#33 Jackie Brandt - Baltimore Orioles

John George Brandt
Baltimore Orioles
Outfield

Bats:  Right  Throws:  Right  Height:  5'11"  Weight:  165
Born:  April 28, 1934, Omaha, NE
Signed:  Signed by the St. Louis Cardinals as an amateur free agent before 1953 season
Major League Teams:  St. Louis Cardinals 1956; New York Giants 1956; San Francisco Giants 1958-1959; Baltimore Orioles 1960-1965; Philadelphia Phillies 1966-1967; Houston Astros 1967

From 1967 Phillies Yearbook

Jackie Brandt played 11 seasons in the Majors, finding his most success with the Orioles in the early to mid 1960s.  Brandt was a consistently good fielder and hitter, and he had at least 11 home runs in seven different seasons.  He won a Gold Glove for his play in left field for the Giants in 1959 and he was named to the 1961 A.L. All-Star team.  His best seasons were 1961 and 1962 when he hit a career high .297 in 1961, good for 9th in the league, with career highs in home runs (19) and RBIs (75) in 1962.  Brandt was a career .262 hitter with 112 home runs and 485 RBIs.

Building the Set
July 20, 2020 from Scottsdale, AZ - Card #131
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 Brandt card entered our collection for $2.

The Card / Orioles Team Set
Brandt is shown modeling a 1963 Orioles road uniform, as the team's 1964 uniforms featured a special patch commemorating the Sesquicentennial of the Star Spangled Banner, composed in 1814.  On the back, Brandt's Gold Glove win in 1959 is featured in the write-up.

1965 Season
Brandt served as a reserve outfielder for the Orioles in 1965 with Boog Powell (#560) in left, Paul Blair (#473) in center and Curt Blefary (#49) in right getting the bulk of the outfield starts.  He was the opening day left fielder for the Orioles before Powell took over, and I wonder how much of that was manager Hank Bauer (#323) awarding his veteran outfielder with the ceremonial first start.  In 96 games, he hit .243 with 8 home runs and 24 RBIs.

Phillies Career
The Orioles traded Brandt to the Phillies with Darold Knowles (#577) for Jack Baldschun (#555) on December 6, 1965.  With the Phillies, he appeared in 82 games in 1966 and 16 games in 1967, batting .235 with a home run and 16 RBIs.  He started 36 games in center, 6 games in right and 2 games in left in his inaugural year with the club.  He was the final batter to face Sandy Koufax (#300) in a regular season game, striking out against the future Hall of Famer in the final game of the 1966 season.  On June 9, 1967, the Phillies sold Brandt to the Astros.

His mainstream Phillies baseball cards can be found in the 1966 and 1967 Topps sets, and he signed reprints of his 1967 Topps card for inclusion in the 2016 Topps Heritage Real One Autographs insert set.

1959 Topps #297

1961 Topps #515

1962 Topps #165

1964 Topps #399

1967 Topps #142

Other Notable Baseball Cards

First Mainstream Card:  1959 Topps #297
Topps Flagship Set Appearances (9):  1959-1967
Most Recent Mainstream Card:  2016 Topps Heritage Real One Autographs #ROA-JB

58 - Brandt non-parallel baseball cards in the Beckett online database as of 7/27/20.

Sources:  
Baseball Reference
Beckett Database
The Phillies Room
The Trading Card Database
Wikipedia

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