196(9) At A Time - Page 17

142 - Woody Woodward The Reds acquired Woody from the Braves during the 1968 season, which explains why he is hatless and wearing a Braves jersey. He is your run of the mill good glove, no stick shortstop.



#143 - Joe Nossek Airbrushed Joe is wearing a KC A's hat. His big league career was just about done as he made it into only 22 games in 1969 and one more in 1970. Nossek would go on to a long career as a coach, including 17 years on the south side with the Sox.



#144 - Bob Hendley This is a decent pose of the Mets pitcher at Shea. His last major league appearance was with the Mets in 1967. He had arm surgery in 1968 and never made it back to the majors. Hendley is most famous for a game he pitched while with the Cubs in 1965, a one hitter against the Dodgers. Unfortunately, his mound opponent Sandy Koufax decided to toss a perfect game that day and Hendley took the loss. Here is more on that game, the last time the Cubs have been no-hit.



#145 - Max Alvis After four seasons as the Indians starting third baseman, Max's career was in decline. He played in only 66 games in 1969 and was out of baseball after 1970.



#146 - Jim Perry Up until this point, Jim was a spot starter. 1969 was his breakout season as he won 20 games while losing only 6 for the division winning Twins.

#147 - Leo Durocher The Cubs skipper gets his own post tomorrow



#148 - Lee Stange This card gives you a nice view of Fenway Park prior to all the recent renovations and additions. Look at how empty the roof is. It looks nothing like that today.





#149 - Ollie Brown Ollie is wearing a Giants jersey and hat. He was one of the leading Padres sluggers in their early years.



#150 - Denny McLain Where are your glasses Denny? McLain was just coming off the greatest pitching season in recent history, as he was the last 30 game winner, going 31-6 for the World Champion Tigers. He was both the AL MVP and Cy Young Award winner.

Overall Set Totals (player cards only)
Hall of Famers - 10
Hatless - 35
Airbrush - 32
Cubs (includes past, present, or future) - 27

More Billy Williams Day

30-Year-Old Cardboard has been celebrating Billy WIlliams Day all day today with several great posts. If you haven't checked them out yet, you should. Since Billy is my all-time favorite Cub, I thought I would jump on the bandwagon.



This is what the Cubs scorecard looked like in 1969. They had a similar looking card in 1962 when the Mets and Astros joined the league, and they repeated the format with the addition of the Expos and Padres. The card also shows everyone the new divisions for 1969.



And here is the inside, with the scoring for game 2 on June 29, 1969 - BIlly Williams Day. Billy had a great game as the Cubs blew out the Cardinals 12-2, giving them the sweep. He went 4-5 with a single, a double, and two triples. I wonder if he thought about trying to stretch the second triple into an inside the park HR for the cycle. I'm sure he was swinging for the fences in his final at bat, when he struck out. It was a great day for a great player.

I got the scorecard off of Ebay a couple years ago. I wish I was among the 41,000 who attended, but since I was only 7, and living in the southwest suburbs in a family of Sox fans, there was no way I would be going to Wrigley Field.



I also have the Billy Williams Day button, which I purchased off of Ebay. The strange thing about the button is that it looks to be in perfect condition for something that is 40 years old. You can also almost always find them on Ebay. Right now there are eight available. How did so many of these buttons survive for 40 years in such great shape? Any chance they are fakes?? Well, I guess it doesn't matter much to me since it was only $3, but it does make me wonder.



And finally, here is a ball I picked up, signed by the Hall of Famer.

Five Random Cubs Cards

I have 5,348 Cubs cards from 14 different brands. A random number generator picked five of them. Here they are in the order selected.



2009 Upper Deck 2009 #64 Kerry Wood This is Kerry's last Upper Deck card as a member of the Cubs. When he returned to Wrigley in mid-June as an Indian, Wood was kind enough to blow two saves and let his ex-teammates win both games. Still a Cub at heart!



Topps 1967 #552 Ted Savage The Cubs bought Savage from the Cardinals early in the 1967 season and Topps had this card of him ready in their later series. It looks like he is wearing a Pirates uniform, whom he played for in 1963. The Cubs gave him the chance to be their regular right fielder, but he hit only.218 in 96 games. He was sent to the Dodgers in April of 1968 in a lopsided trade for the Cubs that brought Phil Regan and Jim Hickman in return.



