Single Card Post: 1974 Topps #599

Behold! This is a card that to me is a beauty of a card. Not due to the fact that it's from the fantastic 1974 Topps set, but due to the fact that it's the Washington error version of said card. I've covered this in the past about these error cards and it's one of my major collecting goals to get a complete team set. I'm just over halfway there and will chronicle what I have in a blog post upcoming. For now though, as I do in these one card posts, let's take a look at the careers of the players pictured.

Ron Diorio had a very brief major league career, only appearing in 25 total games, with 23 of those coming between August and the end of the season in 1973. By April of 1974, he was out of the majors. Most of his career though, was spent in the minors in the Phillies organization bouncing between A and AA ball. Most of his time was spent with the Reading club, where between parts of six seasons he would appear in 173 games with a 2.28 ERA and a 21-11 record. After baseball, he spent 35 years refereeing high school and collegiate basketball in Connecticut and was the first person inducted into the Sacred Heart High School Hall of Fame.

Dave Friesleben debuted in 1974 for a not very good Padres team that almost wound up in Washington DC. However, Ray Kroc (yes, that Ray Kroc) stepped in at the last minute and saved the Padres from moving. Friesleben accounted for nine of the Padres 60 wins that season (which tied for the team lead with Bill Grief). In five seasons with the club, he never won more than 10 games and never had an ERA lower than 3.50. The Padres shipped him to Cleveland in the middle of the 1978 season, who then traded him to Toronto that offseason. By the end of the 70s, he was out of the majors entirely.

Frank Riccelli played 17 whole games in his major league career, debuting for the Giants on September 11, 1976 against the Reds. In that game, he pitched 5 innings, gave up 4 hits, 4 earned runs, had 4 Ks, and 4 walks. He only pitched 11 more innings for the Giants that season, and spent the 1977 season in the minors with the PCL Phoenix Giants. In 1978, he resurfaced for two games with Houston and in 1979 made it into 11 games with the Astros and was out of the majors by the summer. After missing the 1980 season, 1981 was spent with Single-A Alexandria and Double-A Buffalo in the Pirates organization and then wrapped up his career with Triple-A Syracuse (Toronto) in 1982.

Finally, we have Greg Shanahan who has the shortest career of any of those pictured on this card ... 11 games with the Dodgers between 1973 and 1974. As a matter of fact, when this card was issued, he had only appeared in 7 major league games as was a late season call-up from Triple-A Albuquerque both seasons. After his MLB cup of coffee, he spent the rest of his career at the Triple-A level with both Albuquerque and Omaha (part of the Royals organization).

Of these four, none of them had outstanding careers but just based on longevity, Friesleben I'd say had the best, plus he gave us this image during his playing career ...

Enough said.

You've Got Mail #72: Summer of '74

I received a package in the mail the other day from someone I like to call "The Man Who Made Milwaukee Famous."

No, I'm not talking about "The Crusher".

I'm talking about Matt from the somewhat new Summer of '74 blog. He's a Brewers collector and is also building some of the Topps base sets. I shipped a few late 70s extras his way along with a few from 2016 recently. In return, I received some cool stuff back last week.

First were these really cool TTM autographs. I haven't really dabbled into the TTM thing yet but I might give it a try at some point. Since Matt is working on an all-time Brewers signature project, I think it's safe to assume that these are extras. I especially like the Joe Oliver card as he was the Reds primary catcher when I first started getting into baseball.

There were also a decent batch of Indians, both old and new. I know there's a ton of 1991 Donruss out there so if anyone wants to dump their cards from Series 1 on me, let me know.

There were also Reds cards both old and new and even old players (Johnny Bench) on new cards. I swear on every Johnny Bench card Topps puts out, that same picture is on there. The Chris Sabo Upper Deck card I strangely didn't have before somehow.

This was the real star of the package though ... card #599 from the 1974 Topps set and it just happens to be the "Washington" variation of the card. One of my collecting goals is to finish the complete set of the Washington error cards and this definitely puts me one step closer. I only need 10 more cards to complete the set and if you have any of the cards on my want list that I still need, feel free to let me know.

