Up
on the blog today is a “not so missing” 1974 card for infielder Rich
McKinney, who I’ve already created a 1978 career-capper for a few years
back:
McKinney appeared in 48 games for the champion Oakland A’s during the
1973 season, hitting .246 with 16 hits in 65 at-bats in limited play.
He would go on to appear in only 13 combined games over the next two
seasons before spending all of 1976 in the Minors, but would come back
in 1977 to play in 86 games for Oakland, which turned out to be the last
Big League action of his seven-year career.
When it was all said and done, McKinney finished with a .225 batting
average, with 199 hits in 886 at-bats over 341 games, with 20 homers and
exactly 100 runs batted in and 79 runs scored.
Of course we’ll also remember that McKinney got two straight classic
airbrush jobs on his Topps cards in 1972 and 1973, which I profiled
years ago on the blog:
http://whentoppshadballs.blogspot.com/2014/09/an-all-time-classic-airbrush-job-1973.html
http://whentoppshadballs.blogspot.com/2013/09/when-airbrushing-goes-terribly-wrong.html
Classics!
Today’s
“not so missing” card is a fun one, a pre-Topps rookie slab for
long-time reliever Tippy Martinez, who made his MLB debut during the
1974 season with the New York Yankees:
Martinez appeared in 10 games for the Yankees that season at the age of
24, not factoring in a decision while posting an earned run average of
4.26 over 12.2 innings of work.
He would go on to pitch another season and a half for the Yanks,
pitching very well actually, before being traded as part of a
blockbuster trade that saw New York send Rick Dempsey, Rudy may, Scott
McGregor and Dave Pagan to the Baltimore Orioles for Doyle Alexander,
Jimmy Freeman, Elrod Hendricks, Ken Holtzman and Grant Jackson on June
15th of 1976.
While the trade helped the Yankees short term, in the long-term it was
Baltimore who came out on top of this swap, with Martinez, McGregor and
Dempsey performing well for the team for a significant amount of years.
For Martinez, he’d pitch for 14-seasons in the Big Leagues, the first
three with the Yanks, the next 11 for the Orioles, and one final
campaign in 1988 with the Minnesota Twins for only three games.
Over that time he compiled a record of 55-42, with a 3.45 ERA over 546
appearances and 834 innings, with 115 saves, making his only All-Star
team during the 1983 Orioles Championship season.
A steady reliever throughout the course of his career, I always seem to
remember him at his best against the Yankees as a kid watching games
throughout the 1980’s.
Today’s
blog post has a “not so missing” 1972 card for one-year Major League
pitcher Chuck Machemehl, who appeared in 14 games for the Cleveland
Indians during the 1971 season:
Machemehl put in four years of Minor League ball before making it to the
Majors at the start of the season, making his debut on April 6th of
1971.
Over his 14 games, which took place between April and May, he was hit
hard, going 0-2 with an earned run average of 6.38 in 18.1 innings of
work.
In those 18-plus innings he gave up 16 hits, 15 walks, while striking out nine, leading to 16 runs of which 13 were earned.
He’d be back in the Minors for the rest of the year before playing out
his Pro career in 1972 with a split season between the Texas Rangers and
Kansas City Royals systems.
Nevertheless, he made the “Big Show” for that one month in 1971, and kudos for that!
Up
on the blog today we have a career-capping “not so missing” 1976 card
for former shortstop Dal Maxvill, who finished up a nice 14-year career
in 1975 with the Oakland A’s:
Maxvill appeared in 20 games for the A’s in 1975, hitting an even .200
with two hits over 10 at-bats, filling in at both short and second base
in what was his last Big League action.
A member of four championship teams over his career (1964/1967 with the
Cardinals and 1972/1974 with the A’s), Maxvill was pretty much a
“Mendoza-Line” hitter, finishing with a .217 lifetime average with 748
hits over 3443 at-bats, topping .250 only once, in 1968.
Incredibly, he received MVP votes that year while taking home a Gold
Glove for his defensive work. Easily the best season of his career.
Go figure while everyone else in 1968 was struggling at the plate in the
“Year of the Pitcher”, this guy goes out and has his best season.
Gotta love baseball.
I’ve
always wanted to re-do the 1977 Bobby Grich card, since he was an
All-Star the previous year in what was his final season with the
Baltimore Orioles, so here goes:
The 1977 All-Star cards are some of my all-time favorites, so I’m always
interested in “adding” to the checklist, and this one is a perfect fit,
as it shows Grich in-action while still in a Baltimore uniform.
Granted, Topps was trying to do the right thing by showing him as a
member of the California Angels before the 1977 season began, but for
some reason I’ve always felt if a guy was coming off an All-Star or
award-winning year with another team, there should be some love thrown
that way (as in the 1975 Bobby Murcer card, etc).
He would win four Gold Gloves overall in his excellent 17-year career,
while getting named to six All-Star teams and participating in five
American League Championship Series, two with the Orioles and three with
the California Angels.
Defensively he topped the league in assists three times, putouts four
times and fielding percentage twice, generally considered one of the
best fielding second baseman of his era.
I always felt his 1979 season was lost in the shuffle of some great
years put in by the likes of Don Baylor, Fred Lynn and George Brett when
he hit a career high 30 home runs with 101 RBIs to go with a .294
average, fantastic numbers for a second baseman in that era outside of a
guy named Joe Morgan.
Two years later he’d be one of four players tied to lead the American
League in homers with 22, while also topping the league in slugging
(.543).
By the time he retired after the 1986 season he finished with a .266
career average with 1833 hits and 224 homers, with 864 runs batted in
and 1033 runs scored.
Today’s
blog post has a 1970 “dedicated rookie” for long-time pitcher Jerry
Reuss, who was just starting out his excellent Major League career in
1969:
Reuss had himself a wonderful Big League debut for the St. Louis
Cardinals, tossing seven shutout innings with only two hits allowed on
September 27th of 1969.
The man would go on to pitch 22 years in the Big Leagues, starting the
1975 All-Star game for the National League while with the Pittsburgh
Pirates, then going on to greater success with his time as a Los Angeles
Dodger between 1979 and 1987.
During his time with the Dodgers he’d twice win 18 games, lead the
league with six shutouts in 1980, and finish second to Steve Carlton
that year in the Cy Young Award race.
Towards the end of his run he was hanging on for dear life in hopes of
reaching 200 wins, and in 1988 he did just that, putting in a surprising
year for the Chicago White Sox when he posted a record of 13-9 with a
3.44 earned run average at the age of 39, allowing him to join to
200-club.
After four games in 1990 with the Pittsburgh Pirates, he retired for
good, finishing up his career with a record of 220-191, with an ERA of
3.64 over 628 games, 547 of them starts, with 39 shutouts, 11 saves and
1907 strikeouts over 3669.2 innings of work.
On
the blog today, a fun card to create, a 1979 “not so missing” example
for two-year Major League catcher Greg Mahlberg of the Texas Rangers:
Now, stating “two-year” is being generous when you consider that
Mahlberg played in one game during the 1978 season, his first taste of
the Big Leagues. In that one game he went 0-1 at the plate, putting in
four innings behind the plate defensively.
He’d be back in 1979, appearing in seven games this time, going 2-for-17
at the plate for a batting average of .118 with two runs scored and an
RBI on his first and only home run.
He’d go on to play three more years in the Minors from 1980 through
1982, but never get a shot back a Major League game, finishing his Big
League tenure with a .111 average, with two hits over 18 official
at-bats in eight games.
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