#47 - Dick Ruthven (PHI)

I would care to guess that this is Mr. Ruthven's first Topps card of his 14 year career.  I Googled 1973 Topps Dick Ruthven and came up with nothing.  So unless Mr. Stufflestreet at 1973 Topps Photography knows something I don't, I'm going with this card being his first.  In any case, his 1973 season was his rookie year.  His ML debut was in April of that year, so I think he was with the club through spring training '73 and this photo was taken there [see update below].  The pitcher's followthrough pose is one of my favorite poses in baseball card tradition.  His powder blue uni was the Phils' road outfit back then.  I must say I never liked the "swoopie P" Philly threads, and I hated the powder blues.  I much prefer today's modern/retro get-ups with the little blue stars as "i" dots. 

Ruthven pitched for the Phillies twice in his career, and saw post-season action with most of those powerful teams of the late 70's and early 80's.  He received a ring in '80, after getting a no-decision in game 3 vs. the Royals.  Dick pitched nine innings and left with a tie game.  The Royals won in the 10th for one of their two victories.  He also pitched for the 1984 Cubs team, but apparently didn't make an appearance in the playoffs against the Padres. 

Cartoon: Dick lists electronics among his hobbies, but the cartoonist is showing electricity.  Tharn't much 'lectronics that go into a regular light bulb.  A soldering iron fixing a transistor radio with the Phillies game on (Harry Kalas I'm guessing was the announcer in 1974) might be a better cartoon.  I'm launching my career on this blog of cartoon critic.  Gary Larson beware.

Ballpark background: This doesn't appear to be like any major league park I remember seeing, so I'm guessing that the Phils are playing at another team's spring training site. [Update: A reader named Shawn sent me a photo of a early/mid-70's era Shea Stadium showing this section of fence as being in front of the left field bullpen.  Shawn pointed out part of the "3" in the 358 sign right behind Ruthven's right behind.  His body is blocking the rest of the number.  Thanks Shawn!]

#45 - Dave Johnson (ATL)

Dave Johnson, who would later(?) be known as Davey, had a career of 13 seasons in the bigs, a majority of them with the Orioles.  This card is the first card in the set showing a full time second sacker.  It's also the first card in the set, to my knowledge, where the player had at least one World Series ring each as both a player and manager.  Davey got rings with the O's in '66 and '70 and as manager of the famous Mets team of '86.  His 1974 season would be his last full season in the bigs.  He had a blowout year in '73, smacking 43 homers (breaking Rogers Hornsby's all time 2B HR record) and batting in 99.  His numbers were way off in '74 (.251/15/62), and after only one at bat in the 1975 season - a run scoring double - Davey was released by the Braves early in April.  He missed the rest of the '75 season as well as the entire '76 season.  Does anybody know why?  He was signed as a free agent by the Phillies in '77, seeing limited action in '77 and in '78 as well, when he was traded to the Cubs in August.  He played his last eight weeks of big league ball on the North Side before being cut after the season ended.

This photo is a bit strange for an action shot.  The ball is seen behind Davey's behind.  It is easy to jump to the conclusion that he swung and missed.  But... He hit right handed, so this was snapped on his follow through swing.  It looks like he either fouled the ball at the plate and it bounced up behind him or maybe it hit off the catcher or umpire and ricocheted back.

Cartoon:  Davey is a licensed pilot.  Speaking of pilot, here he is shown in a TV cartoon series pilot flying by the Umpire State Building, cutting in front of Bugs Bunny who is waiting on top of the tower to catch that ball.  The show never debuted.  This blog post used two past tense conjugations of verbs that ended in silent T's, just so you know.  Ricocheted and debuted.
Ballpark background:  I can see Mets uniforms in the dugout beyond Johnson, and this looks like the Shea Stadium dugout shown in other card shots over the years.  So, I'm going with Shea Stadium.  Final answer.

#34 - Andy Kosco (CIN)

Andy Kosco.  Member of the Big Red Machine.  Really?  I simply don't remember him when I was a kid.  I glanced at the 1974 Reds roster - 35 players are listed for the entire season - and Andy is one of only four players I don't readily recognize.  Man, with a 25 man roster, I easily recognize 31?  It's amazing what baseball cards, radio and TV can do to a kid's mind.  That stuff in ingrained in the brain.

Here, Kosco looks like a daunting figure, maybe a Ted Kluszewski Lite.  He just looks like a big man.  As I'm keeping track of in the labels, not many ballplayers in '74 were over 200 lbs.  Andy played 10 seasons in the majors, for 7 teams and had 8 uniform numbers.  As it turns out, 1974 was his last year.  And since he batted only .189 in 37 at bats, I'm sure this was his last card, too.  His last game was on July 30, even though he wasn't released by the Reds until October 25.  His card says he was an outfielder, yet he played third base in '74 more than twice as often as the outfield.

