My 1949 Mint Set, and my year of entry into this world
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Updated:
5/19/2026
Views: 96
1949 was a momunmental year in many ways. The two baseball players in the picture to the left are the immortal Jackie Robinson who won the Most Valuable Player in the National League in 1949. The guy to his right was a right-handed pitcher who threw two no-hitters for the Dodgers and pitched in both Brooklyn and Los Angeles for nearly a decade and a half, his name is Carl Erskine. Carl and Jackie were close friends, and Carl wrote a book "What I Learned From Jackie Robinson: Reflections from On and Off the Field." McGraw-Hill, 2005. The book is a good read if you like sport and human decency.
Carl was from Anderson, Indiana where I grew up and played baseball against Carl's kids (Danny and Gary). 1949 was also the year I was born, kicking and screaming -- like most things I do. Seems we are entitled to do a set for our birth year, but 1949 was so special for so many other things.
1949 was also the year the Russian exploded their first Atomic Bomb thereby eliminating our monopoly on the weapon, which in turn, assured the development of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) where the western allies concluded a military alliance.
People don't remember but Greece and China were in the midst of civil wars where communist forces were attempting to overthrown pro-western governments. In China they were successful chasing the Nationalist Chinese off the mainland onto Tiawan. In Greece, they were not successful and the pro-western democratic institutions held, until there was a military take over of the democratic government in April of 1967; by the "colonels" lead by Popudopolos.
I personally prefer the pleasantries of baseball to all the gnashing of teeth and assorted unpleasantries of civil wars and atomic weapons -- and numismatics is even more pleasant and less harrowing than baseball in my old age.
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