I was recently asked by one of the blog readers to
create a "dedicated" 1970 card for tragic figure Miguel Fuentes, the
young pitcher for the Seattle Pilots that was killed during the
off-season between 1969 and 1970 after making his MLB debut with the
Seattle Pilots.
Thought I'd share it here with you all:
Back
in November of 2013 here on the blog, I turned his one Topps card, a
split rookie card in the 1970 set, into a "In Memoriam" card, but my
buddy Rich found this image of him and hoped I'd create a dedicated solo
card.
Here's the original write-up on Fuentes from way back when:
"The last player to throw a pitch for the short-lived Seattle Pilots
franchise was a young 23 year old from Puerto Rico named Miguel Fuentes.
Called up in September of 1969, he managed to get into a few of the last
games played by the Pilots, as no one knew that the franchise
wouldn't make it out of Spring training the following year.
They abruptly
moved to Milwaukee and became the Brewers just five days before opening day, 1970.
Sadly, no one was to also know that Fuentes would never see a game as a
Brewer, or a Major Leaguer for that matter, because of tragedy.
During the off-season back home in Puerto Rico, Fuentes was playing
for Caguas in the Puerto Rican Winter League.
While there, on January 29th, he was involved in a bar fight, where he was shot and killed.
With cards already in production, what was to be his rookie card was
issued along with the rest of Topps' 1970 set, showing Fuentes along
with
another Seattle pitching prospect, Dick Baney.
Sad to see a player who was considered one of the top prospects in that organization cut down at such a young age.
All told, Fuentes appeared in eight games for the Pilots, good for 26 innings. His final record was 1-3 with a 5.19 E.R.A.
Sadly it seems the 1970's had an inordinate amount of young players passing away during their playing days.
As usual I've added the memoriam stripe along the bottom of his photo, as I have done with the other subjects of this thread."