Cartoon:  A home run into the bleachers?  Big deal.  The ball has shoe polish and a bandaid on it, no doubt pitched by Mike Scott.  So how did Big Andy hit it so far?  Well, even thought the fence was 461 feet to left center at Yankee Stadium, this card came out when the Big Ballpark in the Bronx was being remodeled.  The fence was considerably shortened to, like, 399 feet in left center.

Ballpark background:  Okay, this is Shea Stadium again.  Same light tower, same flag.  Same yawn.

#32 - John Grubb (SD/WASH)

John (Johnny?) Grubb.  Yes, there's a lot here.  This is the first Padre card of the set, and it's also the first Washington/Nat'l League card.  I love how they spell "National" and "League."  His name is John on this card, but it is Johnny on his BR page.  Though the card makes a big deal out of his 21 at bats in 1972 and his being one of the Padres leading hitters in 1973, he makes the NL All-Star team in 1974.  And not for the Washington National Leaguers.  Nope, these boys in yellow are the Sandy Eggo Padres, like in waffles for breakfast on the beach.  The beach in San Diego is beautiful, and sandy.  There are numerous waffle shops near the beach.  I know, I went there this summer. 

Grubb played a 16 year career, but was only approached being a regular player with the Padres.  He played for that amazing 1984 Detroit Tigers team, picking up a World Series ring against...hehehe...his former team.  Dontcha just love it when that happens?  He racked up 99 homers in his career, one shy of triple digits.  I love the color scheme of the Padres cards.  Kind of a mix of goldenrod (remember your Crayola sets?) and butterscotch, this color in the Padre pennants is simply delicious.  John's also one of those crossover players, batting left while throwing right.  This picture of him looks like some dude named Kevin I used to know.  Except Kevin never wore a hat.  He looks here like, "Hey, there's a deranged Mets fan on LSD that's going to try to fly off the edge of the third deck!"

Cartoon:  He hit safely in 5 of the 6 games he started?  Well, you can go 1 for 4 every day and hit safely in all 162 games, shattering Joe DiMaggio's record, yet end up with a .250 average.  Actually, though, for only playing in 7 games, hitting in 5 of them for a .333 average is not something to laugh at.  But it's a cartoon, so I'll laugh at it because that's what cartoons are for.  And, say, what kind of middle name is Maywood, anyway?

Ballpark background:  With just a light tower over his right shoulder and a flag pole over his left, this was so obviously taken at Shea Stadium it's not even funny.  That's because just a few cards prior in the set was #29 Phil Niekro at Shea Stadium, and there's the same lights and flagpole.  Not funny, I know.  But Shea Stadium nonetheless.

#29 - Phil Niekro (ATL)

What can I say about a Hall of Famer with a 24 year career?  He started out in Milwaukee two years before they moved to Atlanta.  Phil's knuckle ball was the thing that made him famous, and his knickname was "Knucksie."  He is brother to Joe Niekro, and uncle to short lived Giants first sacker Lance Niekro, who isn't known for throwing knuckle balls while having it around the infield.  Phil never made it to a World Series, and only played in two NLCS, losing both of them with the Braves.

His uni is a bit odd, I think, as he's wearing a pullover top with a belted pant.  I've never liked these Braves threads in my life, not even in 1974.  Phil tossed a no-hitter in 1973, the year this photo was taken, and probably after the photo was taken, as he threw it in August.  Phil had one of those classic multiple team careers where he finished with the team he played for the longest or first.  Although he only pitched three innings for the Bravos at the end of his career.
Cartoon:  I think it probably turned out for the best that neither played football.  I guess one could infer that they didn't play either baseball or basketball with each other.  Havlicek's got a nice haircut.

Ballpark background: This was taken at Shea Stadium.  That light tower just keeps appearing in all kinds of cards.  And that flag is a bit of a fixture, too.  Notice the Mets player in the background.  This position on the field must have been the photographer's favorite of all time.  So many players regardless of team have appeared here and from this angle.  Or so it seems.