Thanks for the great cards Matt. I've got a more Topps base cards I'm piling up to send to you later this summer in the hopes that you can put them to some good use.

The Yard Sale Find Pt.1: The Super Swingin' 70s

Going through the gigantic yard sale find from a few weeks back, I discovered that the haul covered three different decades, the 70s, 80s, and 90s. I thought a fun way to cover the find would be to cover it by decade. Let's start with the 70s back when men were men, Topps was the only game in town for cardboard, and craziness ensued at all ends of the field.

I won't be showing every card that was included in the lot because if I did, I'd be here until next winter scanning cards in and you'd be here until then as well reading about them. So, I'll show the highlights (stars, HOFers, unique/interesting cards) divided up by year. Hope you enjoy this wild and funky ride through 70s cardboard.

Pre-1970

There were a handful of cards that pre-dated the 1970s although not by much. So here are those to get us started with:

These 60s cards are super cool. It's great that these checklists are filled out too. They're in fairly decent shape too. Yes, they're marked up but that's the beauty of them. You know that they were appreciated by a youngster in the 60s building up his set. 

1970

Team cards were well represented throughout the load of 1970s stuff. However, one of the finds I got most excited about was this 1970 Tony Perez card. Vintage Reds stuff always goes for a pretty penny around here so finding a Perez card buried in this mass of cardboard was really awesome. However, it wasn't my favorite find. More on that later.

1971

All of the 1971 cards that were included were team cards, which I'm not going to argue with. I picked out some unique ones to showcase. First, there's a team card of the final Senators team ever, then the Orioles team card, which is in really good shape. I thought the Brewers, Expos and Indians cards were pretty cool with the backgrounds on them. However, the Phillies card is very unique in it's the final team shot taken at old Shibe Park (aka Connie Mack Stadium). The Phillies moved into Veterans Stadium to start the 1971 season and this is a pretty cool throwback to an old ballpark.

1972

1972 has never really been one of my favorite designs and only a few notable names in this batch with Al Downing and Ken Brett. The Mike Corkins card I think is one of those infamous high number cards but I'm not exactly sure where the cut-off is for those. It's always pretty cool to get an old school Astros card. Also, I scanned in some of the team cards that were included too, but the scan didn't come out too well. 

1973

1973 was well represented and there were a decent number of duplicates (although not as much as later years) which leads that perhaps these cards came straight from packs that the person opened as a kid. I love the Larry Bowa card with the powers lines and random stuff in the background. It's almost like he was found at a community softball game in his Phillies gear and someone grabbed a posed picture for posterity. Check out the tent behind Joe Torre, is there a carnival going on? Perhaps a spring break party?

Some general fun here from stars such as Tony Oliva and Ron Santo to the infamous Dave "King Kong" Kingman. I could have sworn he was bigger than that. Don't forget about Don Sutton either.

Tug McGraw's picture looks like it was taken at a sandlot somewhere and I believe Rick Monday was the one who saved the American flag from burning in the Wrigley Field outfield once. 

Here's a few horizontals to close out 1973. I was really excited to find a Willie Stargell card in the mix. I had no clue that Chris Chambliss was a member of the Indians at one point either. It also looks to be miscut or it scanned really bad.

1974

Moving on to 1974 and the best card of this whole haul, a San Diego Padres "Washington Nat'l Lea." error card. Long story short, the Padres were all set to move to Washington DC after the 1973 season. The move was so far along that Topps printed cards with "Washington Nat'l Lea." on them to replace the Padres team name. However, at the very last minute, Ray Kroc (yes, the McDonald's guy) bought the Padres and kept them in San Diego.

1975

1975 for me is call the "rainbow set" as I'm sure many others do because of the crazy use of the color spectrum. So weird to see Ron Santo in a White Sox hat. If I'm not mistaken, I believe this is a sunset card as his final year was spent playing for the South Siders. 

