REVISITING PITCHER BOB GARIBALDI- THIS TIME HIS 1970 LATE SERIES TOPPS CARD

Back in August of last year I profiled pitcher Bob Garibaldi and his 1971 Topps card (#701) because it showed him as a Kansas City Royal player even though he  never appeared in a single game for them in his career.

As a matter of fact, Garibaldi would never appear in another Major League game after the 1969 season, leaving us with a pretty cool mystery as to how he was photographed in a Royals uniform since he never suited up for them (I suspect it was a Spring training shot during the 1971 pre-season).

But it was only after I profiled this card that I realized that he was also given a high-numbered card in the 1970 Topps set (#681), even though he only appeared in ONE game during the 1969 season, good for only five innings!

Here's the card:

It's wild to think that this guy got a card in BOTH the 1970 and 1971 set based on one game and five innings!

For his career Garibaldi totaled 15 games and 26.1 innings over four sparse years pitching for the San Francisco Giants, finishing with an 0-2 record and a 3.08 E.R.A.

He pitched in the bulk of his games during his rookie year in 1962 with 9, then got into four games in 1963, a game in 1966 and that final game in 1969.

I'm sure it's little or no consolation to him, but at least he walked away from the game with TWO baseball cards as a Big Leaguer.

"Half-full" right?!

WE HARDLY KNEW YA: 1978 #303 SAM HINDS

This is one of those cards I remember clearly as a kid since I bought TONS of 1978's when they came out and memorized each and every card in the set: #303 Sam Hinds.

Thing is it wasn't until many years later that I realized this player's Major League days were already over with by the time I was pulling his cards from packs.

Funny. You see certain cards over and over again as a kid and just figure that the player is still out on the field, playing in the Majors and on his way to a "career".

It's a good thing the harsh reality of it all doesn't set in until much later on in life!

 

 

A decent cup of coffee in 1977, and that was it.

 

Hinds was actually a late round draft pick in 1971 by the St. Louis Cardinals in the 35th round, but went on to college instead, pitching for Broward Junior College.

Once he graduated, he then signed as an undrafted free agent with Milwaukee in 1974 and made it up to the Majors in 1977, appearing in 29 games for 72.1 innings, sporting an 0-3 record with a 4.73 E.R.A.

Sadly for him, that was it, as he pitched in Milwaukee's Minor League in 1978 (Spokane AAA) and 1979 (Holyoke AA) before hanging them up.

A single stat line on the back, plain and simple, and a Topps baseball card for all of eternity.

Good for you Sam!

WE HARDLY KNEW YA: 1971 #283 DICK SUCH

The very first baseball card I ever got of a defunct baseball team was a 1971 Topps Dick Such #283, sometime in 1980.
I remember there was this antique store in Bensonhurst in the late-70's/early-80's that also sold rubber banded blocks of old baseball cards.
My lord, I remember it was $2 for a small stack of cards from the 1960's and $1 for huge stacks from the 1970's.
I literally went every other day with every dollar I had!
On top of that, he had those plastic sheets hanging in the window with cards that were more "expensive", and I bought the following all for about $5 each: 1956 Mickey Mantle, Roy Campanella  and Willie Mays, 1959 Mantle, Mays, Hank Aaron, 1958 Roger Maris and 1957 Aaron!
Man I MISS those days when you could frequently find scores like that!
Anyway, a bit before the BIG buys just mentioned, I bought a big stack of cards from the '70's for a buck, and there were cards from every year of the decade.
As I was flipping through the stack right outside the store I came across a "Senators" card.
Wow! I stared at that card for a long minute, excited that I finally had one.
I remember seeing the team name "Senators" on the backs of some current player cards, like Jeff Burroughs and Tom Grieve, just as I saw the name "Colt .45's" on Joe Morgan and Rusty Staub's cards, and wondered why these teams were no longer around.
For a little kid it became some mystical ghost of baseball's past.
Anyway, here was this Senators card of a young pitcher named Dick Such, and I built up my idea of what this guy did on the baseball diamond within minutes.
It wasn't until I got my very first Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia soon after that I was grossly disappointed!
Turns out that Such's career was over before this card ever even saw the light of day.
After starting out the 1970 season up in the Majors with the Senators, Such appeared in 21 games, good for 50 innings of work.
Sadly, it wasn't "good" work, as he went 1-5 with a bloated 7.56 e.r.a. both as a spot starter and a middle reliever.
After seeing some action on July 17th, 1970, he was demoted and never made it back up as a player in the Major Leagues again, eventually calling it a career after the 1973 season.

My first foray into defunct baseball teams.

