It didn’t take long for my lone 1950s Red Sox card – a 1956 Sammy White – to be
joined in my baseball card collection by a pair of battery mates he would have known so well: Frank Sullivan and Ike Delock. I just acquired 1957 cards of both players, long-serving pitchers for the 1950s Red Sox teams.

Big Frank, who stood 6’7″, had a terrific start to his career, one that would warm any Red Sox fan, given what he was able to do in his first outing, in the Bronx no less, against the dreaded Yankees. From a May 22, 1954 newspaper clip about the game: “The lowly Boston Red Sox open a scoreless tie with six runs in the sixth inning tonight and went on to whip the New York Yankees 6-3 as righthander Frank Sullivan won his first major league start…in front of a crowd of 30,119, largest in Yankee Stadium this season despite cold weather and a 24-hour rain.” Frank went on to win 15 games that year!

One of the joys of collecting is the interesting stuff you can learn from the back of the cards – as well as the delightful cartoons. Frank’s cards across the years certainly had their share of fascinating tidbits:

For instance, his 1956 card lets us know that he served as a sergeant on front lines in Korea and that two days after getting married, he was called up from Albany ( in which he went on to win the opening start, described above, against the Yankees…What a week!).

The 1959 card, meanwhile, tells us that he had five straight winning seasons for the Red Sox and that he writes short stories as a hobby.

Later cards – though by then Frank was no longer a member of the Red Sox – are no less informative. The ’61 card provides a delightful cartoon about his being “the most active pitcher” (260 IP, I looked it up) in the A.L. in 1955, with “pant,” “whew,” next to the cartoon of a very tired looking pitcher. The ’63 card lets us know that “he lost the 1955 all-star game,” adding a humorous cartoon of a pitcher lying on the ground, slamming his fist and feet down, with another player or maybe the manager standing above him, saying “But you pitched fine!”

As for the ’57 card just added to the collection, it tells us that he beat Tigers 11 times over two seasons (’55 and ’56). Eleven victories in two years against one team! It also provides a terrific trivia question: “Which relief pitcher hurled the most innings in MLB history?” Answer: Geo Zabel of the Cubs in 1915, 18 1/3 innings.

Ike’s cards, meanwhile, do not offer quite the range of noteworthy information over the years, mainly pointing out on several cards the fine season he had in the minor leagues in 1951, when he won 20 games in the Eastern League. That said, you can’t beat some of the language that appears. On the ’57 card itself, the reader learns, “Ike was ‘poison’ to the White Sox, Orioles and Indians last year. He bowled them over for 10 wins while dropping only 3 decisions. ” Instead of just saying he was tough on such and such a team, beating them X number of times, the colorful language like “poison” and “bowled them over” brings the card and player very much to life.  

Welcome to the collection, Frank and Ike!