He didn’t just sneak in because of his reputation like some guys who weren’t having very good years in ’81. Carlton Fisk was an asset to the pitching staff and a deterrent to base thieves when he was behind the plate, and was hitting well when he was at the plate.

By the end of the first half of the season, he had a strong .395 OBP, and his batting average was better than it had been in four years.

When the strike hit, he was leading his team in OBP, RBI, HBP, was 2nd in HR’s, and tied for 2nd in doubles.

Before the All-Star game could happen though, there was that two month mid-season strike that muddled up the whole 1981 season. Carlton made good use of the time though, spending it with his kid back in New Hampshire.

When the mid-summer classic finally happened, Carlton was a part of the American League’s three-run 6th inning. He left the game, having scored the run that put his team up 4-2.

When the season got rolling again, he picked up where he left off, batting .321 with a .400 OBP, and only striking out once, over 66 PA’s.

The White Sox were lookin’ pretty good in first half of ’81, then pretty bad in the second half. Still, they were a rising power in the American League at this time, culminating in their ALCS appearance a couple years later. In ’82 they finished third, just 6 games back of the Angels, due to a fine mix of veterans like Tom Paciorek, Carlton Fisk, and Greg Luzinski, with a couple youngsters like Harold Baines and Rudy Law.

The organization didn’t really have many realistic future stars for Topps to pick from yet, so they chose….

Jay Loviglio

From 1979-1981, Jay was getting on base at nearly a .360 clip, stole 128 bases (82% success rate!!), scored over 250 runs, and walked more than he struck out …in AAA. The White Sox, and Topps, saw him as the future leadoff man for the 1980′s southsiders. Unfortunately he just couldn’t get on base in the majors. Over the course of 56 career plate appearances, he managed a mere .236 OBP and 5 steals (50% success rate).

Reggie Patterson

Reggie had a cup o’ coffee in ’81, and promptly allowed 11 ER’s in just 7 1/3 IP. He spent the entire ’82 season exiled in AAA Edmonton, where he led the team in wins (14) but was giving up 6 runs per 9 IP. Somehow he managed to make it back to the majors after being traded to the Cubs, appearing in games in ’83, ’84, and ’85. Oddly, he posts a decent ERA of 3.00 in ’85 and never pitches in the majors or minors again. He finally does good, and then he’s gone. There’s a head scratcher for ya.

Leo Sutherland

Here’s another ChiSox prospect that was groomed to leadoff. He stole 51 bases in ’81 in AAA Edmonton, but he posted a low OBP around never cracking the .340 mark his entire time in AAA. When the White Sox called him in ’80, he hit .258 but struck out about 10 times more than he walked. When they brought him back up in ’81, it took 16 PA’s for the team to realize he wasn’t the answer to anything.

Leo played his final major league game in the Twins @ White Sox game on October 4, 1981. All three players on this card were in that game.

I’m pretty sure that this picture was snapped during the second game of a doubleheader in Comiskey Park on Sunday afternoon of July 27, 1980, where the Rangers snipped the White Sox 4-3 in 13 innings.

My first clue is the uniform. In 1981, the White Sox wore the white jersey with white pants. So this has to be 1980. Well, there’s a teensy weensy chance this could be from 1979, but I doubt Topps would use a photo that’s three years old.

My second clue is that it’s a day game, and July 27th was the only time Dewey pitched in daylight at Comiskey during ’80. I didn’t stop there though, I wanted to see what time of day this picture might’ve been taken.

A couple of months ago while I was researching something else entirely, I developed a simple calculation to estimate when a particular plate appearance occurred in a game: GameMinutes ÷ BF = Avg Min Per PA

So, for this game, there were 106 batters faced by the pitchers, and the game took 237 minutes. Plugging in the numbers, that gives us an average of 2.2358 minutes per PA. Since 41 batters stepping to the plate before Dewey entered the game, that would mean about ~92 minutes passed before he threw his first pitch of the day.

The game started at 3:15p, so the photo on this card was taken sometime between ~4:47p and ~5:50p on July 27, 1980.

The main reason Topps had to use an old picture, is ’cause Dewey only tossed 4 innings in the majors during 1981, spending most of the season in the PCL. They likely didn’t have a newer picture than the one shown here, and assumed he’d be back for more in ’82. Unfortunately, after being the final White Sox pitcher to take the mound in ’81, he never made it back to the major leagues.

At the end of October, he was traded to the Phillies, only to get cut and re-assigned in the middle of spring training.

That turns out to be a strange story though. Apparently the Phillies didn’t even give him a chance, after telling him he had a good chance to make the team. He got 2 innings of work in spring training and then they told him he was overqualified for the job and released him.

