WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?- PART VII: 1973 TITO FUENTES

It's been a long while since I posted one of these.
Basically, it was slowly becoming a thread based around the 1973 set since it contained so many cards with odd or just plain "wrong" pictures used.
Well, today will be nothing different, thank you very much.
Let's take a look at the 1973 Topps Tito Fuentes card (#236) shall we?
I do like the fact that it's a horizontal action shot. But jeez, why the image of ass-plant on the infielder who seems to be begging for help from his teammates who are running in to rescue him?
Kind of hilarious actually. But really? That was the best Topps could do?
And by now I'm sure a lot of you know how I feel about random players or umpires in the forefront of an image, like the Giant player on the left. I can't stand stuff like that! Why not just crop him out?
It looks like the game is in San Francisco against the Houston Astros, and if I'm not mistaken that's Cesar Cedeno coming in from center field (more on him in the future).
The shortstop who's looking down at the spectacle seems to be Roger Metzger, and I'm really only assuming that the poor schlep getting an intimate view of Fuentes is second baseman Tommy Helms.
Ugh, poor second baseman. Those Topps people just HAD to have a wicked sense of humor back then.

"So, can I get your number?"

On a side note: I was always interested in Fuentes as a kid because I could never figure out (before the days of the internet) why a guy who had pretty much an all-star season in 1977 seemed to disappear immediately.
While playing for the Detroit Tigers that season, Fuentes had arguably his best year in the Majors, hitting .309 with 190 hits and 10 triples with 83 runs scored.
As a kid who worshiped stats back then, you notice that nice line on the back of his 1978 card (You also couldn't help but notice his hand-written "Tito" headband around his cap, which also makes an appearance on his 1976 card as well).
But then he just vanished, and back then you didn't have all the access to information we do now, so you couldn't figure out why (football was the WORST for this! Guys came and went like nobady's business).
Anyway, it wasn't until years later that I learned Detroit let Fuentes go because they had an up-and-coming star on their hands in Lou Whitaker, who would eventually be the Rookie of the Year in 1978, and team up with another rookie, Alan Trammell to play 19 straight seasons together, until 1995.
It seems Fuentes couldn't hang on with anyone else and was out of the game after 13 games with the Oakland A's in 1978.
Pretty dramatic end to a decent 13 year career that was reasonable productive right until the end.
Fuentes did make a career for himself in the game after his playing days were over, hooking up with the Giants as their first radio announcer for their Spanish-speaking broadcasts beginning in 1981.
Eventually he was even elected into the Hispanic Heritage Baseball Museum in 2002 in San Francisco.
Go Tito...

"GIMME A DO-OVER"- PART XXII: 1979 #320 CARL YASTRZEMSKI

Anyone else out there also hate those "skyward" gazes that appear from time to time on Topps baseball cards?
Ugh. I always found them annoying. Where were they looking?
I wonder if the players were actually directed to look up and far away by the photographer as if something SO meaningful caught their attention. But why? It was so boring and lame in my opinion.
Carl Yastrzemski's 1979 Topps card (#320) definitely falls into this category.
Why use an image like this? Why not wait about an hour and catch him up at the plate in full glory?
Well allow me to do exactly that.
I've taken a nice photograph of Yaz at the plate right around 1979 and used it for my redesign of his otherwise boring card from that year.
Much more colorful, interesting and appropriate for a legend like Yastrzemski, don't you think?
As you can see from the original issued card, Yaz is in Yankee Stadium, probably looking at some crazy stuff going on in the upper deck. Lord knows there was never a game that didn't have SOME nonsense going on up there...(and I "may" have been responsible for some of it! just sayin'...)
By 1979 Yastrzemski was in the twilight of his amazing career, turning 40 in August and playing through to 1983, a nice 23 year career ALL in the friendly confines of Fenway Park while playing for the Red Sox.
What more can you say for the guy but: 3000+ hits, 450+ homers, 1800+ runs batted in AND runs scored, and almost 650 doubles in 3300+ games played.
Oh, maybe we can also add that he participated in 18 All-Star games, collected seven Gold Gloves, and won the Triple Crown in 1967 while pretty much single handedly carrying the Red Sox on his back the last few weeks of the season to a World Series birth before running into Bob Gibson and the St. Louis Cardinals.
The man was a machine, plain and simple, and needless to say he was a first-ballot Hall of Famer in 1989.

