#89 & 90 -- Home Run Leaders

NL Home Run Leaders

Willie Stargell 48

Hank Aaron 47

Lee May 39

The top end of the NL Home Run Leaders is certainly impressive, but there's something a little unusual about this card. I'll see if anyone can guess it and give an answer later. This tied for Hank Aaron's high water mark for season home runs with 47, and it's not enough to win the home run title. Willie Stargell's 48 was an incredible number. Nobody had hit that many in the NL since Willie Mays hit 52 in 1965 and nobody would hit that many until George Foster hit 52 in 1977.

Reggie Cleveland of the Cardinals had kind of a tough year here. Stargell got him for 3 homers, Aaron for 1 and Lee May for 2. The most anyone gave up to this Big Three was Aaron hitting Claude Osteen 4 times. May hit 3 homers in only 7 at bats off Bob Johnson of the Pirates.

Aaron really put the move on Willie Mays in 1971. At the beginning of the year, Mays led Aaron in the Race to 715 by a 629 to 592 margin. However, by the end of the year Aaron narrowed the gap to 646 to 639. Aaron took over 2nd place from Mays on June 10, 1972 with his 649th homer off Wayne Twitchell of the Phillies. By the end of 1972 Aaron was ahead 673 to 654 and, while Mays was almost done, Aaron still had a 40 homer season and 82 more homers left in the tank.

AL Home Run Leaders

Bill Melton 33

Norm Cash 33

Reggie Jackson 32

Frank Howard and Harmon Killebrew had been dominating this category in the AL for years, each of them putting up numbers in the mid-40's, but each was slowing down. Reggie Jackson makes his 2nd appearance on the HR Leaders card and it wouldn't be his last. However, just like the NL card, there wasn't a lot of depth in sluggers. In the NL, 27 homers would be good enough to make the card back and Bobby Murcer's 25 was enough here. The 1997 Rockies would have had 5 guys on this list.

These guys spread it around some. Jim Slaton gave up 3 homers to Melton and Reggie took Steve Kline long 3 times, but Cash didn't hit more than 2 off anyone.

I would have thought that Melton's 33 was the lowest total for a home run leader in a non-strike season. I would have been wrong. In fact, there were 3 seasons in the 1970's where the AL home run leader topped out at 32. We think about the AL being the hitting league now, but in the 60's and 70's, the NL was the superior hitting league.

Melton was the first White Sox player to lead the league in homers with his 33 in 1971. He really had to put on a late run to win the title. On September 28, he only had 30 homers. That same day Cash hit his last 2 and Jackson hit his last one to put both at 32. However, Melton went long twice on the 29th off Jim Slaton and his 33rd the next day off Bill Parsons. He never came close to the home run leaderboard again. He was injured in 1972 and never really recovered.

We all know Reggie's story. For Norm Cash, this may be the most homers he hit in a season in which he didn't cork his bat. He had great seasons in 1961 and 1962, but he's admitted to corking. Oops.

#87 & 88 -- RBI Leaders

NL RBI Leaders



Joe Torre 137
Willie Stargell 125
Hank Aaron 118








AL RBI Leaders

Harmon Killebrew 119
Frank Robinson 99
Reggie Smith 96








Here we start seeing more of the AL stars down the depth chart, but the NL still dominates. There were only 5 guys with 100 RBI seasons in 1971. Think about that. Last year the Mets had three 100 RBI guys and the Orioles had two 100 RBI guys. I didn't know that. Those two teams that didn't make the playoffs had as many as the entire major leagues did in 1971. At the All-Star break Josh Hamilton had 95 RBI in 2008. That would have been 1 short of getting him on this League Leader card. Times have changed.


The NL guys show the top vote getters for the MVP. Joe Torre won, but Stargell and Aaron finished right behind. The voting wasn't really very close and it's interesting to examine it. Aaron had a "consistent" year with good numbers all the way across. Stargell's power numbers were out of this world, but his batting average was "only" .295. Torre had the great batting average, led the league in RBI, but only hit 24 home runs, the same as 2008's Jayson Werth or J.J. Hardy (hardly MVP candidates). However, batting average and run production mattered more than power and being in the playoffs, so Torre won. If the voting were held today, the fact that the Pirates beat the Cardinals for the division and Stargell hit more homers would have cinched the MVP for him.


