Clem Labine Gift

About a week ago, my mom noticed that I didn't yet have Clem Labine, the only Rhode Islander in the set.  She picked up this one from Mickey's for me.  Labine grew up in Woonsocket, as did my mom and her siblings.  There is a picture floating around somewhere of a group of neighborhood boys, among them one of my uncles, getting a pitching lesson from him.  I'll have to find it at some point.

Labine had a couple of double digit win seasons for the Dodgers in the 1950s, including 1955, when he won a game in the World Series.  He died in 2007.  It mentions on the back of his card that he was a paratrooper during World War II; I had forgotten that.  I tried to see if he had been in combat at all, but I couldn't come up with any details about his time in the service, beyond that he entered the service in August 1944.  That would have made him too late for the jumps in Sicily, Salerno, Normandy and Holland, although he potentially could have caught the Battle of the Bulge, Operation Varisty, or if he was in the Pacific, the jump on Corregidor. 

Labine brings me to 158/274 (57.66 %).  He also puts me past the halfway point in terms of the number of Brooklyn Dodgers; he is the 11th one I've picked up, out of 20 Dodgers in the set.