David Berg and Company was a sausage company opened in 1860. The company claims to be the first to sell hot dogs in a major league ballpark, for the White Sox in 1901. The company filed for bankruptcy in 1992 and was bought by Vienna. Today, David Berg hot dogs are still sold by Vienna.
In the late '80s the two companies were rivals. The ballpark was a great place for a hot dog company to get its name and product out. For years Wrigley sold Oscar Mayer and Vienna hot dogs. But the 1984 scorecard has an ad for David Berg, so I'm guessing that they finally got their dogs into the ballpark. A couple years later, in 1987 and 1988, David Berg was a sponsor for the baseball cards given away at Wrigley Field.
Today I'll show the '87 cards. Come back tomorrow for the '88 version.
The 1987 cards were not the usual 3½" x 2½" cards. They were bigger, coming in at 4¼" x 2 7/8". The fronts were a very basic design, with the Cubs logo on top, the player's name and number on the bottom, and a bordered picture.
The cards were given away at Wrigley Field on July 29 The Cubs got clobbered by the Expos 11-3 in front of 37,019 fans.
Cards were made for all the players on the roster plus the manager, while the coaches shared a single card. The most note-worthy cards would probably be the Dawson and Maddux cards.
The 1987 season was his first with the Cubs, signing with the team during spring training. All the major card companies showed him with the Expos due to their early print deadlines. The David Berg card was probably the first issued by anyone that shows Dawson as a Cub.
It was a fairly similar story for Greg Maddux. He pitched for the Cubs in September, 1986, but didn't get featured in any major card releases until the update sets came out. The Berg card was likely the first released to show Maddux as a major leaguer.
Here is the entire set, in alphabetical order:
No comments:
Post a Comment