Not a bad job here by the Topps artists! Once they saturated the image in production it really came out well.
Bonham spent the first seven seasons of his Big League career with the Chicago Cubs, and though you may think leading the league with 22 losses in 1974 is a terrible thing, you’d be surprised to see that besides the losses, the campaign was perhaps his best season of his 10-year career!
He posted a 3.83 earned run average over 36 starts, with ten complete games, two shutouts and 191 strikeouts over 242.2 innings pitched.
Obviously being a pitcher on a hard-luck team leaves you snake-bitten (unless your name is Fergie Jenkins!), but Bonham did follow up that year with a 13-15 season in 1975, though with an ERA almost a run higher at 4.71.
He’d have a nice first year with the Reds, going 11-5 with a 3.53 ERA over 23 appearances, all starts, and would go 9-7 and 2-1 over the last two years of his career, finishing up with a record of 75-83 along with an ERA of 4.01 over 300 appearances and 1487.1 innings between 1971 and 1980.
