My First Cards

Reid Nichols was one of those players I knew, because the back of his card featured my hometown’s name.

Growing up in Elmira, NY, you tend to notice very quickly when Elmira’s listed on the back of someone’s baseball card. No matter who the player is or isn’t, it instantly made them cool to us kids.

Reid had a taste of the big leagues in ’80 and got into 39 games in ’81. In ’82, he was used mostly as part of a platoon in centerfield, sometimes filling in for Jim Rice in left, and occasionally did some pinch hitting and right field work. 1982 happened to be the best season of his career once everything was said and done.

It started off slowly though. Through June 8 he only had 32 plate appearances, while starting 8 games in center, mostly entering games as a late innings defensive replacement. The only highlight of this part of his season was on May 28th in Seattle when he smacked his first career home run off Floyd Bannister in the 7th inning. It put the Red Sox up 1-0, and they went on to win 3-2, so that homer really helped.

The everything changed, very suddenly on June 9 in Fenway against the Yankees. He went 2 for 4, scoring a run and driving in another, as the Red Sox beat the Yankees by 1 run. That night was the start of the new Reid Nichols.

In fact, he was the 5th best hitter in Boston the rest of the year among batters with at least 50 PA’s, very comparable to Carney Landsford’s averages.

The season ended up being his career bests in HR (7), RBI (33), batting average (.302), slugging percentage (.461), and OPS+ (112). It earned him more playing time the following year, but he just couldn’t match the production from ’82.