A pair of Pee Wees

As I continue to address the packages that require the least amount of posting effort, I direct your attention to this Pee Wee Reese Kimball mini.

It fell out of an envelope sent to me by Paul of Random Baseball Stuff fame.

"Aww, that's nice," I said to no one in attendance. "But I have this card already."

But a couple of seconds later, I remembered that I had seen something on the baseballcardpedia.com site. I had scrolled through the checklist on the site for Topps Series 2's Kimball minis and noticed that there was a Pee Wee Reese listed for Series 2.

"That's odd," I said to no one in attendance again. "Pee Wee had a Kimball mini in Series 1."

I kind of chalked it up to wiki-error, which I really shouldn't do, because in this case, baseballcardpedia is an invaluable service that fills the egregious, inconceivable wrong perpetrated by Topps' refusal to provide an online checklist.

But remembering the checklist listing, I turned over the Kimball mini that Paul had sent me, and sure enough, Pee Wee was listed as card No. 67, and in with all of the other players in Series 2.

Then, just for confirmation, I tracked down my Series 1 Pee Wee Kimball.

That one is card No. 43. Yup, those are two different cards.

Now, if you are collecting the Kimball minis, you probably know that Series 2 contains nothing but retired stars, from cards 51 to 100. Of course, Pee Wee is dearly departed and definitely a retired star.

But then why is he included in Series 1? The Series 1 list of Kimballs from 1-50 contains 47 current players, Pee Wee, Mel Ott and Mickey Mantle. Even though Mantle is deceased, I sort of understand his inclusion with current players just because Topps has worshipped Mantle for the last 15 years.

But Pee Wee?

Topps has never shown any obvious love for Reese during its retro craze. He appears often, but not exceptionally so.

Could the two Pee Wees have been an error? Is this some tribute to the Kimball minis of yore that I don't know about just because I'm lazy about research when it doesn't involve cash compensation?

Is it recognition of the fact that the cards are pee wee in size and Pee Wee is, well, Pee Wee?

I'll probably never know.

Besides, I'm too distracted by the image on the bottom of Pee Wee's Series 2 Kimball:

(*Un ... holy ... terror*)

It's like the shortstop of the damned.

Yikes.

Yeah, I'm only collecting the Dodgers from this set. I like my players with faces.