Looking throught the Topps 1969 set, nine cards at a time
#1 - American League Batting Leaders. 1968 was the year of the pitcher and Yaz led the AL in hitting at .301, the league's only .300 hitter. Danny Cater's picture has him in a White Sox uniform, a team he last played for in 1966.
#2 - National League Batting Leaders The Alou brothers let Pete Rose join their party. NL hitters did better that the AL, with Rose hitting .335, one of five .300 hitters.
#3 - American League RBI Leaders Not one Hall of Famer in the bunch and Harrelson is in a Senators uniform.
#4 - National League RBI Leaders One of my favorite cards in the set, with two of my favorite Cubs featured.
#5 - American League HR Leaders Just like the RBI card, no Hall of Famers and an airbrushed Hawk Harrelson. Mercy!
#6 - National League HR Leaders Another favorite of mine, with Ernie Banks last appearance on a leader board. This was the only Ernie Banks card I ever had as a kid. McCovey had a heck of a 1968, leading the league in home runs and RBI's.
#7 - American League ERA Leaders Two Indians top the list. Their ERA's were unreal, Tiant at 1.60, McDowell at 1.81 and McNalley at 1.95. And note the old bird logo on McNalley's hat, a logo the Orioles ditched after the 1965 season.
#8 - National League ERA Leaders Bob Gibson was unbelieveable, posting a miniscule 1.12 ERA! And he actually has a bit of a smile on his face, something hitters never saw from him.
#9 - American League Pitching Leaders All Denny McLain did was win 31 games! Never done since, probably never will be done with five man rotations today.
1969 was a year full of memorable events. Richard Nixon took office, Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon, and...
...the Cubs won the World Championship. Well, almost. But that was the season I got hooked. I got hooked not only on the Cubs, but also on baseball cards. They were five cents a pack for five cards and a slab of gum. (The next year the price went up to ten cents for ten cards, meaning you lost a piece of gum for your dime.)
Looking back on it 40 years later, you would have to wonder why I got hooked on a choking team and a really bad set of cards. I like to blame it on the youthful ignorance of a seven and a half year old.
The 1969 Cubs had a great team, a great start, and a lousy finish. Much could be written about them. But today I want to focus on the Topps cards of 1969. Because if you look at them objectively, you would have to say they are a major failure, too. But to me, with them being my first real cards, they are a thing of beauty.
Tomorrow I will begin a look at each of the cards from the set. I'm planning to do this twice a week. But being the impatient person that I am, I will go through the set nine cards at a time, which is one page from the album per post. And I also won't write much of a bio about the players because again, I am too impatient to do all the research. Instead, I plan to write about the card; what I see, what does the card say. When I get to a Cubs player, I will devote an entire post to that player and talk about their contributions to the 1969 team.
Today I'd like to give my overall impression of the set.
Overview: There were 664 cards in the set, divided into seven series. Four subsets were included: the league leader cards, World Series cards, All Star cards, and four cards with team stars together.
The Design: It lacks any originality.
The font and style for the team name is borrowed from the 1967 set, just shrunk down a little.
The circle with the player's name is borrowed from the 1968 set.
Topps even used the same color scheme for the teams as they did in 1967 and 1968 (orange was the color for the Cubs and White Sox).
Take 1967 + 1968 and you get 1969. The design team took the year off.
The Photography: I guess the photographers took the year off too. As I go through the set you will see that many of the cards used photos that were at least two years old, with some as old as five years.
Assorted Issues: 1969 was an expansion year, with the Pilots, Royals, Padres, and Expos beginning play. Since Topps had no photos of these players in their new team's uniforms, the set included a huge number of hatless players. The first expansion team player in the correct uniform didn't show up until the fifth series.
The set also had the Astros copyright problem that wasn't resolved until the fourth series. The A's presented a problem because 1969 was only their second year in Oakland and Topps was using many old photos of players with "KC" on their hat. The Topps solution was the infamous airbrush.
The Backs: No problems here for me. I love the cartoons, the red looks nice, although some cards have seen the red fade more than others. And after a two year absence, Topps returned the backs to a horizontal format. The stats are very readable on a white background. This is the only part of the card they seem to have gotten right.
In Summary...
