The Ultimate Status Symbol

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If you have ever known the thrill of trading Marvelous Marv Throneberry, Mudcat Grant, and Chico Carrasquel for Harmon Killebrew and the 1959 Washington Senators, hold on to your rosin bag. Your big chance may have finally arrived. For 30 bucks, a photograph, and a little background information, Big League Cards Inc. of Teaneck, N.J., will send you 50 real-live baseball cards bearing your own likeness. They even smell right, thanks to the gum included in the package.

Big League Cards is a product of the fecund mind of Jim Bouton -- erstwhile hurler for the New York Yankees, author of the best-seller Ball Four, sportscaster, actor, TV scriptwriter and entrepreneur. In business, as elsewhere, he has occasionally struggled with his delivery serving up such clunkers as Big League Brain, a paper slide rule used to predict the outcome of pitcher/batter confrontations, and Rodney's Cube a Rubik's Cube knock-off with only three movable planes. (Named for Rodney Dangerfield it was once solved by a hamster in 2.4 seconds; Dangerfield took a bit longer.)

But three years ago, Bouton hit the jackpot with an ersatz chewing tobacco, Big League Chew -- shredded bubble gum in a pouch. He licensed the concept to the Amurol Products division of Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. Big League Chew recorded sales of $18 million in 1981, capturing 8% of the bubble gum market in its first year.

Now, Bouton hopes he is en route to another win with Big League Cards, which he founded about a year ago. At the moment, the company is still closer to Bouton's home (two blocks) than to its break-even point, but it has been doing a fairly brisk business just through word-of-mouth. Satisfied customers include IBM Corp. marketing manager Kevin Gropp who, according to his card," . . . shot a hole-in-one at Montclair Country Club in 1980!"; and Phil Present, division vice-president with the brokerage services group of Automatic Data Processing Co. Then there is Tom Winner, senior vice-president of William Estey Co., who appears on his card in his softball uniform. "I've had requests for them from people who work with me," he says. "I've even autographed them."

And who knows? If the idea catches on, an autographed Tom Winner might someday be worth, say, an Adam Osborne and a Nolan Bushnell.