Saturday, February 24, 2018

THE 1978 BUDDY SCHULTZ, BUT WHY THE AIRBRUSHING?

Today I wanted to focus on the 1978 card for former St. Louis Cardinal’ pitcher Buddy Schultz, with its typical 1970’s Topps paint-job:


Nothing terribly out of the ordinary as far as airbrush jobs went for the era, however I never understood why it was even necessary since Schultz played with the Cardinals in 1977, appearing in 40 games with 37 of them out of the bullpen, pitching a total of 85.1 innings.
As a matter of fact he had a very nice season for St. Louis, going 6-1 with a 2.32 earned run average! So why wouldn’t Topps have an image of him suited up in the Cardinals uniform?
Odd.
As for Schultz, he would pitch five years in the Majors, appearing in 168 games with his only starts being the aforementioned three in 1977.
He’d finish his career with a nice 15-9 record, along with a 3.68 ERA over exactly 240 innings pitched, with 12 saves and 193 strikeouts.

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