Here's a strange one for you all today, a closer look at the image variation on former Montreal Expos pitcher Dennis Blair's 1977 Topps and OPC cards:
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| OPC version |
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| Topps version |
Not much of a difference huh? Yet
they went ahead and used pretty much the same image with a slightly
different angle for his cards. Very odd for the effort.
Looks
to be the same photo shoot, with one shot from a few steps to the left
of the other, as you can see the light tower and scoreboard shift way in
the background. Oh well!
As for Blair, he originally came up
to the Big Leagues in 1974 as a 20-year-old, having a nice rookie year
that saw him go 11-7 for the Expos, with a nice 3.27 earned run average
over 22 appearances, all starts.
Over those 22 starts he threw
146 innings, completing four games with one of them a shutout, striking
out 76 while walking 72 (ouch).
He'd pretty much pitch just
as well the following year, with a lot less support, as evidenced by his
8-15 record with a 3.80 ERA over 30 appearances (27 starts), though he
did walk 106 batters against his 82 strikeouts.
Sadly arm
issues set in during the 1976 season, as he would appear in only five
games, going 0-2 with a 4.02 ERA before spending the next four years in
the Minors Leagues for various organizations.
In 1980 he would
make a comeback to the Majors, now with the San Diego Padres, appearing
in five games but with little success, going 0-1 with a 6.43 ERA over
14 innings of work, thus concluding a four-year Big League tenure that
had him end up 19-25 over 62 games, with a 3.69 ERA in 339 innings, with
178 strikeouts and 192 walks allowed.
