Reggie didn’t have quite the career expected of him. He was 6 feet tall by the time he was 14 and pitching to players older them him, but turned to be only a mediocre pitcher with flashes of greatness.

Still, he was good enough to hang onto a major league roster spot for 13 years and get inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.

In fact, 30 years after he retired, his 105 career wins still make him the 4th winningest Canadian born pitcher in history out of 120 Canadian hurlers. He also ranks 8th in saves and his ERA ain’t too bad for a Canadian—

Every single one of the guys on this card had the exact same amount of wins in ’81, with 14. That’s got to be the weirdest thing about it. I mean, all 5? That’s got to be pretty unusual.

Probably even weirder, is that they were all tied at 13 too. Yep, at the end of play on September 22, 1981, these five pitchers along with Fernando Valenzuela, were tied with 13 wins a piece. The difference between them in the end, was what happened afterwards—

McCatty, Vuckovich, & Valenzuela pitched the best but their teams had trouble scoring for them. In fact, Fernando’s final start was 1-0 loss to the 39-68 Padres with Fred Kuhaulua on the mound?

Other than Fernando, the only N.L. pitcher to just miss the big tie in the end, was Steve Carlton. He’d won most of his games earlier in the year, going 9-1 on a 2.80 ERA before the strike.

Strangely, his Phillies had trouble scoring for him after the strike was over. His second half ERA of 1.93 would normally be enough to pull off the 5 wins he needed. Unfortunately, he only went 4-3. He didn’t reach the tie at 13 or 14.

As for the American League pitchers, Pete Vuckovich actually had a blown save, which balloons his ERA in the above table. So it’s notable that in his final 2 starts, he gave up just 1 run in 15 2/3, but still couldn’t get credit for a win in either start. He was incredibly hot, but seemed to suffer the same problem as Carlton & Valenzuela.

Jack Morris’s ERA, BB/9, and HR/9 easily make him look bad, but he’s probably the most interesting story of the bunch here. He won his 14th, against Scott McGregor who was looking for his 13th. Since Scott won his next start, this game effectively kept Scott from being on this card.

Jack faced up against Pete Vuckovich a few days later, with both the pitchers sitting at 14 W’s, hoping to pass each other. Neither of them won it, but if either of them had, then one of them wouldn’t have been on this card.

Besides Scott McGregor, there was another A.L. hurler who just missed out on being pictured here, was Kansas City’s Dennis Leonard. From September 8 onward, he went 6-1, with a 1.39 ERA.

Dennis had been having a rough year up to that point, but he would’ve appeared on this card if he didn’t get a no decision on Aug 25th when he faced Jack Morris, or on Aug 10th when he faced Dennis Martinez, or the loss he got when he matched up against Pete Vuckovich in June.

Dennis is the reason though, why McCatty isn’t the sole American Leaguer on this card. October 2nd, they faced off in a wonderful pitchers duel in Oakland. Steve was lookin’ for his 15th win, which would’ve put him on this card alone with Tom Seaver.

Both pitchers went the distance, but Dennis came out on top with a 2-0 victory, effectively sticking McCatty at 14 wins.

I never realized when I was a kid, that there were almost more players for this card ’til I started lookin’ into it a couple months ago. Now it fascinates me how intertwined this all was.

Despite that, I consider 1982 to be his breakout season. He led the world in runs scored with 136, which was the highest total by any player since 1970.

You might think he did that only because of the sluggers behind him in the order like Robin Yount, Gorman Thomas, or Cecil Cooper, but Paul did his part by knocking out 201 hits, 300 total bases, and stealing 41 bases (4th most in the American League).

In fact, Paul had a 3 homer game. One in his first at-bat, then smacking another in the 5th, while the last came off uber-closer Dan Quisenberry. That wasn’t easy back then, when the Royals had pitching and the KC on the Royals cap meant “Kansas City” not “Keystone Cops”.

Whether Molitor was scoring on his own or with a little help from his friends, the fact is, the Brewers were a totally different team on days Paul didn’t cross home plate. In games he scored at least 1 run, the Brew Crew were an unbeatable team, going 70-22. If he didn’t score, they were a weak 24-52! The winning percentage difference is .761 when he scored, and just .316 when he didn’t.

If we look at this from a slightly different angle, we find that the Brewers really couldn’t get the job done without him being on his game. Paul hit .327/.401/.509 in the Brewers victories in ’82, but only .268/.315/.370 in their losses. It doesn’t matter how good the middle of your order is hitting, if your leadoff man has a .315 OBP. Foretunately, Molitor was at his best far more often than he wasn’t.

The Brewers, often called Harvey’s Wallbangers at the time, made the playoffs for the 2nd season in a row, and this time they found themselves in the World Series. Paul, was a big part of Milwaukee’s success in the post-season, killing the Angels pitchers to the tune of a 1.065 OPS, and then got on base at a .394 clip against the Cardinals pitchers in the World Series.

