EXPANDED LEAGUE LEADERS: 1975 A.L. RUNS BATTED IN

Next up in my ongoing "Expanded League Leaders" series is the 1975 A.L. Runs Batted In leader card featuring the top three RBI men of the 1974 season for the Junior Circuit:

 

We start off with the top RBI man, the Texas Rangers' Jeff Burroughs, former #1 overall pick and young stud, who paced the league with 118 "ribbies" in 1974.

Burroughs was still only 23 years of age by season's end, hitting 25 homers with a very nice .301 batting average to go with the RBIs all leading to him taking home the American League MVP Award and making his first All-Star team.

He would end up putting in a very nice 16-year Major League career, hitting 240 homers before he was done by the end of the 1984 season.

In second place with 103 RBIs is a man that is terribly overlooked these days, Oakland A's All-Star third baseman Sal bando, who topped 100 RBIs for the second and final time over his excellent 16-year career.

Bando would finish third in the MVP race for 1974, helping the A's to their third straight championship, hitting 22 homers and making his fourth All-Star team, this after coming in fourth in 1973 and second in 1972.

The man was so good yet gets forgotten these days when talking about 1970's baseball.

In third place with 99 RBIs for the 1974 season, another Oakland A's star, Joe Rudi, who finished second in the MVP race that season, the second time doing so in three years.

Rudi led the A.L. with 39 doubles, hitting .293 with 22 homers and taking home his first of three Gold Gloves while making his second All-Star team for the loaded A's offense.

Incredibly, as with the other two players featured today, he also put in exactly 16 seasons as a Major Leaguer, with three All-Star nods, three Gold Gloves and two second place MVP finishes to go with his three championship rings.

GIMMIE A DO-OVER: 1977 JOE RUDI

Time to go ahead and add Joe Rudi to my recent run of recreating the 1977 Oakland A's stars who fled Charlie Finley for greener pastures elsewhere:

 

As with Bando, Tenace, Campenaris, etc, Rudi headed for the hills and signed with the California Angels after a wonderful run with the Oakland A's beginning in 1967.

The outfielder first baseman was twice the runner-up for an A.L. MVP, in 1972 and in 1974, helping the juggernaut Oakland A's to three straight World Series crowns.

He led the league with 181 hits and nine triples in 1972 along with doubles (39) and total bases (287) in 1974 while also giving the A’s a flexible fielder that could play all three outfield positions as well as first base.
Such a solid player, he teamed up with the likes of Sal Bando and Gene Tenace that made the A’s much more than just superstars like Reggie Jackson and Jim “Catfish” Hunter.

Sadly however, as with the other Oakland players who signed elsewhere before the 1977 season, he didn't continue his star status with his new team, suffering injuries and playing only one full season out of his three with California, moving on to the Boston Red Sox in 1981 and back to Oakland for one last hurrah in 1982.

By the time Rudi retired, he finished up with a career .264 average, with 179 homers and 810 RBIs over 1547 games and 5556 at-bats playing for the A’s, California Angels and Boston Red Sox between 1967 and 1982.

GIMMIE A DO-OVER: 1973 JOE RUDI (NOT GENE TENACE)

OK, so today on the blog we have a long overdue “do-over”, a redone and CORRECTED 1973 card for former All-Star Oakland A’s outfielder Joe Rudi, who was given the disservice of having fellow All-Star teammate Gene Tenace pictured on his card.
So here’s a redone card with a nice shot from the 1972 World Series featured:

Rudi had two second-place MVP finished during his great run during the middle part of the decade, in 1972 and 1974, while also taking home three straight Gold Gloves between 1974 and 1976.
He led the league with 181 hits and nine triples in 1972 along with doubles (39) and total bases (287) in 1974 while also giving the A’s a flexible fielder that could play all three outfield positions as well as first base.
Such a solid player teamed up with others like Sal Bando and Gene Tenace that made the A’s much more than just superstars like Reggie Jackson and Jim “Catfish” Hunter.
By the time Rudi retired, he finished up with a career .264 average, with 179 homers and 810 RBIs over 1547 games and 5556 at-bats playing for the A’s, California Angels and Boston Red Sox between 1967 and 1982.
By the way, for those not familiar, here’s the original as-released card mentioned earlier:

Hilarious...

 

 

1975 IN-ACTION: JOE RUDI

Adding to my long-running 1975 “in-Action” thread, I post my Joe Rudi edition, one of the important cogs in the Oakland three-peat World Champion teams of the mid-70’s:

Rudi had two second-place MVP finished during his great run, in 1972 and 1974, while also taking home three straight Gold Gloves between 1974 and 1976.
He led the league with 181 hits and nine triples in 1972 along with doubles (39) and total bases (287) in 1974 while also giving the A’s a flexible fielder that could play all three outfield positions as well as first base.
Such a solid player teamed up with others like Sal Bando and Gene Tenace that made the A’s much more than just superstars like Reggie Jackson and Jim “Catfish” Hunter.
By the time Rudi retired, he finished up with a career .264 average, with 179 homers and 810 RBIs over 1547 games and 5556 at-bats playing for the A’s, California Angels and Boston Red Sox between 1967 and 1982.

