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Richard George Bertell
Chicago Cubs
Catcher
Born: November 21, 1935, Oak Park, IL
Signed: Signed by the Chicago Cubs as an amateur free agent, June 20, 1957
Major League Teams: Chicago Cubs 1960-1965; San Francisco Giants 1965; Chicago Cubs 1967
Died: December 20, 1999, Mission Viejo, CA (age 64)
Between 1961 and 1965, no one started more games behind the plate for the Cubs than Dick Bertell. His last full season with the team, 1964, was also his best season as he appeared in 112 games and hit .238 with career highs in home runs (4) and RBIs (35). He led the league twice in passed balls in 1961 and 1962, but he also led the league in baserunners caught stealing with 34 in 1964. Bertell was known for his strong arm and his 47.7% career caught stealing percentage is currently 47th on the all-time list.
In 444 career games, Bertell was a lifetime .250 hitter with 10 home runs and 112 RBIs.
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| July 18, 2020 - Doug at bat with home plate umpire behind pitcher |
July 20, 2020 from Scottsdale, AZ - Card #127
I continued to be fairly active with my eBay purchases in July, as we prepared for the abbreviated 60-game baseball season to start. Having been somewhat haphazard in my eBay hunts up until this point, I decided to focus and specifically try to complete the first series of our 1965 Topps set. I added 10 cards to our set from the first series (cards #1 through #88) from Scottsdale Baseball Cards, and the envelope with our new cards arrived on July 20th. As of this writing, we need 39 of the 88 cards from the first series so we're more than half-way there. The priciest card still needed is the A.L. Home Run Leaders card (#5) featuring Mickey Mantle. This Bertell card entered our collection for $2.
The Monday these cards arrived, Doug and I spent the day recovering from a long and hot weekend of tournament baseball in Palmyra and Hummelstown. It was absurdly hot and we had the added angst of trying to make sure we stayed socially distant from everyone. We live in South Jersey, and I've been happy to see most of the people we've encountered in our day to day required travels are masked up when needed. That wasn't really the case during our trip west into Pennsylvania for this tournament. If you had dropped in from outer space and were told there was a nationwide pandemic going on, you wouldn't really have known from the people and interactions I saw all weekend. Watching Doug play baseball was great, shaking my head at people not wearing masks or not socially distancing was frustrating.
The Card / Cubs Team Set
No offense to Bertell, but there's nothing incredibly remarkable about this card. The write-up on the back notes he was the captain of the Iowa State baseball team and Bertell was inducted posthumously in 2000 into the Iowa State Hall of Fame.
1965 Season
Bertell was the opening day catcher for the Cubs, and he'd appear in 34 games before a May 29th trade sent him to the Giants. Bertell was sent to San Francisco with Len Gabrielson (#14) for Ed Bailey (#559), Bob Hendley (#444) and Harvey Kuenn (#103). He spent the rest of the season as the back-up to Tom Haller (#465), getting into 22 games and hitting .188. In total, Bertell appeared in 56 games, hitting .205 with 10 RBIs.
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First Mainstream Card: 1961 Topps #441
Topps Flagship Set Appearances (5): 1961, 1963-1966
Most Recent Mainstream Card: 1966 Topps #587
18 - Bertell non-parallel baseball cards in the Beckett online database as of 7/21/20.
Sources:
Baseball Reference
Beckett Database
The Trading Card Database
Wikipedia
Previous Card: #26 Bobby Knoop - Los Angeles Angels
Next Card: #28 Barney Schultz - St. Louis Cardinals
Bertell spent all of 1966 with the Giants' AAA team. Then 1 week before the 1967 season he was traded to the Cubs, and started the first 2 games.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Randy Hundley was injured and the Cubs wanted someone not named John Boccabella to play until Hundley returned a few days later?
Those were Bertell's final 2 games, as he was released in May.