Friday, September 7, 2018

Just One Card & Missing Links - 1970s Phillies Edition

1975 Topps #405
1977 Topps #394
1979 Topps #169
1980 Topps #277
1981 Fleer #585
Having tackled the Phillies Missing Links from 1980 through 2008 at this point, I wanted to see what a Phillies Missing Links set from the 1970s would look like.  As far as I can tell, and please offer revisions in the comments if needed, listed below are the players who suited up with the Phillies between 1970 and 1979 and never received a Phillies baseball card.

Below this list, I've presented what I believe to be those Phillies players who received just one Phillies card, with most of these occurring in the team-issued photo card sets from the '70s.  I don't know if creating cards for these players is a project I'll tackle in the near-term, but with the checklist in place the next step would be hunting and gathering pictures of these players in red pinstripes (or baby blue road uniforms).

Phillies Missing Links of the 1970s - Initial Checklist
1 Del Bates (1970)
2 Mike Jackson (1970)
3 Manny Muniz (1971)
4 Dave Downs (1972)
5 Bob Terlecki (1972)
6 Dave Wallace (1973-1974)
7 John Stearns (1974)
8 Larry Fritz (1975)
9 Ron Clark (1975)
10 John Montague (1975)
11 Rick Bosetti (1976)
12 Bill Nahorodny (1976)
13 Mike Buskey (1977)
14 Manny Seoane (1977)
15 Dan Warthen (1977)
16 Orlando Gonzalez (1978)
17 Kerry Dineen (1978)
18 Todd Cruz (1978)
19 Horacio Pina (1978)
20 Dan Boitano (1978)
21 John Poff (1979)
22 Jack Kucek (1979)


Just One Card
1970
Doc Edwards - 1970 Phillies Photocards*
Bill Laxton - 1970 Phillies Photocards

1971
Bobby Pfeil - 1971 Phillies Photocards

1972
John Bateman - 1972 Phillies Photocards
Gary Neibauer - 1972 Phillies Photocards

1974
Allan Bannister - 1975 Phillies Photocards
Jesus Hernaiz - 1974 Phillies Photocards
Frank Linzy - 1974 Phillies Photocards
Pete Richert - 1974 Phillies Photocards
Erskine Thomason - 1976 SSPC #600^


1975
Cy Acosta - 1975 Phillies Photocards
Don Hahn - 1975 Phillies Photocards
Wayne Simpson - 1976 SSPC #599^

1976
Fred Andrews - 1977 Phillies Photocards
Tim Blackwell - 1977 Phillies Photocards

1977
Dane Iorg - 1977 Phillies Photocards

1978
Dan Larson - 1980 Phillies Photocards

1979
Rudy Meoli - 1979 Phillies Photocards

*As a coach, with two variations so he might not technically belong on this list.
^Wearing a Toledo Mud Hens uniform.

Just One Card Links
1970 to 1979
1980 to 1989
1990 to 1995
1996 to 1999
2000 to 2004
2005 to 2009

8 comments:

Jim from Downingtown said...

Mike Compton only had 1 Topps card (1971).

The Shlabotnik Report said...

For obvious (Mets) reasons, I'd like to see John Stearns and Don Hahn.

I had no idea Todd Cruz started with the Phils (although I see it was just 3 games).

I feel like John Poff is familiar to me, and I have no idea why.

Steve F. said...

I have a note that says that Don Hahn had a card in the 1975 team set. Maybe Rick can verify--I have a now-deceased friend who gave me his handwritten checklists for the 1970s team sets and a couple of those differ slightly from your checklists, so this could be a mystery card.

On Ron Clark's 1986 manager card with Clearwater, he is full-on in a Phillies uniform (because that's what they wore in Clearwater that year). Seeing that card, I am going to get it signed and insert it in the 1975 page of my signed Phillies cards binder--it's good enough!

Those names all bring back vague memories of Phillies yearbooks when I was a young lad.

By the way, someone at http://1979cards.blogspot.com has already created 1979-style cards of a couple of those guys (Poff, Kucek and Larson).

Steve F. said...

Actually, I just looked and you list Don Hahn on your want list for 1975 photocards.

Steve F. said...


One more point--John Bateman may or may not have appeared on one or two Topps cards as a Phillie--Chris Speier's and Steve Carlton's cards.

I'm going to revise something I wrote here on July 10, 2011:
---
"If it helps determine which catcher it is [on the 1973 Carlton card], McCarver was 6'0", 183 lbs., while Bateman was 6'3" and 210 lbs. Carlton was 6'4" and 210 lbs. The catcher looks pretty solid, so it might be more likely Bateman.

