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Bob Cerv was a Yankee at three times in his career, briefly replaced Mickey Mantle during the Hall of Famer’s rookie season, and in his first year as a starter away from New York, excelled by smashing 38 homers, eclipsing 100 RBIs and becoming an all-star en route to finishing fourth in the MVP voting in 1958. But these reasons are not why I think of Cerv. In fact, I hadn’t known about Cerv until Billy Crystal’s movie “*61.” The movie depicts Cerv as being the roommate of Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris during the 1961 season in which the two Yankee sluggers chased Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record. That must have been a hell of an experience for Cerv, who mainly was a backup for the Yankees during all of his stints with the club.

This entry was posted on December 30, 2009 at 12:31 am and is filed under Rookie Card Showcase with tags baseball, baseball cards, Bob Cerv, New York Yankees, rookie card, sports, Topps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.