OPC IMAGE VARIATIONS: 1977 CHIP LANG

Good day all!

On the blog today we take a look at the image variation between the 1977 Topps and OPC cards of former Montreal Expos pitcher Chip Lang:

OPC Version

Topps Version

 

Certainly one of the rare occasions where the Topps card is better than the OPC version, with Topps opting for an action shot of the righty instead of a posed image.

Now, as for the player himself, when I say Chip Lang was a “two-year” MLB pitcher I am stretching it quite a bit, as Lang appeared in one single game during the 1975 season, his Big League debut, pitching 1.2 innings and allowing two hits and three walks for a cool 10.80 earned run average, with two strikeouts.
He’d be back on a Major League mound the following season, appearing in 29 games for Montreal, with two of them starts, going 1-3 with a 4.19 ERA over 62.1 innings of work, striking out 30 but walking 34.
He would go on to play two years in the Minors, for both the Montreal and Pittsburgh Pirates organizations, but never get back to the Big Leagues, finishing up with those 30 appearances in 1975/1976, with a record of 1-3 along with a 4.36 ERA in 64 innings pitched.

 

MINOR LEAGUE DAYS: LEGENDS EDITION- LEFTY GROVE

On the blog today, we add the great Lefty Grove to my on-going 1971 "Minor League Days: Legends Edition", celebrating his time with the Baltimore Orioles before dominating the Major Leagues:

Take into account those "lost" years pitching for the Baltimore Orioles Minor League franchise in the early 1920's, when the team owner refused to sell him to a Major League franchise.

Those were some of the all-time best Minor League clubs, and all Grove did in his five years there was go 111-39!

That's a .740 winning percentage. Imagine some of those wins tacked on to his Major League totals. Just awesome.

In his five years in the Minors, his win totals were: 15, 25, 18, 27 and 26!

So he started out in the Big Leagues at the age of 25 because his Minor League team refused to sell him earlier in his career, and all Grove did was go on to win 300 games against only 141 losses, good for the best winning percentage among all 300-game winners at .680.
He won nine E.R.A. titles, four games won titles, and seven strikeout titles in his 17 year career.
In 1931 he won the first BBWA American league M.V.P. award when he went 31-4 with a 2.06 E.R.A. and 175 strikeouts, all league leading numbers. That would also be his second straight pitching triple-crown, as he lead the league in the same categories in 1930 as well.
His .886 winning percentage that year is second all-time among 20+ game winning seasons, behind Ron Guidry's .893 winning percentage when he went 25-3 in 1978.
How about this for a cool performance: in 1930, as Grove went 28-5 with a 2.54 E.R.A. and 209 strikeouts for his first pitching triple-crown, he also lead the league in saves with nine.
By the time Grove retired after the 1941 season playing for the Red Sox, he was a sure fire Hall of Famer, and was inducted his first year of eligibility in 1947, getting named on 123 of 161 ballots cast.

1960'S CAREER-CAPPERS INSERTS: STAN MUSIAL

Today on the blog we spotlight my "1960s Career-Cappers" insert card for the great, arguably greatest, Stan Musial, about as forgotten or overlooked a great of the game as there is:

Musial's MLB numbers are just absurd: seven batting titles, two R.B.I. titles, five triples titles and eight doubles titles, with career numbers of 475 home runs, 1951 runs batted in and a .331 career average. Throw in his 725 doubles, 177 triples and 3630 hits along with 1949 runs scored and the numbers are staggering. 

And don't forget that Musial also lost a year to military duty, easily putting him over 500 homers, close to 3900 hits and around 2100 runs batted in if he played in 1945.

Along with the great Frank Robinson I always felt Stan Musial was often the most overlooked in the decades since his playing days ended.

When talk of "Greatest Living Player" came up it was always Williams, DiMaggio, Mays or even Aaron that would come up. But Stan Musial would always kind of be that after-thought.

Criminal.

Three Most Valuable Player Awards, FOUR second-place finishes, including three in a row between 1949-1951, and twenty consecutive all-star appearances, Musial definitely is a member of that rarified stratosphere of baseball royalty along with the likes of Ruth, Cobb, Mays and Wagner, among others.

1975 IN-ACTION: BILLY WILLIAMS

Today's blog post has a 1975 "In-Action" card for "Sweet Swingin' Billy from Whistler", Billy Williams, Hall of Fame outfielder extraordinaire of the Chicago Cubs:

Williams was truly a magnificent player that gets lost in the crowded Hall of Fame N.L. outfield of the era filled with guys like Aaron, Mays and Clemente.

However he was a player ANY team would kill for, putting in All-Star calibre season after season through the 1960s and beyond.

He wrapped up a Hall of Fame career in 1976 with the Oakland A’s, his second season with the team after 16 years with the Chicago Cubs.
By the time he retired, he finished with 2711 hits, 1410 runs scored, 426 home runs, 1475 runs batted in and a .290 batting average over 2488 games.
He was the National League Rookie of the Year in 1961, two-time runner-up to the MVP Award (thanks to Johnny Bench each time) in 1970 and 1972 and a six-time All-Star.
What a career he put together, yet always in the shadows of giants like teammate Ernie Banks, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente.
Nevertheless, though it took him six years of eligibility to make it, he was elected for a rightful place in Cooperstown in 1987 when he received 85.7% of the vote.
Just a great player all around.

