Steppin' on Joe's toes

I kicked around the idea of collecting the 1976 SSPC set for a long time. As with other sets I had the Orioles and a few other assorted cards. About six months ago I found one on eBay at a reasonable price and picked it up.

If you follow Joe Shlabotnik's The Shlabotnik Report (and you should) you know that he has had an ongoing series of posts featuring this wonderful oddball set. That's one reason that until now I haven't bothered to do anything with my cards other than shuffle through them. Posting them feels a little like putting up pictures of someone else's kids. However....

....now that I've finished the 1970 Topps chase I decided to binder this one and do at least this one post based on it. BTW...if you are not familiar with the story behind this privately produced set you should check out this brief but thorough introduction to it.

I'm posting some random SSPCs here today. I had about 20 scanned but several lost their border in the scanning process and I hate posting those. Two terrific ballplayers from the Orioles segment of the set kick off the scans, Don Baylor and Paul Blair. The cards are grouped together by team with a few exceptions. The last 50 or cards are made up of managers, coaches, the checklists, stray players from teams grouped elsewhere, things like that.

George Brett had had a fine rookie season in 1974 but he exploded in 1975 and this card, released with this set following that season would have been one of the most coveted had these actually been in circulation.

Pete Rose. I was hoping that the Brooks Robinson card would have scanned better but whatcha gonna do?

Brian Downing. As I recall he had a really wierd batting stance...or maybe I'm confusing him with someone else.

Dusty Baker looking very young.

My set came with both the error 'Noland' Ryan and the corrected version. These 'combo' cards are the fronts of the seven checklist cards. There are a couple of other 'errors' which are players whose pictures were mixed up.

Joe Ferguson with his epic 'stache.

Woody Fryman has hijacked the groundskeeper's cart.

The back of Duke Snider's card lists him as 'Hitting Instructor' and mentions his additional role as a broadcaster in Montreal.

Luis Tiant looking a bit perplexed.

The backs look like this.

That's a quick look at a dozen of the 630 cards in this quirky masterpiece. I'm about to put it in pages and I can't wait to see how it looks.

This brief SSPC interlude is over...I now return the 'rights' to blogging these babies to Joe.

I'm Hungry

So lets have some Hostess cards from the closet box of oddball 'stuff'. 

Here is a 1975 Brooks Robinson. Obvious spring training photo session with the shadows of Brooks, the photographer and the support crew visible.

Jim Palmer's card from that 1975 set was shot in Yankee Stadium.

A trio of 1976 Hostess cards. Mike Torrez pitched for 18 seasons and won 20 games once... as a member of the '75 Orioles, his only year in Charm City. By the time this card was cut from a box of Ding Dongs he was pitching in Oakland courtesy of the Reggie Jackson trade.

Here's Brooks again in a spring training shot. That's Miami Stadium's curved roof behind him.

 Don Baylor was on the same April flight to Oakland as Mike Torrez since they both were part of the Reggie trade. It's surprising to me to look back at Baylor's numbers as an Oriole and see that he hit only 57 homers for them. He had 25 in 1975.

Finally this is the 1978 Jim Palmer. '78 was Palmers last 20 win season. He was coming off a second place in the Cy Young balloting after having won the award three of the previous four seasons. He was headed for the back side of his terrific career but wasn't done quite yet. In 1982 he pitched well enough to finish 2nd in the Cy Young voting.  

Big E gifts from Mark Hoyle (and a bonus)

Friend of the everyone's blog Mark Hoyle sent along a couple of Elvin Hayes cards from the 1975/76 Topps hoops set. I don't think I had ever encountered cards from this year. Poking around eBay and other sites I found that Topps used color combos for each team that didn't match the teams colors which was pretty much their modus operandi for decades across all their sports issues.

Simple fronts with a pic, plain sans serif block fonts and the two piece stripe adornment. The backs with that green and purple/blue coloring are hard to read. 

That is Elvin's regular card and he shows up on the Bullets Team Leaders card as well. 

Interestingly the backs of the leaders cards list the Bullets' yearly leaders in four categories going back nine seasons to 1966/67.

As I looked at the cards from this set online I was struck by how many of the players were very familiar to me. I probably couldn't name more than 5 current NBA guys and I have no idea who won the championship last year but I remember Kevin Porter and Mike Newlin.

With the addition of these two Big E cards and the handful I've picked up in recent months I guess I am officially making Hayes a PC to chase. I have seven 'career era' cards in my cart at COMC and when I finish checklisting what I have I'll add a few more.

One other thing I found online was the set's team cards. They have the usual photos of the teams sitting and standing on benches. All except the Lakers. Have a look:

Yup, it's a 'floating heads' team card!!

That's Connie Hawkins on the upper left. And some guy named Abdul-Jabbar second from the right on the bottom row. I've heard of him, too.

He is the added gift I mentioned. It's a 1974 Topps Don Baylor stamp! I love oddball O's stuff like this. I have one or two of these from the Orioles team set but the Don Baylor is new to me. Thanks so much, Mark. You make the blogosphere a better place, even without a blog!