1965 Alt -Topps

This was a design that I really like. It has the full sized photos with just a simple white border similar to the 1957 Topps design.  It also incorporates a very 60s-looking almost cartoonishly colorful team name and text bubble. Due to the players used in the prototype and the very 60s feel, I went with 1965 as my year of issue for this Alt set.

In what has become a typical quirk, the player named and the player in the photo don't match.  The photo is Jim Fregosi taken from his 1963 card. The name used, however, is Dodgers first baseman, Wes Parker. 

I made a card for each of these players.  In my cleaned-up version I reduced the size of the team name and text bubble.  I think it gives a cleaner look and allows more of the photo to show.  I could not find a font that matched the one used in the prototype, so I improvised.

My base cards are the eventual MVPs and Cy Young award winner of the 1965 season. Mays And Versalles were the MVPs.  As usual, I tried to keep the team colors similar to those used by Topps in 1965.

In 1965 there was still only one overall Cy Young award winner and that was Koufax. It wasn't until 1967 that there was one for each league. So through a little extrapolation, I included Eddie Fisher.  Fisher went 15-7 with 24 saves. He led the league in games, appearing in nearly half of them at 80 games. He also led in pitching ratio with 0.974. Koufax was the unanimous choice for Cy Young in 1965, thus no other pitcher received any votes. In the AL Fisher was #4 in MVP voting, the highest among pitchers.

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I'm going to take requests on this set now rather than wait until after I've published the other elements of this set.  That'll give me a little extra time to put them all together.

1966 Topps AL Leading Firemen: Kline, Fisher, Miller

Once again the pitcher with the most saves was not the "Fireman of the Year". I've given up trying to figure out how The Sporting News determined the leaders. So I've ranked them once again strictly by save totals.

 In 1965 Ron Kline led the AL with 29 saves but the Sporting News Fireman of the Year award went to Eddie Fisher. Fisher had 5 fewer saves but also had 4 fewer blown saves. He had the most pitching appearances and a 15-7 won-loss record compared to Kline's 7-6. Fisher also pitched the final 2 innings of the 1965 All Star Game. He surrendered a single hit to crosstown rival Ernie Banks. Rounding out the top 3 was Stu Miller. Miller was tied with Fisher with 24 saves but had 14 relief wins compared to Fisher's 15.