#23 - Craig Robinson (PHI)

It's really funny looking at non-star players from eras past.  Here, Craig Robinson looks like the guy in my high school yearbook who won the award for "most likely to remain the same the rest of his life."  He's 5'-10" and 165 lbs.  This is otherwise known as Average Joe.  With a bell curve for dude size, Craig fits 37% of all American males.  And such dudes can be a major leaguer when they grow up.  I like that Craig is wearing one batting glove, and that photographers love to capture gloves laying on grass.  Craig is a humble guy, too, as he even chokes up on the bat for a photo op.  I didn't know that Eugene was a team in the PCL in 1971.  I always thought the AAA had larger cities, like Portland and Las Vegas.  I looked it up, and sure enough, Eugene, OR had a PCL team from 1969-73.

Craig was with the Phils in 1973, but was traded to the Braves in December.  The next card in this set will be his traded card.  Craig's 1974 season with the Braves was a regular one, playing in 145 games, and getting over 500 plate appearances.  His next three seasons (his last) he would not play even 40 games in a year.  He finished his career just one home run behind Duane Kuiper on the all time list.  Kuiper had one.

Cartoon:  Being signed is pretty darned thrilling, I guess.  Craig didn't win a World Series or MVP or break records, I guess as well.  Otherwise he might have said those things were most thrilling.  What kind of pen did they use to sign contracts back in 1970?

Ballpark background:  Although it looks like a great big lawn, I'm pretty sure this is Shea Stadium.  Those twin 10,500 foot high light tower poles look like the ones at Shea.  All the way to the left of Robinson's chin you can see the edge of the second deck sticking out, with the "lower deck" seats under it.  I don't know what they were called, but it was kind of the next seating level in the "bowl" up from the field box seats.  Other shots in this set and other years' cards give this away as Shea.

#10 - Johnny Bench (CIN)

One of the greatest catchers to ever play baseball.  Today, Johnny and Yogi Berra are viewed just about as the two greatest ever.  Johnny revolutionized catching with his patented one hand behind the back style.  Not many injuries from foul tips or wild swingers.  And this is the guy flat in the middle of that monster Big Red Machine lineup.  It's enough to be a power hitting catcher, but that fact is overwhelming in knowing just how good a hitter he was.  I hated the Big Red Machine back in the 70's, being a Giants fan myself, but just to be honest, it was a very respectful hatred.  Except for Pete Rose.

Do you get the idea that the Topps editors wanted its collectors to know about Johnny's 1970 and '72 seasons?  I wonder why.  But I'd like to call attention to the double-knit polyester pullover pajama uniform Bench is wearing.  And the half-calf stirrups.  You won't find that in today's game, although it's nice that he didn't pull them up high enough to just see the stripes up the sides of the legs.  Solid leggings look a bit better.  Especially on a player like Bench.  If Johnny ever had an air-brushed card photo, would the artist use Krylon paint?

Cartoon: I didn't know that Johnny sang country music.  He's from Oklahoma, so I could guess that he listened to it.  I wonder if his singing ever started any bar fights.  Say, it looks like the Topps cartoonist had a good job for a while.  Must have been seasonal work.  Did this guy file for unemployment once the season started?

Ballpark background: Johnny is sporting the Reds road uniforms, and the players in the dugout in the background are displaying New York Mets home threads.  My eddicated guess is that this ballpark background is Shea Stadium.

#8 - George Theodore (NYM)

This would be George Theodore's only Topps baseball card of his career.  He played two seasons with the Mets, 1973 and 1974.  He saw limited action with 45 games in '73 and 60 games in '74.  He hit only two homers, one in each year.  His '75 homer came in 76 at bats, a solo shot for his only RBI of the year.  Only 12 of his 26 games were in the outfield, and he made 2 errors in 7 total chances.

An interesting positioning of Theodore in Topps numbering system places him at card #8, just after #7 Catfish Hunter.  These two cards came after all the front-loaded Hank Aaron stuff.  The A's played the Mets in the World Series in 1973.  Theodore played in two of the games, games 2 and 4.  In game 2, he pinch hit for Mets pitcher Ray Sadecki and grounded out to short.  Not much help in the Mets 10-7 win.  In game 4, he was a late 8th inning defensive replacement for outfielder Cleon Jones, then popped out to end their half of that inning in another Mets win.  Back out in the field in the 9th, the A's hit two singles to left field (there's no record of Theodore fielding the ball, and he was not credited with a fielding chance), so that half inning secured a Mets victory, and his major league career was essentially over.  Catfish Hunter pitched in games 3 and 6, so the two never faced each other.

Nickname: Stork

Typo: George is shown here with a birthdate of 11-13-47, but all other records indicate he was actually born in '46.

Cartoon: George likes marshmallow milkshakes?  I wouldn't know.  But he sure makes a slurping noise.

Background ballpark:  Shea Stadium, during batting practice