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.