Well, after almost six months of seeing a weekly post regarding my
imagined sub-set, "1975 Topps Cy Young Award Winners: 1951-1974", we
have finally come to the last post, the 1974 winners: Jim palmer and
Mike Marshall.
Take a look at my card design:
As with my 1972 post, I had to first create a new card for Marshall
(Like Steve Carlton in '72), since his regular 1974 card had him as a
Montreal Expo.
So I designed a new card showing Marshall as a Dodger, for whom he went on to win the award with in 1974.
Take a close-up look at my redesigned 1974 Mike Marshall card:
And for those who forgot what the original looked like, here you go:
Marshall came to Los Angeles and just put in a season for the ages,
as he appeared in a (still) Major League record 106 games, all out of
the 'pen, leading the league with 21 saves and 83 games finished.
The man posted 208.1 innings pitched IN RELIEF! Just incredible!
For the season he posted a record of 15-12, with a 2.42 earned run
average and 143 strikeouts, not only giving him a Cy Young Award, but a
third place finish for Most Valuable Player as well.
Over in the American League, it was a tremendous season for Oakland A's starter Jim "Catfish" Hunter.
After finishing in the top-5 for the award the previous two years,
he took it home in 1974 by posting a 25-12 record along with a 2.49
E.R.A.
The wins and earned run average led the Junior Circuit, and he also
led the Oakland A's to their third consecutive World Championship,
beating the Los Angeles Dodgers and cementing their place as one of the
powerful dynasty's in baseball history.
It was the fourth of five consecutive 20-win seasons for "Catfish",
his last coming the following year in his first campaign with the New
York Yankees.
Well, this was one heck of a thread. Fun to design the cards and
write up some of the original information I gathered from the SABR
article dating back to 1993 regarding "What if" Cy Young winners between
1951 and 1966.
Since John Hogan and his blog "Cards That Never Were" already did
such an amazing job with this same idea put to Rookies of the Year, I'll
have to scrap that idea and perhaps apply it to something else.
We shall see what I can come up with…maybe World Champions?
Keep an eye out…
