One More for "Mr. Tiger"

Last week baseball lost another legend.  Here is one more card in the style of the 1967 Alt-Topps. Over the past several years he has been featured on this blog more than a few times.  In fact, he was even included in my latest posts of the 1967 Alt-Topps.  He was on the AL batting leaders card.

He passed away on the 6th of April and his #6 was retired by Detroit in 1980.  I thought it might be interesting to see how Kaline performed on April 6th over his Hall of Fame career.  But what I came to realize is that the baseball season for the most part used to begin mid-April.  Its has been creeping earlier and earlier since 1970. Kaling had only played on April 6th 3 times in his career. Collectively, he hit .462 in just 3 games: 1970, 1971 and 1974.  He went 6 for 13 with 3 walks, 2 RBIs and 2 runs scored.  Not bad.

Here are the cards that I've created for this blog in the past:

1967 Alt-Topps

Here is another Topps mock-up.  Although the name says Ben Solomon, it's obviously Eddie Mathews.  Ben Solomon was an art director for Topps.  His name on the card must be an inside joke.  The Braves moved to Atlanta in 1966. Mathews is sporting a Milwaukee Braves cap. That is because the photo was lifted from his 1964 Topps card.





Mathews last season for the Braves was their first season in Atlanta.  That made him the only Braves player to play for the Braves in Boston, Milwaukee and Atlanta. Despite the Milwaukee cap and the fact that Mathews was traded to Houston before the season, I placed this set in 1967, AKA "the Summer of Love".  These cards give off that vibe. This is in contrast to the classic, clean, no-nonsense design Topps actually used in 1967.

Here is my version.  I used a more straight forward, less cartoony font for the team name. But I preserved the other design elements.






As usual, I made base cards of the respective MVPs and Cy Young Award winners.  I also followed Topps' color scheme from the actual 1967 set (as best I could).

The 1967 AL MVP was Triple Crown winner, Carl Yastrzemski. In the NL the MVP was Orlando Cepeda.  He had been the 1958 Rookie of the Year for the Giants. Primarily a first baseman, there was just no room on the Giants behind "Stretch".  He was traded to the Cards in May of 1966.

1967 was the first year the MLB awarded Cy Youngs to each league.  In the AL, Jim Lonborg of the Red Sox was having a career year.  He had 22 wins and 246 strikeouts, both league-leaders and career highs.  In the NL, Giants pitcher Mike McCormick also had a career high and league-leading 22 victories.

To be continued...

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Just as I've done in previous Alt-Topps posts, this post contains the base cards, I'll make a couple more posts with various subsets. And, of course, I'll make as many request as I can an hopefully post them in a few weeks. Just post your requests (or even ideas for other subsets, etc) in the comment section.  Thanks.

1968 Alt-Topps

Here's another in a series of rejected Topps designs ** (Now found in "The Brooklyn Collection". An exclusive "582 Montgomery Club" issue from Topps).**  As I stated in my previous post.  This mock-up features the photo of  Bubba Phillips and inexplicably bears the name of Angels pitcher Jim Weaver.

I'm not sure why they used the airbrushed photo from Phillips' 1964 card.A greater mystery is why the designer used Jim Weaver's name. He pitched just 53 innings at the major league level over 1967 and 1968.  Was it an inside joke? Was he related to someone at Topps? Why him? 

Well here is my cleaned up version of this card. I put the actual Jim Weaver in place of Bubba.

 I had to "borrow" the photo from his 1968 Topps Rookie Stars card.

Because Topps used Weaver as their subject, I am using this design for my Alt- Topps 1968 set. My usual method is to make base cards of that year's MVPs and Cy Young awards winners.  Since 1968 was the "Year of the Pitcher", Gibson and McLain won both MVP and Cy Young Awards. 

To round it out I added 2 more pitchers who had great 1968s.  Tiant led the A.L. with a 1.60 ERA.  Seaver was coming off his Rookie of the Year season in 1967. He had 16 win seasons in 1967 and 1968. Both of these pitchers were on the 1968 All Star teams.  Tiant was the A.L. starter and Seaver struck out 5 of the 8 batters he faced including Hall of Famers Mantle and Yaz.