Lucky for Topps that Rusty Staub didn't finish in the top 3. I wonder how they'd have handled that since they had a licensing issue with him and didn't produce a card of him from 1971-1973?

The AL again shows the dominance of pitching. Only Killer topped 100 RBI, although Frank Robinson was at 99. However the Top 10 goes all the way down to 86. If a top player in the middle of a lineup today came up with 86 RBI, it would be seen as a down season. But there's no doubt the 11 names on the AL leaders card back were some of the league's top guys (except for Reggie Jackson, who was missing with only 80 RBI).

# 85 & 86 -- NL Batting Leaders & AL Batting Leaders

NL Batting Leaders


Joe Torre .363
Ralph Garr .343
Glenn Beckert .342








AL Batting Leaders

Tony Oliva .337
Bobby Murcer .331
Merv Rettenmund .318






In 1971, the NL hit .252 and the AL hit .247. That was when I started following baseball and to a certain degree, things from the 1970's are ingrained in my head as the way things ought to be. A car ought to cost about $5,000. A house should cost about $25,000. A meal at McDonald's, well, that was a luxury in the mid-1970's, not an everyday occurrence. Before I go sounding like one of those "we walked through the snow uphill both ways" kind of guys, I take my kids to drive throughs a lot more than I went to them when I was a kid.


However, it's still ingrained in my head that the average baseball game should be a 4-3 game. That's changed and I don't like it. Another thing that's ingrained in my head is .363. When I see Joe Torre, I don't think "World Series Manager" or "He just wrote a book" or even "He has a magic touch. He tamed Manny Ramirez and look what happened to A-Rod when Joe left New York." Nope, when I think of Joe Torre, I think .363 because I was a Cardinal fan as a young baseball fan and I know Torre hit .363 to win his batting title in 1971.


He didn't have competition. The Roadrunner had a great year and came up 20 points short. Glenn Beckert had a career year, hitting .341 and I thought (wrongly so) that would happen every year. As you read down the top 10 on the card back you see an All-Star team with names like Cleon, Sanguillen, Clemente, Aaron, Brock and Staub. However, despite there being 3 Hall of Famers down the line, the 3 faces on the card are Torre, Garr and Beckert. Two of them got there with by far their career best in batting average (Garr hit .353 in 1974).


The AL card shows that the AL was not a hitters league. Now there's nothing wrong with Tony Oliva, Bobby Murcer and Merv Rettenmund. However, there were only 6 guys that hit .300. Wow. Of course, the AL had all kinds of pitching. The A's and Orioles alone had all kinds of talent. I'm amazed that there was only about a 5 point difference in league batting average.


Tony O was a great player and if he hadn't torn up his knee, he'd be in the Hall of Fame. He was kind of the Billy Williams of the AL, but he just didn't have the longevity. He beat out Bobby Murcer, who was unfairly saddled with the "Next Mickey Mantle" expectations. Murcer had a great career, but he, nor anyone else that's played in the Yankee outfield in the last 40 years has been "The Next Mickey Mantle." Even though they finished 6 points apart, there wasn't a real batting race. Oliva hit .350 most of the year, but tailed off considerably the last month (he hit .217 in September) and Murcer was solidly in the .330's all year.


But there's no depth in the AL top 10. Rod Carew got his mail delivered in the AL Top 10, but there were no other Hall of Famers. Amos Otis and Roy White were solid players, but I don't think I ever knew that the recently deceased Ted Uhlaender ever finished Top 10 or that he even played enough to qualify.

#84 -- Vince Colbert

Vince Colbert





Nice Spring Training shot of Vince with the Arizona mountains in the background. Vince was not related to Nate Colbert of the Padres. He'd cracked the rotation in 1971 as a spot starter at least and did reasonably well, even though he had a high walk rate. Vince was with the Indians part of 1972, but when he was 1-7 by the end of July, the Indians handed him a ticket to Portland, where he went 1-6. Ouch. He got 3 games in September and that was it for his big league career.