Enough with the skyward gazes already...

A nice action photo for my redesign.

MISSING IN ACTION- 1974 RICO CARTY

Just a few years after his amazing 1970 season which saw him lead the National League in batting as well as starting alongside Hank Aaron and Willie Mays in the outfield at the All-Star game, Rico Carty's career was in flux, seeing him suit up for three different teams during the 1973 season.
It all started during the Winter of 1970-71 while playing in the Dominican Republic, when Carty seriously injured his knee and saw him go from M.V.P. candidate to missing the entire 1971 season.
He came back in 1972 but only appeared in 86 games, batting .277 with six home runs and 29 runs batted in for the Braves.
During that off-season Atlanta traded Carty to the Rangers for pitcher Jim Panther, but the change of scenery didn't help him much as he hit .232 in 86 games before the Chicago Cubs purchased him from Texas on August 13th.
He only managed to get into 22 games for the North Siders, batting .214 before being sold to the Oakland A's about a month later.
His time in Oakland was minimum, as he appeared in only seven games, going 2 for 8 in a designated hitter role for the eventual World Champs.
However, all told for 1973, Carty DID get into 115 games, good for 384 at-bats. Yet when 1974 rolled around, Topps didn't have a card for him in their set.
Granted Carty was released by Oakland in December of '73, but you think there'd be a card for a guy who played a relatively full season AND was a star of some magnitude not too many years earlier.
After signing on with Cordoba in the Mexican League for the beginning of 1974, he was back in the Majors by August, signing on with Cleveland which rejuvenated his career.
As everyone saw immediately, Rico was not done as a Major League player by a long shot, coming back to post some solid years before finally retiring after the 1979 season.
As a matter of fact, in his second to last season in 1978, at the age of 38, he split the year between the Blue Jays and the A's, hitting 30 home runs and driving in 99 runs with a .282 average as a D.H.
Not too shabby a showing for a guy that was supposedly done as a professional four years earlier.
By the time he was done a year later, Carty ended his career with a batting average just under .300 at .299, with over 200 homers for six teams: the Braves, Rangers, A's (two stints), Cubs, Indians and Blue Jays.
Anyway, here's a "missing" 1974 card for Carty, showing him as an Oakland A's player since Topps would never have had him as an Indian.

Depicting Rico's first, short-lived stint with the A's.

IN MEMORIAM- PART VIII: GIL HODGES

Today I want to pay my respects to a legend that inexplicably has not been inducted in the baseball Hall of Fame: Gil Hodges.
Excelling on the field for the Dodgers as well as in the dugout for the Mets, Hodges became a legend in the New York area, and his name still has recognition around here thanks to the top-notch little league that kids flock to every year (of which I also took part in as a kid 30-35 years ago).
After his Hall-worthy playing career Hodges was the first successful manager of the New York Mets, and was depicted on Topps cards in the late-60's and early-70's.
But sadly, by the time late series packs of 1972 cards were finding their way into neighborhood candy stores, Hodges passed away just before the 1972 season of a sudden heart attack at a young 47 years of age, leaving us with yet another card becoming a sort of "memorial" to an already deceased baseball figure.
Needless to say there was nothing Topps could do to pull his card and swap it with one showing his unexpected replacement, Yogi Berra.
So instead, card #465 of the 1972 set had Hodges smiling near the batting cages at Shea Stadium during B.P. in 1971. A nice "final" card to say the least.
As with other subjects in this thread, I've added a "memorial" banner running across the bottom of the card.

April 4, 1924 - April 2, 1972.

