Well well.
In light of recent events, specifically Joe Torre becoming a member
of the Baseball Hall of Fame, seems there's a "new" card that falls
into the "Hall of Fame Leader Cards" from the 1970's, card # 87 from the
1972 Topps set, N.L. R.B.I. Leaders".
Now that Torre is in the Hall, we see that he was featured on the
card along with other Hall of Famers Willie Stargell and Hank Aaron.
And though technically Torre was inducted as a manager, he did
fashion an excellent career as a player over the course of 18 years,
playing for the Braves, Cardinals and Mets.
For this card, we see Torre lead the National league in ribbies
during his M.V.P. 1971 season with a nice total of 137, followed by
Stargell's 125 and Aaron's 118.
Nice bit of National League power right here. 1482 homers and 5022 runs batted in between them!
While Torre had to wait until this year for Hall induction, Aaron
was voted in almost unanimously in 1982, with Stargell joining him in
1988.
A little oddity here to mention: seems that Stargell's image on the
leader-card is a closely cropped version of the image on his 1970
baseball card. Wonder why?