As the late Paul Harvey would say, there's a rest of the story that might explain why he plummeted so fast. Ken Aspromonte took over as the manager in 1972. According to an exceprt about Vince in the book "More Tales From the Tribe Dugout," Aspromonte wanted Vince to pitch at 190 pounds. He'd been around 215 to 220. He had to crash diet to lose 30 pounds, but he also lost the steam on his fastball, which was no longer in the low 90's. He looked so good at 190, he got tested for anemia. He was just never the same and the Indians gave up on him.

After the season the Indians sent him to the Rangers and in Spring Training of 1973 the Rangers sent him back (for Alex Johnson). He pitched at AA in San Antonio most of 1973, doing well with an 8-1 record and 3 saves. But when you're 27, spent most of the last 3 years in the big leagues and you can't crack the AA rotation on a regular basis, some guys decide to pack it in. Vince made it up to the AAA team for a time, but wasn't pitching regularly or terribly well, and that was a career.

I'd like to know more about Vince's basketball career. The cardback says he scored 29 in a half once. OK. What were the circumstances? Was this a state championship game or was it against weaker competition. I did see that Vince, a Washington DC native, was inducted into the College of Eastern Utah Hall of Fame in 1995. He was first team all-conference in baseball and basketball and won trophies in track. He was also the first black player recruited to East Carolina and is 2nd to former Pittsburgh Pirate reliever Bob Patterson in major league wins by ECU Pirate alums.

Vince did well against Hall of Famers. Brooks Robinson was 1/12 and Hall of Fame position players as a whole only hit .200 against Vince. The best batting average by a Hall of Famer was Jim Palmer going 2/3. Although he isn't a Hall of Famer, Frank Howard was an imposing figure at that time, but he went 0/16 against Vince.

Check out this link to his high school yearbook picture. It shows he's married with a son and 2 grandchildren and is a detective in security at Cleveland State. I did find a photo where he was recognized as a baseball/basketball letter winner at ECU and a recent photo from his Hall of Fame induction in Eastern Utah. He still looks like he's got a competitive edge, doesn't he?




I didn't know much about Vince when I started researching this post (at 2:30 AM), but I've learned a lot and glad I did. So, in honor of Vince's favorite song, according to his high school yearbook, this goes to Mrs. Colbert for her big leaguer:

Modern Card Update -- Jeff Stone

I know some of you collect autographed cards. I also know some of you have the same opinion of that portion of the hobby as I did in the late 80's: why would you want to mess up a perfectly good baseball card by having someone write on it?





I got started sending cards off to get autographed on a rainy Saturday afternoon in September 1999 as something to (1) distract my 4 year old son and (2) try to give him a hook to get interested in baseball. Now, it's something I admit I do more for me than him.





Today I got these in the mail.


Jeff Stone was a pretty nondescript player who had a good half season in 1984 and was pretty mediocre thereafter. He did make somebody's top three all-time favorite Phillie list. Aside from that, Jeff's biggest claim to fame was probably a quote that was attributed to him when he was first up with the Phils and a waiter in a restaurant asked if he wanted shrimp cocktail: "No thanks. I don't drink."

Normally, I don't post my autograph successes here. That's not what this site is for, unless I post a picture of a 1972 card that's been autographed. However, I wanted to point out something unusual about these cards. I sent them to Stone in November 2001. They came back with a 34 cent stamp (I guess the post office was considering them "forevers") If this autograph request were a child, it would be finishing up first grade.

My previous long wait for a card had been a little over 3 years. At 7 years and almost 5 months, this shatters that one. Not that I think when I send a card out today, "Hmm, I'll be seeing this beaut again when the Obama Administration is history" but it does give me hope that I might see those cards I sent Cesar Cedeno in January 2000.

