For
fun today, following on the recent footsteps of my re-done 1978 Richie
Zisk card, I present my 1978 Oscar Gamble card, showing the slugger
suited up for the Pale Hose instead of the Topps-issued airbrush job of
him as a San Diego Padre:
Coming off of what turned out to be the best season of his 17-year Major
League career, Gamble set career-highs in home runs (31), runs batted
in (83), runs scored (75) and total bases (240) as a member of the
Chicago White Sox “South Side Hitmen” team.
That 1977 White Sox team was a good one, based in large part to the fire
power they had in their line-up, as they finished 90-72 for the season.
Besides Gamble and his 31 homers, they also got strong contributions
from Richie Zisk (30 homers), Eric Soderholm (25 homers), Chet Lemon (19
homers), Jim Spencer (18 homers), and Lamar Johnson (18 homers).
As a team the ChiSox ended up hitting 192 homers for the year, very nice muscle display!
As I mentioned the other day in his “dedicated rookie” post, I never
realized that during his entire career, Gamble only had ONE season where
he topped 500 plate appearances, and that was in 1974 while playing for
the Indians (he had 508).
In 4502 career at-bats, Gamble hit 200 homers. Not bad when you think
about a full career would be around 8000 at-bats. We’re talking 400+
homers from him.
Always aware of his numbers, he'd frequently talk about his "home run
ratio", and years later Jim Kaat, while broadcasting games on the YES
channel, would always bring that up when some current player was hitting
home runs at nice pace.
Nevertheless, Gamble played 17 seasons in the Big Leagues, with those
200 home runs, 666 RBIs and 656 runs scored over 1584 games between 1969
and 1985.