Up on the blog today, thought it'd be fun to finally go ahead a re-do his 1971 Topps card, which originally showed him airbrushed into a Montreal Expos uni:
Of
course by now we all know that Marshall was a player who gave Topps
fits by not allowing them to photograph him. Yet apparently Topps did
have rights to issue a card of him, so they would keep recycling images
of him from his Detroit Tigers days.
1971 was really the beginning of his incredible run as a
reliever over the next few years, culminating with a Cy Young Award in
1974 with the Dodgers when he appeared in a (still) Major League record
106 games, all in relief.
In those 106 games he went 15-12 with a 2.42 earned run average, 21 saves and 143 strikeouts in 208.1 innings of work!
Incredible…
Later in the decade he had a couple more great years with the Twins
in 1978 and 1979, finding his
groove again, putting in two seasons of Cy Young caliber relief work
saving 53 games and appearing in 144 games between 1978 and 1979.
By the way, thanks to Marshall’s medical background, having multiple degrees in
medicine, he’s also remembered for allegedly being the person suggesting
to teammate Tommy John to undergo this radically new surgery when Tommy
John’s career was seemingly over.Of course, John did so and eventually the surgery would end up being so associated with him that it took on his name, “Tommy John Surgery”, and extending John's baseball career an astounding 14 years!
