Steelers’ helmets should look like steel.) They also apparently printed the 1953 card before Shipkey was traded to the Bears.
In previous posts I’ve shown you that the images of Bill Wade and Doug Atkins are reversed on their 1960 Topps football cards. Here’s another reversed image in the same set, Frank Varrichione. I’ve included his 1959 Topps card for comparison–notice his jersey number. Remarkably, on all of Varrichione’s cards, the card companies spelled his name correctly.
Shortly after I added 1962 Post Cereal cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery, a customer pointed out to me that Mike Henry, who appears on one of the cards, later had a successful acting career. After seven seasons at linebacker for the Steelers and Rams, Henry went on to play Tarzan, Junior Justice, and Donald Penobscot! Brian’s Drive-In Theater has a nice acting biography of Mike Henry.
Pat Brady‘s granddaughter sent me a note a couple of days ago and told me that her grandfather had passed away. Brady was a quarterback and star punter for the Pittsburgh Steelers. According to RGJ.com, in the three years he played in the NFL, he led the league in punting average twice. In college at Nevada, he once kicked a 99-yard punt, the longest possible.
John Nisby, who played guard from 1957 to 1964 for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Washington Redskins, passed away on February 6. Nisby made the Pro Bowl three times: twice with the Steelers, and once with the Redskins. Nisby’s obituary at dignitymemorial.com includes a recent photo of him, plus a nice photo gallery of him and his family.
