Short & Sweet 1970 Fun - Cubs But Not Cubs

The 1970 set includes four players that are wearing a Cub uniform but were with other teams.

This is the most obvious.  Niekro was traded to the Padres early in the 1969 season. He was moved to the Tigers over the winter.  He's pictured from 1967 or 1968, wearing a Cubs road uniform.

 

 

You'll have to take my word for it with these three, since the 1969 Cubs road uniform was a more plain gray with no piping around the neck.  All three of these players were with the '69 Cubs.  Selma and Phillips are older looking than past cards, so I'm saying these were taken in 1969.  Nye has to be in a Cubs uniform since that is the only MLB team he played with prior to his trade to the Cardinals.

Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 15,067 Cubs cards from 122 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1970 Topps #80 Don Kessinger This sis a really nice looking shot of the Cubs shortstop at Shea Stadium in 1969.  Kessinger was in the midst of a five year All Star run. He won his second straight Gold Glove in 1970 also.

1980s: 1989 Star #7 Jerome Walton  This shot come from an interesting angle, one you don't see on cards very often.  It looks like the picture was taken from the bleachers. They must have been using a pretty big zoom lens.

1990s: 1993 All Time Heroes #74 Fergie Jenkins This one and done set has oddly shaped cards.  The two outside parts fold over and cover the stats on the inside.  You can read more about this set from Upper Deck here.

2000s: 2002 Gallery #4 Antonio Alfonseca Mordecai Brown was affectionately known as Three-Finger Brown.  If not for all of today's political correctness nonsense, Alfonseca would have been known as Six-Finger Alfonseca.  His extra finger did him no good during his time with the Cubs.  He was just 5-6 with an ERA of 4.86 and just 19 saves.

2010s: 2015 Heritage #367 Kyle Hendricks The Cubs righty was deemed Heritage-worthy based on his 2014 rookie performance, going 7-2 with an ERA of 2.46.  He slumped a little in 2015, going 8-7 and his ERA rose to 3.95.

Short & Sweet 1970 Fun - Bunters, Too

Not everyone in 1970 was a swinger.  There were a bunch of bunters, too.

Short & Sweet 1970 Fun - Scoop King

The players on the Angels were very competitive with one another.

Sandy Alomar said he could scoop some grass or maybe his hand with his glove.

Jim Fregosi was not impressed.

He can scoop a pickup truck!

Short & Sweet 1970 Fun - Swingers

1970 was a very hip year.  Major league baseball was full of swingers.

Short & Sweet 1970 Fun - The Elbow

Last week I took some time to page through the 1970 Topps set.  It was the first set that I really collected as a kid so even though it may not be the most exciting looking set, it has always been a favorite of mine.

I came across several interesting things with the set.  Over the next few days I'll be showing what I found.  The posts will be short and sweet and hopefully a little fun.

Today I've got the elbow.

There are many cards in the set that show various people in the background.  But today's card has something in the foreground...

...an elbow!

How did I never notice that elbow before?

What an odd choice for a picture.

Even if you use the picture, why not crop out the elbow?

2017 Topps Chrome

The 2017 version of Topps Chrome came out last week.  The Cubs were again represented well in a 2017 product.  The checklist has 200 players and 12 of them are Cubs.   That's more Cubs than were in the 2012, 2013, and 2014 Chrome sets (just three Cubs per year, nine total).  In fact, there haven't been this many Cubs in Chrome since the days when Chrome was a complete parallel of the flagship set.

The only downside for me is the reappearance of Rob Zastryzny.  He'd been left out of the last couple Topps products.  I was hoping they were over him.  Looks like they're not.  Aside from Rob Z, the rest of the included players are all the usuals.