The scene pictured is pretty clearly a complete game victory by Carlton at the Vet in a day game, with the catcher shaking his hand. It had to have been either May 7 (McCarver catching the entire game), June 11 (also McCarver the whole game) or August 13 (Bateman catching the entire game)--those were the only three home, day, complete game victories Carlton had that season.

I can't tell whether the catcher is the same height as Carlton or 3" shorter. On the one hand, one might guess that it is more likely McCarver, as the Topps photographers don't seem to have captured a whole lot of late-season action ever (hence all the airbrushing).

OTOH, McCarver's 1973 card, taken presumably during the 1972 season, shows him with short hair, while the catcher on the Lefty card has some wings of hair over his ear, and John Bateman's hair does have those wings on his 1972 card (photo taken in 1971, presumably). So it might be Bateman."
---

I now think that the Carlton card is McCarver and the Chris Speier card is Bateman. And here's why. First the Speier card being Bateman--settle in:

It could be July 15, 1972, a day game in which Speier hit an inside the park home run with John Bateman (#6) catching and a skinny white guy Ed Goodson on deck. The fellow on the left of the photo looks like a skinny white guy and seems to be angled to be getting a closer look at the play. And the third baseman is looking a bit casual, which he might be doing if there was no one else coming around the bases behind Speier. Finally, check out this picture in the Bakersfield newspaper, which sure looks a lot like the same play: https://newspaperarchive.com/bakersfield-californian-jul-16-1972-p-28/

The funny thing is the paper describes the catcher as Tim McCarver but the boxscore shows it was Bateman.

However, we have the problem that the Phillies third baseman Don Money wore #16 that year. Later in the season they called up Craig Robinson who played 3B and wore #18, but he never played in SF that season. The 3B on the card is clearly wearing #18.

I thought maybe the play was instead from June 5, 1971, or game 2 of June 6, 1971, both games when the Phillies 3B was Bobby Pfeill, who wore #18. But in both games the Phillies catcher was Irish Mike Ryan, who wore #9. On June 5, Speier scored from first on a double where there was no play at 3B so Pfeill could have been looking relaxed there. But the on deck hitter was Bobby Bonds, and that doesn’t look like him on the card. On June 6 in a game they were losing 2-0 in the 8th, Speier scored on a groundout to first base with another runner going from 2nd to 3rd. The on-deck hitter was Tito Fuentes, a dark-skinned Cuban, so I don’t think that is him on the card. So on these two plays, we have the right uniform # at 3B but the wrong one at C, and the on deck hitter doesn’t seem to match the baseball card. Plus the play was from a year earlier.

Money and Pfeill were the same height and had similar weights. Pfeill left after 1971 and no one wore #18 until that September. Maybe Money had a wardrobe issue and wore #18 that series on the road. OTOH, in 1971 Tony Taylor wore #8 and McCarver wore #6, and both were veterans, so there was no way Mike Ryan was wearing one of those numbers. Plus McCarver caught and Taylor played in that series. So I think we have to assume that wasn’t Mike Ryan wearing the wrong jersey and it wasn’t 1971. So I say that is July 15, 1972, John Bateman is the catcher, and Don Money is wearing the wrong number on that baseball card.

Steve F. said...

Part two-----As to why I think the Carlton card shows McCarver:

- The guy looks shorter than Carlton (McCarver was three inches shorter; Bateman was the same height).
- If you Google the phrase Tim McCarver catching gear, two of the first pictures to come up are separate photos of Timmy Mac congratulating Bob Gibson by shaking his hand on the mound that look very similar to the catcher on the Carlton card.
- The straps on the back of the chest protector seem to be different. The Carlton one clearly comes down the middle from the back of the next and bisects the #6. On the Speier card, there doesn't seem to be a vertical strap. It seems to just go around the catcher's neck and another around his waist. Also, the strap around the waist seems to be bright white on that card while on the Carlton card it seems to be a darker shade, maybe gray.

So I think Bateman does have a Topps card as a Phillie, just not the one we thought he did back in 2011!

Jim said...

Great stuff! I've updated the listing to show Hahn's 1975 Phillies Photocard, and I've removed him from the initial 1970s Missing Links checklist.

Steve F. said...

If you like that analysis, check out this from one of the bloggers, Baseball Researcher, that you link to on the side of your blog:

http://baseballresearcher.blogspot.com/2017/12/baseball-in-new-kind-of-love.html