Here's a nifty league leader card from 1971 that has THREE
prominent Hall of Famers: the National League Home Run Leaders card
(#66).
Beautiful!
Johnny Bench, Billy Williams and Tony Perez.
58 years of star baseball between them, amassing 7491 hits, 1194 home runs and 4503 runs batted in.
While Perez and Bench were powering the pre-"Big Red Machine" at
this point, Williams was clubbing his way into legendary status on the
North side of Chicago with the Cubs.
(Un)funny enough for Billy Williams, he would finish second in Most
Valuable Player voting BOTH in 1970 and 1972, losing out tho Bench both
times.
Even funnier regarding this card: just as we saw on the previous
"Hall of Fame Leader Card" in my last post for this thread, here we have
the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place finishers in the stat being represented
being the same as the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place finishers
in the M.V.P. voting.
Perez ended up in third place (his highest finish during his career) in 1970, behind Bench and Williams.
All three of these players were at the height of their careers
here, with Williams an established veteran, Bench the "new superstar on
the block" and Perez somewhere in between.
I've always been a big fan of those 1971 league leader cards...
