My First Cards

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 their save totals, but on summing up the pitcher’s saves & relief wins.

Bruce Sutter didn’t exactly runaway with the NL reliever points, ’cause Rick Camp was winning a number of his relief appearances. As late in the season as Sept 12th, Rick & Bruce were tied with 23 points a piece.

After that, Rick only earned 3 more saves while Bruce earned 5, giving Bruce the title of Leading NL Reliever in ’81. During the stretch where he pulled ahead, his ERA was a not-so-good 4.26, compared to Rick Camp’s 3.68.

Still, Bruce had 32 appearances of 4 or more outs during the strike-shortened ’81 season. Unfortunately, you won’t see any relievers doing that these days. Rick wasn’t too far behind, with 26 appearances of 4+ outs, but still not quite Sutter-ish

The AL’s Rollie Fingers, in his first season for Milwaukee, pitched a lot of 4 or more out appearances too. He did it in 30 of his 47 appearances.

There was just no doubt in any reasonable mind that he was having one of the best season’s ever, as he posted a 1.04 ERA, 2.07 FIP, league leading 28 saves, appeared in 41 of the Brewers 109 games (38% of team’s games), and accumulating 4.1 bWAR (2.5 fWAR) on route to winning the AL MVP & Cy awards.

This would be a good time for you to go see him throw the final pitch of the Brewer’s season, clinching the team’s first trip to the playoffs.

I always loved Rollie’s mustache. Who wouldn’t? I remember first seeing him on the stickers or maybe a stamp, and that ‘stache just blew me away.