#401 Johnny Bench in Action!
Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench had been Rookie of the Year (1968), MVP twice (’70 & ’72), World Series MVP (1976), a 14 time All-Star (including 13 consecutive), and won 9 gold gloves as a catcher.
Here we see him in the batters box, in the classic Johnny Bench stance. It would’ve been nice if this card showed him catching, but this was at the point in his career where he was playing a lot more first base than catcher.
As a catcher, he threw out 33% of runners attempting to steal on him during his career. He’d led the league three times in catching runners, twice catching base stealers 57% of the time!
In 1975, he caught over 1000 innings, without allowing a single passed ball. Johnny was arguably the best catcher of his generation.
He was also a great batter, and the best hitting catcher this side of Mike Piazza. In the early 70′s, Johnny led the National League in HR’s twice and RBI’s three times. One year, he led the league in Total Bases. how often do you find a catcher doin’ that, eh?
On July 15, 1980, Johnny passed Yogi Berra for the career home run record for catchers; A record he’d hold for another 10 years and a couple months.
When Carlton Fisk broke the record in 1990, Johnny flashed a great sense of humor, saying “I was thinking about making a comeback until I pulled a muscle—vacuuming”.
In overall value, Johnny Bench was worth 683 RAR (
I don’t think I need to say much more about his career, so I’m going to dive into the photo itself now, ’cause we can actually determine what game this photo is showing us, based on the fact that—
- Reds are wearing the road uniform
- The stadium has a blue edged dugout
- It’s a day game.
- we can kind of see who’s batting after him
In 1981, Johnny played road games in Pittsburgh, St Louis, Philadelphia, Houston, San Diego, Montreal, Atlanta, and Los Angeles. I’m pretty sure the only stadiums among those that had a blue edged dugout and sunshine would be Atlanta Fulton County Stadium & Dodger Stadium.
That leaves us with just five possible games, but in one of those, Ken Griffey batted after Johnny Bench, so we can rule that game out automatically since the waiting batter is clearly white or latino on the card.
Thanks to a newspaper search, I found that only one of the four remaining games was played during the day. That leaves Saturday September 19, 1981 in Dodger Stadium, as the game that fits.
Although, there’s more to this story. As pointed out in the comments, Johnny Bench’s 1981 record breaker card looks as if it was taken in the same place, perhaps the same game. That ’81 card’s photo clearly shows Dave Concepcion waiting in the on deck circle. The player in the on-deck circle of this ’82 card, appears to be a blurry Dave Concepcion, which means the photo in this ’82 card, would most likely be a photo of an afternoon game played on Sunday July 27, 1980 at Shea Stadium.
Although, I’m not sure the crowd looks like the same people in both cards. Any ideas?
Actually, I think that this photo was from 1980 at Shea Stadium. The Reds played an afternoon game there in July, 1980 with Dave Concepcion batting behind Bench. I am pretty sure that a shot from this at bat was used on the In Action card as well as the 1981 Topps Bench record breaker card the previous year.
What?!? Oh man. Lookin’ at the ’81 Record breaker card right now, I think you’re right. You know, I thought that looked like Concepcion back there and Shea’s dugout (like in Kingman’s card), but it never occurred to me that Topps might use a photo from ’80 so I never checked 1980 lineups to see if he hit behind Bench. I gotta edit half this now. Thanks for pointing that out, I’ll be sure to check that kind of thing in the future.