Topps All-Star Misses: 1968 NL Outfield

The 1968 Topps All Star cards for the National League outfield mirrored the 1967 All Star Game starting outfield.  Perennial All Stars Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Roberto Clemente were all there.  But the cards themselves say "The Sporting News 68 All Star Selection."  The actual 1968 Sporting News All Star outfielders were Billy Williams, Curt Flood and Pete Rose. 

More 1971 Alt-Topps

Managers, Team Cards and Traded

The manager cards are a bit of a preview of what Topps did in 1973 and 1974.  I also chose a couple of Hall of Famers to fill these cards. Walt Alston was the Dodgers manager from 1954-1976. He won 7 Pennants and 4 World Series titles. He was inducted as a manager in 1983.

Bob Lemon was inducted into the Hall as a player in 1976. 1971 was his first full season as manager. He took the reigns in KC from Charlie Metro midway through the 1970 campaign. He would eventually get a World Series title as manager with the Yankees in 1978.

On the team cards, I tried to incorporate elements of the base cards. I shrunk the home plate to hold the team logo instead of the photo.  

The Padres and Brewers were both part of the 1969 expansion. The Brewers, of course, began in Seattle in 1969. Back then, the Brewers were an American League team.  Both these teams had very similar logos.

The giants traded Ron Hunt to the Expos for a 28-year-old rookie utility man, Dave McDonald. Before the start of the 1971 season the Expos bought McDonald back from the Giants.  Ron Hunt was a player who would take one for the team.  A ball magnet, he led the league in hit-by-pitches from 1968 to 1974. In 1971 he was beaned a career high 50 times. 

1971 marked Flood's return to baseball after sitting out the 1970 season. In 1969 the Cardinals dealt him to the Phillies as part of a multi-player trade. Flood famously sued the MLB and eventually led to free agency. But in 1971 the suit was still ongoing. The Phillies traded him to Washington. Unfortunately, he only played 13 games for Ted William's Senators. He hit a meager .200 and retired by the end of April 1971.

Even More 1964 Alt-Topps

World Series, Leaders, All- Stars and Topps All-Star Rookie Cards

Just a few more of my favorite subsets, World Series cards, Leaders cards, All Star cards and Topps Rookie All Star cards.

For the World Series card I kept the basic format but reversed the layout.  In the real 1964 set, Topps also highlighted Koufax's 15 strikeouts in Game 1. But I gotta say I like this photo better. 

On the leaders cards, I went a little off script for Topps. Instead of one large horizontal photo with two (or more) smaller photos below, I used one large vertical shot for the leader and smaller photos to the right.

Another un-Topps thing is having a card for Runs Scored Leaders.  Not one of the top stats but I like the top three players, so...

Again for the All Star cards, I reversed the Field.

Instead of a team logo, I used the All Star Game logo from 1963. I also tried to incorporate the logo's colors into the card format.

Since this format reminds me so much of the 1960 Topps All Star Rookies subset, I had to recreate it here.

Oddly in 1964 all but one of the Topps All Star Rookie team had the official trophy on his card. That was Jesse Gonder.  But in the Bizarro Universe, my Alt-Topps has got him covered.

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Just as I did in the last batch, I am willing to take a few requests.  I know most people just look at the pictures in these blogs.  But if you actually read this all the way to the bottom of the last post, it's the least I could do.  Just leave your requests in the comment section.

1963 Fleer

The 1963 Fleer set was cut short at just 66 cards. Topps won a court battle allowing it to have a near monopoly on baseball cards until 1981. Fleer had to cease printing cards after just one series. 

The '63 Fleer set has had loads of Cards That Never Were posted by multiple sources on the interwebs. I made nine different cards myself, which I posted on this blog and on my other blog, Rating The Rookies.  

Here are my 1963 Fleer cards of Ernie Banks, Ken Hubbs, Fritz Ackley, Curt Flood, Joe Shipley, Al Moran, Lee Stange, Don Zimmer and even Kris Kringle. 

Fleer themselves have made versions of these cards, too. They included this Mickey Mantle MVP card as an insert in its 1998 Tradition set.

Then again for its 40th anniversary in 2003 it included several very nice looking cards. Like these of Luis Aparicio, Lou Brock and Duke Snider::

Although the 2003 set included several players from 1963 it was annoyingly flawed. First, they changed the design slightly by shrinking the player sketch and coloring it white. Second was the inevitable Fleer Tradition logo on the top. But the biggest flaws were the players either in the wrong era uniforms, like Red Schoendienst and Willie Stargell,

 Or simply in black and white like Eddie Mathews and Frank Malzone:

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Ok, all that was a long-winded prelude to tease my next few posts. I am not going to try to complete the 1963 set. That would be insane (although possibly fun).  

 We've seen plenty of base/player cards that never were based on the 1963 Fleer set. But if it had expanded beyond the first 66 base cards into an entire set, what would the other elements of a complete set look like?

1963 Fleer Curt Flood

St. Louis Cardinals CTNW Favorites #5

In 1963 Curt Flood won his first of 7 consecutive Gold Gloves. The other two Gold Glove winners in the outfield were Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente. Pretty good company. 

Despite his All Star performance on the field, Flood is most associated with his challenge of the Reserve Clause. He was part of a 7 player trade that brought Dick Allen to St. Louis. But Flood refused to be sent to Philadelphia. The Phillies played in the 60+ year old Connie Mack Stadium and had just come off a 99 loss season. The only teams with more losses in 1969 were the 2 N.L. expansion teams, the Expos and Padres. He was also wary of the fans in Philadelphia. Dick Allen was often the target of verbal (and often racist) attacks by his hometown fans. He was also the target of debris thrown by fans, famously including batteries. He eventually took to wearing a batting helmet while playing defense.

Although his battle against the reserve clause would go all the way to the US Supreme Court, it was struck down. In 1970 the MLB ushered in the 10/5 rule. Nicknamed the "Curt Flood Rule", it allowed for any player with 10 years in the MLB and 5 years on the same team to veto any trade.