#83 -- Dalton Jones

Dalton Jones

Dalton was a part-time player, primarily with the Red Sox and then the Tigers. He was only in a Tiger uniform for a short time in 1972 before being sent to the Rangers. The back of the card and the sponsorship of his Baseball Reference page both discuss his proclivities as a pinch-hitter. I like the comparison to Gates Brown on the card back, but not mentioning that Brown was also a Tiger. That meant that Billy Martin had the top 2 AL pinch-hitters of all-time at his disposal.

Dalton went 0-7 as a pinch-hitter with the Tigers through the end of May in 1972, so he was sent to Texas. That wasn't a good thing in 1972, but for Dalton it meant that he played under Ted Williams, who "recruited" him to the Red Sox and was one of his idols. Dalton got those 2 pinch-hits he was shy of Gates Brown, but the 2nd came on September 4 and was the last of his career. He had 81 pinch-hits at that time, but Gates had 4 by that time to hit 85 for his career and widen the gap.

This was the end of the line for Dalton in the big leagues. The Rangers released him following the season. He went 0 for his last 20 and 2 for his last 33, so it's not hard to see why. There is no card where Ted Williams is shown tutoring Dalton on hitting. Dalton caught on with the Expos and played with their AAA team for a time in 1973, but when he was hitting .208 after 59 games he gave it up for good. (The Baseball Reference beta site has better older minor league stats!)

Dalton was not a very good fielder. He primarily played second and third and his fielding percentage and range factor fall well below league average. In 1967, he played only 30 games at third for the Impossible Dream Red Sox, but he played Games 1-4 of the World Series at third, hitting .353 in those 4 games. However, after an 0-4 in Game 4 and the Sox down 3 games to 1, Dalton was pulled for Joe Foy. Foy went 0-4 in Game 5 and 1-4 in Game 6, but the Sox won both to force Game 7. Dalton got a pinch single in Game 6 and scored the run that put the Sox ahead to stay. In Game 7, Dalton drew a walk as a pinch-hitter off a dominant Bob Gibson (who only struck out 10) and the Cards won (Go Crazy Folks!). His performance in the Series was a high water mark in his career.

If you look at Dalton's home run log, you won't see any grand slams. As a pinch-hitter, he had one that headed into the upper deck in right field in Tiger Stadium on July 9, 1970, but Don Wert took it away from him. Don Wert played third, didn't he? Dalton was a Tiger and he was teammates with Wert at the time, weren't they? So how did Wert rob Dalton of an upper deck homer? I don't think Ken Griffey, Jr. ever got up that high. The porch in right field of Tiger Stadium overhung (that's got to be poor grammar) the field and Dalton hit a high fly. Instead of going halfway, Wert was retreating to first when the ball went into the seats. As the ball went into the seats, Dalton was hitting first base and Wert was retreating. Dalton passed Wert and was called out. Wert and the other two runners on got to score, so Dalton got credit for a bases clearing 3 run single. It broke a 3-3 tie and the Tigers won. At least they didn't lose by 1.

#82 -- Ron Woods

Ron Woods

I don't know much about Ron except that I seemed to get a lot of his cards and I was glad he didn't play for my team. I don't know what I had against Ron, but I think he just didn't look like he was confident and in control. While it's almost a "night card" it also looks like he's gazing longingly at Gene Mauch, "Put me in, skip. I'll hit it."

When I did research about Ron, I didn't find much. Many of the "hits" had to do with him being traded from the Yankees for Ron Swoboda. OK. Swoboda was at the end of his career. Many of the rest of the items I found were Yankee fans bemoaning the bad teams of the late 60's and early 70's and Ron playing centerfield was one of their arguments. He played center about half-time for a year and a half and hit .205. I feel your pain.

Playing in Montreal from 1971-1974 was the best time of Ron's career. He wasn't bad in 1971-72 and his OPS+ was actually above 100. He had his most at bats against Steve Carlton and even hit .302 against him.

There's not much else that really stands out about Ron, so he can now fade back into obscurity.....

Speaking of sinking into obscurity..... RIP 2009 Duke Blue Devils. Better luck next year.