Obviously, this is one of the coolest cards in the set when you’re an eight year old and I dubbed it “the card of five stars”. You’ve got 5 of the best players AND they’re the home run leaders!

It all starts with Mike Schmidt, who led the National League in homers for the fifth time in his career. His 31 HR’s might sound like an unimpressive number, but he did it in only 102 games played as the Phillies played just 106 that year.

Just doin’ a rough estimate, 31 HR’s in about 2/3 the usual amount of games, means Mike was on pace for about 45 homers. Even if he slumped a little, he probably would’ve reached 40 for the second straight year.

At the mid-season break though, he was stuck in a three way tie that included George Foster and Dave Kingman. Another dangerous slugger and fellow future Hall of Famer Andre Dawson, was just 1 homer shy of them.

Mike wedged out a little breathing room after the All-Star game, smacking 9 HR’s in late August. He had a 4 HR lead over Andre & Dave when September began.

As this card tells us, Dawson and Kingman faded in the end while Schmidt left them all in the dust the rest of the season.

The A.L. race for the home run lead was a much more rabid affair. Actually, it was kind of like the A.L. batting race, with a pair of sluggers coming from behind.

Stormin’ Gorman Thomas led the major leagues with 15 HR’s at the break. Only two behind him in the A.L., were Tony Armas, Dwight Evans, and Gary Gray.

Gary Gray? Yeah, that’s right. A uniquely named nobody was finally getting some playing time in Seattle and making a run at being noticed.

Well, Gary Gray returned to being Gary Gray after the break, and didn’t hit another homer all year.

Meanwhile, after the break, three stars named Bobby Grich, Eddie Murray, and Greg Luzinski were heating up. By September 35, Gorman and Tony were leading the A.L. with 21 HR’s a piece.

It was really anybody’s to have, but Gorman just kept staying one step ahead of the pack. At the time, many figured he was going to end up with the most HR’s in the league. After all, he did it just two years earlier with 45.

But just like in the A.L. batting race, which was Richie Zisk’s to lose, this was Gorman Thomas’s to lose — and he did. He didn’t hit another homer for the rest of the season. He wouldn’t hit another home run til game 5 of the playoffs (the division series against the Yankees).

Greg Luzinski would only smack a pair before the season finished, and that just wouldn’t be enough in this race.

Now, I really should mention how hot Bobby Grich was. From September 20 – October 2, he hit .409/.449/.727 with 4 HR’s. He was just on fire. The 4th homer in that hot stretch came on October 2, and made Bobby the first to reach the 22 homer plateau in ’81. Oh yeah, it was an exciting one too, being a 1st inning 3 run blast.

The next night in Kansas City, Tony Armas joined him at 22, with a 2-run homer in the 6th.

With a day left to the season after that, both Tony & Bobby must’ve been thinkin’ they could win the HR title. The last day of the season though, neither of them would sneak ahead.

That last day of the season, at about the same time of the afternoon, Eddie Murray joined them with a 3rd inning blast and Dwight Evans hit his 21st.

You’d think that would be the end of it, but no. Dwight hits another homer in the 8th inning of his game, to make a four way tie atop the leaderboard!

Thus, Dwight gave birth to the awesome “card of 5 stars”.

This is one of the few times we see a major league player lookin’ more like a fan on his living room couch enjoyin’ the game, than lookin’ like a player. You could even mistake his expression for a little beer buzz. He was definitely enjoying life in the major leagues.

John loved to play too though. He didn’t want to sit around on the bench and just watch the games, do the occasional pinch hit or defensive substitute thing.

In fact, John wanted out of the Angels organization in ’82, ’cause he felt he wouldn’t be able to get playing time in the big leagues with the team they were building.

So maybe the photo in this card was just a result of John trying to cope with so much bench time. Maybe he liked it at first. Who Wouldn’t love a decent salary with a great view of baseball games, and some chances to play once in a while?

The team tried to accomodate him, sending him down to AAA Spokane where he could get some more playing time than he would up in California.

He never made it back to the majors, but played professional baseball into the mid-1980′s. He wasn’t with the Angels though, he found himself in the Reds and Tigers organizations after that one year in Spokane.

Whatever the case, he must’ve enjoyed ’82. He got the playing time even if it wasn’t in the majors, and he helped his team win the 2nd half PCL North title. They went on to beat the Tacoma Tigers in the first round of playoffs before losing a six game series to the Albuquerque Dukes.

