Thursday, March 18, 2010

1981 Donruss: The Black Armbands

I noticed this while looking through the 1981 Donruss set last week. Three different teams are wearing black armbands.

Can you name the person each team was honoring?



Up first are the Chicago Cubs. This card of Rick Reuschel shows the thick black armband on the left sleeve. It's a little hard to make out because of the darkness of the card, but trust me, that is a black armband.



The Atlanta Braves also are wearing them. Here we see the black armband on Sarge's left sleeve.



And finally, the Yankees are wearing a narrower armband on their left sleeve, as you can see on Eric Solderholm's card.


One of these is pretty easy, one is not too hard, and one would be known mostly to die-hard fans of the team. Leave your guesses in the comments and I'll check from time to time to see it the correct answers have been given.

5 comments:

  1. i'll guess munson for the yankees (although they would wear the armbands for elston howard in 1981), wrigley (the owner) for the cubs, and i have no idea for the braves.

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  2. gcrl,
    You are two for two! Those are the two I figured would be the easier ones. It took me quite a while to finally figure out the Braves.

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  3. I think it was an active player who died in 1979 off season and before the 1980 season but can't remember his name. I know Mike Miley, Lymann Bostock and Bob Moose all died a round the late 1970s.

    If it is a retired player you got me

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  4. It could have been Steve Macko who died of cancer back in November of 1981. He played for the Cubs in 79-80.

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  5. You would have thought the Cubs would have done something when Macko died, but they didn't do anything at all. His death didn't even merit a mention in the Cubs media guide.

    The Reuschel card's picture is from 1977, and the armband is for P.K. Wrigley.

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