In the spring of 1950 Robinson went to Hollywood and played himself. The Jackie Robinson Story opened in May, a low-budget picture with Ruby Dee as Rachel, and the man on the screen was the man everyone had been reading about, now the National League’s Most Valuable Player and its batting champion. Then he came back and hit .328, which by any standard but his own the year before was a very good season.
Bowman’s 1950 set is the one that came out that summer, 252 cards in a single run, the same small 2 1/16 by 2 1/2 inches as the year before. What changed was the picture. The 1949 cards had been tinted photographs on a flat color. For 1950 Bowman had every front painted, working from photographs but filling in a real place behind each man — a sky, a grandstand, a stretch of outfield grass.
For 1950 Bowman had every front painted, filling in a real place behind each man.
Robinson’s is a batting picture. He stands in, bat cocked over his shoulder, in the home whites, and behind him there is a ballpark: the green field, the dirt, rows of seats rising into a pale haze. It is the first card of him that puts him somewhere. Every earlier card had cut him out of the scene and stood him against nothing at all.
There is still no name on the front. Bowman had added names to some cards late in 1949 and then took them away again for 1950, leaving the front entirely to the artwork; the name, the biography and the record are all on the back. It would come back in 1951. So for one season the painting is all there is, and the painting is good.
The cards were printed with a narrow cream border, and on many of them it is not cream for long. The paper takes on the yellow of age, and the edges of a painted picture show wear sooner than the face. Centering on so small a card is a matter of a few hundredths of an inch, and the 1950 set is known for its tilts. The color itself tends to be good. It is the border, and how evenly it sits, that decides most of them.
