A CARD THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN- 1979 TOM BRUNO

Here's a card that should have been for Tom Bruno, a pitcher who had a nice 1978 season, but instead was given a spot on one of those horrid black-and-white multi-player rookie cards in the 1979 set:

  

Bruno's 1978 season was excellent, with 18 appearances and 49.2 innings pitched, posting a record of 4-3 with a sparkling 1.99 earned run average, with three starts and a save thrown in.

I would think that would merit a dedicated card, especially when he was already in his third year of Big League ball, starting out with 12 games for the Kansas City Royals in 1976 before appearing in another 12 games for the Toronto Blue Jays during their inaugural season of 1977.

He’d finish his career after the 1979 season, posting a record of 2-3 with a 4.23 E.R.A., with 27 strikeouts over 38.1 innings and 27 appearances, ending up with a record of 7-7 with a decent 4.22 E.R.A., 80 strikeouts and a single save over 69 games and 123.2 innings pitched.

A CARD THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN- 1977 EDDIE MURRAY

Now, even though Eddie Murray's 1978 rookie card is one of my favorite cards to this day, I always felt that since the guy was the 1977 American League rookie of the year, it would have been nice to have a card for him for that season.

This doesn't really fit into either a "dedicated rookie card" or a "missing" card, but I still wanted to design one for the future Hall of Famer since he was one of my favorite players growing up.

Take a look at my imagined 1977 card for the great switch-hitter:

Next to Mantle, the greatest switch-hitter in the game?

Odds are Murray probably would have been included on one of those awful multi-player rookie cards like Andre Dawson or Dale Murphy, but since we know how much I am NOT a fan of those cards, I went with a dedicated card for him here.

I won't get into Murray too much here, since I covered that when I profiled his rookie card, but wow, what an understated superstar he was.

While the Schmidts, Ripkens, Murphy's, etc were racking up awards and acknowledgment, all Murray did was quietly rack up 3000+ hits, 500+ home runs, 1900+ runs batted in and more.

The man was awesome, simply put.