So you won’t find Ed Bouchee’s name in any list of the 50 Greatest Mets. He didn’t set any team records and he didn’t help the New York Mets win a pennant. What he did accomplish though is very significant. He was the first player to ever appear in a Mets uniform on a Topps card. In the 1962 set, most of the team’s Topps cards are head shots without caps; most of the players who are pictured with a cap, have the team logo airbrushed out. With the exception of the multi-team rookie cards, only Al Jackson and Bouchee have any distinctive team markings visible. Jackson, however, is wearing only a cap and warm-up jacket whereas Bouchee is pictured wearing the complete team home uniform. Kneeling with a bat, he looks like he is sitting in the on-deck circle.
Bouchee did not have a great career. He started with a bang in Philadelphia but after his 1957 rookie season when he nearly won Rookie-of-the-Year and even placed in the MVP voting, his successes dwindled. He got into legal trouble and missed the first half of the 1958 season. In fact, because of this, Topps didn’t even issue his 1958 card. He played parts of five seasons with the Phillies, parts of two seasons with the Chicago Cubs and finished his major-league career as an original Met. He was selected from the Cubs on October 10, 1961 with the 30th pick of the expansion draft.
In 1962, he played in 50 games for the Mets. He hit three home runs, scored seven runs, and hit .161. He also managed to collect 10 RBIs. Bouchee, along with teammate, Gus Bell would often be used by Casey Stengel as pinch-hitters. Early in the season, when Gil Hodges didn’t play, Bouchee would start at first. Needless to say, the fans, of course, would have much preferred to see Hodges. He argued with Stengel that he should have been starting over the aging Hodges but Stengel didn’t oblige. In fact, in early May, the Mets acquired Marv Throneberry who also played first base. So instead of getting more playing time, he got less.
Bouchee’s first game with the Mets was on April 11th, 1962. His final game with the Mets (in fact of his major league career) was on July 29th, 1962; he only got one at bat.
Ed Bouchee passed away a little over a year ago; on January 23, 2013. He may not have been the first Met or even the first Met to play first base but he was the first Mets player to wear the team’s home uniform on a baseball card.
That’s a pretty interesting find. It’s a shame it wasn’t someone more impactful to the Mets, but a great nugget of info nonetheless.
You forgot about the recently departed Don Zimmer, who is in a 1962 card in a Mets uniform showing a bit more than Jackson’s.
Lifelong Mets fan and don’t want to be a downer, but one can’t honestly discuss Ed Bouchee without looking a little further into the “legal trouble” which kept him out of baseball for the first half of 1958 after a standout rookie season.
Bouchee was arrested for exposing himself to little girls. It’s chronicled pretty well here in an article written before his death: https://suite.io/jeff-young/58mj25h
In short, he was reinstated after undergoing psychiatric treatment, and, as far as I can tell, the reason for his absence on the field was pretty much not mentioned by the press or with only oblique references to his having “undergone treatment” or being involved in a “morals” issue.
He clearly was a troubled guy, which is sadder still when you imagine the success he might have achieved on the field, but exposing one’s self to children is a heinous act, and sympathy for the perpetrator need be offered sparingly, if at all.
Interesting to observe how different the times were; it is beyond imagining that a player today having committed such acts would ever be allowed to play again, and certainly not after only a half-season hiatus.