Now allow my little rant here and let's look at Gil Hodges' career a bit to see how mystifying it is that Cooperstown hasn't deemed him worthy of induction.
As a player, Hodges came up with the Dodgers for good in 1947 after a few years in the military, just in time to become a cog on the powerhouse Brooklyn teams throughout the 1950's.
Playing alongside Hall of Famers Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, Jackie Robinson, Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax, Hodges more than held his own, putting up power numbers that any team in the league would have been ecstatic with.
Here's a guy that manned first base while pounding 370 career homers, six times slamming 30 or more in a season.
He also produced seven consecutive seasons of 100 or more runs batted in (1949-1955), and was recognized with nine years of M.V.P. consideration when voting came around.
On the defensive side of things he was no slouch either, leading the league in multiple categories multiple times: three fielding titles, three seasons leading the N.L. in putouts, three times leading in assists and four seasons leading the league in turning double plays.
This was a true All-Star first baseman year in and year out!
Immediately after his playing days were over in 1963, Hodges was hired to manage the Washington Senators and struggled with a bad team, finishing in the American League second division every year between 1963 and 1967.
However from his first full season in 1964 to his last, the team saw a 15 game improvement, ending that campaign with a 76-85 record, good for sixth in the A.L.
The following season Hodges found himself back in New York, managing the Mets out in Queens.
After a ninth place finish his first year there (just one game above the last place Houston Astros), Hodges and the Mets did the unthinkable in 1969.
Lead by a young corps of talented guns like Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman and a yet "unknown" Nolan Ryan, they managed a historic 27-game turnaround, good for first place in the new N.L. East with a record of 100-62.
Once into the postseason, they stunned the baseball world by sweeping the Atlanta Braves in the playoffs, then defeating the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles in the World Series four games to one, claiming about as unexpected a championship as anybody could have dreamed of.
This is a guy who proved himself time and again, both as a star player and world champ manager, yet we see others like Jesse Haines, Travis Jackson or even contemporaries like Bill Mazeroski or teammate Reese get inducted in the Hall instead of him.
I'd love to see the day when Major League Baseball makes this right and placed Gil Hodges in Cooperstown where he deserves to be.
My little rant for today...

JUST FOR THE FUN OF IT- 1970'S BASEBALL TRIVIA PART XIX

Time for this week's set of trivia questions. Answers will be posted tomorrow down below:


1. There was only one pitcher in the decade of the '70's to strike out 200+ batters in a season without winning 10 or more games. Who was he?

2. What pitcher threw the fewest innings in a 20-win season during the decade?

3. Who sported the highest E.R.A. during a 20-win season in the 1970's?

4. What Hall of Fame pitcher gained an All-Star game win two years in a row?

5. Which two All-Star games were the only ones during the decade where Hall of Fame pitchers were the winner and loser?

***SPOILER ALERT! ANSWERS BELOW: 

1. Bob Johnson, Kansas City Royals: 1970. He went 8-13 with 206 strike outs.

2. Bob Forsch, St. Louis Cardinals. In 1977 he went 20-7 with 217.1 innings pitched.
 
3. Jim Merritt, Cincinnati Reds. He went 20-12 with a 4.08 E.R.A.
 
4. Bruce Sutter, Chicago Cubs. He won in 1978 and 1979 for the National League.

5. 1977 and 1979. In 1977 Don Sutton got the win with Jim Palmer getting the loss; in 1979 Bruce Sutter got the win while Rich Gossage took the loss.

DEDICATED "ROOKIE CARDS" #2: 1975 GARY CARTER

Let's give another Hall of Famer a "proper" rookie card, as opposed to some lame multi-player card that was actually issued by Topps.
Today's player, Gary Carter, was a former teammate of my first subject in this thread (Andre Dawson), part of that young talented Montreal Expos roster in the late-70's/early-80's.
In 1975 Carter made his first card appearance on the multi-player card you see below (#620).
It was an awesome set with some fantastic rookies (Brett, Yount, Lynn, Hernandez) and all-time legends winding down their careers (Aaron, B. Williams, Ron Santo, F. Robinson), so really I'm not trying to complain about it here.
However as I stated with the first post on this thread, I was never a fan of these multi-player rookie cards. Looking back on them now it's incredible to see how many of the players depicted never even made it up to the Majors in the future. Wasted space in my eyes (the 1977 set was particularly brutal in this respect).
Sadly Gary Carter was picked by Topps to be on one of these cards, so we also have the "un"legendary Dan Meyer, Marc Hill and Leon Roberts taking up space on what should have been a classic card of the best catcher in the 1980's and eventual Hall of Famer.
But today, allow me to imagine what a "dedicated" rookie card of Gary Carter in 1975 could have looked like had Topps issued one.
Instead of using one of those "Gary Carter-like" smiling poses we're used to, I found a slightly more serious shot of him posing at-bat. Just seemed nice and different for a change.
Enjoy...