Unfortunately for Paul and his team, they lost game 7 of that series….so close, but yet so far. It would be another 11 seasons before he’d find himself playing for a championship again, this time with the Blue Jays. That time, he won it.

A few years later he retired as one of the all-time great batters….scoring more than 1700 runs, collecting over 3300 hits, stealing more than 500 bases, hit over .300, and an OBP of .369.

Random Paul Molitor facts and stats—

• 39 game hitting streak in ’87 (7th longest to date)
• Hit for the Molitor cycle on May 15, 1991
• 1 of only 4 players with 1850+ RC without hitting more than 250 HR’s
• As of 2010, is a coach for the AAA Rochester Red Wings
• Posted a .521 OBP when the count was 3-2.
• Posted a .520 SLG in the Sky Dome

Compiling a 7-13 record on the strength of a 5.19 ERA, will rarely get you recalled from the minors. His 1.655 WHIP really gives you an idea how his summer of ’82 went. Toiling like that in AAA, watching your old team head for the playoffs, must’ve been very hard. Though, I’m sure he was rooting for his old teammates to win it all.

His final major league appearance was a Tuesday night back in August 1981, when the White Sox visited Milwaukee. Everything started out fine, but blew up in his face out of nowhere.

Milwaukee was losing 3-0 in the top of the 6th when Brewers manager Buck Rodgers made a pitching change. He brought in the young Rickey Keeton from the ‘pen, who’d been pitching very well for the past few weeks, posting a 2.84 ERA since the 2nd half of the season had begun.

When Rickey took the mound, there was 1 out and the bases were loaded. He gets the first batter to groundout to 3rd, and the next one to fly out to leftfield. Inning over. Things looking good.

That would prove to be the final out he’d ever record in the majors. When the 7th inning began, everything broke loose. Ron LeFlore led the inning off with a single before stealing 2nd and being doubled in by Mike Squires. Future Hall of Fame catcher Carlton Fisk then singles Squires over to 3rd, to put runners at the corners with nobody out.

Greg Luzinski draws a walk, and the White Sox have the bases loaded for the 2nd inning in a row. At that point, Keeton gets replaces by Jamie Easterly, who allows 1 of Keeton’s baserunners to score.

And that was it for Keeton’s career. After the ’81 season finished, Rickey was traded to the Astros and moved on to the Royals organization after a while. He finished his baseball career in ’85 for the Omaha Royals, going 8-4 with a 4.96 ERA.

I think this is Rickey’s only Topps card, as I couldn’t find any other when I Googled him. Oddly, ’82 seems to be the only year he had any cards, and all 3 major card companies made a Rickey Keeton card (Fleer, Donruss, and Topps).

What really makes the card for me though, is the expression. He’s looking upward, hopeful, dreaming, of a better time that he seems sure will come in the not-too-distant future. The photo was apparently taken in ’81, because he was no longer part of the Milwaukee Brewers when the 1982 season started. He’d been traded in early March to Seattle—where he stunk. He hadn’t been all that good before 1982 either, bouncing through five teams and playing below average almost every season.

Yet, after ’82 he’d find himself playing in the northside of Chicago for four seasons, posting a 122 OPS+ during that time. Yep, that young hopeful look on Thad’s 1982 Topps card, wasn’t insanity but soon became a reality. It pays to dream. During his time with the Cubs in the mid-80′s, he’d get on base at a .379 clip and his batting average was a respectable .302. Sadly, he still didn’t get a lot of plate appearances. He really deserved more than he got. No joke.

Get this, despite producing a .375 OBP in 1984 (in limited PA’s), he was only given 2 plate appearances in the 1984 NL Championship series. Two. Those were pinch hitting assignments. Yeah. Just 2.

It feels like an injustice when I look at his 1985 stats and see he had an OBP of .391 & hit a good .328, but only got 202 PA’s. Are you kidding me?? It seems the Cubs just couldn’t see what they had in Thad.

So I wondered if maybe his splits for ’85 would tell me things weren’t as bright as they appeared on the surface, but hey, Thad Bosley’s OBP with runners in scoring position (45 PA’s) was .400! Why do you limit this hitters plate appearances? When he came to bat with the score tied, he put up a batting line of .366/.435/.512. It was even wilder when men were on (any) base— .328/.423/.578/1.001. I mean, look at that slugging and OPS, wouldn’t you look to have a hitter like that coming to the plate when there’s a men on base?

Then, just before the 1987 season began, Bosley was traded to Kansas City. In a weird twist, it turns out Bosley wasn’t any good in the American League. It’s like the AL was kryptonite to him. His stats drop back to being well below average, just like his pre-Cubbie days.

So it all makes me wonder, how good might Thad Bosley have become if he was given more playing time and stayed in the National League? From the look on on his face, I think maybe Thad knew just what Thad had in him.

[claim code: 4sgactzx2y]