Tough (but Fun) Baseball Card Trivia

[nolemmings]

Joe Coleman

From 1967: Boswell, Short, Seaver, Bahnsen, Dobson, Holtzman and Niekro.

[Gr8Beldini]

Originally Posted by nolemmings

Joe Coleman

From 1967: Boswell, Short, Seaver, Bahnsen, Dobson, Holtzman and Niekro.

That ends it. Joe Coleman is the 8th twenty game winner RC from 1966. The 7 guys listed above are correct for 1967 (as long as you understand that the Niekro in question is Joe, not Phil), which was the other season (in addition to 1965) which had 7. Very impressive. Thank you for playing.

[nolemmings]

Thanks for asking. BTW, I had to triple check to make sure that 1967 was Chris Short's rookie card, as in my mind I recall seeing a'65 and even a '64 Topps card of his. How in the heck did he not have a card before 1967? Contract dispute with Topps I assume? He appeared in enough games to basically "earn" a card for every season from 1961-1966. Maybe this has been covered before.

[Rich Klein]

Originally Posted by nolemmings

Thanks for asking. BTW, I had to triple check to make sure that 1967 was Chris Short's rookie card, as in my mind I recall seeing a'65 and even a '64 Topps card of his. How in the heck did he not have a card before 1967? Contract dispute with Topps I assume? He appeared in enough games to basically "earn" a card for every season from 1961-1966. Maybe this has been covered before.

There are a whole bunch of people who have their RC in 1967 that you would never suspect never had Topps cards before

The most famous was Maury Wills

Then Chris Short

Then people such as Doug Clemens and Arnold Earley. Trust me, there were some funky things in 1967. I think, and if Mark Armour reads this he probably can chime in better than I do but that was when Marvin Miller 1st got the players reasonable money to be on Topps cards.

Rich

[nolemmings]

Thanks Rich. I knew about Wills of course, his absence being the stuff of considerable writing. But Short? Wins 17 games in 1964, makes the AS team and gets MVP votes, then wins 18 games in 1965, and doesn't have a Topps card in either of the ensuing years?

It might explain a minor mystery, though, and maybe is something collectors are pleased that happened. Short was third in 1964 ERA in the National League, so one might think he would be on the LL card in 1965. Instead, Topps chose to show only Koufax and Drysdale, which was always curious to me--why only two guys shown when the other leaders honored three? Then I see the ERA leaders from the AL show only two as well, and leave out Whitey Ford, which makes little sense, unless they were looking for some sort of symmetry in the treatment of the ERA leaders from the two leagues.