Traded...Sort Of

In last week's post on the Starting Lineup set, I pointed out that the Cubs set had two players in it that were traded for one another....

 

Calvin Schiradi for Lee Smith, yet both were in the Cubs team set.  One was changed, the other wasn't.  It seemed odd.

It also seemed familiar.  I knew that there was a set that had done the same thing several times.  Problem was, I couldn't remember which set it was.

I was pretty sure it wasn't Topps, so I started flipping through my binders.  I didn't have to go too far, just up to the letter D....Donruss 1981.

This was Donruss' first set, and they didn't have a ton of time to prepare it.  But for some reason, they have several cards in the last 100 of the set that have a player on new team, while the player they were traded for was left on his old team.

Oddly, in every single case, the trade is mentioned on the backs of both players' cards.  So they write about the trade on both cards, but only bother to change one of the two fronts.  Very odd.

I found four different instances of this, and two of the four involved the Cubs.

 

Jerry Martin was sent to the Giants on December 12, the Cubs got Joe Strain

 

Bruce Sutter moved to the Cardinals, Leon Durham came to the Cubs

 

The Pirates sent Bert Blyleven to the Indians in exchange for Bob Owchinko

 

It was a multi-player swap, but two of the bigger names saw Butch Hobson go from the Red Sox to the Angels for Carney Lansford.

Weird, huh?