The Twins team card has seen better days as there are a few creases in it but to me that's more than acceptable. I'd rather have vintage cards that were well loved than ones that are pristine shape. The Cubs one is interesting as it's actually a team photo, where in previous sets Topps used a makeshift design of floating heads on a generic background.

1976

Getting into the back half of the 70s now as we enter the bicentennial year of 1976. I love the rainbow unis on these Astros cards, I'm not sure what the "40" shoulder patch is on Wilbur Howard. If anyone does, feel free to pass it along.

I could be wrong but I believe the Oliva card is another sunset card. There's also the Cobra, who would have a successful career stretching into the early 90s.

Sparky and Catfish! Plus Joe Torre is his waning days as a player. My favorite card of this batch has to be the Indians team card with their awesome red jerseys. If you look closely at the photo, I'm pretty sure you can see Municipal Stadium crumbling as well. 

A few more cards, this time of some players approaching the back side of their careers. Piniella would continue playing until 1984, while Stargell and Alomar were both retired by 1982.

One of the cool things Topps did with the 1976 set was include some of the old-timers in this Sporting News all-time all-stars subset. These were the only three I found while sorting but not a bad lineup in all honesty.

Hey look! Some Topps Traded cards! I had no idea Tommy Helms was still playing in 1976, let alone being shipped off to Pittsburgh, I showed off a Dusty Baker card earlier so I think it's pretty neat to at least get his traded card to go along with it.

1977

Starting to get into the bland years of 70s Topps cards now but there's still a number of cool things to be had. It was unexpected to find an early Dave Winfield card and a Brooks Robinson card that's seen some better days but that's the fun of digging through mystery boxes and yard sale finds. You never really know what you'll find. 

Haven't shown many team cards recently but these just needed to be shared. The White Sox are in all their softball uniform glory (and probably shorts too). The Indians card looks like a carbon copy of the 1976 card but I still love the old school red uniforms.

And to close out 1977, a few rookie cards and a Bob Forsch/Ken Forsch "Big League Brothers" card. Notice that one of the rookie cards is Dennis Martinez and the other, well, how can you go wrong with a baseball player named Bump.

1978

The rookie catchers card has a lot of decent names on it, including Dale Murphy. Sadly, Bo Diaz would meet an untimely end when he was crushed by a satellite dish on top of his house in November 1990. The biggest name on the rookie second basemen card is by far Lou Whitaker. As far as the others go, I think Garth Iorg hung around the longest. Perlozzo was out of the majors by the end of 1979 and Dave Oliver only played the 1977 season.

There were a fair amount of Yankees and Dodgers in the pile for both 1978 and 1979, with a few duplicates. I got 3/4 of the famous Dodgers infield, just missing Garvey but hey, 3 out of 4 ain't bad. There's also another Chris Chambliss card, this time with the team I recognize him with, future Reds pitching coach Don Gullett, and Dusty and Manny.

I found a few more fun team cards including the second year Mariners in front of the Kingdome, the Giant posing with a trolley car, and the Indians and White Sox once again sporting the same wild uniforms from the year prior.

These manager cards are pretty cool as they show a picture of them in their playing days as well. Interesting to note here that Torre was just moving into manager from being a player/manager. And it's Bobby Cox in his first stint as Braves manger.

1979

And so we come to the end of the decade with a cavalcade of random players. Much like Oscar Gamble's afro, things has decidedly cooled off a bit and the 80s were fast approaching. For this last batch, I tried to show some decent names that hadn't already been shown, like Amos Otis, Bob Boone, Bill Lee, etc. Late 70s Topps isn't exactly the sort of stuff that I actively chase but if it comes to me in a trade or in a lot like this, I'm fine with it.

I feel exhausted after that! Going through these cards definitely gave me an appreciation for some sets I'd looked over in the past that I'll have to consider buying cheap singles of at the next card show I visit. I hope that you enjoyed this first part of the journey through the yard sale find. I'll have the part 2 up in a few days.