Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Where's Billy?

The PSA master list of Billy Williams cards includes all of the team picture cards from his active years. In theory, Billy would be in the picture on the card.

But does the theory hold water?

Let's take a look and see if we can find Billy.


The picture for the 1961 card was probably taken at Spring Training, 1960.  There are too many players for this to be from the regular season.  


It looks like Billy is in the front row, far left.  But that is just a guess. The picture isn't clear enough.  A search of ebay for Cubs team pictures from this era only turned up regular season team pictures, so they weren't any help.


If I was right with the 1961 card, then I'm right for 1962 also since the same picture was used.

In 1963, no Billy.  That doesn't make sense since he'd been with the team a while by then.  But...


...the picture on the 1963 card is the same one as...


...the 1960 card.  How Topps messed up is that??

In 1964, again, no Billy as we go from messed up to.... well, I just don't know what to say.


It's the same 1960 picture, making its third appearance.

Surely, by 1965 we'll get to see Billy.


Nope....ITS THE SAME 1960 PICTURE AGAIN!!

So recapping the first five years of Billy, we have two pictures over five years, with only a maybe for his appearance on the cards.  Hopefully, things will improve as we move on to 1966.


Yay!! A different picture, and a new one at that!  Well, kinda new.  This is the Cubs 1964 team picture.


Billy is in the second row, fourth from the right.  It doesn't really look like him, but I found the original of the picture that includes a listing of all the players, so I'm 100% sure that Billy is inside the red circle.


The 1967 card uses another new picture!  Two years in a row with a somewhat up-to-date picture.  Topps is awesome!  The picture is the 1966 team, with Leo Durocher front row, center.


Billy is in the front row, last player on the right.

We move ahead to 1970, since there were no Cubs team cards in either the 1968 or 1969 set.


The picture is from 1969, since you can see the centennial patch on some of the sleeves.  Billy must like being on the end.


This time he's on the far left of the front row.

From here on the game of Where's Billy gets pretty easy because of

 


Floating Heads!!  Those are from 1971, 1972, and 1974, which was his last year with the Cubs.


The 1973 set used an actual team picture and Billy is very easy to spot.


He's still on the end, but this time standing in the second row.

Billy did show up on one more Cubs team picture,


the 1975 card.


This time he's not on an end, but fourth from the left in the front row.  PSA doesn't count this one since he was with the A's in 1975.  It seems odd to count several cards with no Billy and not count one with him.


We found him.  Thanks for playing!

2 comments:

  1. I kinda get a kick out of seeing Tony Taylor in the 1965 Cubs team card picture...About that 1966 card. The fellow in the white t-shirt on the far right...I imagine that should be Yosh Kawano, but it looks like someone's oversize head has been cut-and-pasted on it...

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  2. That's odd that the '68 Topps set just left out some team cards (maybe that happened a lot in the '60s, my only frame of reference for '60s cards is Dodgers).

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