So, is he eatin’ pop rocks or what?

In early April ’82, just before the season officially got underway, Ed tore his rotator cuff and was out for the year. Sudden stop. He played a few minor league games in ’83 and ’84, but he never really made a comeback of it.

So back on October 2, 1981, he and the rest of the baseball world had no idea that his one out single that moved Bobby Grich to second base would be Ed’s final major league at-bat.

He’d been a solid backstop for half a decade leading up to the injury. He’d also just re-signed with the Angels, and was getting ready to split the catching duties with newly acquired all-star catcher Bob Boone.

Ed had been an outfielder who converted to catcher, ’cause the Pirates organization was full of outfielders at the time he came up from the minors. Although he was a light hitter, he worked hard to do better behind the plate. He even practiced blocking the plate during infield practice, which some scouts never saw any catcher do before.

Maybe his hard work ethic came from feelin’ like he needed to catch up with other catchers abilities. I couldn’t find exactly how his injury happened, but I’m pretty sure rotator cuff’s usually tear during a throw. However it happened, in the end, I like to think it’s a testament to Ed’s hard work attitude to be the best catcher he could possibly be.

That’s not typically a sign of your career going the way you planned it, and it certainly wasn’t going as planned for Butch.

See, about nine years earlier, Butch had been following his father’s footsteps as an Alabama University quarterback. He was better at baseball though, and in 1973 he set the SEC’s season home run record. Teams noticed, and the Red Sox drafted him just a couple months later.

He earned a cup of coffee in the majors for the ’75 Red Sox, and then got the fans very excited in 1977 when he smacked 33 doubles, 30 homers, and drove in 112 runs. He was just 25, so his future looked incredibly bright. He even earned some MVP vote points for his performance.

What people didn’t notice much at the time, was that his OBP was a flat .300 — a very bad sign for any hitter hoping to enjoy a lengthy career in the majors.

A couple years later in 1979, Butch would impress people again, with 28 HR’s & 93 RBI’s. Though those numbers weren’t better than his 1977 totals, further stats tell us this was the best year of his career. He had a career high 106 OPS+, and a career high WAR of 1.5.

The following season was much worse, and the Red Sox dealt him to the Angels in December of ’80. He rewarded California with his highest seasonal OBP of his career, a mere .312. Yes, .312. Continuing elbow problems made things even worse. All this led to the Angels sending him to New York for Bill Castro towards the end of spring training in ’82.

About a month later, Butch made his debut in pinstripes with a pinch hit double down the right field line in the eighth inning of a loss to the Tigers.

Sadly for Butch Hobson fans, he’d only get 9 more hits to finish his career.

That final base hit came in the bottom of the 1st off Floyd Bannister, on July 21st at the Stadium.

Less than two weeks later, he’d finish his major league career by striking out twice in a game against the White Sox on August 3, 1982, just a couple weeks short of turning 31 years old.

He spent the next 3 seasons in AAA Columbus, trying to get back to the majors, before moving on to other things, including being a minor league manager.

In the end though, yeah, Butch Hobson had a career in baseball and most likely—you didn’t. Good goin’ Butch.

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.

He’d never slugged higher than .464 or got on base better than .338, but those were different days back then. People only seemed to notice the fact he smacked 21 HR’s and drove in 101 RBI’s 3 seasons earlier. The logic was that with Dan in the lineup, pitchers wouldn’t want to pitch around Ken Singleton or future Hall of Famer Eddie Murray.

Yeah, in hindsight that sounds so crazy that you’ll think I’m joking until you read the March 3, 1982 article, “In the Orioles starting lineup, Dan will do the Driving“, from the Miami News. Yes, people actually believed he’d be the powerful run producer and made a nice pun about it (Ford/driving…get it?).

History shows us what we’d expect though, that Dan didn’t drive the O’s offense. It was all hype, no hop. There were 5 hitters in Baltimore’s lineup who drove in more runs than Dan, and 4 batters smacked more HR’s. So he didn’t even do what was expected.

Maybe it was just too much pressure or something, I don’t know. By May 25, he was batting just beneath the Mendoza line, .197, with only 4 home runs. When the season was finished, he’d only raised his batting average up to .235 and added 6 more round trippers. His OBP for the year, was a horrible .279.

