Here is another vintage Exhibit Brooklyn Dodgers card in my collection. This time it is from 1935, and it features 4 different Dodgers on one card. Called a Four-in-One Exhibit card, it features Van Lingle Mungo, Vincent (Al) Lopez, Danny Taylor, and Tony Cuccinello. The reverse is blank.
This is one of the least valuable cards from the set, even as it includes a future Hall of Famer in Al Lopez. I guess you can say that this card gets no respect, and I have always wondered why. After all, as I said above it includes a future Hall of Fame catcher in Al Lopez during the early part of his career. It even includes a colorfully combative Brooklyn player in Van Lingle Mungo. Heck, he has one of the best names Baseball has ever had. In fact, I'm humming that great Dave Frishberg song as I write this. Tony Cuccinello was a very able second baseman, batting .292 in 1935, and Danny Taylor batted .290 while in the outfield. Hilariously, the photo used for Cuccinello is not actually him. It is of George Puccinelli, who has never played for the Brooklyn franchise. Can't the copy editors see that he is wearing a Cardinals uniform?
Since I can't get that damn song out of my head, I though I would pass along an infamous story from his days as a Dodger playing in Cuba in the spring. For some background, Mungo was known as a bit of a drinker and roughhousing carouser. He also had a way with the ladies. Anyway, on one spring evening he was caught red-handed fooling around with a married woman. The husband confronted him, so Mungo naturally gave him a knuckle sandwich in the eye. Undeterred, the husband reached for a butcher knife with the intention of exacting capital punishment. Van fled, and hid out in the teams hotel. As the story goes, the police where called to arrest him, and Mungo had to escape the country with the help of some teammates and Dodgers executive Babe Hamberger. They crawled him out a window that was several flights up, and smuggled him in a laundry cart to a waiting seaplane. Needless to say, his spring that year was over. I often wonder, though how did he explain his early arrival home to his wife?
Below is the jazz classic by Dave Frishberg called Van Lingle Mungo below.
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