I couldn’t think of an obvious Card of the Day today, so I used the Gallery’s “Wild Card” button to pick a random card. (Try it!) The result: this 1959 Topps CFL Bob MacLellan card. Perfect!
According to cflapedia.com (which I recommend visiting), MacLellan played center for McGill University in Montreal, then played for the CFL’s Montreal Alouettes from 1955 to 1960. He was inducted into the McGill Athletics Hall of Fame in 1999. His page on the McGill site says he starred in hockey as well as football, and that he earned a degree in dentistry in 1961. It also says he was “the Montreal Canadiens back-up goalie for visiting NHL teams.” I couldn’t find him on the Canadiens’ all-time roster, however, so he apparently never got into a game.
McGill is one of 88 players in the 1959 Topps CFL set. The 1959 CFL cards look just like their NFL counterparts, with their brightly colored backgrounds, team logos, and multi-colored player names. The only difference is that the text on the backs of the CFL cards is printed in both English and French, making the little blurbs about the players even littler.
As far as I know, this was MacLellan’s only appearance on a card. You can see the rest of the 1959 Topps CFL set in the Gallery.