GIMMIE A DO-OVER: 1970 LOU PINIELLA

Up on the blog today, we're going to go and give Lou Piniella a do-over on his 1970 card, something worthy of the 1969 American League Rookie of the Year:

Re-done version

As issued by Topps

 

You'd think with a full season of 1969 under his belt, Topps would have had a better image for his 1970 card.

However with the battle going on between the card maker and MLBPA at the time, they were recycling images or using older images taken years before.

Right before the 1969 season Piniella was traded by the Seattle Pilots to another new franchise, the Kansas City Royals, for John Gelnar and Steve Whitaker.

It was a great move by the Kansas City team, as Piniella would not disappoint, going on to cop Rookie of the Year honors by hitting .282 with eleven homers and 68 runs batted in.

He'd play with the Royals through the 1973 season, making one more All-Star team in 1972 when he hit .312 while leading the league with 33 doubles, collecting a career-best 179 hits.

After being traded to the New York Yankees before the 1974 season, Piniella found his permanent home in the big leagues, playing the final eleven seasons of his career there.

Along the way he was a member of two championship teams, hit .300 or better five times, and eventually would even become manager of the Yanks before moving on to a long career leading Major League squads.

Over his 18-year career he hit .291, with 1705 hits in 5867 at-bats, and besides 10 games split between the Orioles in 1964 and the Indians in 1968, he'd do it all with the Royals and Yankees between 1969-1984.

In 1986 he took over as Yankee manager, and would go on to manage for another 23 seasons, guiding the Yanks, Reds, Mariners, Devil Rays and Cubs.

He would lead his teams to a World Series win in 1990 (Reds), an American League record 116 win season in 2001 (Mariners), eight 90+ win seasons (all but the Devil Rays), and six 1st place finishes (with the Reds, Mariners and Cubs).

Not a bad career spanning 46 years!

REVISITING A POST FROM 2013: MISSING IN ACTION: 1976 TOM KELLY

Good day everyone!

Thought it'd be fun to revisit a blog post from over 10 years ago, this one my "missing" 1976 card for future World Series winning manager Tom Kelly:

Here's the original post write-up for the card:

While trolling around online recently, I came across an old photo of former Twins manager Tom Kelly as a player from 1975.
I've always known that he didn't have much of a Major League playing career, but never realized that he saw enough action in his only year, 1975, to warrant a card being issued for him in the 1976 set.
In his only season up in the big leagues, Kelly played in 49 games for 147 plate appearances, hitting a not-so-impressive .181 while playing first base and some outfield. Not much, but enough in my eyes for Topps to give him a card.
Nevertheless, after that brief time in the "bigs" he bounced around the Minors until 1980, suiting up for the Twins and Orioles.
He did have some pretty decent seasons, showing some "pop" to go along with some solid averages, and he even got to pitch in a few games, going 1-0 with a 1.88 E.R.A. in 24 innings, yet for some reason he never got the call back up.
Well as we all know, Kelly found his way to leading teams on the field, starting out as skipper for Visalia in A-Ball at the ripe old age of 26 in 1977 as a player-manager.
By the time 1986 rolled around, he was managing the Minnesota Twins, and it was a position he'd hold onto for 16 years, even leading the team to two world championships in 1987 and 1991.
Some of the players he managed were stars like Kirby Puckett, Paul Molitor, Dave Winfield and Jack Morris.
He finally retired after the 2001 season, getting himself a bunch of baseball card appearances of the managerial variety along the way.
But today, I post a 1976 player card I designed for the former Twins leader reflecting his cup-of-coffee back in 1975.
Seems the Twins didn't have a card of a first baseman in the 1976 set. I had to "cut out" the player icon in the lower left from a George Scott card and recolor the border for the Kelly card shown below. Go figure...

OPC IMAGE VARIATIONS: 1977 DAVE CASH

Today on the blog we take a look at another OPC/Topps image variation in the 1977 sets, this time for Dave Cash of the Montreal Expos:

OPC version

Topps version

Obviously, as with so many others, the OPC Cash has a nice posed shot as opposed to the Topps airbrush monster you see here.

Cash, who played the first five years of his Big League career with the Pittsburgh Pirates, came over to the Philadelphia Phillies in October of 1973 in a trade for pitcher Ken Brett, and did not disappoint the Phillie faithful, having his three best years as a Major Leaguer between 1974-1976.
In those three seasons Cash averaged over 200 hits a season, along with a .300 average while playing pretty much every single game, even setting the MLB record (since broken) of 699 at-bats during the 1975 season.
He’d sign with the Montreal Expos in the Winter of 1976 as a Free Agent, and would have one more very good year in 1977 before quickly having his career turn South.

In his 1977 season, Cash would collect 188 hits, with 42 doubles and 21 stolen bases while hitting .289 in 650 at-bats.

The following year he took a bit of a dip, hitting only .252 with 166 hits, scoring 66 runs with 12 steals, though he did appear in 159 games.

After an injury-plagued 1979 season he found himself with the San Diego Padres in 1980, where he hit .227 over 130 games, before retiring at only 32 years of age.
All told, Cash finished with a very nice .283 career average, with 1571 hits over 5554 at-bats and 1422 games between 1969 and 1980, stealing 120 bases and scoring 732 runs.