If you haven't picked up on it already, there was something fishy about the National League pitchers.  Both Gibson and Seaver are posing as southpaws.  These two tried to pull a fast one on Topps and their poses even made it as far as the proof sheet. 

Here is a closer look at the Gibson and Seaver Proofs:

In 1968 the real Topps caught the pranks by these well-known pitchers before releasing the 1968 set.  The folks at Alt-Topps were more easily fooled.

1972 Topps Bad-Ass Photos of the Stars: Walt "No-Neck" Williams

1943-2016

I was saddened to hear the news that one of the favorite White Sox players of my childhood passed away last week. Walt Williams, affectionately known as No-Neck, played for the southsiders from 1967-1972. He along with Carlos May, who lost a thumb during a military training exercise, and Pat Kelly made up the Early '70s White Sox outfield which Harry Carey referred to as "no neck, no arm and no thumb".

I had made a card of Williams once before for my other blog "Rating the Rookies" seen to the right. But I wanted to make a tribute card of him during his White Sox tenure. So while scanning the interwebs for an appropriate picture I came across this photo of him on his motorcycle in old Comiskey Park. So I figured I'd modify the 1972 Boyhood Photos series for this card. 

I also ran into problems finding a decent photo of Walt in a 1972 era Sox uniform. So what I did was take the half-assed airbrush job Topps did on him for their 1973 card to the left and "fixed" it. 

Checking in with "Rating the Rookies"

This has been a busy time for me and I haven't really had the time to commit to this blog. Although I haven't been very busy on this blog, I have still been occasionally creating Cards That Never Were for my other blog, Rating The Rookies.

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Here is a 1975 Topps card for Lloyd Allen and a 1973 Topps card for Winston Llenas. They shared a 1970 Rookie Stars card while on the Angels. You can see that post here.

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Craig Reynolds, Lamar Johnson, Johnnie LeMaster and Jerry Manuel all share a Rookie Infielders card in the 1976 Topps set. 

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Jim Miles and Jan Dukes were both on a Senators Rookie Stars card in 1971. Here they are representing the same team in 1968 and 1971 repectively.

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In the 1963 set Rogelio Alvarez, Dave Roberts, Bob Saverine and Tommy Harper share a Rookie Stars card.

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Sammy Ellis and Mel Queen were both on the 1964 Reds Rookie Stars card.

More "Rating The Rookies" Cards That Never Were

This week I created 4 new cards for my sister blog: Rating the Rookies. Click Here to see more about these players as well as the real Rookie Card they shared.

1963 & 1964 Topps Chris Short

I am continuing with my versions of the Chris Short cards that never were. If you read the last few posts you know that like Maury Wills, Short was missing from Topps sets during the same time period for possibly similar reasons. Unlike Wills, the missing Chris Short cards are not as well documented. 

In 1963 Chris Short was a semi-regular in the Phillies rotation. The Phillies themselves improved from a 7th place finish in 1962 to 4th place in 1963 but Short's record fell below .500 again. On the bright side, he was throwing a lot more strikeouts and his ERA dropped below 3.00 for the first time in his career.

In 1964 The Phillies had a 6 1/2 game lead in the NL pennant chase on September 20th, only to succumb to an epic 10 game losing streak to land in 2nd place behind the Cards. 

Short's season reflected the Phillies efforts as well. He was 17-7 with his last win of the season coming on September 14th. His final 5 games of 1964 resulted in 2 losses and 3 no-decisions. He also made  his first All Star appearance and even garnered a couple MVP votes. In addition to his 17-9 record, he had 181 K's and was 3rd in the NL with a 2.20 ERA. (Which is what started this whole thread)

1964 Topp Early Wynn - 30 Tribute Card Project - Part 8

This part 8 of a continuing 30 tribute card project inspired by this article from Sports Collectors Daily. In previous posts I have shown 4 cards that Topps had produced and 15 cards that I have found on various blogs pages. Now I have my turn:  

In the 1950s only 2 AL teams other than the Yankees saw post-season play. Both were managed by Hall of Famer Al Lopez and both had 20+ game winner and future Hall of Famer Early Wynn. At the age of 39 he won the Cy Young award. And he was a workhorse for the Go Go Sox, leading the league in Wins, Starts, Innings and Batters Faced. Like most of us, his performance declined steadily in his 40's and at the end of the 1962 season he was released by the White Sox with a career win total of 299. The Indians picked him up in mid-June and on July 13, 1963 he finally got his 300th victory. For the remainder of the season he was mostly used out of the bullpen. He would remain with the Indians as a coach through 1966.

