Vintage bats & gloves: 1976 SSPC Part I

I'm starting a new "series" looking at what is written on players' equipment that appears on cards. Probably going to be all or almost all bats and gloves. I don't think I'll find the next F-Face bat but it's still fun for me to do this, maybe some of you will find it fun too.

I started by going through my 1976 SSPC set. I found so many cards that I stopped at about a third of the way through the set. By the way, while thumbing through these cards I was reminded why I love it so much. Some of my other "series" are winding down so I'm thinking of starting a card-by-card for this set like I do for '81 Topps. I won't necessarily go as in-depth with writing the player bios this time. We'll see.

It's fun to see where a player has customized his equipment. For example, Cesar Cedeno wrote CC on his batting gloves.

And Ray Corbin personalized his fielding glove.

The rest of the photos are of players with someone else's bat. I'm not going to look up every card I see and figure out if the player is holding their own bat or someone else's. But this set has the player's jersey number on the back so it's easy to do in this case.

We'll start with these two cards that are back to back in the set - #131 and 132. Bob Tolan, #28, is holding a #28 1 bat. I guess it's Tolan's #1 bat? In that case, John Scott, #6 is using Tolan's #3 bat.

Plenty more examples of players "borrowing" bats.
 

Morris Nettles, #16, with bat #17 - Mickey Rivers.

Thought this was a borrowed bat but it's actual a card error. Jerry Hairston has his correct bat (#22). Back of the card says he is #2. According to Baseball Reference he started as #2 then switched to #22.

Ken Henderson with Bill Stein's bat.

Dave Winfield with Fred Kendall's bat.

Here's another one where it turns out SSPC made an error. They list Von Joshua as uniform #12. Joshua wore #12 for the Dodgers but never for the Giants, for whom he wore #19.

Lee Lacy with Davey Lopes's bat.

GRRR! Doug Rader hamming it up with Mike Easler's bat.

Biff Pocoroba with Frank Tepedino's bat.

Hopefully you enjoyed this little meandering around some of the tiniest minutia you can get on a baseball card. Lots more to come.