How
many of you out there were taken for a loop when you pulled a 1978
Larry Hisle card out of a pack to immediately notice the missing
baseball seams on the position holder?!
I remember it got my attention to the point that for years I never realized that the image of the slugger was airbrushed.
Take a look:
Not a bad airbrush job!
Hisle, who was the reigning American League RBI champ while a member of
the Minnesota Twins in 1977, found himself as a Brewer after being
granted Free Agency in the early days of the practice, and had an
excellent season with 34 homers and 115 runs batted in along with a .290
batting average and 96 runs scored.
However, sadly for him AND the Brewers, that would be the last solid
season he’d have, playing in only 26 games the following year due to
injury, and going on to play in only 53 more games over the next three
years before retiring in 1982.
Over the course of his 14-year career, the 234 runs batted in he had in
1977/78 would represent about a third of his career mark of 674.
Now, if we could only know what happened to those seams on the baseball!