Overqualified?!? Huh?? So, the Phillies thought Dewey Robinson was too good for their team? And then they don’t even trade him, but just drop him? Weirdest thing I’ve ever heard a team tell a player.

Anyway, a couple months later, he catches on with the PCL’s Portland Beavers. The team was having horrible bullpen troubles, so they needed the help, but when Dewey joined up with the club, the starting pitchers suddenly got hot and completed 10 of their next 15 games. Not much use for Dewey, ’til June 2 against Spokane….when he finally got to pitch again. He threw 4 IP, K’d 5, and gave up just 1 run, earning the save.

In August, he moved on to the Vancouver Canadians (also in the PCL), earning his first save for them on August 19. He never pitched well enough to be recalled to the majors though, and after the 1982 season, he was done as a player.

Afterwards, he went on to do some coaching in college, the minors, and even the major leagues in recent years. As of 2011, he’s part of the Rays coaching staff, listed as “coordinator, pitching”. Apparently, he’s not overqualified to coach.

Epic.

“Epic”, just says it all. I’ve never seen another card that just makes me want to drop everything and go play baseball the way this one does. It always had that effect. How can it not? It has to be my favorite baseball card of all time, featuring one of the best action moments ever by a future Hall of Famer, and it’s not some glossy overproduced lookin’ thing, but a classic rustic sort of feel.

Carlton Fisk, as you probably know, was also part of another epic shot, when he smacked one of the most memorable walk-off home runs ever, forcing a game 7 in the 1975 World Series.

I was too young to have seen that when it happened, so to me, this card shaped how I viewed him—a hard playing catcher who just did whatever he had to, to make the play. When I was 8 and 9, whenever I’d wear my plastic White Sox batting helmet and swing my whiffle ball bat, I was Carlton Fisk. I would turn the hat backwards, toss a ball up in the air and dive to catch it. I was Carlton Fisk.

This was probably the first card that made me wonder “when did this happen?”. I specifically remember standing in my backyard sandbox one day, wondering that, and with the help of the internet, I was finally able to narrow it down to two very possible games—April 3rd and April 7th, 1981, both against the Pirates in Bradenton, Florida, at (pre-renovated) McKechnie Field. How?

First, Carlton’s wearing Chicago’s ’81 road uniform. Second, the players in the dugout are wearing yellow or orange colored caps (possibly pillbox style), white uniforms, and black jackets. That rules out every American League team, so this had to be a spring training game against the Astros or Pirates, which would also explain Fisk wearing long sleeves.

Turns out, the White Sox played as the road team against the Pirates on April 3 & April 7, 1981. They didn’t play the Astros after Carlton joined the team in late March. The Pirates usually wore black caps with their white uniforms back then, but thanks to Jason Thompson’s ’81 Topps traded card, we can see the Pirates wore the exact combination we see in the dugout on this card, at least once during that year.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find boxscores or play-by-play descriptions in any newspaper articles that said much about those two games. This is a crucial point, ’cause White Sox apparently played two different teams on Friday April 3 (Cardinals & Pirates), so it’s possible Fisk didn’t play the Pirates that day but only on April 7th.

All this, makes the card all the more amazing, because it shows that Carlton Fisk was giving his best effort in a game that wouldn’t even matter in the season standings. He was playin’ his hardest even when he wasn’t trying to earn a roster spot or trying to earn a big money contract. He was just playin’ hard for all the right reasons .…for the love of the game.

The feel good story kept going, and from his debut on August 1, 1974 on through the 1981 season, he stole 427 bases—more bases than any other player during that span. The 1980 Sports Illustrated article “A Leg Up On The League Lead” said “LeFlore usually makes the whole team go”.

He started the 1982 season hot; Through May 18, he was hitting .338/.373/.486, with 14 steals, helping the team to a 23-12 start. The White Sox were just a 1/2 game out of first. He’d scored 28 runs in 33 games played.

Then something changed, and his feel good story starts crashing down hard and fast. From May 18-July 17, he’s only got a .295 OBP, and his BAbip fell from .446 earlier in the year to .327. If their igniter can’t get on base, the team can’t score. This affected the team’s offense terribly, as the team went 22-29 during the two month span. Interestingly, they went 7-7 when Ron wasn’t in the lineup.

The next day, Ron got suspended for 3 games, for missing a special team practice and showing up for the July 18th game just minutes before it started. That didn’t seem to teach him much though, as he was late for the team flight to Detroit later on.

This is a behavior pattern that got fined a lot by Sparky Anderson in Detroit, and annoyed the Expos too. So it’s not really surprising it would get on the nerves of a young Tony LaRussa in Chicago too. He was trouble in the ChiSox clubhouse from midseason onward, and played in his last major league game on September 3, as a pinch runner.

