NOT REALLY MISSING IN ACTION- 1977 GLENN ADAMS

On the blog today we have a “not so missing” card that could almost be considered “missing” considering the amount of games this player played in during the 1976 season, outfielder Glenn Adams of the San Francisco Giants:

Adams did appear in 69 games in 1976, though only accumulating 75 plate appearances, thus the grey area between missing and not-so-missing, but hey, it’ll get you a card here on the blog either way!
Originally up for the first time in 1975 with 61 games, Adams hit .243 his second year under the Big League sun, with 18 hits in 74 official at-bats.
He would move on to the Minnesota Twins in 1977 and hit a very impressive .338 over 95 games, with 91 hits in 269 at-bats along with 49 runs batted in and 32 runs scored. Not bad at all!
He’d stay in Minnesota through the 1981 season before one last year in the Big Leagues with the Toronto Blue Jays in 1982 when he hit .258 in limited play, 30 games worth and 66 at-bats.
Overall, and I have to say I didn’t realize this even though I remember him well, Adams finished his Major League career with a very admirable .280 batting average over his eight-years, with 452 hits in 1617 at-bats, with 225 RBIs and 152 runs scored.
I just had to go look at his Minor League numbers and man this guy could rake!
Over his professional career he had seasons of .335, .352, and .330, hitting an overall .311 in his eight years of Minor League ball, including a .334 clip in Triple-A over four seasons!

 

NOT REALLY MISSING IN ACTION- 1973 BOB GEBHARD

On the blog today, we have a ‘not so missing” 1973 card for former Minnesota Twins pitcher Bob Gebhard, who appeared in 13 games during the 1972 season:

Gebhard, who made his Big League debut a season earlier with 17 appearances and a 1-2 record, went 0-1 in 1972, with a bloated 8.57 earned run average over 21 innings pitched.
He would spend all of 1973 in the Minor Leagues before moving on to the Montreal Expos, where he’d make it all the way back to a Major League mound with one last appearance, pitching two innings and giving up a run, not factoring in a decision.
He would play the 1975 season in the Minors for Montreal, putting in a decent season out of the bullpen, going 4-3 with a nice 2.67 ERA over 44 appearances, but retire right after that at the age of 32.
All told, in his brief three seasons in the Major Leagues, Gebhard finished with a 1-3 record over 31 games, with an ERA of 5.93 in 41 innings, all out of the bullpen as a reliever.

NOT REALLY MISSING IN ACTION- 1972 JIM FRENCH

Up on the blog today to start the new work week, a 1972 career-capping “not so missing” card for former catcher Jim French, who played the last of his Big League games in 1971 with the Washington Senators:

Now, yes he was never an official member of the Texas Rangers, and was released by Washington at the end of the 1971 season, but hey, I figured with this unique situation where a player finished his career while his team became another franchise during the immediate off-season, why not make up a card like this?
French played the entirety of his seven-year Major League career with the Senators, beginning in 1965 through the 1971 season when he only appeared in 14 games, hitting .146 with six hits in 41 at-bats over that limited rolse.
Never a full-time player, the most action he ever saw in one season was 69 games in 1970, with 63 games the season prior.
It seems he retired from professional ball as he has no Minor League play after 1971, thus finishing his career with a .196 batting average with 119 hits in 607 at-bats, spread out over 234 games, with five home runs, 53 runs scored and 51 runs batted in.

 

1975 IN-ACTION: MICKEY RIVERS

Haven’t added to my long-running “1975 In-Action” series in a while, so let’s go and add “Mick the Quick” Mickey Rivers to it today shall we:
Take a look:

Mickey was coming off his first full year in the Big Leagues, leading the American League with 11 triples in 1974 while batting .285 with 133 hits in 466 at-bats while stealing 30 bases.
1975 would see him lead the American League once again in triples, this time with 13, while also topping the Junior Circuit with 70 steals while hitting .284 on 175 hits in 616 at-bats.
Man, "Mick the Quick" was a player I loved when I first got seriously into baseball in 1976 or so. He was that New York Yankee with the speed and flash that my six-year-old mind latched on to back then.
He put together a nice 15-year career that saw him lead the league in stolen bases once and triples twice, while topping 200 hits in 1980 with the Rangers when he hit .333.
He even managed to retire from the game hitting .300 his final year in the big leagues, playing for Texas in 1984.
He'd finish with a .295 batting average with 1660 hits and 267 stolen bases, as well as those two World Championships in the Bronx in 1977 and 1978.

