This week’s Monster Card is Ellis Kinder of the 1953 Boston Red Sox. The card you see is of the reprint set. His selection is somewhat significant as he is the first teammate of an existing Monster Card selection. Ted Williams of 1953 was already chosen a few weeks back. I didn’t really plan it that way. I was thumbing through teams, ran across Kinder’s card thought, “Hmm, he and Williams were teammates.”.
Ellis Kinder’s card is nice, first of all, because of the obvious. His A*Z. Kinder certainly had that coming. In ‘53, he led the AL in saves (27), games pitched (63), and games finished (41). More to the point, he had a miniscule 1.85 ERA in 107 innings.
| Year | Tm | G | PA | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | SB | BB | SO | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1953 | BOS | 69 | 30 | 29 | 3 | 11 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 6 | .379 | .379 | .414 |
But let’s look at his hitting stats. I doubt we’ll see a saves leader with 29 at-bats ever again. Kinder did the most with those at-bats, too. He batted .379 with one double. For his efforts, Ellis Kinder got a pretty nifty card for fifties reliever. One 6 plus eight 7s all the way to 51. That puts the last 9 at 62.
Historically, Kinder wasn’t a fantastic hitter, batting .142 for his career. He did hit one homerun and drove in 11 rbis (as a starter) in 1950, though. In no other year did he hit .300 and only one other did he hit above .200 (.250 in 1955).
In 1953, he came in 11th in the MVP voting. The voters didn’t his APBA card to look at. Maybe they would been more impressed (I’m joking).
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