Favorite Players A-Z (Part 1 of 3)

My mother (probably all mothers) used to say, "If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it, too?".  Maybe.  I've seen a few bloggers make an A-Z list of favorite players. So I figured that I'd jump, too.  I'm more than a bit of a homer so look for an overabundance of Cubs and White Sox players.

For the most part, I'm including cards I had previously created for this blog.  I had to make one card specifically for this post (it's the letter "L") and there is one real card which might be my favorite card in my collection.

Right off the bat, I'm torn. Two of my all time favorite players have last names starting with A. So I'm cheating already.

Hank Aaron on a rejected Topps design.

1972 Topps Dick Allen In Action

1953 Topps Ernie Banks

1984 Topps Roberto Clemente Statue

1978 Topps Larry Doby

1972 Topps All Star Pitchers (Yeah, I know I spelled Dock wrong)

1964 Topps Nellie Fox All Star

1976 Topps Father/Son style Mark Grace Broadcaster

1968 Topps Frank Howard All Star

1957 Topps Monte Irvin

First ten cards and only 5 were Chicago teams, if you don't count Grace. Not bad. (For me).

To be continued....

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.