This card sums up the 1969 set for me. It is of Senators manager Jim Lemon. Well, he was supposed to be their manager, but he was fired in January and replaced by legend Ted Williams. Its January and Topps has to decide what to do with the Lemon card. Should it be left in the set or replaced by another player, or maybe by a card for Ted Williams?
Well, Topps make the strangest decision. They left the card in the set, but changed the back of the card to this:
That right, they changed the drawing to say, basically, Jim Lemon, you stink, you got fired! That was the nicest thing they could say about him. Maybe the could have added a "U" on his hat since now he was on the Unemployed! And later they added two cards that featured Ted Williams.
And to you Topps, I say your 1969 cards stink (but in my seven and a half year old eyes, these cards are the best!)
I thought this would be interesting.
I have all of my Cubs cards cataloged on a spreadsheet. There are a total of 5,264 cards from Aardsma to Zuleta. I used a random number generator to spit out five numbers and then matched those numbers to the cards in those rows on the spreadsheet.
Here are the five random Cubs cards in the order the number generator gave them to me.
Topps 1973 # 81, Whitey Lockman.
This is Whitey's first Cubs card, as he took over as manager of the team in July of 1972. He passed away recently and I had this post on him. The biggest thing about this card isn't Whitey Lockman, but Coach Ernie Banks. In my mind, this is the last real card for Ernie Banks.
Bowman 1991 #421, Heathcliff Slocomb.
A typical Bowman card from the era, with a posed shot. Slocumb had yet to make a major league appearance.
Upper Deck 2006 #623, Geovany Soto.
This is Soto's first Upper Deck card. It looks like they got him at a spring training game since there is no name on the back of his jersey. At this point in his career, he had played in one big league game and made an out in his only at bat.
Fleer 1984 #486, Larry Bowa.
Bowa was the shortstop for the 1984 NL Eastern Division Champion Cubs!! (and the NLCS 2-0 games lead-blowing team...I hate Steve Garvey). Two things catch my eye on this card: First, the Cubs logo on his jersey is almost a direct match on top of the card's Cubs logo. Second, why is Larry throwing a ball with a glove on his throwing hand?
Pacific 1998 #254, Brooks Kieschnick.
The patch on his sleeve tells me this picture was taken in 1997. It is this patch,
commemorating the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's MLB debut. In 1998 Kieschnick was still seen as a decent prospect, but as it usually is with the Cubs, he didn't pan out. He later tried to reinvent himself as a pitcher, a reverse Rick Ankiel, and did make it briefly back to the bigs with the Brewers.
A very random selection, I must say. Five different players, five different seasons, five different products. I wonder if that will happen every time? We will find out next Monday!
Topps 1972 Fergie Jenkins
And the 1973 edition
Fergie Jenkins and Greg Maddux had their #31 retired by the Cubs today.
Over the course of two seasons, 1972 and 1973, a Canadian film crew followed Fergie and the Cubs. The result was a documentary called "King of the Hill." It gives you a great inside look as Fergie and the Cubs of 1969 had their last hurrah.
The movie is about one hour long and is well worth watching.
See it here.
According to SABR, there have been 675 triple plays in the major leagues from 1876 to the present. The Giants lead all franchises with 42 triple plays and the Cubs are second with 40. More triple plays (23) have been pulled off at Wrigley Field than at any other ball park in MLB history.
The last Cubs triple play was almost twelve years ago, on May 10, 1997, in the bottom of the fifth inning against the Giants at Candlestick Park.
Cubs pitcher Amaury Telemaco gave up back to back singles to start the inning. On a 1-2 count Giants batter Stan Javier hits a flyball that is caught by...
centerfielder Brian McRae for one out. The runner at second tags up and tries to make it to third but a nice throw from McRae to...
third baseman Jose Hernandez nails the runner for out number two. Meanwhile the runner on first decides to try and take second. A quick throw from Hernandez to...
Ryne Sandberg gets the runner at second and the Cubs have their triple play. For those of you scoring at home, that was an 8-5-4 triple play.
In a couple strange coincidences, the next most recent Cubs triple play was also against the Giants, in 1986. And the Cubs prior four triple plays, going back to 1965, were all against the Pirates. Their six most recent triple plays against only two team. Strange. But then again, I would expect nothing less from the Cubs.
