Jerry Reuss on baseball cards

Jerry Reuss pitched 22 seasons in the major leagues, winning 220 games. His best season was 1980, when he went 18-6 with a 2.51 ERA, leading the league with six shutouts (including a no-hitter), finishing second in the NL Cy Young voting. He is currently a broadcaster for the Dodgers, and has his own website at JerryReuss.com. Known to the baseball card blog community as a fan of Night Owl Cards, he kindly answered my own questions about baseball cards.

"I captioned every one of the cards from all the manufacturers when I posted the cards on my Flickr account. Check out http://www.flickr.com/photos/43289453@N03/sets/72157622957192473/ and this site might answer some of your questions.

The 1974 Topps card has an interesting story. It's on the Flickr site.

My rookie card is a sentimental favorite because it was the first. Like all of the other kids I grew up with, we wondered what our baseball card would look like.

I don't collect cards anymore. In fact, I put them in complete sets and donate them to charities, hospitals, schools, etc. for fundraisers. I kept a handful of complete sets for family members, however."

Thanks! His flickr set is really pretty amazing. The story of the 1974 card is that it is an airbrushed version of a picture from two years earlier, when he was an Astro.

Here is the 1974 card, with him as a Pirate:

And here is the original photo, from his Astros days:

There is a lot more of interest on this site. Did you know that his 1989 Upper Deck photo was snapped by legendary photographer V.J. Lovero?

Here is his 1989 Fleer, which is a good example of altered font. His caption says "I asked for a card with a hitting pose. Good picture, bad form!"

There's lots of other great stuff on the site. He has a lot of his own photography, both candids from his playing days, like this shot of Rick Horton in Monument Park . . .
. . . and action shots he took after his playing days, like Derek Jeter homering on Jason Dickson's first major league pitch.

There are also some interesting pictures of himself, like this cool photoshopped image.

And here is an outtake from a Topps photo session in 1985.