I always felt that the 1974 and 1976 cards of Oakland A's players were so beautifully colorful.
A perfect marriage between the card design and the Oakland uniforms
made the complete made the composition of so many of them perfect.
Here's one of them, the 1974 Ken Holtzman card (#180):
Man.
Doesn't it always look like the most sunny day in world history with these Oakland cards?!
Look at the colors flying off of there! Beautiful…
And if I'm not mistaken, that should be none other than Reggie
Jackson out there in the outfield. I'm not 100%, but I think I even read
that somewhere.
Look at some of the other Oakland cards from the set that year:
Rollie Fingers, Reggie Jackson, Darrell Knowles, Paul Lindblad and Jim
Hunter.
Just awesome in-game action shots with green and yellow all over the place!
Very nice stuff. I've always been a sucker for cards that have design and photo blended together so perfectly!
Ken Holtzman was definitely a somewhat underrated starter from the
1970's, as he posted a decent career spanning 15 years, pitching for no
less than five championship teams (1972-74 A's and 1977-78 Yankees).
Six times he won 17 or more games in a season, topping out with 21 wins in 1973 for Oakland.
He also had a 9-0 season with the Chicago Cubs in 1967, a year
which had him serving in the National Guard, which only allowed him to
play on weekends.
He also threw two no-hitters in his career, both while pitching for the Cubs.
In 1969 he no-hit the Atlanta Braves, eventual Western Division
champs, and two years later at Riverfront Stadium, the guy threw a
no-hitter against the Cincinnati Reds, defending National League
champs!
All told he ended up with a 174-150 record to go along with a 3.49 E.R.A. and 1601 K's.
A bit of a side-note on Holtzman: oddly enough he appears as a
Sporting News All-Star selection in the 1968 Topps set, even though he
wasn't even named to the National league team in 1967.
Seems the Sporting News selected him based on his 9-0 record, even
though he only managed the twelve starts I mentioned earlier for the
entire year.
