Sure,
we have seen custom fantasy cards created for Dave Kingman’s crazy 1977
season created before, even San Diego Padre editions.
But I had to create and add them to my own collection of customs, so here goes:
I plan on creating four different 1978’s for the former slugger, one for
each of the teams he played for that 1977 Summer when he played for
teams in each division of both leagues. Just nuts.
Kingman was coming off a 1976 season that saw him miss his first home
run title by one when he slammed 37 homers for the New York Mets, just
behind Philadelphia Phillies slugging titan Mike Schmidt.
Nevertheless, the Mets were about to clean house so to speak when they’d
trade Kingman to the Padres, only to have the California Angels select
Kingman off waivers some three months later, then to have the Angels
trade Kingman to the New York Yankees nine days later for the September
stretch run.
Throughout all of that, Kingman put in a decent year with all the havoc,
hitting 26 homers and driving in 78 runs, hitting .221 over 132 games
and 439 at-bats.
Of course, he’d find himself with the Chicago Cubs in 1978, on this way
to hitting 48 homers in 1979 for his first home run title, then back to
the Mets for three more seasons including his second homer title in 1982
with 37, before finishing up his career with three straight 30+ homer
seasons with the Oakland A’s before retiring abruptly after a 35 homer
campaign in 1986.
I was always fascinated with the three straight 30+ homer seasons
followed by a sudden retirement, as I thought it was bad-ass of him to
have done that when he clearly had some years left in his career,
possibly en route to 500.
But as it was, he left the game with 442 homers, with the aforementioned
two home run titles and a wacky 1977 season that made him the only
player to ever play in all four divisions over the course of one year.