Wednesday, July 26, 2017

NEGATIVE SPOTLIGHT- 1974 NELSON BRILES "TRADED" CARD

I love coming across the original painted negatives Topps used on cards in the 1970’s, and this one is no different: Nelson Briles’ “traded” photo used in the 1974 sub-set:


After three very nice seasons with the Pittsburgh Pirates between 1971 and 1973, Briles was traded over to the Kansas City Royals along with Fernando Gonzalez for Ed Kirkpatrick and Kurt Bevacqua in December.
He’d pitch there for a couple of years before moving on to the Texas Rangers in 1976 (which gave us an awesome airbrush job for him in that set!), before winding down his MLB career in 1978 with the Baltimore Orioles.
He pitched for 14-years in the big leagues, ending up at 129-112 with a nice 3.44 earned run average over 342 games and 2111.2 innings pitched, including two excellent seasons back-to-back in 1967 and 1968 when he posted win totals of 14 and 19 respectively with sub-3.00 E.R.A.’s, including a sparkling 2.43 in ‘67 as part of the World Champion squad that also had Bob Gibson anchoring the pitching staff.
I like how Topps used the GIANT “traded” banner to help in the airbrushing endeavors, only modifying what was needed to get the card done.

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