1988 Domino's Bill Freehan

 

Looks like Freehan's watching a popup go out of play.

 Bill Freehan's offensive numbers were not overwhelming, but he was an excellent defensive catcher and had a career year for the 1968 World Champion Tigers. That year he finished second in the MVP voting, hitting .263 with 25 HR and 84 RBI. He spent his whole career in Detroit, hitting .262 with 200 HR and 758 RBI over 15 seasons. After his career he was a coach and an announcer. He died in 2021.

I have 22 of his cards, from 1965 to 1977. I would be interested in trading for 1963 Topps #466 and 1964 Topps #407. 

Burgers or gum? Tom Brookens

Last time it was 6-1, gum. Will this be closer?

Wendy's has Brookens in his jacket in spring training, while Topps has him sprinting out of the batters box, eying a fly ball. Brookens was primarily used as a defensive replacement late in games for the Tigers in '84. In 113 games he had only 224 at-bats, and hit .246 with 5 HR and 26 RBI. He went 0-for-5 in the postseason (0-for-18 lifetime).

Tom Brookens was a utility infielder for the Tigers from 1979 to 1988, and ended his career with a year each for the Yankees and Indians. In 1,336 major league games he hit .246 with 71 HR and 431 RBI. Brookens was a longtime minor league manager and major league coach in the Tigers organization. He is now retired.

New year's roundup

It's been almost a month since my last roundup post. Some good stuff that's come in since then .  .  .

Two 1971 semi-high-numbers and three high numbers! Casey Branton, OBC. 

njavgjoe from TCDB, a mix of a little bit of everything. Back to the Future is one of my favorite movies, so I like having a card from an insert set with that name.

Three 1957s, all pitchers. Mark Talbot, OBC.

JJDaddio, TCDB - very nice little vintage trade. '71 Bazooka is certainly not a set you see every day.

Some more '71s, as well as some '75s. Jimmy East, OBC.

A very nice and surprisingly cheap 1936 Frankie Crosetti! $6 on eBay.

brando7288 on TCDB with a fun little mix. Baseball cards with everything from a 1964 Ford Mustang ad to the moon!

Fuji very generously sent out a nice little holiday PWE. Lots of Yankees including a few that I needed, including my first '25 Topps Holiday, appropriately enough.

Steve Sankner, OBC, with a menacing Boston pitcher.

Finally, Night Owl never disappoints. Part of his latest package to me were these vintage oddballs, including two cards of Dodgers WS losses I'm sure he's glad to get rid of. I really like the '66 with the all white background.

He also sent three Dodgers postcards! One is a Dodgertown postcard with a great photo of Steve Garvey (and possibly Carlton Fisk?). The other two are team-issued player postcards which count as baseball cards for my collection. The Duke Sims is a 1971. The Ron Cey I had a very hard time identifying. The only clue I could find online came from an old post from the Owl himself, noting that Cey's lack of facial hair made this pre-1974, so I'm comfortable calling it a '73.

 

Kellen Raab on baseball cards

Kellen Raab pitched in the Diamondbacks' organization from 2004-2006. In 76 games he went 19-17 with a 5.31 ERA. Recently, he joined TCDB and posted about his new project to collect cards of his teammates and blog or do videos about them. I reached out to him with some more questions about his baseball card experiences and he kindly replied.

 "My favorite card story of mine is the 2005 South Bend card.  The photographer was only taking pictures for the first homestand and I wasn't pitching until game 5 on the road.  So he said that if I wanted an "action" shot I had to come to the stadium on my own to get it.  So my pitching shot was really just an empty stadium other than me and a photographer at like 10 AM.
 

I would say all of my cards are my favorite.  I think the biggest regret was never getting a major produced card like a Bowman, Topps, Upper Deck etc.  I didn't have an agent until after I started to pitch well and didn't make it known it was a priority.  I always assumed it would happen eventually and then I got hurt and things didn't happen.  I am also sad the team I played for last didn't produce any baseball card sets as it would have been nice to have more of them.

Growing up I collected cards with my mom and dad.  We pretty much collected anything and everything in the 90's.  Living in Omaha with the Royals I collected autographs.  So I was always trying to get cards of guys I could get signed. We also collected high level players and tried to collect all of their different cards.  My favorite players were Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden.  As life went on and moving into my own life I had to downsize the collection considerably due to space in my home.  My collection now consists mostly of my favorite players and the guys I played with and against."