Fleer 1993 #9 Candy Maldonado Candy was one of the Cubs big free agent signings in the winter of 1992. But this was another example of the Cubs getting a guy just past his prime (see also Jacque Jones, Milton Bradley). He was a bust as he hit .186 with only 3 home runs and was sent to the Indians in August of 1993.



Stadium Club 1993 #228 Rick Wilkins Here is a nice shot of a collison at the plate. I love the way the mask is flying through the air. At least we can actually see the face of a catcher. Usually they are wearing their mask in action shots. 1993 was WIlkins' career year. He blasted 30 home runs and hit .303. We thought we were set behind the plate for years to come. But in 1994 he had only 7 homers and his average fell to .227. By 1995 he was traded away and spent the rest of his career bouncing around between six different teams.



Leaf 1992 #509 Ken Patterson This lefty came to the Cubs along with Sammy Sosa from the White Sox in exchange for George Bell. He was 2-3 with the Cubs in 1992, his only season on the north side. After the season, he was granted free agency and signed with the Angels.

Sunday Cubs Fact: A Very Bizarre Shutout

Why do I have one card of Rick Reuschel and 12 Pirates?

Because just a little more than 35 years ago, on June 20, 1974, Cubs starter Rick Reuschel threw a twelve hit shutout against the Pirates. Hard to believe, right? The Pirates had twelve hits but failed to score a single run. The Cubs managed only six hits against Doc Ellis and John Morlan, but two of the six were home runs and they won the game 3-0.

Big Daddy never once had a 1-2-3 inning. There were runners on base every inning. Of the twelve Pittsburgh hits, four came with two outs, so that helped. The Bucs also hit into two double plays. And Reuschel walked none and struck out seven. There were 12 Pirates left on base and they were 0-10 with runners in scoring position. When he had to bear down, Reuschel got the job done.

The Pirates cards shown are those who had hits, and if a player had more than one hit, his card is shown as many times as he had hits.

Goudey Goodies

I've been going back and forth for a while whether to work on putting together Goudey Cubs sets. I wasn't too familiar with the product until I read some of the other blogs talking about it. Well, I finally gave in and said, what the heck...go for it.

With only three years of releases, this wasn't too tough to complete. I started with the 2009 cards. Getting the base set was easy, there were plenty of those available.

Here are the seven regular print cards from the base set:



Kosuke Fukudome



RIch Harden



Derrek Lee



Aramis Ramirez



Alfonson Soriano



Geovany Soto



Carlos Zambrano

There were two short print cards of Cubs greats, Ryne Sandberg and Ron Santo.





Two Cubs were a part of the Sports Royalty subset, Ernie Banks and Ryne Sandberg.





And finally, there were four Cubs in the Heads Up subset, Ernie Banks, Derrek Lee, Alfonso Soriano, and Derrek Lee.










That's a total of 15 Cubs cards from 2009. It took a little luck and a lot of Buy it Now, but I'm glad I put the set together. I'll show you 2007 and 2008 in the next week or so.

Well, That Sucked

The trip yesterday afternoon to Comerica Park didn't exactly worked out like I hoped.

First, the weather did not cooperate. The forecast was calling for a high of 85, which was cooler than it has been the past few days, a welcome relief. Well, they were wrong. It was very hot and very uncomfortable. The temperature at the start of the game was 93 with a clear sky and little wind. And Comerica offers no shade. We were cooking in the first row of the upper deck.



Here is the view from our seat. Note to anyone going to Comerica, don't sit in the Row A of the 300 level unless you like moving your head up to avoid the plexiglass.

Second, the Cubs lost and got swept by the Tigers. The game got off to a good start, with Michigan alum Jake Fox hitting his first career home run in the first inning, staking Ted Lilly to a 3-0 lead. But Ted couldn't hold it, giving up a couple long balls himself. The Cubs ended up losing 6-5, just before big storms roared through.

We ended up leaving the game after 7 innings. Little Wrigley Wax did not like the heat or the seat location (too close to the edge) and with the Cubs down (and I too was pretty uncomfortable) we left early for the air-conditioned comfort of the car and then the hotel.

Here are a few other looks at the park.