Cards That Never Were - 35th & 36th Series Checklists

Oscar Gamble and Rusty Staub

Just doing a bit of house-keeping here at CTNW.  The cards on these checklists date all the way back to July of 2016.  

I made the checklists in the 1983 design and included 2 of the greats that we lost earlier this year, Oscar Gamble and Rusty Staub.  Checklist 35 is populated with several cards from my other long neglected blog, Rating The Rookies.  It also contains many NFL/AFL Rookies of the Year and "Throwback Thursday" cards.

Checklist 36 is dominated by the 2016 post season cards I made. I took Hall of Famers that played for the 2016 post season teams. The twist was they were better known for wearing other teams' uniforms and I put them on cards from the year they were inducted into the Hall. I have to say, it made for some unusual looking cards. Also in that series were more Football ROY's and the missing manager cards from 1974.

If you wish to check out all the cards on these checklists without all these boring words getting in the way, click here.  Or, as always you can click on this (or any other) checklist in the right margin.  It will direct you straight to the page that contains all of these cards.

1972 Alt-Topps Requests

To the people who read all the way to the bottom of my last post, here are your requests.  To be fair, I added that last paragraph about the requests 8 or 9 hours after I had first published my last post. This is just my way of saying thank you to all the other baseball card nerds.  Thank you for sharing my interests and even participating in them. 

I ended up making 11 cards in all.  Bill requested more All Stars so I included Bud Harrelson in what would be his only All Star start. Norm Cash actually started in place of  Boog Powell. Although Powell wasn't listed as injured, he only started in 8 regular season games in July of 1971. Despite going 0 for 2, Cash was good choice to fill in for Boog. First, he was playing in his home stadium. Second, he was hitting .293  with 20 homers in the first half of 1971.

I had a request for Ken Boswell from "Rumple" while "Buzz" gave me a laundry list. Above are the base cards. Staub could've been another traded, but since he wasn't dealt to the Mets until April, I kept him on the Expos.

I did give traded cards to Sudden Sam and McLain.  The shot of Denny wearing #52 must've been from spring training.  His familiar #17 belonged to pitcher Ron Klimkowski in 1971. Klimkowski didn't make Oakland's big league roster after spring training in 1972 and was released outright in May. McLain himself was dealt to the Braves for Orlando Cepeda in June after only 5 starts for the A's.

Both Baseball-Reference and The Baseball Almanac have him listed as wearing #17 during his short time with the A's.  I've seen pictures of him wearing 30, 31 and 52 but never 17.  Can anyone find a picture of him wearing #17 for the A's?

Another Buzz request was Frank Robinson.  I found this great shot and made it a Game 6 card.  So much going on in this photo.  First of course, you have Robbie scoring on a pop fly to shallow center off the bat of Brooks.  You also have Manny Sanguillen at the plate and in the foreground, batboy Jay Mazzone.  Mazzone had lost both hands as a 2 year old.  He joined the Orioles at 12 in 1966. 1972 was his final season.  

Even More 1972 Alt-Topps

World Series, All-Star, Leaders and Traded Cards

I'm not done yet. 

Here is what I imagine the World Series cards would look like in my Bizzaro Universe 1972 Topps set.

And the All Star cards.  I went with a Detroit Tigers color scheme because the 1971 classic was played at Tiger Stadium.  Hard to believe that 1971 is still the only season in which both starting pitchers were African-American. 

As a side-note, the Pirates fielded a line up that featured African Americans in every position also in 1971 for the first time in MLB history.  This wasn't done with any forethought of creating history as most of the regular line up featured black players. It was more of a happenstance due to injuries.

For the Leaders cards, I adopted the format Topps used in 1970 and 1971.

In the real 1972 set Topps began making late-series Traded cards. I mimicked that here using the original concept model, John Mayberry and another famous guy who wasn't in the original 1972 Topps Traded sub-set.

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I thought I'd try something different. Just wondering if anybody actually reads this all the way to the bottom. If you did, I'll take a few requests for this alternative set. If you have a player you'd like to see, base or sub-set, just post it in the comments before October 15th.  Then I'll do what I can to create those cards and make a final posting under the 1972 Alt-Topps heading by the end of the month.

More 1972 Alt-Topps

Managers, Rookies and Team Cards

Running with this same concept, I made these manager cards of two Hall of Famers who were  gone before the start of the 1973 season. Ted Williams was the Manager of the Year for the Senators in 1969. In 1972 the Senators moved to Texas and lost 100 games. It was Williams final year.  Meanwhile, Durocher was falling out of favor in Chicago.

I included the coaches on these cards like Topps would do in 1973 and 74 but it seemed a shame to reduce them to black and white on such a colorful set. You might notice that both 1959 MVPs are included in the coaches. Nellie Fox coached under Williams for the Senators and the Rangers. Ernie Banks was a coach for the Cubs the first few years after his retirement.

And of course, made the necessary rookie cards featuring what would be the 1972 Rookies of the Year.

And love 'em or hate 'em, here are the team cards.

1972 Alt-Topps

After being away for so long, I was undecided when (or if) I would start posting again.  But I do have quite a backlog of cards that I've already made. I also have quite a few ideas that still need to be fleshed out. What I do know is that I just don't have the time to post very often. So I'm going to try posting once a month.

Like I said before, "Cards That Never Were" was not a unique idea when I started this blog.  And lately there are even more blogs out there with similar content. Additionally there are Twitter, Facebook and other accounts devoted to the very same concept. Rather than just add more to the pile, I wanted to try something a bit different.

I came across some of Topps rejected concept cards on The Topps Archives and Keith Olbermann's Baseball Nerd and various other message boards and blogs.  Similar to what I did with the 1963 Fleer set, I decided to create an outline of what these mock-ups could be as a complete set. I will try to incorporate what we've all come to expect in a complete set: Rookie cards, All-Star cards, Leaders, World Series, etc.

For my first "Set", I think this was a prototype for the 1972 set. The designer used John Mayberry's 1971 card and put it inside his design. I decided to clean it up a bit and see what the cards might have looked like if Topps went with this design in 1972.

Here are few base cards, using the MVPs and Cy Young winners from 1972. Oddly, Three of the four were on new teams in 1972. Carlton had a card in a St. Louis uniform plus a late series "traded" card. For Dick Allen and Gaylord Perry, Topps just recycled old photos and tried to pass them off as their new team.

I tried to keep close to the color schemes that Topps used in 1972. If that Mayberry card was made using the color scheme the Astros used in 1972, it would look more like this:

In my next post I'll delve into this concept a little deeper.