Friday, March 19, 2021

GIMMIE A DO-OVER: 1971 JOY FOY

On the blog today, a card entirely created because of a wonderful photo I stumbled upon,a re-done 1971 card for former infielder Joy Foy:

  

Originally Topps has a late-series card for Foy in their 1971 set showing him with his new team, the Washington Senators, for whom he was yet to play.

However, I wanted to use this image so I figured a nice redone card showing him with the Mets, who he played the 1970 season with, would still fly.
Definitely think it was the right choice! Nice image of him interacting with fans in the stands either before or after a game.
Foy came up to the Big League in 1966 with the Boston Red Sox and really had an underrated rookie year, scoring 97 runs while hitting 15 homers and driving in 63 with a .262 batting average.
Over the next two seasons he’d pretty much keep those numbers consistent, giving the Red Sox a very good young shortstop for the future.
However, left unprotected in the 1969 expansion draft, the Kansas City Royals picked him as the fourth overall pick. So it was straight to the “second division” for Foy, where he once again had a solid year, batting .262 with 37 stolen bases and 72 runs scored for the new Major League team.
Of course, he would then become a part of one of those lopsided trades in the early-70’s, as the New York Mets acquired him for a young outfielder named Amos Otis, giving the Royals a player who would be a mainstay in the outfield over the next decade, while Foy fizzled out, hitting only .236 in Queens during the 1970 season, before that last season for Washington.
It seems that Foy developed some problems during his tenure with the Mets, apparently even showing up to games high on marijuana, thus leaving the Mets no choice but to leave him unprotected once again, enabling the Senators to take one last chance on the young infielder to no avail, when he hit .234 in a limited role.

That turned out to be his last year in the Majors, spending all of 1972 in the Minors before calling it a career, finishing with a .248 batting average, with 615 hits, 355 runs scored and 291 RBIs over 716 games and 2484 at-bats, with 99 stolen bases.