Thanks!

 

Lots of delicious cake

I did a big vintage trade with brcdad of TCDB. On my end I got mostly Hostess cards. Yum!

So many '75s I couldn't fit them all in one photo. Here's the first half, pretty standard. 

It gets more wild in the second half. Oscar Gamble has the famous Afro he also has on his famous Topps card. Decent airbrush attempts were made to cover up Bobby Murcer's Yankee hat, and to give a Yankee hat to Catfish Hunter. But the star of the lot by far is that fantastic Rusty Staub card. The artist gave Staub a Mets hat, started putting Mets pinstripes on his Expos jersey, but gave up before getting to his sleeve. Left the Expos jersey too!

Some bicentennial beauties.

A few from '77, the set I'm currently working on for the blog series. This set has not fared nearly as well as the first two in the head-to-head's with Topps.

A nice trio of '78s.

Finishing strong with '79s, including a fantastic Yankee Stadium card with Ron Guidry.

Finally, finishing off with some gum - two 1972 Topps high numbers!

 

Wood vs. Wood #320

Last time we had a 9-1 win for 1962. Skipping past the multi-photo subsets in '62, lands us at the titanic battle at #320.

This matchup has probably the most star power. 1,517 home runs!

Hank Aaron is pictured at Milwaukee County Stadium. Henry Aaron was one of the greatest baseball players who ever lived. He was an excellent right fielder who won three Gold Gloves. He was a real speed threat, stealing 240 bases despite playing much of his career in an era where the stolen base was seldom used. He was a marvelous hitter, with a .305 lifetime average and winning two batting titles. He walked more than he struck out for his career. But of course, Hammerin' Hank is best known for his power. He broke Babe Ruth's career record with 755 over 23 seasons, a record that stood for decades, and is considered by many to be the real home run king.  The record was achieved not by a few unreal seasons, but by amazing consistency - he hit at least 20 home runs a year for 20 years (1955 to 1974), topping 30 home runs in 15 of those seasons. To this day he is the all-time leader with 2,297 RBI and 6,858 total bases. Unfortunately he was not surrounded by a lot of talent during his career, but the three times he made the postseason he continued his greatness, hitting over .300 in each series, and hitting .362 with 6 HR and 16 RBI in 17 total games. After his career, he took on a front office role with the Braves, and owned chains of restaurants and car dealerships. He died in 2021.

Barry Bonds follows through at Shea Stadium. Foul ball? Popup? In six day games at Shea in '86, Bonds went 2-for-20, with both hits being singles. If not for steroids, people would probably consider Barry Bonds the greatest hitter of all time. He holds the career record for home runs, 762, and single season record, 73 in 2001 (the only year he hit 50 or more HR). His walk totals are off-the-charts, in large part because his batting eye was so good you couldn’t throw him a strike (and no-one has ever explained how steroids help your battin eye). It’s a shame that his legacy is tainted by his use of a drug whose impact on his numbers can only be guessed at, but not explained. Bonds has been a Giants special instructor since 2014, and the Barry Bonds Family Foundation has operated since 1993.
 

Cake or gum? 1977 Larry Herndon

Last time it was another shutout for Topps, 6-0. Will Hostess get on the board this time?

Hostess has Herndon at spring training, some bats and a helmet abandoned in the outfield behind him. Topps has him at Candlestick park, pregame at the batting cage. I'm not sure what the ad is behind him, might be for Chevron.

Herndon made his big league debut with the Cardinals in 1974 but played almost all of his career with the Giants (1976-1981) and Tigers (1982-1988). With the Giants he was a decent hitter, good fielder with some speed. After he was traded to the Tigers he immediately developed into more of a slugger. After six seasons with 23 total HR for the Giants, he hit 24 in his first season in Detroit. He hit .333 in the 1984 World Series and caught the final out. Overall in 1,537 games he hit .274 with 107 HR and 550 RBI. After his playing career he was a minor- and major-league coach, and is now retired. 
 

1974 Topps Deckle dating revisited

A couple of recent comments on my Deckle Dating blog posts have pointed out a couple more instances where Topps's date for the card could not have been right.

On the last card, Willie Horton, I noted that it was the only time Topps dated a card as 1972 instead of 1973 on the back. I figured that was probably right, but commented Kevin noted that the button-down uniform Horton was wearing was last seen in 1971.