Although Such's playing career didn't pan out, he did find success as a pitching coach both in the Majors and Minors.
As a matter of fact from 1986 through the 2001 season Such was the Minnesota Twins pitching coach under Ray Miller and Tom Kelly, even coaching both Twins World Champion teams in 1987 and 1991.
Such is still coaching in the Minors today, now for the Boston Red Sox and their Rookie-Level Gulf Coast Red Sox team.
One last thing to mention: can you imagine a more frustrating season for a pitcher than Such's 1967 Minor League year at York in the Double-A Eastern league for Washington?
That season, playing for a bad team, Such posted a season E.R.A. of 2.81 in 20 starts and 128 innings, yet had nothing but an 0-16 record to show for it!
Ugh.

WE HARDLY KNEW YA: 1976 #623 BOB ALLIETTA

Today I'm spotlighting a card depicting a player that appeared in only a few games in his Major League career.
By the time this card (#623) hit the shelves in 1976, Bob Allietta was already out of the Majors for good.
As I've stated before I've always been a sucker for cards that showed a player who came and went before we even knew it, so allow me to profile guys like this from time to time.
Allietta was drafted as the seventh pick overall in the January 1971 draft by the California Angels as a catcher out of High School.
After working his way up the Minor League system, he finally got the call to the Majors in 1975 and saw action in 21 games, good for 45 at-bats and a .178 batting average.
Sadly for him, he was on the disabled list for about a month and a half smack in the middle of the season, limiting his playing time.
As (bad) luck would have it, those 21 games would end up being all the time he would see in the "bigs", and he would bounce around the Minors for five teams through the 1980 season.
Ironically enough, his last two seasons in the Minors, playing for Tacoma of the Pacific League (the Indians' Triple-A team), he had his two best professional seasons at the plate, hitting .301 in 1979 and .304 in 1980.
But as stated earlier, after the 1980 season, at the ripe old age of 28, his career was over.
Professional sports are a BITCH of a mistress as we all know...
Well at least he got a card in my all-time favorite set! And it's not a bad looking card at that!

21 games and this nice card for Allietta and the Majors.

WE HARDLY KNEW YA: 1979 #172 MIKE BRUHERT

Anyone else out there have a deep interest in players who's career encompassed a single full year in the Majors, never to appear again?

One of the all-time classics would have to be Henry Schmidt of the 1903 Brooklyn Superbas.

Here's a player that stuck out when you were reading through the MacMillan Baseball Encyclopedia because of his one year career that consisted of a 22-13 record. One season, 20+ wins, and never to be seen again.

Of course with him there was a simple explanation: he wasn't interested in playing out East since he was making a decent enough living playing in the Pacific League.

So in an age when things were extremely different for professional athletes, Schmidt just packed his stuff and returned to the West coast, enjoying a few more productive seasons before retiring as a pro player.

Today I post up a card of another such player who's career was a single-line in the MacMillan encyclopedia: Mike Bruhert of the 1978 New York Mets.

That season, Bruhert earned a spot on the Mets rotation, starting 22 games while appearing in five more, for a total of 133.2 innings of work.

His final numbers weren't that great, as he tallied a 4-11 record to go along with a 4.78 E.R.A. But at the very least you can say he was a serviceable arm for struggling team. He even threw a shutout against the Philadelphia Phillies in September.

But that was it for him on the big league level. He never made it back to the Majors, even though he did spend four more years in the Minors for the Mets, Rangers and Yankees systems.

All told he spent 12 years in the Minors, and nine of them were for the Mets, appearing in 278 games split between starting and relieving. 

But as a Major Leaguer, it was "one and done" for both his playing career and his baseball card "career".

But all was not lost for Bruhert, as he later became the pitching coach at Fordham University when his playing days were over. He even got a wife out of his professional experience, marrying then New York Mets manager Gil Hodges daughter after meeting her when he first came up in the Met's system in 1971.

Nevertheless, I've always enjoyed cards of players that had that single-line career. I couldn't help but wonder what the stories were behind these players, and I'll be profiling more of these guys in the future.

 

A "One and Done" career captured on cardboard for eternity.

 

WE HARDLY KNEW YA: 1970 #533 BUZZ STEPHEN

What an odd inclusion to the 1970 set card Buzz Stephen (#533) is.

Why Topps decided on this player to include in their set is beyond me.

You see, Stephen's entire career consists of two games pitched for the Minnesota Twins in 1968. A total of 11.1 innings.

He actually got a decision in both games, going 1-1 with a 4.76 E.R.A. But that's hardly enough to justify a card for the guy two years later as a member of a team he never ended up pitching for.