Carter's first appearance on a card, in 1975 as issued by Topps.

My design for "The Kid" in all his youthful glory on a dedicated card.

I remember when Gary Carter really took over the "best catcher" tag from Johnny Bench around 1981. It was like he was suddenly everywhere with that smile of his!
Sure you still had Carlton Fisk producing in the American League, but Carter really took over as the the top backstop and held onto that title for pretty much the rest of the decade.
This was a guy who had nine seasons of 20+ homers and four 100+ R.B.I. seasons as a catcher. Not too shabby!
After finishing second in Rookie of the Year voting in 1975, Carter also went on to have 11 All-Star game nods, five Silver Slugger awards, three Gold Gloves and seven seasons where he garnered M.V.P. votes, finishing in the Top-10 four times.
By the time he retired after the 1992 season, he finished with 2092 hits, 324 home runs and 1225 runs batted in.
Needless to say Cooperstown came calling, and in 2003 he easily got voted in after being selected on 387 of 496 ballots, securing his place in baseball history forever.
However, sadly years later Carter was diagnosed with brain cancer, and despite undergoing aggressive treatment he succumbed to the disease about nine months later in February of 2012.
A tragic and shocking loss for the baseball world to say the least.

ANOTHER CLASSIC: 1977 TOPPS DAVE KINGMAN #500

I remember the first time I ever laid eyes on a 1977 Topps Dave Kingman card (#500). I thought it was "majestic"! 

Seriously! I ripped open a wax pack back in 1977 at the age of eight, flipped through the cards looking for any Yankee players, and THIS beauty caught my eye.

Just look at it: Kingman following the flight of what seems to be one of his many BOMBS, with that awesome blue "N.L. All-Stars" banner running across the bottom.

What made it all work for me was the fact that the "Mets" name across the top, Kingman's uniform, and the All-Star banner all matched perfectly, making for an esthetically flawless card in my book.

Much like the 1977 Rusty Staub card, which I profiled on this blog some time ago, I am always a sucker for a card where the design AND photo are color coordinated! Some 1976 A's and Reds cards come to mind as well.

Take a look at Kingman's card:

"Kong" following one of his moon shots.

Kingman was such a freakin' enigma when he played. While he was bashing homers no matter where he went, he often came across as a bit "flighty" or "distant" to teammates and the press alike, leading him to be less than popular in his 16 year career.

On top of his personality, Kingman personified that "all or nothing" player, often hitting 30+ homers with less than favorable batting averages, piling up strikeouts like few others in the league.

Take his 1982 season as an example. Kingman lead the N.L. In homers with 37, yet managed to eke out a .204 batting average with a league leading 156 strikeouts.

Adding to the enigmatic legend, in 1986 Kingman hit 35 home runs for the Oakland A's, yet never returned to the Major Leagues, thus setting a record that still stands today for homers in a final season of a career.

As a matter of fact, in his three years playing for Oakland, the LAST three years of his career, Kingman smashed 35, 30 and 35 home runs. 100 home runs for a guy who hung them up soon afterwards without warning.

By the time he was done both frustrating and exciting fans, he belted a very respectable 442 homers for the Giants, Mets, Yankees, Angels, Padres, Cubs, and A's.

What's amazing about that home run number was that he hit those 442 homers in just 6677 at-bats! Consider that Hank Aaron had over 12000 at-bats and you get the sense of Kingman's homer "ratio" (a favorite Oscar Gamble quip). Amazing. But at the same time, in those 6677 at-bats he also whiffed 1816 times! 

Again, it was all-or-nothing with "Kong", but it was a fun ride watching him play.