The 1978 Topps St. Louis Cardinals
The set contains 26 Cardinal images, including the Roric Harrison and Steve Dunning paint jobs, but excluding those of Phillips, Schultz, Dwyer, Underwood and Eastwick.
The team photo was hard to place, as I was unable to locate a key, but I think I did a fairly good job sussing out who was who. If I am correct, the photo was taken at Busch Stadium during a homestand from 8/12-8/19 - Denny and Bosetti arrived on the club on 7/29 while they were on the road (Denny is definitely in the photo and I think Bosetti is as well), and Tony Scott who is also in the photo went to the DL on 8/19 and was replaced by Dane Iorg who I don't think is in the image - in any event Kessinger left the next day and he is in the image. Any help with a key would be appreciated.
The small image of Vern Rapp was taken while he was with the Rochester Red Wings in 1953 or 1954.
A good number of images seem to have been taken at Al Lang Stadium in St. Petersburg, the spring facility the team shared with the Mets - these include several players in road blue, but since in a couple of photos the details of the park are the same as those in images of players in white, the were probably dressed for intra-squad action: Templeton, Forsch, Brock, Dierker, Hrabosky, Cruz, Scott, Simmons, Mumphrey, Urrea, Falcone, Reitz and Anderson.
One image was snapped at Shea, the Brock RB, and it was taken either 4/12-4/14, 8/8-8/10 or 9/23.
More images were taken during one of the club's trips to Candlestick, 6/14-6/16, 9/2-9/4: Tyson, Hernandez, Rasmussen, Rapp, Metzger, Freed, Rader and Denny.
This leaves the two paint jobs, Dunning and Harrison. Dunning's is a real stunner - is he even awake? He was in camp with St. Louis in 77, and it's hard to think Topps went looking for an older image and chose this one. So, without much to base this on, I will call Dunning for St. Louis and attribute to Al Lang in the spring of 77.
Then there is Roric Harrison - he was also with the club in the spring, and was also shot at Al Lang.
A few years ago, the Topps Vault spit this image out to confirm:
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