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. 
