Baseball
Billy DeMars’ MLB career was short but card has value
Shortstop Billy DeMars played only 80 games in three Major League Baseball seasons for the Philadelphia Athletics and the St. Louis Browns, after which he played in the minors for parts of five more seasons. He batted .237 in the bigs.
He spent 19 years as an MLB coach with the Philadelphia Phillies (where he was part of the 1980 world championship club), Montreal Expos and Cincinnati Reds. Pete Rose called DeMars the best hitting coach with whom he had ever worked.
Considering his short-lived playing career, why does Billy DeMars’ 1950 Bowman baseball card have value?
Because, as Sports Collectors Digest artist Ronnie Joyner points out, it was the last card in the 1950 set.
Check out the story of Billy DeMars in this bio-illustration by Joyner:
