Tuesday, September 17, 2013

MUSTARD YELLOW ALL OVER AN EMPTY STADIUM: 1973 FRED NORMAN

Wow! By looking at Fred Norman's 1973 Topps card (#32), you can pretty well see that San Diego Padres games in the early 1970's were not too popular an event to attend!
If you can manage to look past the classic mustard yellow uniforms the Padres sported back then, you can plainly see that there isn't one fan to be seen in the numerous seats behind the action!
According to "Baseball-Reference.com", the Padres total attendance in 1972 was 644,273, for an avererage of just over 8,000 people a game.
Well it seems that none of them sat along the third base line then.
Just crazy. Looks like a warm-up game...
As for Norman, his 1972 season had a bit of a quirk: of his nine wins that year (he was 9-11), six were by shutout! 
Luckily for him, he was traded during the 1973 season to the Cincinnati Reds, where he went on to be a part of the "Big Red Machine" and their two championships in 1975 and 1976.
He pitched for the Reds into the 1979 season before moving on to Montreal for a year before retiring with a 104-103 record.
Talk about your reversal of fortune!

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