Kelley, who was ironically given a 1971 card though he last pitched in the Majors in 1967 for the Cleveland Indians, appeared in 27 games for Atlanta in 1972, going 5-7 with a 4.56 earned run average over 116.1 innings of work.
Of those 27 appearances, 14 were starts, and he completed two of them with one being a shutout, along with 59 strikeouts.
That amount of action certainly seems like enough to warrant a card in the ‘73 set don’t you think?
Anyway, once the 1973 season started, Kelley would end up only appearing in seven games for the Braves, going 0-1 over 12.2 innings, which would end up being the last appearances of his Big League career.
His finest season in the Big Leagues was easily 1971 when he made his return to the Majors, going 9-5 with a nice 2.96 ERA over 28 appearances after toiling in the Minors really since 1967.
When Topps gave him that 1971 card in their set, he pitched a total of ONE inning since the end of the 1966 season, and I wrote about it was back on this blog in August of 2013:
http://whentoppshadballs.