Things only got worse from there as Ron was arrested on September 30, 1982 on drug & gun related charges. By December, the White Sox were trying to unload him, but nobody else wanted him. The White Sox were even willing to pay Ron LeFlore to not play.

Two days before another court date in January ’83, Ron’s infant son dies. His legal issues kept on being drawn out with more and more court dates, as well as the White Sox deciding to just release him and not have to pay him a cent. Of course, the players association helped Ron with that issue.

Eventually, in June, he was acquitted of all the charges. Despite that, the White Sox still didn’t want him. They’d cut him in spring training, which was probably a formality considering they didn’t want him before that anyway. Then they claimed that he’d breached his contract by not being in shape to play and by bad behavior, both of which his contract covered.

Insanely, Ron had more legal troubles a few months later when a man sued him for money the man thought he was owed for discovering Ron LeFlore in prison a decade earlier. Don’t know how that one turned out.

Ron LeFlore doesn’t give up easy though. After the ’83 season, with no teams willing to give him a shot to play, he bolted for the Puerto Rican winter league to show he can still be worth something to a team. He even dropped 23 lbs and made sure he was in better shape.

I remember reading somewhere that he tried out for the Expos in the spring of ’84, but I can’t find that anywhere now. The trail grows cold until 2009, when we find Ron and his wife “living check to check, trying to squeeze every nickel and dime out of Ron’s monthly MLB pension payments”. He can’t even afford the hip replacement he needs.

Sad end to a player who was so exciting and thrilling. A man who’d opened the door when opportunity knocked and got to play with & against some of the greatest baseball players in history.

I also like how he signed his name “Bobby” instead of just Bob or Robert. Makes the card feel more like he’s living out little Bobby’s baseball dreams.

Bobby, wasn’t the best player on the White Sox roster, but he had a good couple of years leading into the ’82 season. In ’81, he started getting used as a pinch hitter a little more than the average player and did petty good at it.

Before the next season though, he was sent from the southside to the northside. The Cubs used him almost exclusively as a pinch hitter for the pitcher and as a late innings defensive replacement, before he was sold to the Phillies at the end August.

He actually hit a lot better for Philadelphia than he did in Chicago, but he was still just a bench player though. At first glance, Bob’s stats look like the description of a player beyond his prime who’s just hanging on by filling out a roster spot. Then I found a very interesting detail to his ’82 stats.

When Bobby came to the plate and there were no runners on the bases, he only hit .119 and got on base at a .190 pace. Just what you’d expect from a player fading into obscurity, but, the real surprise is how he hit when runners were in scoring position (RISP), hitting .350 and getting on base at a .480 clip!

Unfortunately for Bob, 52% of his plate appearances came with nobody on base, dragging down his averages. Only 28% of his PA’s came with RISP. If the manager had used him to pinch hit more when runners were in scoring position, Bobby’s career might’ve lasted longer. He could definitely still get the job done when the moment was important.

Maybe it was the power of the ‘stache.

His talents began to fade in 1980 though. From 1976 through May 8, 1980 he was hitting .321 with a .375 OBP, and slugging at .536, to give him a .911 OPS. Looked like he was having yet another good season for the ChiSox when ’80 started. Nobody knew it at the time, but on May 9 in a game in Texas, Lamar would go 0 for 5 and his career would never be the same. Just look at the sudden difference here, even if we include his not-so-good beginning years—

Period	AB/HR	AVG	OBP	SLG
1974-5/8/80	35.75	.298	.348	.439
5/9/80-1982	57.19	.267	.320	.370

That’s a significant drop in averages there, and a big change in his home run rate slowing down. What’s weirder is that he was just 28 years old, which should be a players prime time (age 27-30ish). Makes me suspect an injury or a batting coach trying to change something about Lamar’s approach at the plate, but I couldn’t find anything to confirm that.

So when Lamar was granted free agency in November 1981, his career was limping on its last leg. In January 1982, he signed with the Rangers. For the first nine games of the season, he hit well and looked like he could be getting a second wind, batting a pretty .375/.423/.583/1.006! But after those nine games, he hit a mere .250 and only got on base at a .318 pace. He probably doesn’t remember 1982 as fondly as I do, since his career was finished that year.

One more thing. Notice on the back of Lamar’s ’82 card that one of the trivia questions is about Jim Kaat. Kaat played with Lamar on the White Sox in ’74-’75. The first time they played in the same game, Kaat won his 19th of the season, 3-1, over the A’s. Lamar provided the 2-run difference in the score by driving in the winning run and scoring one himself earlier.