In October of 1968, the fledging Seattle Pilots team selected Stephen as their 9th pick of their expansion draft. It seemed like a decent pick considering not only did 23 year old Buzz make his Major League debut, but he had a solid year in the Minors as well, going 11-9 with a 3.96 E.R.A. at Charlotte in Double-AA ball.

But, as with so many other drafts, many get picked, but few end up in the "big show".

Stephen never made it back up, pitching in the Minors for a couple of more years in the Orioles system before calling it a career.

Yet in 1970, Topps gave Buzz a slot in their set, leaving many to scratch their heads decades later.

2 games, 11.1 innings, and a baseball card for all of eternity.

Not too bad.

I'll never get tired of cards like this…

 

2 games in 1968 got him THIS card in 1970.

 

WE HARDLY KNEW YA: 1971 BOB GARIBALDI AND A TEAM HE NEVER PLAYED FOR

Man, Topps must have been scrambling for guys to fill card slots when it got to the last series of the 1971 set.
Just take a gander at the player on card #701, Bob Garibaldi.
Here is a guy who appeared in nine games in 1962, four games in 1963, one game (for only one inning) in 1966, and one final game (for five innings) in 1969, all for the San Francisco Giants.
Yet here he is, donning a Kansas City Royals uniform even though he never played an official game for them in his career.
Pretty confusing on Topps part considering that they seemed to be at a loss for correct photos of players on their new teams throughout the decade, resulting in many of the airbrushing disasters profiled on this blog.
Garibaldi totaled 15 career games for 26.1 innings, with an 0-2 record in the Majors, pitching his last game on October 1st, 1969.
On October 19th of 1970, he was traded to Kansas City for Fran Healy, but never even played for any of their Minor League teams, as he was then shipped off to the San Diego Padres in April of 1971!
I have checked and rechecked the image on this card and I am quite certain that this is NOT an amazing airbrush job. So the mystery as to how they got this photo of him in Royal blue is beyond me!
Anyone know the deal here?

Wearing a uniform for a team he never played for.

"WE HARDLY KNEW YA"- A CUP OF COFFEE AND A BASEBALL CARD #2

This 1975 Topps Bruce Ellingsen (#288) card always stuck out to me because of the photo. It reminded me of a Hollywood head shot instead of a baseball card.
Not only that, but this looked like a photo out of the '50's or '60's, NOT the wild and crazy '70's. Amid the sea of funk that was the 1975 set, this card garnered a second look for all the "wrong" reasons.
Ellingsen was drafted by the Dodgers out of high school in the 63rd round of the 1967 draft. After toiling in the minors for both L.A. and the California Angels, he was traded by the Dodgers to the Indians on April 4th, 1974.
What makes the trade so significant was that the player L.A. got in return straight up was none other than Pedro Guerrero, then a teenager in rookie ball.
Definitely a one-sided trade if there ever was one, as Ellingsen ended up pitching for Cleveland in a total of 16 games during the 1974 season, posting a record of 1-1 in 42 innings, never to return again. So by the time kids were pulling this card out of packs, Ellingsen was out of the Majors for good.
Now consider that Pedro Guerrero went onto a very good 10-plus year career with L.A., with three top-4 M.V.P. finishes and four all-star nods, and Cleveland has to consider this one of the worst franchise trades in their recent history.
Oh well, at least Ellingsen got a Topps baseball card out of a 16-game "cup of coffee" in one of the more memorable baseball card sets. Good for him.

Is this a "Head Shot" or a baseball card?

"WE HARDLY KNEW YA"- A CUP OF COFFEE AND A BASEBALL CARD #1

I was rummaging through cards the other day and was really focusing on players I had no clue about. As I was flipping through the last series in the 1970 set I came across a Lou Marone card (#703).

Now, me being an Italian, I always take a second look at a player with a name that's something out of my own neighborhood, so I checked his career out on Baseball-Reference.com and found exactly what I was looking for: one of those players who got a heck of a lot more life out of his baseball card than his own career.

By the time his 1970 card came around, Marone's career was pretty much already done. He appeared in only one game for the Pirates that year, going 2.1 innings and giving up a homer. And that was it. Not just for the year, but for his career.

In 1969 he posted some pretty solid stats, appearing in 29 games out of the 'pen and sporting a split 1-1 record with a nifty 2.55 E.R.A. in 35.1 innings. He also had 25 K's while only giving up 24 hits. Not too bad at all.

I couldn't find much else on his career, other than he finally hung them up in 1972 after some Minor League action in the Pirates organization.

I've always had a soft-spot for guys that appeared on cards, only to be out of the game by the time their little claim to fame on cardboard was out there for kids to gawk at when they ripped open packs come Spring the following year.

Here's to you Lou. Hope you found better success outside the game later on!

Card #703 in the 1970 Topps set.