My First Cards

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 leading their league in steals in ’81 In fact, Tim, had 50 steals by mid-June when the strike halted all the games. Oh yeah, 50 steals but he’d only been caught 6 times. 6 TIMES!

That amazing 89.2% success rate was really the only thing that separated the two during the first half of the season. Beyond that, they had the same amount of XHB (18) and the same OBP (.419).

Tim was in the midst of breaking rookie record for steals in a season, and had a shot at breaking the all-time single season record for steals in a season. The strike held him back from getting a chance to break that 2nd record.

Nobody in the NL ever challenged Raines that year for the lead in steals. When he reached 50, his nearest competition was at half that — 26. If he didn’t play another game all year, he would’ve led the league anyway, ’cause nobody else managed to steal more than 39 by the end.

I think people forget just how great Tim Raines was.

Over in the American League, things weren’t much different. Rickey Henderson was having a tougher year than he did in 1980, but still never really had trouble winning the AL Stolen Bases title in ’81.

The closest he came to letting it slip away, was at the end of August when Seattle’s Julio Cruz was just 3 steals behind Rickey. It was just too hard to catch Rickey though.

In hindsight, this card was a declaration of a new era. From 1981 – 1984, Rickey & Tim would be the stolen base leaders every year in their leagues. Gone were the days of Ron LeFlore, Willie Wilson, or Omar Moreno, leading the league.