Saturday, November 18, 2017

AN INTERESTING PHOTO SPOTLIGHT- 1978 RORIC HARRISON

Today I wanted to look at this Topps airbrush job for former pitcher Roric Harrison on his 1978 card, which also has a lot to scratch your head about as far as why Topps ever went to this much trouble for:

As releases 1978 Topps card
Airbrushed image used

You can clearly see Harrison in a St. Louis Cardinals jersey that was cropped just so to have him on his 1978 card as a Detroit Tiger.
Funny thing is Harrison never ended up playing for the Tigers, getting released before the season even started.
On top of that, at the time this card came out he hadn’t even been on a Major League mound since the 1975 season when he last played for the Cleveland Indians.
So where do the Cardinals fit into all this?
Harrison bounced around a lot during his five-year career, especially between Big League stops in 1975 and 1978 when he played the last nine games of his career, with the Minnesota Twins.
From the beginning of 1975 to 1978, he was a member of no less than six teams, though actually playing for only three of them (Braves, Indians and Twins).
In between, he signed with the Tigers, the Pirates and Cardinals, with whom he never played.
Amazing that Topps did all this for a guy who hadn’t played a Major League game in three seasons, and was bouncing around so much.
I wonder why the need to get him into the set when guys like Bill Melton and Carlos May were left out?
Anyway, Harrison did actually make it back to the Majors in 1978, but as I stated before as a member of the Minnesota Twins, where he went 0-1 with a 7.50 earned run average over nine games and 12 innings pitched.
Thus would end his career, with a record of 30-35, with a 4.24 E.R.A., 10 saves and 319 strikeouts in exactly 590 innings pitched.

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