Matthews just finished his first season with the Atlanta Braves when this card would have come out, after playing the first five years of his Major League career with the San Francisco Giants, for whom he brought home a 1973 NL Rookie of the Year Award.
He would go on to play through the 1987 season playing pretty much equally for the Giants, Braves, Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago Cubs, with a short 45-game stint in Seattle at the very end, hitting a very nice .281 over his career with 234 homers and just under 1000 runs batted in.
In 1983 while with the “Wheez Kids” of Philly, he would help them reach the World Series with an MVP performance in the NL Championship Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers when he slammed three homers in four games with eight RBIs.
In 1984 he’d finish fifth in the NL MVP race when he led the league in both walks and on-base-percentage, helping the Cubs reach the post-season for the first time since 1945 before losing to the San Diego padres in the Championship Series.
