Up on the blog today, a 1974 "not really missing in action" card for former outfielder and pinch-hitter Vic Davalillo, whose career was in flux when this card would have seen the light of day:
Davalillo,
a former All-Star and Gold Glove winning outfielder in the mid-60's,
split the 1973 season between the Pittsburgh Pirates and Oakland A's,
appearing in 97 games and hitting only .184.
This was after a
1972 season that saw him hit .318 over 117 games for the Pirates, which
was more in line with his steady .280-.300 hitting in the first 11 years
of his career.
Turns out he would spend the next three
seasons playing in the Mexican League before coming back in 1977 with
the Los Angeles Dodgers,where he'd play parts of the next four seasons.
An
interesting player that gets overlooked these days, as I stated earlier
he was an All-Star and Gold Glover in 1964 with the Cleveland Indians,
his first full season in the Big Leagues, and would be a steady bat
throughout his career, finishing up with a .279 average over 16 years,
with 1122 hits in 4017 at-bats.
In the end with the Dodgers, he was primarily a pinch-hitter, hitting a combined .312 in 1977 and 1978 for the N.L. champs.
I'll
always remember him as one of those players born in the 1930's when I
was a kid buying 1979 cards at the age of 10. Not many of them around at
that point.
Funny the little things you remember with collecting when you get older.