Brought to you as a public service announcement (vintage cigarette ads)

August 13, 2015

https://i1.wp.com/171.67.24.121/tobacco_web/images/tobacco_ads/smoking_in_sports/baseball/medium/baseball_08.jpg?resize=225%2C370Today marks the 20th anniversary of the passing of Mickey Mantle. And while he didn’t die from lung cancer, he and many of his fellow athletes — role models — didn’t mind picking up a few extra bucks shilling for the tobacco industry. One of the reason’s the Honus Wagner T-206 is so rare is that he wanted them removed from circulation because he famously didn’t want be be associated with tobacco products that were made attractive to kids because of the premiums, back in the day before bubble gum cards.

Mantle was one of the players whose ads were included in this gallery prepared by Stanford University. Other big leaguers included Joe DiMaggio,Ted Williams, Willie Mays, Waite Hoyt, Elston Howard, Johnny Mize, and many more.

Guess they were too early for this scene from one of my favorite movies.

0Shares

Tagged as: baseball and advertising, Mickey Mantle

Comments on this entry are closed.

Previous post:

Next post:

script type="text/javascript"> var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-5496371-4']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();