THE WHOLE NINE: SERIES 2- MISSING IN ACTION: 1981 MINNIE MINOSO

On the blog today, we have my "not really missing" 1981 card for Minnie Minoso, from my recent custom "Whole Nine: Series 2" set released a few months ago:

I'm so happy that Minoso is finally a Hall of Famer, and I always felt the stunts in 1976 and 1980 may have even hurt his chances of getting into Cooperstown.
From 1951 to 1961 he had a wonderful Major League career, leading the league in stolen bases three times, triples three times, and hits and doubles once each, while also driving in over 100 runs four times and topping 20 homers four times.
Eight times in that span he would top a .300 batting average, and in 1951 many consider him the true American League Rookie of the Year when he hit .326 split between the Cleveland Indians and Chicago White Sox, while topping the league in triples with 14 and stolen bases with 31.
Along the way he was named to seven All-Star games, winning three Gold Gloves as well, funny enough finishing fourth in the A.L. MVP race four times.
Of course, 12 years after his last playing days, in 1976, he ended up going 1-for-8 at the plate as a 50 year-old, then coming back in 1980 at the age of 54 and going hitless in two at-bats.
Nevertheless, Minoso finished his career with a .298 average, with 1963 hits over 6579 at-bats, along with 186 homers and 205 stolen bases while also topping 1000 runs scored and RBIs, 1136 & 1023 respectively.

If only he didn't have to wait until his age 27 season to show the ENTIRE country what he could do on a ball field.

WTHBALLS CUSTOM SET SPOTLIGHT: 1890 "BASEBALL CHAMPIONS" PUD GALVIN

Time to showcase my custom "19th Century Base Ball Champions" card for the "Little Steam Engine", Hall of Fame pitcher Pud Galvin, from my custom set released in 2018:

Over the course of his spectacular 15 year professional career, Galvin produced 365 wins, with 10 20-win campaigns, which included two straight 46-win campaigns in 1883 and 1884 with the Buffalo Bisons.

In those two seasons, Galvin started 147 games and completed 143 of them. Read that again! 143 complete games in two years, with a total of 1292.2 innings of work! Just astounding.

When he retired after the 1892 season, he was at the top or near top of every pitching mark in baseball's young history, winning 365 games, tossing 57 shutouts, completing 646 while throwing 6003 innings, with a 2.85 earned run average.

Just a powerhouse of a pitcher in the game's early years, with the end result a spot in Cooperstown when he was inducted as a player by the Veterans Committee in 1965.

Of special note for all uber-baseball history geeks out there: it seems that it was recently discovered that he pitched in the National Association before his Major League days, appearing in eight games for St. Louis in 1875 as an 18-year-old, going 4-2 with a league-leading 1.16 ERA, completing all seven of his starts with a save thrown in. I do not recall this at all until seeing it recently, and I promise you I've been a fan of National Association history since the early-80s.

Baseball history STILL evolving with nuggets like this some 150 years later! Fantastic!