Grand Slam Baseball
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Grand Slam Baseball was a promotional game issued by the Ashland Oil Company in 1967. This was a collect-and-win game with instant winners. With each visit to a participating Ashland Oil gas station, customers received a free paper game piece. Concealed in the game piece is a photo of one of twelve major league baseball players. Some game pieces are instant winners. The game pieces have two perforated tabs. When the tabs are removed, the tri-fold printed game piece can be unfolded to reveal the baseball player photo and message inside. Instant winner cash prizes were $1, $5, $10, $25, $100, $1,000 and $5,000. You could also win an all-expense-paid trip-for-two to three games of the 1967 world series. A game card was given away free with spots to store your baseball player pictures. Collecting all twelve baseball players won a prize of a Roadmaster bicycle. The game pieces are loosely regarded as baseball cards and, as such, are graded and slabbed by the major grading companies. Even common cards in high grade sell for substantial prices. Eleven of the players are common and were printed in roughly equal quantities. The prize-winning player ... Jim Maloney ... was, of course, issued in small quantities as were the instant winner game pieces. Most Jim Maloney game pieces were redeemed for the bicycle prize and are presumed to have been destroyed. A photo of a Jim Maloney game piece is shown below and it is rumored to be the only one in existence. |
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Above: Front and back of an unfolded Grand Slam Baseball game piece containing a photo of Bill Mazeroski. |
| Below: Unfolded game pieces showing the eleven other baseball player photos. |
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Above: Prize-winning game piece with photo of Jim Maloney, which is the key player for the Roadmaster bicycle prize. This is the only known surviving example of a Jim Maloney game piece. The word 'void' is written on it, along with some initials, which indicates that this game piece was redeemed for the prize but was not destroyed by Ashland Oil. |
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Above: Newspaper ad in the Batavia Daily News (Batavia, NY) 6/12/1967. |
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