Friday, January 20, 2012

1976 Fleer Randy Jones


After losing the battle to Topps in 1963 Fleer wouldn't make cards featuring active baseball players until 1981. They also stopped making football cards with Topps and Philadelphia printing AFL & NFL cards respectively. In 1976 Fleer began making football cards with active players again. They had a contract with the NFL but not with the Players' Union. So while Topps could print cards featuring players they could not use copyrighted team logos. Fleer on the other hand could use team and league logos but not the players' names.

Here is Randy Jones as he would have appeared on a 1976 Fleer issue. After coming in 2nd to Tom Seaver in the 1975 Cy Young voting he secured the 1976 Cy Young award by leading the league in wins and complete games. All this while playing for the 5th place Padres. He was named starting pitcher the All Star game. He pitched 3 scoreless innings and earned the win. After the 1976 season he had surgery and never regained his Cy Young form.

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