MISSING IN ACTION- "IN ACTION": JOE RUDI

Here’s a “missing” in-action 1972 card for a guy who gets forgotten a bit in the baseball decade of the 1970’s, but was really a key figure on a big team, Joe Rudi of the Oakland A’s:

Rudi was an important cog in the machine that was the dynastic A’s team that put together three straight World Champion teams between 1972 and 1974, as his two second-place finishes show in 1972 and 1974.
Throw in three straight Gold Gloves from 1974-1976 and three all-star game nods, and you see why the guy should be remembered a bit more for his contributions during the decade.
He would lead the American League in hits and triples during the ‘72 season, with 181 and nine respectively, and would also pace the league in doubles and total bases two years later with 39 and 287.
A solid player through his 16-year career, he would finish after the 1982 season with a stint back in Oakland after four years in Anaheim and a year in Boston.
He would end up with a .264 average, 179 homers, 684 runs scored and 810 runs batted in, mainly during the “dead” 70’s hitting era.

ANOTHER AWESOME CARD FROM 1971: JOE RUDI

Here’s another one of those great in-game action cards from the 1971 Topps set: Joe Rudi:

What has always mystified me was that the 1971 set is chock-full of great action cards, yet the following year when Topps decided to run the “In-Action” sub-set we were left with some terrible photo choices.
Anyone know what was going on?
If you were to take some of the 1971 cards like Rudi, Thurman Munson, Lindy McDaniel, etc, you could have one kick-ass “In-Action” sub-set!
Anyway, as we all know Joe Rudi was on the cusp of a great run in Oakland, winning three consecutive World Championships between 1972 and 1974, getting named to three all-star teams, winning three Gold Gloves, and finishing second in Most Valuable Player voting twice, in 1972 and 1974.
As one of the early big name Free Agents, he moved on to the California Angels in 1977 where he’d spend four seasons before playing out his career with a year in Boston in 1981 and back to his original team, Oakland in his final year in 1982.
All told he’d hit .264 for his career, with 179 homers and 810 runs batted in over 1547 games.

1973 TOPPS JOE RUDI: A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY

Today we'll look at Joe Rudi's Topps card in the 1973 set.

It's actually not a bad looking card. Great shot of what seems to be a couple of A's players congratulating Rudi after a home run. We also have a great view of the crowd in the background on a bright and sunny day in Oakland, California.

Only problem is, it's not Joe Rudi being greeted at the plate as the card may lead you to believe, it's actually Fiore Gino Tennaci, A.K.A. Gene Tenace.

Topps had the wrong player portrayed on card #360. Now, I know we've all seen this before and since (Aurelio Rodriguez in 1969; Gary Pettis in 1985, Al Leiter in 1988), but this is the only card that I am aware of where the player photo used was an "action" shot. All the other cards that had the wrong guy were portrait poses.

Anyone know of another Topps card that used the wrong player on another person's card that was an action shot? Please let me know…

I couldn't identify the two other A's players in the shot, but I think the Indians catcher behind the A's players is Ray Fosse, ironically an A's player by the time this card came out.

Funny, but as I continue with this blog, I'm really appreciating the 1973 set more and more. It was never one of my favorites, but I'm only now seeing how it's really one of the most fun sets Topps produced in the decade.

That's Gino being greeted at the plate, not Joe Rudi.

AIRBRUSHING THE OAKLAND A'S AWAY IN 1977

The free-agent "boom", and the trades resulting from it, caused a ton of bad airbrushing in the '77 set league-wide. But I was drawn to an unusually large number of former teammates that were part of this group: former Oakland A's.
For any fans of the A's in the mid-70's, it must have been brutal watching the mass exodus of such an awesome three-peating dynasty pretty much all in one fell-swoop, either by trade or free-agency.
After Catfish Hunter and Reggie Jackson left before the 1975 and 1976 seasons respectively, the true dismantling occurred during the off-season between '76 and '77, when no less than SIX star players were wearing another teams uniform for opening day.
Because of the madness of all this player shuffling, Topps had their hands full with all of these former A's, having to airbrush their cards to stay up to date with the players new team depictions.
Of course, with an already shaky hand at the airbrushing game, the added rush of players to "fix" only added to the mess, and we were presented with some funny cards for the history books.
Check out some of the cards here:

The Rudi card was actually a great job of airbrushing. But just look at that Bando card! Hilarious. Looks like some bad decal of a cap was slapped on top of the original photo, and then colored in with crayon.
Even though he wasn't actually part of the dynasty A's teams, Don Baylor was on the team for the 1976 season, and his card is also a classic, with the Angels' logo not skewed correctly, giving us a twisted perspective only the Twilight Zone could have given us. Awesome!
Looking at all these guys, it truly drives home just how awesome those 1972-1974 A's teams were. Throw in Reggie and Catfish, and consider Vida Blue, Claudell Washington, Ken Holtzman, and even Blue Moon Odom, and you wonder what they could have done if they stayed together a bit longer.
Would have been great seeing this team grind it out against the "Big Red Machine" at THEIR peak just a couple years later in 1975-76.