Favorite Players A-Z (Part 2 of 3)

Part 2 of me jumping on the bandwagon.  Here's "J" through "R" of my favorite players A-Z.

I hope this isn't a recurring theme.  Again, I couldn't choose between two of my favorites.

1974 Topps Traded Fergie Jenkins

1986 Fleer Bo Jackson

1975 Topps Dave Kingman

1981 Donruss Greg Luzinski

1969 Topps Carlos May

Don Newcombe on another rejected Topps prototype

1962 Topps Buck O'Neil

1968 Topps Satchel Paige

1980 Donruss Dan Quisenberry

1973 Topps Frank Robinson

Ten more cards and this time a mere 3 Chicago cards.

MLB Dream Bracket Alt-Topps Cards Part 8

Cubs v Mets
Giants v Brewers

The 3rd round began yesterday and I'm just finishing up the first round of match ups.  Again they pitted older franchises against sixties expansion teams. The Mets colors were originally colors were going to be pink and black.  They decided to change them to orange and blue in homage of the two New York teams that had recently departed for the west coast.  The Brewers were born as the Seattle Pilots in 1969. Weeks before the 1970 season they were "rescued" by Bud Selig and relocated to Milwaukee.

In the Cubs - Mets match up, I went for a 1969 reunion. On the Cubs 26 man roster there is exactly one pitcher (Jenkins) and 3 starting position players (Banks, Santo and Williams).  For the Mets there are 3 pitcher (Seaver, Koosman and McGraw), one starting position player (Jones) and one reserve (Agee) that played in 1969. So in a slight break from my norm of 1 pitcher and 3 position players, the Mets will have 2 pitchers and 2 position players. To see the results of this series click here.

In the Giants - Brewers match up I have Christy Mathewson, Mel Ott, Willie Mays and Willie McCovey for the New York/San Francisco Giants.  The makers of this roster all but forgot about the Seattle Pilots.  Gorman Thomas was drafted #1 by Seattle but didn't make the bigs until 1973. So for the Brewers/(not)Pilots I have Pete Vuckovich (who liked to wear two different shoes), the aforementioned Gorman Thomas, Paul Molitor and Christian Yelich. To see the results of this series click here.

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These cards are base on the MLB Dream Bracket.  Not sure who picked the "all-time players". It is a product of Twitch, Out of the Park and Draft Kings.  I take no responsibility for their choices, good or bad.  The cards themselves are based on a rejected Topps design from the late sixties.

To check the status of the bracket click here.

More 1965 Alt -Topps

Rookies, Team Cards and Managers

Love them or hate them, here they come.  First is the multi-player Rookie Stars card.  For the rookie card I let the photos take a backseat to the design and went with a 1963 rookie card feel.  I know people dislike the multi-player design because for every card with a "Steve Carlton" you get a "Fritz Ackley".  But with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, these are loaded.

The AL card has the top two Rookie of the Year nominees, Blefary and Lopez. It also has 1966 ROY Tommie Agee and Skip Lockwood. Lockwood came up as a 3rd baseman. He batted .121 in 33 at bats in 1965. He went back to the drawing board and was reborn as a pitcher. He pitched for 12 years in the majors from 1969-1980.

Once again in the NL, I have the players with the most ROY votes. Lefebvre, Morgan and Linzy. The fourth was future Hall of Famer, Fergie Jenkins. In 1965, Houston was transitioning from .45s to Astros. During spring training they had several cap logos.  This shot of Morgan has the plain embroidered star. There also were a couple variations with just an 'H' and a few sewn-on-patch variations before the final version.

The team cards are about as basic as they get. I used the same script and a simple white border.

The Manager cards are the same as the regular issue cards.  I went with a pair of teams that will surely upset Yankee fans.

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I got a lot of good requests for this set so far.  Some of them are a bit challenging, but keep them coming.

1971 Alt-Topps

Here is another design that I only had a black and white image to work with. I tried to replicate it using a similar shot of the great Roberto Clemente. The Font is reminiscent of Topps 1971 football cards. That plus the photo of Clemente drove may decision to make this an Alt-1971 set. 

One quirk about this prototype is the oddly specific player position. Here it defines Clemente's position as "Right Field" instead of the more generic "Outfield".

As usual, I created base cards of the MVP and Cy Young Award Winners. In 1971 the NL Cy Young winner was Fergie Jenkins.  Always a workhorse for the Cubs, Jenkins led the league in complete games and innings pitched. He also led in Wins with 24. He also led in strikeouts to walk ratio with an outrageous 7.11 to 1. The next closest was Tom Seaver with 4.74 to 1.

The AL Cy Young winner was Vida Blue. Blue also had 24 victories and was simply lights-out in 1971. He led the league in Pitching Ratio and ERA, and averaged 8.7 strikeouts per 9 innings. His performance also garnered the AL MVP.

The NL MVP was cardinals third-baseman, Joe Torre. A Gold Glove catcher for the Braves, he was dealt to the Cardinals in 1969 after his offensive stats began to sag. The Cards made him a corner man and his numbers went right back up. In 1971 he led the NL in RBI's, Batting Average, Hits and Total Bases.

Since the AL MVP already has a card, I decided to make a base card of 1971 Comeback Player of the Year. This was Norm Cash's second time winning the award. In 1965 he hit .223 with 7 homers in the first half of the season.  In the second half he batted .307 with 23 dingers. After hitting .259 with 15 homers in 1970 his first half of 1971 rose to .293 with 20 homers and an All Star start.

Even More 1968 Alt-Topps

World Series, All Star and Leaders Cards

As I finish out the 1968 sub-sets, I think Topps missed the boat by not making this into a real set. The stars design adapts well to multiple sub-sets. For the World Series cards I swapped the oval out for a Shield (borrowed from 1978 Topps All-Stars).

For the All-Stars, I went horizontal. Same as the real 1968 set but I borrowed the B/W action background from the 1969 Topps All-Stars.

I used a couple of my favorite outfielders from that ERA. Sweet-swinging Billy Williams and Hondo.

Unlike the real 1968 Topps, this set used a variation of the much-used vertical format for the leaders cards.

I couldn't have 1968 leader cards without Yaz, who won the triple-crown in 1967.