Good day folks.
On the blog today we have a missing 1975
card for Rusty Torres, who appeared in 109 games for the Cleveland
Indians during the 1974 season yet was left out of the 1975 set by
Topps:
Torres hit .187 over 150 at-bats that
year, collecting 28 hits with 19 runs scored and 12 runs batted in for
the Tribe, playing all three outfield positions while also putting in
some time as a designated hitter.
His career began in 1971 as a
member of the New York Yankees, for whom he played parts of two seasons
before heading to Cleveland as part of the trade that got the Yanks
Graig Nettles in November of 1972.
He'd spend all of 1975 in
the Minors before making it back to the Big Leagues in 1976, now a
member of the California Angels, where he'd play in 1976 and 1977,
before putting in two years with the Chicago White Sox, and one final
year as a Kansas City Royal in 1980.
All told, he'd hit .212
over 655 career games between 1971 and 1980, scoring 159 runs and
driving in 126, with 35 homers, finishing his pro career with one season
in the Mexican League in 1982 for Monterrey.
Sadly, his life
outside of baseball was marked with serious criminal charges, including
sexual abuse of a minor in 2012, for which he was sentenced to three
years in prison.