Meanwhile, the guy he was traded for, Doug DeCinces, posted a suave .369 OBP, hit 30 HR’s, drove in 97 runs, and slugged over .500! The trade was clearly a bust for Baltimore.

There was a bright spot in Dan’ season though, which was June 14, when Harvey’s Wallbangers came to town for a visit. In the 7th inning, Dan Ford was sent in to pinch hit with the O’s leading by a run. He put the game out of reach with a grand slam. The victory helped the birds stay ahead of the Brewers in the standings.

The next season, in ’83, Dan would return to being an above average hitter. He wasn’t great, but he was good enough to help the Orioles win the World Series. After that Championship, Dan simply faded into baseball history.

4 Random Dan Ford career stats and facts—

• Coming to the plate with nobody out, he had a .343 OBP and .320 BABIP
• Had a .510 slugging percentage against the Seattle Mariners
• He should’ve played for the White Sox, since he had a .372 OBP in Comiskey Park.
• Hit best in July: .292/.338/.477 with 24 HR’s and 102 RBI’s (158 games started)

Even as early as his first season, he was a budding star, getting some votes for Rookie Of The Year that included a 1st place vote. He did about as well in that vote as George Brett.

Then on April 17, 1982 in a game against the Twins, Burleson was injured and didn’t play again ’til June 30 the next year.

To me, the expression on his face in the card sums up the shock of his career being derailed without warning.

After ’82, Rick only played 40 games until 1986, when he won the AL Comeback Player of the Year Award. That was his last good year though, as he played only one more year and was out of the majors. Eventually, he became a pretty good minor league manager.

Back to ’81 for a moment. In May, Rick pulled off a 15 game hitting streak, batting .375 during it.

It was the 7th best hitting streak that season. This no doubt played a big part in him getting to the All-Star game.

Speaking of the All-Star game, Rick makes a cameo on the Tony Armas card, which was photographed in Cleveland sometime before the All-Star game got started.

4 Random Rick Burleson career stats—

• Leading off an inning, he posted a .353 OBP
• Hit best in June: .301/.345/.404
• Was an awful pinch hitter, having a .280 OBP & slugged .238
• He scored more runs (68) against the Brewers than against anyone else

Since everybody else has said so much about him already, I’m just going to skip to the highlights of his 1982 season & tell you why his career ended.

His best performance was on May 18, 1982, in Milwaukee. He posted a game score of 82, tossing a complete game victory against the eventual American League champions! He only allowed 1 run, and 3 hits. Molitor smacked 2 of those, while the other was a solo shot by Marshall Edwards.

Although you could make a good argument that his best game was Sunday July 11, 1982, when the Yankees came to visit the Angels. He struck out 8 Yankees in 7 1/3 innings. Sure he allowed 8 baserunners, but he only let 1 score (Nettles). He got a no decision, being he was taken out during a 1-1 tie and a runner on 1st.

Then again, May 23, 1982 in Tiger Stadium was quite a good one too. Steve Renko threw a complete game victory, allowing only 1 run.

He started off the season great, as you probably guessed already. The first half of the year, he went 7-2, 3.09 ERA, 4 CG, and only allowed 4 HR’s in 102 IP. Then the bottom fell out. The rest of the season was horrid….going 5-4 on a 7.00 ERA, giving up 13 HR’s in just 54 IP. It wasn’t out of nowhere though, as his ERA began to balloon in June. He only kept on winning for a while, because the California Angels offense was good enough to score plenty of runs.

Looking at his day/night splits for 1982, it seems his biggest problem was that he had a decent 3.28 ERA in the day but a 4.79 ERA in night games. That’s a full 1.51 run difference. The previous year, 1981, he developed this problem in his splits (2.97 daytime & 3.67 at night). Of course, that wouldn’t be such a problem if he spent the time in Wrigley Field, but he didn’t. He was stuck on a team where most of their games were at night. If you want to stay in the major leagues, you’ve got to be better in night games than day.

It didn’t stop there though. The next year, playing for the Royals, he posted a decent daytime ERA of 3.42 but a terrible 4.92 at night. That’s a full 1.5 run difference. Which explains exactly why Steve’s career came to an end on Sunday August 28, 1983 in Kansas City. Interestingly, it was a day game, and he pitched 5 great innings but got the loss, 1-0.