My First Cards

This Fred Lynn card looks kinda goofy and like it was probably part of a Topps photoshoot on the same day as his ’81 Topps traded card’s photo. You can even see the little tuft of hair sticking out of his hat right in the middle of his forehead, in both these cards. His hair’s even flipped up just the same on the sides of his head.

Kind of reminds me of the awful Mike Schmidt motif Topps pulled on us back then.

Anyway, Fred also doesn’t appear to have a tan yet, suggesting this might be during spring training ’81, which would be just a couple months after the superstar was traded from Boston. Historically that’s rather significant, ’cause his career totally changed at that point in time.

See, back in those days, the concept of park effects on players hadn’t even occurred to most people. Very few people had any clue that Fred Lynn would be a much worse hitter after he left the friendly confines of Fenway Park. Perhaps the only one who knew, was Bill James.

In the May ’81 Sports Illustrated article “He Does It By The Numbers“, Bill said he predicted Fred wouldn’t even approach the offensive production he had in Boston and would be just a .285 hitter during his years in California with 18-24 HR’s a year. That sounded nuts to a lot of people at the time, considering Fred had been a .308 hitter and smacked 39 HR’s two years earlier.

Mr James nailed it though, as Fred lost 37 points of batting average, hitting just .271 in California (’81-’84) and never hitting more than 23 HR’s in a year during that time. See, Bill James noticed that Fenway was good to lefthanded batters like Fred. In fact, he stunk awful in his first year for his new team, .219/.322/.316, 5 HR’s, and earning 0.1 WAR, meaning he went from superstar to replacement player levels immediately.

Fred wasn’t exactly a bust in an Angels uniform though, as he bounced back in 1982, batting .299/.374/.517 with 21 HR’s and 4.8 WAR—his highest WAR since he was ROY & MVP.

In a lot of ways, ’82 was Fred’s best post-Boston season, though ’84 wasn’t bad. My biggest Fred Lynn memory was in the ’83 All-Star game when he smacked a grand slam off Atlee Hammaker. It turned out to be his final All-Star game and final hit in one. I was watching the game on this tiny black & white TV we had, which also had a cassette recorder and radio all in one. I missed Fred’s slam, as I had to go outside and pretend to pitch like Steve Carlton for a few minutes. When I came back in, I found my American League was leading thanks to the slam.

So anyway, this card always makes me think about how Fred’s career changed so drastically and I never really got to see his greatness on the field, and how the world had no idea it was all about to change when this photo was shot. I once read somewhere that he was included in a 1981 book about the 100 greatest players of all time.