Just for fun today on the blog, I finally went and created a 1977 variation card for Hall of Famer Willie McCovey celebrating his brief time as an Oakland A's player:
McCovey
spent only 11 games with Oakland at the tail end of 1976, hitting .208
after starting the year with the San Diego Padres, for whom he played
since 1974.
In
1977 he'd be back where it all started, San Francisco, where he would
finish his brilliant Big League tenure, playing through to 1980.
McCovey was beginning to enter the twilight of his Hall of Fame career which spanned 22 seasons between 1959 and 1980.
Over that time he took home a Rookie of the Year when he burst onto the Major League scene with a .354 average and 13 homers in 52 games in 1959, an MVP in 1969 when he led the league with 45 homers, 126 runs batted in, a .453 OBP and a .612 slugging percentage, while getting six All-Star nods.
By the time he hung them up for good, he finished with 521 homers, 1555 RBIs, 1229 runs scored and 2211 hits playing for the San Francisco Giants, San Diego Padres, and a brief 11-game stretch with the Oakland A’s at the end of the 1976 season.
In 1986, in his 1st year of eligibility, he was voted into the Hall with 81.4% of the vote, an easy first-try inductee for the man from Mobile, Alabama.
Over that time he took home a Rookie of the Year when he burst onto the Major League scene with a .354 average and 13 homers in 52 games in 1959, an MVP in 1969 when he led the league with 45 homers, 126 runs batted in, a .453 OBP and a .612 slugging percentage, while getting six All-Star nods.
By the time he hung them up for good, he finished with 521 homers, 1555 RBIs, 1229 runs scored and 2211 hits playing for the San Francisco Giants, San Diego Padres, and a brief 11-game stretch with the Oakland A’s at the end of the 1976 season.
In 1986, in his 1st year of eligibility, he was voted into the Hall with 81.4% of the vote, an easy first-try inductee for the man from Mobile, Alabama.