Bendable Bender: 1911 T201 Mecca Double Folder

I recently was chatting with the proprietor of Nomo's Sushi Platter about the 1961 Golden Press set. He's recently picked up the Hank Greenberg from the set, and I own the Charles Bender.  I was going to post about the Bender, but came across ANOTHER Bender that's one of my all-time favorites, the 1911 T201 Double Folder.

The old-school feel of the portrait is spectacular. I appreciate the recent iterations of Topps 206 have tried to replicate this, but they come up far short compared to the real thing. You don't need Clayton Kershaw in front of turn of the century insane asylums. A vintage feel is all about the the baroque feel of Bender's posture here, the kind of self-contradictory motions described by Eugenio d'Ors that you'd expect to see exhibited by the saints of a European cathedral. Bender's torso is in full follow-through, twisting above his lower body that betrays almost no movement save for a left foot that seems to shift away from the throw. You cannot throw a baseball as represented here, period. The posture is impossible the way the ballpark is improbably spacious, the way the wine-bottle-shaped shadow at his feet is simply not something that could ever exist. 

Then there's the back. I love how they include Bender's batting stats along with his pitching stats. When was the last time you saw that? At any rate, by all accounts he was a decent hitter. 

What really makes the card cool, though is this:

You flip the card over and you get Rube Oldring, a man who was not only Bender's teammate but also his roommate on the road. As with Bender you get the same feel here. Oldring is somewhere lost in space, in a cow field perhaps, and unnaturally bent over like he's the hunchback of Notre Dame. He's supposed to fit on the card, sure, but he appears to be a human trying to enter the home of a hobbit, not someone preparing to field ground balls.

Anyway, a little vintage on a Friday. Golden Press is coming, just not yet. Have a good one everybody and goodnight Pumpsie Green, wherever you are!

Double Duty: Bender and Oldring 1911 T201 Mecca Double Folder

I picked this card up about a year ago. It's an awesome twofer of HOFer and CCC favorite Charles Bender and the less known Rube Oldring.

First the whole card with Bender:

Overall it's a pretty classy shot of Bender at, I'm guessing, an early version of Shibe Park. Being a guy who digs on some vintage, I'm often disappointed by how current brands (ahem, Topps) will take something like this and go waaay crazy with it (T206, I'm looking at you!). Cards from the actual era were pretty straightforward and not all all self-conscious like the C. Kershaw in The Shining-type cards you pull nowadays.

Anyway, Oldring and the stats are on the back.

Sure enough, if you fold Oldring over he lines up nicely with Bender's legs in kind of a fielding pose. 

The coolest thing is that, according to a Bender bio I read, the two were roomies back in the day. When was the last time two baseball roomies were on the same card? Anyone else know of any cases?

Have a good one everybody and goodnight Pumpsie Green, wherever you are!