Saturday, August 26, 2017

1977 MARINERS REDONE- KURT BEVACQUA

Today we look at a great card, the 1977 Kurt Bevacqua, which is an airbrushed image so Topps could show him, as all others in this thread, as members of the new clubs in town, the Seattle Mariners (or Toronto Blue Jays):


Interesting thing is, Bevacqua would end up never playing an inning of ball for the Mariners, getting released by the team before the season even started after being purchased from the Milwaukee Brewers just a few months earlier.
Nevertheless, Topps managed to get some “real” images of him in a Mariners uni before he was let go, so I re-did the original, so here you go:

Bevacqua managed to sigh with a new team less than a month after being released by Seattle, the Texas Rangers, where he’d play for the next couple of seasons before moving on to the San Diego Padres in 1979.
He’d be on the move once again in 1980, getting traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates for, among others, the ever wonderfully-named Rick Lancellotti, before making it back to the Padres in 1982.
Of course, that last stint in the Majors, with the Padres from 1982 through 1985 would give him his the most memorable moment in the Majors (well unless you consider that sweet 1976 Topps bubble-blowing card the peak of his career), when he hit a three-run home run in Game Two of the 1984 World Series against the eventual World Champion Detroit Tigers, giving the Padres their only win in the series.
Overall, he’d end up playing 15-years in the Majors, mainly as a platoon or part-time player, batting .236 over 970 games with 499 hits over 2117 at-bats for six teams.