Going back to a theme that I haven't done in months: League Leader Cards That Never Were. For reasons only known to Topps, there were no stolen base nor saves leader cards until 1973. In the earliest incarnations of the leader cards this extended into missing RBI leader cards as well. Those weren't included until the 1964 set.
For those not familiar with the term Leading Fireman, it was an award given out by The Sporting News for the leagues' best closers. I was supposed to be based on a formula combining relief wins and saves. However this seemed to be inconsistent and sometimes he award was given to a pitcher that didn't statistically fit that supposed formula, see here. So for the purposes of my leader cards, I went to using saves leaders
For the second year in a row Ron Perranoski won the Sporting News Fireman of the Year award. With a league leading 34 saves he also received Cy Young and MVP votes in 1970. Meanwhile, the runner up was Yankees reliever, Lindy McDaniel who was Fireman of the Year with the Cardinals in 1960 and the Cubs in 1963. Rounding out the top 3 was Tom Timmermann. In his second year in the big leagues, Timmermann had a career high 27 saves.
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