Baseball card story from Gil Patterson

Gil Patterson made his major league debut for the World Champion 1977 New York Yankees. Despite a great start, drawing raves from Carl Yastrzemski among others, a series of injuries derailed his career and he never returned to the major leagues as a player. He has since become a successful pitching coach, developing Roy Halladay as Toronto's pitching coach. Currently Pitching Coordinator for the Oakland A's, he is also a pitching specialist at Worldwide Baseball Prospects and also does private pitching instruction. He kindly shared with me this story about his baseball cards.

"I do have one sad baseball card story. 1977 was my first and only season as a major league pitcher with the Yankees. (I was 21 years old.) My Topps baseball card had the wrong picture on it and when I went to them and told them about the mistake, they said, "Don"t worry, you are 21, you will have 15 baseball cards with the correct picture." I never got that other baseball card. It's too bad; I would have liked to show my 11 year old son."

Thanks! While the 1977 Topps card mistakenly shows Sheldon Gill, here is his 1992 Wiz Yankees card featuring a correct photo.