 Here is the list so far. The Black X represents cards produced by Topps, The red X represents those made by other baseball card geeks, and the blue X represents the cards made by yours truly:

1.       1952 Joe DiMaggio X

2.       1956 Ralph Kiner X

3.       1957 Bob Feller X

4.       1957 Phil Rizzuto X
5.       1957 Jackie Robinson X

6.       1961 Ted Williams X

7.       1962 Jackie Jensen X

8.       1964 Stan Musial X

9.       1964 Early Wynn X

10.   1965 Duke Snider

11.   1966 Yogi Berra X

12.   1966 Warren Spahn 

13.   1967 Sandy Koufax X

14.   1967 Robin Roberts X

15.   1968 Whitey Ford

16.   1969 Rocky Colavito X

17.   1969 Roger Maris 

18.   1969 Eddie Mathews

19.   1970 Don Drysdale X

20.   1972 Ernie Banks X

21.   1973 Maury Wills X

22.   1974 Willie Mays X 

23.   1977 Hank Aaron X

24.   1977 Frank Robinson X

25.   1978 Brooks Robinson X 

26.   1978 Jim Wynn

27.   1980 Lou Brock

28.   1980 Thuman Munson X

29.   1984 Johnny Bench X

30. 1984 Carl Yastrzemski X

To be Continued......

30 Tribute Card Project - Part 1

A while back, I was reading a post on Sports Collector's Daily that really seemed to be right up my alley. Rich Klein, one of the contributors to this site, wrote about the desire for Topps to make "Tribute" cards for their next Archives set. Tribute cards are basically cards from the year after the player retires. The part of the article that intrigued me was his list of players that he wanted to see tribute cards for. 

 I had seen many of the cards on his list somewhere on the web before, so I started doing a little research. As it turns out, Topps made versions of 4 cards on the list. I found 15 "card creations" from his list on various other baseball card blogs. I thought I could post them here and give a shout-out to the bloggers who made the cards and have inspired me. That still leaves me with 11 cards to complete the list.

Here is his "Wish List":

1.       1952 Joe DiMaggio 

2.       1956 Ralph Kiner

3.       1957 Bob Feller

4.       1957 Phil Rizzuto

5.       1957 Jackie Robinson

6.       1961 Ted Williams

7.       1962 Jackie Jensen

8.       1964 Stan Musial

9.       1964 Early Wynn

10.   1965 Duke Snider

11.   1966 Yogi Berra

12.   1966 Warren Spahn 

13.   1967 Sandy Koufax

14.   1967 Robin Roberts

15.   1968 Whitey Ford

16.   1969 Rocky Colavito

17.   1969 Roger Maris 

18.   1969 Eddie Mathews

19.   1970 Don Drysdale

20.   1972 Ernie Banks

21.   1973 Maury Wills

22.   1974 Willie Mays

23.   1977 Hank Aaron

24.   1977 Frank Robinson

25.   1978 Brooks Robinson 

26.   1978 Jim Wynn

27.   1980 Lou Brock

28.   1980 Thuman Munson

29.   1984 Johnny Bench

30. 1984 Carl Yastrzemski

First I gotta give Topps credit where credit is due:

Topps created these Promo cards tor the National Sports Collectors Convention. Taking care of #1 & #3 on his list.

Just this past year Topps produced these two. The Stan Musial was a special autographed insert in the 2013 Heritage set. And the Banks was part of the Series 2 - 1972 mini subset. That takes care of #8 and #20 on the list.

In my next few posts will share some of the cards on this list that I found on the internet made by my fellow baseball card geeks.