Let's whip up a 1977 card for Oscar Gamble as a Chicago White Sox player for my newest entry in my "traded" thread:
Topps had him (understandably so) as a New York Yankees player, since he wasn't traded to the White Sox until April of '77.
As it turned out, 1977 would be the best year of Gamble's solid 17-year career, mainly as a power-bat off the bench.
In only 408 at-bats that season, Gamble powered 31 homers to go
with 83 runs batted in with a nice .297 batting average in his only
season in the South Side.
As a matter of fact, I never realized that during his entire
career, Gamble only had ONE season where he topped 500 plate
appearances, and that was in 1974 while playing for the Indians (he had
508).
In 4502 career at-bats, Gamble hit 200 homers. Not bad when you think about it!
After his lone season in Chicago, Gamble would take his bat to San
Diego, where he'd play for the Padres for a year, then on to Texas for
part of the 1979 season before he made it back to the Bronx.
Once back he'd play for the Yanks until 1984, before playing out his career with the White Sox in 1985.
I'll always remember Gamble as a Yankee at the tail-end of his
career. He always seemed to hit a homer when he came up, and was always a
fun guy to watch play. A true character.
Always aware of his numbers, he'd frequently talk about his "home
run ratio", and years later Jim Kaat, while broadcasting games on the
YES channel, would always bring that up when some current player was
hitting home runs at nice pace.