I had actually been strongly considering 1971 based on this 1972 card, where his uniform was opened in just about exactly the same way, but I had decided that wasn't enough evidence. I hadn't considered whether the uniforms themselves had changed.

Horton appears to be in the dugout in the inset photo; a very similar photo was used for his 2004 Topps All Time Fan Favorites card.

I'm guessing his '72 base card was also taken at this time, over by the third base line.

So not August 8, 1972. The Tigers were in Boston on August 8, 1971 so it couldn't have been there, plus that undershirt looks a little warm for August.

 

Then I got a comment from tjisonline on one of the first cards in the set, Steve Carlton.  He writes, "This photo is from a 1972 Spring Training game. Carlton was wearing Rick Wise's old jersey with # 38. A picture from the same photoshoot can be seen on his 1973 Topps Pin-up."

That early in the series I wasn't going back to earlier years to check for discrepancies. You wouldn't know that Carlton's number was not 32 from this photo, but based on the baggy jacket underneath, tj's tip is credible when you look at the '73 pinup:

Carlton had just been traded for Wise, and I guess he didn't get his old #32 until the season started. I assume that this 1973 Topps card is from that day also: 

I guess at some point in spring training he took Darrell Brandon's #32, with Brandon moving to #30. 

On the off chance that it is the same day, March 15, but in 1972, the Phillies beat the White Sox 8-6 in spring action. In other news, The Godfather debuted in theaters, and two British soldiers were killed by an IRA bomb.
 

Jim Wywn

I noticed this the other day when putting together a blog post on Jim Wynn, and was going through his TCDB pages. I don't usually pay attention to facsimile signatures, even on vintage cards, but this one on his 1969 Topps Deckle caught my eye.

Wywn! Did he not know how to spell his own name, or was this such a bad job by Topps in making a fake one?

This inspired me to go through his full run of cards on TCDB. The oldest Wynn card with a facsimile auto is a 1966 team issue. His handwriting is clearly labored, especially with his M and N's which seem constructed of multiple separate lines. Still, his name is spelled correctly.

Another team issued card in 1967 has a more script autograph. It does look like it says "Wynne" instead of "Wynn" but that might just be some extra flourish.

That year, Topps issued their fourth card of Wynn, and first with a facsimile auto. Here is where we see WYWN!

For the next several years, this exact same WYWN autograph appeared whenever there was a facsimile auto in a set Wynn appeared in, most notably 1968 Topps Game, 1970 Topps Super and 1971 Topps. Also his 1970 Kelloggs card. Topps provided the photos, and I guess the autographs, for that set.

His MLB Photostamp from that year, not produced by Topps, has a correct autograph for him.

Finally, in 1975, Topps produced a card with a "correct" autograph for Wynn. (Well, it looks like it could say Fire Ulyru, but at least it doesn't say Jim Wywn.)

 

1981 Topps Gary Alexander

 

The front: Action shot at Yankee Stadium, with the photo angled to make his stance look less crouched. In the stands a hot dog vendor is busy in the first row. Alexander played in one day game at Yankee Stadium in 1980, June 29. In the top of the 6th inning, down 2-1, Alexander pinch hit for second baseman Dave Rosello and hit a sac fly off of Ron Guidry to tie the game. In the bottom of the 6th Jack Brohamer replaced Alexander to play second base. Jim Lefebvre hit a three-ruh homer that inning to break the game open; the final was 7-2 Yankees.

The back: Alexander's 27 home runs were four more than Johnny Bench and Dale Murphy, who was still primarily a catcher in '78.

The player: Gary Alexander played parts of three seasons for the Giants from 1975 to 1977, catching John Montefusco’s no-hitter in 1976. He was traded twice in three months in 1978 – to the A’s in March, then to Cleveland in June. He managed to hit 27 home runs that year but struck out a league leading 166 times. In 1979 he struck out 100 times in 358 at bats, then struck out 52 times in 178 at bats in 1980. He played briefly for Pittsburgh in 1981 and that was it.

The man: After his playing career Alexander joined the Los Angeles Fire Department, retiring as a Captain in 2020.

My collection: I have 12 of his cards, from 1977 to 1982. I would be interested in trading for 1975 TCMA Lafayette Drillers #12.