Single Card Post - 1977 Topps #492

Our subjects of examination today appear as a quartet on card #492 of the 1977 Topps issue. Everyone on the front of this card looks less than impressed, save for Carlos Lopez. Also, it looks to me that every hat is airbrushed. Three of these four I've never heard of so let's see how they did and if anything new is uncovered:

Tony Armas only made 4 games with the Pirates in 1976 before being shipped off to the A's with five other players for Phil Garner, Tommy Helms, and another player. Armas had six decent years with Oakland appearing in 694 games overall hitting .250, with 111 HRS and 374 RBIs. In the strike-shortened season of 1981, Armas was an All-Star and finished fourth in MVP voting. After the 1982 season, Armas was traded by the A's to Boston in a deal that landed Oakland Carney Lansford in return. With Boston, his best season (and probably best overall in his career) was 1984 where he played in 157 games, hit 43 homers, led the AL in RBIs with 123, and won the Player of the Month award for June. On top of that, he appeared in his second All-Star Game, finished in the top ten of MVP voting and won a Silver Slugger. After this power saw a relapse in both 1985 and 1986, Armas left Boston as a free agent and signed with the Angels before the 1987 season started. He would play three more years before retiring after the 1989 season and a 14-year career.

Steve Kemp was the first overall pick of the January 1976 amateur draft out of USC by the Tigers and was a bright spot on a Tigers squad that finished 4th in the AL East in 1977 with a .257 average, 18 homers, and 88 RBIs. Two years later, Kemp made is only All-Star team hitting .318/.398/.543 with 26 HRs and 105 RBIs and finished in the top twenty of MVP voting. After the 1981 season, he was sent to the White Sox in exchange for Chet Lemon. He only spent one season on the south side and then signed with the Yankees as a free agent. After two decent season, the Yankees traded him and Tim Foli to the Pirates for Dale Berra, Jay Buhner, and Alfonso Pulido. In Pittsburgh, he was a part-time player and was released by the Pirates in the middle of the 1986 season. He resurfaces for a few shots in 1988 with the Rangers but was released again in the middle of the season.

Carlos Lopez only played three years in the majors and all three with different teams. His MLB journey began when the Angels purchased him in 1973. He spent the 1974, 1975, and the majority of the 1976 seasons in the minors. At the end of 1976 he appeared in 9 games with 10 at bats and got exactly zero hits in those 10 at bats. The Mariners selected him in the 1976 expansion draft and he fared a bit better in Seattle and had his best season stat wise. After the season, the Mariners shipped him off to Baltimore along with Tommy Moore for Mike Parrott. After 129 games with the Orioles in 1978 he disappeared from the majors. 1979 was spent in the Orioles minor league system and by 1980 was back in the Mexican League where he played another five seasons.

Gary Woods debuted in 1976 playing in six games with the A's and after the season was selected by the Blue Jays in the expansion draft. With the Jays, he was primarily a backup outfielder, only appearing the 68 games over 1977 and 1978. After the season, he was traded to Houston for a minor leaguer and spent the entire 1979 season playing in the minors with Tuscon (AZ) and Charleston (WV) in the Astros system. The next year, he was back in the majors and again was primarily a backup outfielder, only getting in 73 games over the 1980 and 1981 seasons. After the 1981 season, he was again traded, this time to the Cubs for Jim Tracy. The best season of his career was the 1982 season, his first with the Cubs were he hit .269/.327/.388 but only mustered 4 homers and 30 RBIs. After that season, he had three more years with the Cubs as was out of the majors after the 1985 season.

Here's the back of the card for those who are interested. One thing I always liked about 1977 Topps is the back of the card as it's made to look like, at least in my opinion, a scoreboard you'd see at the local sandlot. Anyway, of the four players mentioned here, there's no doubt that Tony Armas had the best career of all involved. 

Retail Repack Adventures #4: Revenge of the Repack!

This is becoming a bad habit of mine. Not the fact that I can't leave these things alone whenever I step foot into Walgreens, but the fact that it seems that a new month of posts starts off with one of these! I bought this particular repack back towards the end of January and since then, I've been in a self-imposed drought in an attempt to stretch my card money as far as possible. Enough about me though! Let's dive in to this repack!

This repack was chock full of Topps from all eras, including these 2008 cards. My collection has a gaping hole regarding cards from 1994-2011 (I got back into collecting in 2012) and these repacks are helping to ever so slowly fill in that hole. I was pretty happy when the Mike Piazza card fell out of the box, especially considering that it's his sunset card.

As I mentioned, more Topps cards. The Cano was the cover card of the stack. I'm slowly learning to love the 2010 Topps design too.

Hey look! Parallels from the mid 90s! Bip is a foil version and big Cecil is from the Score Gold Rush line.

Here's something you don't see cards of every day, Wade Boggs in a Devil Rays uniform. This will get added to my personal stash as will the Pujols, even though I'm not a Cardinals fan at all.

Here's another 2010 Topps card, this one of Max Scherzer, before the Nationals backed up a Brinks truck to his front door a few years later. The Cabrera card is pretty cool. I remember Topps doing a bunch of the "Super Veterans" cards back in the day but don't remember many recently so this was a real treat to pull out of this package.

This 1992 Upper Deck pack I've already covered in the first edition of my new ongoing series called "Back Packs". Read about it here

Just like the last repack, this one was stuffed to the gills with 2012 Topps. I think I like these more than most people, simply because it was the first pack I bought when I got back into collecting. This was the best of the batch that was included, any duplicate will wind up in eventual trade packs.

Finally, the requisite Reds. Hatteberg played three seasons for the Reds at first and was Votto's backup during his final season in Cincy. To be honest, I'd kind of forgotten about him. Cairo was a solid player on the two Central Division winners in 2010 and 2012. It's also a sunset card as 2012 was his last season.

This was a nice solid repack and I'll be on the look out for another next time I hit up a Walgreens.