NOT REALLY MISSING IN ACTION -1974 MIKE THOMPSON

Merry Christmas everyone!!! And may 2018 be a banner year for all of us!!!
Here’s a “not so missing” 1974 card for a guy who pitched a total of four innings the year before, spread over two appearances, Mike Thompson:

Thompson was back in the Major Leagues after spending all of 1972 in the Minor Leagues, not factoring in a decision in that brief action for St. Louis.
In 1971 he had his first taste of the Majors, going 1-6 for the Washington Senators with a 4.86 earned run average.
He would go on to split the 1974 season between St. Louis and the Atlanta Braves, posting a record of 0-3 before finishing up his four year career in 1975 going 0-6 for Atlanta.
All told the numbers weren’t pretty, finishing with a career 1-15 record over 54 appearances and 164.2 innings pitched, with a 4.86 E.R.A.

MISSING IN ACTION- 1972 MIKE THOMPSON

Here’s a fun card to create, a “missing” 1972 card for a guy with somewhat of a unique card history, as well as career, though NOT for all the right reasons, Mike Thompson of the Washington Senators/Texas Rangers:

I played around a bit and took a photo of Thompson while still donning the Senators uni, and photoshopped him into a Texas uni.
As you know the Rangers players that year were airbrushed into a blank red cap, or had images of them that conveniently had any noticeable team insignia not visible (think Jeff Burroughs).
If you look at Thompson’s 1973 card you’ll see almost an exact same pose between the two, making it easy for me to use some of the ’73 pic on this ’72 card.
As for Thompson, the fact that he HAD a 1973 card was odd since he didn’t even play in 1972.
So then why not a 1972 card since he appeared in 16 games for Washington in 1971, where he posted a 1-6 record along with a 4.86 earned run average over 66.2 innings?
Sadly for him, that one win in 1971 would be the only win of his brief four-year career, as he would end up at 1-15 with a 4.86 ERA playing for the Senators/Rangers, St. Louis Cardinals and Atlanta Braves.
I profiled the fact that he did get a card in the 1976 set after appearing in 16 games for Atlanta, with a woeful 0-6 record and 4.70 ERA, making for one of the rougher set of statistics on the back of ANY card.

NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN- 1976 MIKE THOMPSON AND HIS 1-15 CAREER RECORD

I've been meaning to write a profile about this card for some time now.
Besides the fact that it features a player that never actually played in the Majors again by the time this card came out, a BIG interest of mine as far as cards go, it's also a player that ended his career with a 1-15 record, with that one win coming in 1971!
Five years before this card was issued, Mike Thompson came up in his rookie year for the Washington Senators and appeared in 16 games with 12 of them being starts.
He finished with a 1-6 record over 66 innings, sporting a 4.86 E.R.A. for a team that went 63-96 for manager and all-time legend Ted Williams.
In 1972 he spent the year in Denver for the franchise's (now the Texas Rangers) Triple-A team, going 6-8 with a 4.10 E.R.A. over 112 innings in 20 games. He never got called up to the Majors, and would find himself traded the following Spring to St. Louis for a player to be named later.
Oddly enough, the fact that Thompson didn't appear in the Majors was good enough for Topps, as they issued a card for him in their 1973 set, which I'll profile later on.
Sadly his time with St. Louis wouldn't offer him much more as far as big league action, as he only got into 2 games in 1973, good for four innings with no decisions.
Over the course of the following two seasons in 1974 and 1975, Thompson would split the time between St. Louis and the Atlanta Braves, who bought him in September of '74.
In those two seasons he got into 36 games, 15 of them starts, but came up on the wrong side of every single decision he had, going 0-9.
So by the time the card you see below was issued in 1976 (#536), he was at a career 1-15 record over five years for three teams, 0-9 of that record the past four years, 0-6 of THAT the previous year, yet Topps went ahead and included him in their awesome 1976 set.
Go figure.

At the time this card was issued, he hadn't tasted a win in five years.

Thompson was out of baseball after a year in the Cincinnati minor league system in 1976, and forever gave us a card that we can gaze upon for years on end asking, "Why did this guy get a card?"
You have the love the facial hair though. True '70's look until the Brooklyn hipsters adopted it in the '00's, much to my (and MANY others') dismay.