1981 Topps Home Team Photos 5 x 7 Steve Carlton1981 Topps #202 Steve Carlton RB
1981 Topps Scratch-Offs #104 Steve Carlton
While perusing my favorite baseball card blogs today, I came across what I thought at first to be an error. The 1980 Topps blog featured a post on the 1980 Topps Super Cards - those 5 x 7 giant cards featuring posed head shots of the stars of the day. The post lamented the fact Steve Carlton was not included in the 60-card set . . . but I could have sworn he was. I even remember he wore a batting helmet on his Super card, and the picture was very similar to his Topps Record Breaker card. (Why do I remember stuff like this but I can never remember driving directions or street names?)
Anyway, it turns out the good folks from the 1980 Topps blog were correct (as usual), and Lefty was in fact omitted from the 1980 set. Three Phillies were featured in the 1980 5 x 7 set - Pete Rose, Mike Schmidt and Larry Bowa. Lefty and his helmet had to wait until 1981 to appear within the Topps Home Team Photo 5 x 7 set.
Presented here, in honor of the omission of Steve Carlton from the 1980 Topps Super Cards set, I present the 1981 Topps Steve Carlton in a Helmet Trilogy. Enjoy. (Sadly, Steve is featured without a batting helmet on his 1981 Topps Stickers picture.)
3 comments:
Very odd to have a pitcher posing...with a batting helmet on.
Ah, the scratch offs! Those are worthy of a blog all of their own. I loved those darn things - got us through the 1981 strike that summer.
Great stuff. We were stuck collecting the Dodgers and Angels 5x7's here in Arizona. I took care of that years later by getting 1 box of unopened packs of each home team set from eBay. Someone should start a blog featuring the 5x7 cards, stickers, and the scratch offs. Topps put out a lot of stuff in '81
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