And for those not familiar or do not remember, here’s the original as issued by Topps 42 years ago:
Crawford spent the 1976 season with the St. Louis Cardinals, his first season NOT playing as a Los Angeles Dodger since he came up to the Big Leagues in 1964 as a 17-year old “local kid”.
He had a nice season for the Cardinals, hitting .304 over 120 games, with 50 runs batted in and 49 runs scored with 31 extra-base-hits.
On October 20th of 1976 he was traded to the Giants as part of a six-player trade that included John Curtis and Vic Harris going to San Fran, while Mike Caldwell, John D’Acquisto and Dave Rader came to St. Louis.
Understandably, Topps went to work to airbrush Crawford into a Giants uniform in anticipation of his playing there during the 1977 season.
Well on March 26th of 1977, just before the season started, Crawford was on the move again, getting traded to the Houston Astros, thus negating the work Topps did for their 1977 card.
On top of that, after just 42 games with Houston, Crawford found himself playing for the Oakland A’s after getting traded for Denny Walling and cash.
Turns out that time with Oakland playing out the 1977 season would be the last of his Big League career, as he would go on to play in the Mexican league over the next two years before retiring for good as an active player.
Over 14 MLB seasons, Crawford hit .268 with 921 hits over 3435 at-bats, playing in 1210 games between 1964 and 1977.
