#193 Lynford Lary

This card was also in the batch of PSA crossovers that I recently received back from SGC. The card was originally a PSA 6 and crossed over at the same grade to SGC 80. It's a nice example, with great centering and good corners. On the design side, it's not one of the better efforts in the set, with a yellow background that is a little blah for a guy with such a great name.

Lynford Lary, nicknamed "Broadway," played parts of 12 seasons as a shortstop with the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Washington Senators, St. Louis Browns (twice), Cleveland Indians, Brooklyn Dodgers, and St. Louis Cardinals. He is featured on this card as a member of the Yankees. As a hitter, he didn't have much pop (.372 career SLG), but he had a keen eye, posting a very solid career .369 OBP, thanks to 705 career walks against 470 strikeouts.

His best season came as a 25-year old in 1931, when he posted a .280/.376/.416 line (113 OPS+) with 10 home runs and 107 RBI as the Yankees' starting shortstop. Apparently, the Yankees weren't impressed and Lary lost his job the next season to 21-year old Frankie Crosetti, who would hold down the shortstop position full-time for the Yankees through the 1940 season. Oddly, it appears that Lary was the superior offensive player (91 career OPS+ to Crosetti's 84). Crosetti never had an offensive season as productive as Lary's 1931 campaign. Lary led the American League in stolen bases in 1936 with 37, during his first stint with the St. Louis Browns.

Lary was married to Mary Lawlor, an actor who starred on Broadway and in two feature films.

Crossing Over

Having only recently gotten back into collecting baseball cards, I am still relatively new to third-party grading. When I first started purchasing 1933 Goudey cards about six months ago, I bought both SGC and PSA, with the intention that I would cross all PSA cards over to SGC. At that point, I was intending to collect the set in Very Good condition, which is SGC 40 or PSA 3. I found, however, that many of the PSA 3 and 4 cards that I purchased dropped a grade when I submitted them to SGC for crossover. At that point, I decided that I would limit my PSA purchases, so that I wouldn't end up paying the going rate for a PSA 3 or 4, only to have it drop a grade at SGC. This made collecting more difficult, though, since PSA-graded 1933 Goudeys are more prevalent than those graded by SGC, especially on eBay.

Over the last month or so, I decided to raise the quality of my set to more or less Excellent condition (SGC 60 or PSA 5), except for the super-expensive cards. In doing so, I sold off my lower grade cards and have been purchasing higher grade examples. I have found that higher grade PSA cards cross over to SGC much more consistently. As a result, I have started purchasing PSA 5 and 6 1933 Goudeys when the price is right. I recently submitted three such cards to SGC for crossover: #99 Tony Cuccinello (PSA 6), #157 Sam Byrd (PSA 5), and #193 Lynford Lary (PSA 6). All three are nice examples and, if they cross over to SGC 80 (Cuccinello and Lary) and SGC 60 (Byrd), I will have gotten a great deal, as I purchased them at a reasonable price as a lot on eBay. I will post the results of the crossover once they are available.