It wasn’t until years later that I found out for sure, and that it was Bobby Jones and NOT the former speedster that was staring out onto the field on that slab of cardboard released when I was eight-years old:
Literally decades later, with the advent of the wonderful World Wide Web, I finally got to see some correct images of what should have been on the card, putting to rest the little mystery that bugged me for so long:
Getting back to the actual card, it’s funny to see Topps did an airbrush job on a player that never actually played, or even SIGNED with the Mariners organization.
I can’t tell if Jones was in a California Angels uniform, the team he played for the previous season, or the Texas Rangers, for whom he played in 1974 and 1975.
From the back of his uni (or jacket?), it seems to point to the Angels but I can’t be sure.
Either way it was also fun the see that Jones put in a long 20-year career of professional baseball between 1967 and 1987, even playing two years in Japan in 1978/1979.
Thanks to these modern days of information at our fingertips it’s fun uncovering all these little facets of card collecting and players from my childhood!