Wood vs. Wood #101

Last time '62 won, appropriately enough, 6-2. Who will come out on top this time?

Carroll Hardy gets a nice Yankee Stadium background on an otherwise plain shot. Hardy's pro sports career began with the San Francisco 49ers in 1955. He caught four touchdown passes as a halfback, but after the season decided that football was "pretty rough" and he would be better off attempting a major league baseball career. He would go on to play eight seasons in the major leagues for Cleveland, Boston, Houston and Minnesota. In 433 games he hit .225 with 17 HR and 113 RBI. He is best known in baseball circles as the only man to pinch-hit for Ted Williams, replacing the Splendid Splinter mid-at-bat in a 1960 game after Williams fouled a ball off his foot. After his baseball career ended, Hardy returned to football as an executive, eventually becoming Assistant General Manager of the Denver Broncos, helping build that franchise's first Super Bowl teams. He died in 2020.

That Carl Willis card has to be in the airbrushed cards Hall of Fame. Willis came up with the Tigers in 1984, and was traded to the Reds on September 1 of that year. He appeared in 7 games for the Reds in 1984, 11 games in 1985, and 29 games in 1986. However, Topps somehow never got a picture of him in a Reds uniform and airbrushed an old Tigers photo. Fleer managed to get a current photo of Willis, but Topps couldn't? What makes it even funnier is that at this time the Reds had a no-facial-hair policy. For several years it seemed Willis's career was about over, as he bounced around the minor leagues. Surprisingly, he returned in 1991 as a key member of the Twins bullpen as they won the World Series. He stayed with the Twins through the 1995 season. Overall in 267 games he went 22-16 with 13 saves and a 4.25 ERA. He has gone on to be a successful major league pitching coach, now on his fourth team with at least one Cy Young winner on each team. He has been Cleveland's pitching coach since 2018.