1971 "BASEBALL'S GREATEST MOMENTS": CESAR TOVAR

Today on the blog we add Cesar Tovar to the 1971 Topps "Baseball's Greatest Moments" set, one of the greatest oddball sets ever made, celebrating his unique game where he played all nine positions:

On September 22nd of 1968, Tovar became the second Major League player ever (after Bert Campaneris of the Kansas City Athletics) to play all nine positions in one Big League game, doing so against the Oakland A's, ironically enough starting the game as a pitcher and facing Campaneris, who was the lead-off batter!

As a matter of fact, in his one-inning stint as a pitcher, Tovar even fanned Reggie Jackson, before moving on to the other eight positions as the game wore on.

Since then, Campaneris and Tovar have been joined in the "all-nine-position" club by Scott Sheldon (2000), Shane Halter (2000) and Andrew Romine (2017), still a very exclusive club considering the game's long and illustrious history!

As for Tovar and his career, over his 12-year career he batted a very respectable .278 considering the “modern-dead ball era” he played in, with 1546 hits over 5569 at-bats in 1488 games, with 834 runs scored and 435 RBI’s and 226 stolen bases.

With guys like Tony Oliva, Rod Carew and Harmon Killebrew in the same line-up, it made for some good offense in their prime.

 

1976 PROJECT- CESAR TOVAR (RE-DO)

As part of my ongoing “1976 Project” for Reader Jim, we went and created a Texas Ranger version of his 1976 card since he played the bulk of the 1975 season with them before moving on to the Oakland A’s at the end of the year, here’s what I came up with:

Tovar was bought by Oakland on August 31, 1975 for their stretch run, and ended up playing with them through the 1976 season before moving on to the Yankees for the final 13 games of his career that year.

A solid player during his years with the team he came up with, the Minnesota Twins between 1965 1972, Tovar once led the American League in hits with 204 in 1971, doubles and triples in the same season in 1970 and even garnered MVP consideration five years in a row between 1967 to 1971.

In his 12-year career he batted a very respectable .278 considering the “modern-dead ball era” he played in, with 1546 hits over 5569 at-bats in 1488 games, with 834 runs scored and 435 RBI’s and 226 stolen bases.

With guys like Tony Oliva, Rod Carew and Harmon Killebrew in the same line-up, it made for some good offense in their prime.