1963 Fleer Don Demeter: Outstanding in Its Field

Don Demeter got clobbered by 7th-grade English.

Now, before you get the wrong idea here, I have no idea how the man himself fared at diagraming sentences or comprehending Dickens or writing iambic pentameter.

I’m sure he did swimmingly.

No, it’s the perception of the man, in my mind, that ran into the propeller end of junior high esoterica.

See, the seventh grade rolled around in the fall after the first summer when I completely lost myself to baseball. By August, all I wanted to do was watch baseball, read about baseball, wallow in baseball cards, etc., etc., etc.

And then, all of a sudden, I’m in English class reading about Chaucer and Orwell and Roman mythology.

And Greek mythology.

At home and at lunch and in my head? Still baseball.

And somewhere along the line in all my diamond studies, I ran across Don Demeter, a player nobody talked about, but one who showed good power for a handful of teams in the 1960s.

And somewhere else along the line, I learned of Demeter, Greek goddess of the harvest.

The grind of seventh grade ground the two to pieces in my impressionable little brain, and the grist has proved impossible to separate through all the years since.

The result?

Don Demeter is a farmer.

Now, there doesn’t seem to be any factual basis for that in the biographical information I’ve read about the slugger, but the logical structure is indelibly hammered into place:

Don Demeter -> Demeter -> harvest, agriculture, grains -> Don Demeter is a farmer

And you know what?

Demeter’s 1963 Fleer baseball card doesn’t help matters, either.

Here, see for yourself:

Check prices on eBay (affiliate link)

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Now, you tell me: what exactly does that blue sky say to you? Given that you can’s see Demeter’s surroundings? And that he’s carrying a scythe over his shoulder?

That’s right, Skippy.

He’s standing in a corn field.

He’s a farmer.

Told you.

If you want to get a closer look at the card and prove it to yourself, you can usually find nice raw copies on eBay (affiliate link) for $5-10. Or you can get fancy and spring for a graded copy — up to $150 or so for a PSA 9 specimen.

But, really, you should just take my word for it.

Don Demeter is a farmer.

After all, I’ve thought about it a lot.