Abner Powell was an early pioneer of baseball in New Orleans beginning in the late 1880s. He has been referred to as the “Father of New Orleans Baseball,” due to his efforts to stabilize the city’s professional team and the Southern League in which the team played. He became a part-owner of the local team and implemented innovations in the business management of the team. Over 130 years later, Powell is one of the old-time players included in a popular baseball card set issued in December 2025.

Following three seasons with Washington, Baltimore, and Cincinnati in the early major leagues, Powell joined the New Orleans Pelicans in the Southern League as a pitcher in 1887. (Yes, New Orleans, the baseball Pelicans existed long before the now basketball Pelicans came along.) He quickly became player-manager and was also involved in the operations of the club. He later acquired a controlling interest in the Pelicans franchise, while he was still playing and managing.

Powell popularized the Ladies’ Day concept in New Orleans, where once a week women could attend ballgames for free. He used tarpaulins, taken from the city’s shipping docks, to cover the baseball diamond on rainy days. He is credited with inventing the first “rain check,” where fans were issued a detachable stub on tickets for admission to a future game after a rainout occurred. These advances eventually became mainstream in the operation of professional baseball teams around the country.

Gene Gomes, great-grandson of Powell, is responsible for proposing the idea with baseball card manufacturer The Topps Company to produce Powell’s baseball card. Gomes, a member of Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) since 1981, came up with the idea when he was writing Powell’s biography in 2019 for SABR’s BioProject.

Gomes’s extensive research of his great-grandfather’s career triggered him to initiate contact with Topps to see if there was interest in developing Powell’s card as part of their annual Allen & Ginter issue. Powell did not have a baseball card produced during his player and manager days.

Allen & Ginter trading cards, featuring world cultures and naval flags, were the first full-color cards ever produced. Beginning in 1886, the tobacco company’s cards were inserted in cigarette packs as incentives, followed by inclusion of baseball players in 1887-1889.

Topps resurrected the Allen & Ginter brand in 2006, and it continues as popular collector issue today. The company adopted the nostalgic design of the early cards. The card images are a mixture of current MLB players, the game’s legendary players, as well as non-baseball persons. Variations of the base set, such as mini cards and parallel cards, are also produced by Topps.

Gomes’s quest for a Powell card took five years before it was finally realized. He made repeated calls into the Topps organization without luck. The pandemic put a damper on any real progress with advancing his proposal. He was eventually put in touch with Jeremy Fullerton, an executive within Fanatics, the company that acquired Topps. Fullerton’s involvement became the turning point for getting his idea on the table in December 2024.

Gomes was eventually asked to provide photos and background information about his great-grandfather’s career, so he knew his proposal was being considered. But he did not know until much later in 2025 that the card was coming to fruition.

Powell’s card, number 251 in the set, was finally produced as part of the 2025 Allen & Ginter set that was issued in December 2025. The reverse of his card contains his stats with the Washington Nationals.

It is obviously a thrill for Gomes to see his great-grandfather take his place with a card in the iconic Topps set, alongside current MLB superstars Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge.

“I never thought about quitting my pursuit,” Gomes says about his long ordeal. “It gave me a great feeling of enjoyment and personal satisfaction to finally see the card in print. It is a beautiful card.” He says it has been a pleasure sharing it with his family and friends. Gomes has collected all 350 cards in the base set, and he says he is well on his way to collecting over 20 variations Topps has produced.

Gomes’s story about Powell’s baseball card is featured in the February 2026 issue of Beckett Baseball magazine.