And here we have the Kirk Gibson card where he looks like a stoner who’s just been asked “Quick Kirk, what color was Washington’s white horse?” Yeah, marvel at his reaction for a moment. Despite this being a ridiculous looking photo, he was a budding star coming off his breakout season where he batted .328/.369/.479, [...]
John played in parts of 13 major league seasons, with his best years coming as a Cleveland Indian. By 1981, he was finishing up his career in Texas.
Scott Sanderson has one of the most boring poses I’ve ever seen on a baseball card. I am fascinated by how some poses in this set of cards seem to reflect the type of season the player had. I first noticed it with Steve McCatty‘s card, and now I’m thinking about it again. Scott was [...]
I’ve always thought this was a pretty cool shot of “Double Cheeseburger” Reggie Cleveland. A laid back guy in the dugout or the bullpen, sportin’ some big 80′s glasses, and a fine trimmed beard worthy of a country music star. Reggie didn’t have quite the career expected of him. He was 6 feet tall by [...]
A pair of Hall of Famers grace the final League Leaders card in this set. One lookin’ like the twin brother of Grizzly Adams, while the other looks like he just walked out of an old silent film. These were the days when relievers weren’t called closers yet, but firemen. They weren’t judged solely on [...]
Nolan Ryan was awesome, while Steve McCatty got credit for an ERA title he really didn’t win.
It’s funny how you view cards so differently now, than when they came out. In early ’82, getting this card in your pack, was gold. You had the NL ROY and a guy who’d just thrown a perfect game. They were both young enough, to think they were going to be great throughout the 1980′s. [...]
Every single one of the guys on this card had the exact same amount of wins in ’81, with 14. Another 4 pitchers were at 13, and could’ve easily had 14 too.
Wow, now that’s a card. Two of the greatest base stealers of all-time, on the same baseball card. I absolutely loved this card when I was a kid, for that very reason. you can keep your home runs, steals and triples are far more exciting. Neither Tim Raines nor Rickey Henderson had any real trouble [...]
A pair of future Hall of Famers dominate this card. Even when this card hit the public in ’82, we all knew these guys would be or at least could be in Cooperstown someday. Of the two, Eddie Murray had the easier time winning his league’s RBI title, even though it was close. Although it [...]
Obviously, this is one of the coolest cards in the set when you’re an eight year old and I dubbed it “the card of five stars”. You’ve got 5 of the best players AND they’re the home run leaders! It all starts with Mike Schmidt, who led the National League in homers for the fifth [...]
Bill Madlock and Carney Lansford each won their batting titles as third baseman, but, they took two different routes to get their crowns in 1981.
Could this be a clue that the “All-Star” & “In Action” subsets of the ’82 Topps set, were after thoughts?
In 1981, Mike Schmidt was busy earning his 2nd straight National League MVP award, 6th straight gold glove, while earning his 6th trip to the midsummer classic. The first month of the season, he showed everyone why he was 1980′s NL MVP, by producing a 13 game hitting streak in which he batted .327/.431/.755 with [...]
It’s incredible how many Yankees cards there are in this set. I’ve been trying to even out the deck by getting a lot of Yanks cards out of the way. So, here’s Graig Nettles – in action (’cause Topps really didn’t understand that action shots should be on every card anyway) I remember being disappointed [...]