 

NICKNAMES OF THE 1970s- 1973 TOM HALL

Let’s go and give versatile pitcher Tom Hall, aka “The Blade”, a 1973 nickname card, adding to my long-running “Nicknames of the 1970s” thread started here many years ago:

Hall, who was as thin as a “blade of grass”, had himself quite a season in 1972 for the Cincinnati reds, going 10-1 for the National League champs, with a 2.61 ERA over 47 appearances, seven of them starts.
His career would play through the 1977 season, with seven games for the Western Division champ Kansas City Royals, finishing off a nice 10-year stint that saw him go 52-33 with an excellent 3.27 ERA and 797 K’s over 358 games and 852.2 innings.
That 1972 season would be considered his best when he went 10-1 with a 2.61 ERA and 134 strikeouts in 124.1 innings for the National League Champion Cincinnati Reds.
But his 1970 year would not be too far behind, when he went 11-6 with a 2.55 ERA and a career high 184 strikeouts over 155.1 innings and 52 games for the Minnesota Twins.
Not too shabby!

 

 

NOT REALLY MISSING IN ACTION- 1974 TOM LUNDSTEDT

Up on the blog today we have the third “not so missing” card on this blog for former catcher Tom Lundstedt, though he did appear on a multi-player rookie card in the 1974 set.
I just came across this nice image of him and figured “why not”?, thus closing out his brief three-year MLB career with three dedicated cards:

Lundstedt made his Big League debut in 1973 with four games, going 0-5 at the plate over the course of the last month of the season with the Chicago Cubs.
He collected the first three hits of his career in 1974, spread out over 32 at-bats and 22 games with the Cubs for an average of .094 along with a run scored.
Over the off-season he'd be traded to the Minnesota Twins for Mike Adams, and he'd go on to appear in 18 games, batting .107 with another three hits, this time over 28 at-bats, with two runs scored and an RBI while filling in behind the plate.
Turns out it'd be the last of his playing days, Majors OR even Minors, as I cannot find any other playing time for him according to Baseball_Reference after that 1975 activity.
Nevertheless, in his brief three year Major League career, Lundstedt played in 44 games, batting .092 with six hits in 65 at-bats, scoring three runs and driving in one.

 

MINOR LEAGUE DAYS- GAYLORD PERRY

Up on the blog today we have the great Gaylord Perry added to my long-running “Minor League Days” 1971 sub-set, celebrating the man’s fantastic professional career that spanned over four decades:

This image showing him as a Tacoma Giant was taken in the first couple of years of the 1960’s, before he went on to become a solid starter for San Francisco between 1962 and 1971.
Gaylord Perry for me growing up in the late-70’s/early-80s pre-teen was the stuff of legend since he was the first player I remember reaching 3000 strikeouts, which at the time made him only the THIRD player to do so behind Walter Johnson and Bob Gibson.
He was also (and I remember this vividly) the first pitcher to reach 300 wins since Early Wynn, which was a 20 year gap, the first pitcher to win a Cy Young Award in both leagues, which he did with the Indians in 1972 and the Padres in 1978.
That 1978 season saw him take home the award after a fantastic year that saw him go 21-6 with a 2.73 earned run average at the age of 39 after coming over from the Texas Rangers.
People may also forget that for a relatively brief moment he was the all-time strikeout king before a couple of guys by the name of Nolan Ryan and Steve Carlton caught up soon after.
He posted 5 20-win seasons, finished with 314 for his career, along with 53 shutouts and 3534 strikeouts over a 22-year Big League career, tossing 300+ innings six times.
Is it safe to say that he’s almost a forgotten all-time great?