Well! It took me a while to realize I made a mistake a few months back when I created a 1974 "missing" card for Vic Davalillo, when I MEANT to create a 1975 version!
So today I fix it with the 1975 version, along with the original post:
Davalillo,
a former All-Star and Gold Glove winning outfielder in the mid-60's,
split the 1973 season between the Pittsburgh Pirates and Oakland A's,
appearing in 97 games and hitting only .184.
In
1974 he'd hit .174 over 17 games with Oakland, with only four hits in
23 at-bats, driving in a run and spending some time in the outfield.
This was all after a
1972 season that saw him hit .318 over 117 games for the Pirates, which
was more in line with his steady .280-.300 hitting in the first 11 years
of his career.
Turns out he would spend the next three
seasons playing in the Mexican League before coming back in 1977 with
the Los Angeles Dodgers,where he'd play parts of the next four seasons.
An
interesting player that gets overlooked these days, as I stated earlier
he was an All-Star and Gold Glover in 1964 with the Cleveland Indians,
his first full season in the Big Leagues, and would be a steady bat
throughout his career, finishing up with a .279 average over 16 years,
with 1122 hits in 4017 at-bats.
In the end with the Dodgers, he was primarily a pinch-hitter, hitting a combined .312 in 1977 and 1978 for the N.L. champs.
I'll
always remember him as one of those players born in the 1930's when I
was a kid buying 1979 cards at the age of 10. Not many of them around at
that point.
Funny the little things you remember with collecting when you get older.
