Time
to go and give former National league Most Valuable Player George
Foster a “Dedicated Rookie” card in the 1971 Topps set, a set that saw
him on a multi-player rookie card:
Foster had a few call-ups with the Giants before they traded him to the
Reds and help set a course of baseball history that we remember as the
“Big Red Machine” Cincinnati Reds.
It turned out to be one whopper of a trade for the Reds, as they gave up
Frank Duffy and Vern Geishert to get a guy who’d go on to slam 20+
homers in a season seven times, including his monster season of 1977
when he hit 52, becoming the first player since Willie Mays in 1965 to
do so.
As a matter of fact between 1966 and 1989 Foster’s 52 homers were the only time a player reached that number.
For his efforts in 1977 with those taters, his .320 batting average, and
league-leading 124 runs scored and 149 runs batted in, he took home the
MVP and was voted as a starter for the all-star team.
He would lead the league in homers again in 1978 with 40, along with
RBI’s with 120 (his third year in a row doing so), and go on to start in
three more all-star teams before becoming the first $2 million dollar
man in baseball when he signed with the New York Mets before the 1982
season.
By the time he retired at the end of the 1986 after 15 games with the
Chicago White Sox, he finished with 348 homers, 1239 runs batted in and
986 runs scored along with a .274 average and just under 2000 hits with
1925.