Luke Easter, Dale Mitchell and Bob Porterfield Purchases

It's been along time since my last post.  I had exams all last week and this week and got really bogged down in those.  But I'm home for spring break now, and have a lot of catching up to do.

I picked up several 1953 Topps over the past few weeks.  These three, #2 Luke Easter, #26 Dale Mitchell and #108 Bob Porterfield all came from a fellow member on Net54baseball, who knew someone who had them and arranged the sale.  All three of these are very difficult to track down because the players died very young.

Luke Easter was one of Tim Russert's heroes growing up.  He was known for his mammoth home runs, nicknamed 'Easter Eggs'.  By the time this card came out, he was 38 and battling several injuries, but played for several more years with the Buffalo Bisons, where Russert saw him several times.  After his career was over, he became a pay steward for one of the steelworkers' unions in Cleveland, where he was murdered in an attempted robbery in 1979.  Mitchell was a two time All-Star for the Indians who made the final out in Don Larsen's World Series perfect game.  Porterfield came out of nowhere to win 22 games for the 1953 Washington Senators and throw two no-hitters that year.  He made the All-Star team the following season before fading away.