Baseball cards have a long history in Bloomington, Illinois dating back over 100 years. Some of the earliest baseball cards produced featured players from the Bloomington Blues, a minor league team that called Bloomington home from 1912 to 1915.
The Blues were a Class D minor league affiliate of the Chicago White Sox located in Bloomington’s East Side Amusement Park. In their heyday in the early 20th century, East Side Park was a popular spot for recreation in Bloomington and drew crowds of over 1,000 fans per game to watch the Blues take on teams from nearby cities like Peoria, Springfield, and Decatur.
During this era from the late 1800s through the 1910s, baseball cards were produced primarily by tobacco companies as promotional items included in cigarette and chewing tobacco packages. Some of the earliest baseball cards produced featuring Blues players included issues from brands like Fatima, Sweet Caporal, and T206 White Border cigarettes. These vintage cards featuring Bloomington-based minor leaguers have become highly collectible among baseball memorabilia enthusiasts today.
After the Blues folded in 1915, Bloomington was without affiliated professional baseball for several decades. The popularity of baseball card collecting continued to grow nationwide during the 1920s and 1930s thanks to mass production by companies. Goudey Gum Company released several sets in the 1930s that included cards of major leaguers who had begun their careers in the minor leagues with the old Bloomington Blues such as Dode Paskert and Walt Kinney.
In the post-World War II era, the baseball card boom was in full swing. Bloomington native William “Billy” DeMars was a star minor league pitcher in the 1940s who had cards produced of him during his time in the minors with the Wichita Falls Spudders and Kansas City Blues. DeMars went on to pitch briefly in the majors for the Chicago Cubs in 1948. His vintage minor league cards remain popular with collectors from Central Illinois today.
The next affiliated minor league team to call Bloomington home arrived in 1949 with the formation of the Bloomington Dodgers, a Class D farm team of the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Dodgers played at Bobby Helm Field and drew good crowds throughout their 12-year run through 1960. Top prospects and future major leaguers like Don Drysdale, Tommy Davis and Willie Davis all honed their skills with the Bloomington Dodgers during the early stages of their professional careers.
Their time in Bloomington led to numerous baseball cards being produced featuring the future big leaguers. Sets from Bowman, Topps and other popular 1950s card manufacturers all included rookie cards or early minor league issue cards of Dodgers who played for Bloomington. These vintage cards chronicling the formative minor league years of future Dodgers stars are highly prized by collectors today with ties to Central Illinois.
After the Dodgers left town, Bloomington went through another dry spell without affiliated pro baseball for almost 30 years. The rise of independent minor league teams and summer collegiate wood bat leagues helped fill the void to some extent. The Central Illinois Collegiate League featured top amateur talent and had teams based in Bloomington and Normal throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
All-star and standout players from this amateur wooden bat circuit occasionally received regional promotional baseball cards that are now highly collectible today among Central Illinois collectors. Examples include 1970s era cards from brands like Donruss featuring CICL all-stars and league leaders from that era.
In 1989, affiliated professional baseball finally returned to Bloomington with the formation of the Midwest League’s Bloomington Cubs, a Class A affiliate of the Chicago Cubs. Playing their home games at Joe Faber Field, the Cubs drew well and helped spark a renewed interest in minor league baseball in the community.
Numerous future major leaguers got their start in pro ball with the Bloomington Cubs over their 11 seasons from 1989-1999, including players like Kerry Wood, Nomar Mazara, and Mark Prior. Their time in Bloomington led to many prospect and rookie cards being inserted in popular sets of the early 1990s from manufacturers such as Score, Leaf, and Pinnacle.
Today, these vintage minor league baseball cards chronicling the careers of future MLB stars in their earliest pro seasons with the Bloomington Cubs remain some of the most sought-after issues for collectors from Central Illinois and beyond. They represent an important chapter in the history of baseball card collecting and affiliated minor league baseball in Bloomington.
While Bloomington has been without affiliated pro baseball since the Cubs departed after 1999, baseball card collecting remains a popular hobby amongst residents. Local card shops like The Card Bin have helped fuel interest with their extensive offerings of new and vintage issues representing Bloomington’s rich baseball history at the minor league and amateur levels over the decades.
Through baseball cards produced locally and nationally, the stories of ballplayers and teams from Bloomington’s past have lived on alongside the hobby’s growth into a multimillion-dollar industry. Cards provide a tangible link to an important aspect of the city’s sporting heritage and culture that continues attracting new generations of collectors in Bloomington to this day.
