Cake or gum? 1977 Luis Tiant

Last time it was Topps with a 9-1 victory. Will it triumph again?

For the first time in a while we have two photos from the same shoot. Hostess has a headshot, and like the other cards in this set the coloring for the hat and collar seem a bit touched up. Topps has a longer shot with Tiant posing like he's about to throw a pitch.

Luis Tiant came up with Cleveland in 1964 and had some good seasons pitching for a bad team, topped off by 1968 when he went 21-9 with a league leading 1.68 ERA. He got hurt the next year, lost 20 games and his ERA went up by over two runs. The next two seasons were lost seasons for Tiant, but he rebounded in 1972, changing his delivery to an extremely unusual, deceptive motion, and won his second ERA title. Over the next several years he put together some more good seasons for the Red Sox, and beat the Reds twice in the 1975 World Series. He signed with the Yankees in 1979 and had a couple of OK seasons for them, but was no longer dominant. He retired in 1982 after brief stints in Pittsburgh and California. Overall in 573 games he went 229-172 with a 3.30 ERA and 2,416 strikeouts. He has gotten some HOF consideration in recent years but poor showings from ages 28-30 doom him from having strong enough peak or career numbers. After his career he was a minor league and college coach. He died in 2024.