It's Been A Minute

One of my favorite phrases in life.  

So much has happened over the past month and a half. Unfortunately, most of it involves me working, which nobody really wants to hear about. I am just going to skip ahead to the part where I talk about baseball cards and pretend that I still do this on a regular basis.  

I still have the time to purchase baseball cards, just not write about the baseball cards. I have narrowed this post down to 4 cards. There are some large stacks of cards sitting around my house at the moment and it's not because my wife repainted and refurnished my baseball card room in a day while I was at work.  

The stacks of cards are out of the frame, but I am actually going to make a post about the state and condition of my card room at the moment assuming I don't disappear for another six weeks.  

As I was saying, picking out just 4 cards was a bit of an accomplishment.  

The first three are all from the 2021 Topps Chrome Anniversary set.  Two former Durham Bulls players and a backup catcher for the Cardinals.  

First, former Durham Bulls player Greg Luzinski.  Great power hitter and a great signature too.  

Next up is Cardinals backup catcher Gene Tenace. Earlier in his career he was not a backup for the Oakland A's. Tenace was the 1972 World Series MVP. I do not have a Padres autograph of Tenace, but he was also a starting catcher in San Diego.  In 1980, Gene Tenace hit .222, but walked 30 more times than he struck out and had an on-base percentage of .399. 

Amazing. 

Last up on the Topps Chrome cards is former Durham Bulls player and current Minnesota Twins manager, Rocco Baldelli.  The green Rays jerseys were horrible.  

Last card is a Paul Goldschmidt autograph.  

He's been on the Cardinals a few years now, but I rarely buy any of his cards and I never post them when I do. Nothing too special, just usually cool looking parallels or base cards from when he played with the Diamondbacks. Nothing this nice.  

These Guys Are Actually Good?

I started collecting baseball cards in the early 1980s when I was in early elementary school. Some of my initial impressions of players from those cards lingered for a long time in my world.  At some point in late high school or early college, I realized that a lot of the "washed up, old guys" from those early 1980s sets were actually good players during the 1970s.  There were even a few lingering from the 1960s.  

As a baseball card collector, I have ended up circling back to collect cards of a few of these players.  This past week, I managed to snag two autographs from the 2021 Topps Archives set of players who appeared in 1983 card sets.  That was my first year opening packs and these two players seemed way past their prime. The six-year old version of me did not fully appreciate their skills for very likely superficial reasons.  

First up, Cardinals back-up catcher Gene Tenace.  

He was the Cardinals back-up catcher during the early 1980s.  Gene Tenace was a .230 hitter and managed a grand total of 12 home runs in the 2 seasons he played for the Cardinals.  Not exactly someone to be excited about pulling from a pack of cards.  I kind of ignored those 1970s seasons while he was playing for the A's.  

Some years later, I learned about the Gene Tenace from the 1970s.  He regularly hit 20 home runs a year?  Gene Tenace won the 1972 World Series MVP by hitting 4 home runs in a 7 game series against the Reds?  You're sure that wasn't Reggie Jackson?  

It turns out that before he was an old guy and the back-up catcher for the Cardinals, Gene Tenace was a good player.  It's true.  All of it.  There are other things that I really appreciate about his career beyond winning a World Series MVP and being a back-up catcher on the Cardinals. 

+Gene Tenace regularly walked more than he struck out.  

+Gene Tenace 1060 career hits and 984 career walks. 

+Baseball Reference has him rated as the 13th best catcher of all-time ahead of Roy Campanella, Buster Posey, and Yadier Molina. 

+Amongst modern catchers, Tenace has the second highest OPS (on-base percentage and slugging percentage) amongst modern catchers.  He's ahead of Johnny Bench, but behind Mike Piazza.  

He was a really good player.  Here is my latest Gene Tenace card.  

I am still waiting for Topps to make a card of him as a back-up catcher for the Cardinals.  

Next player.  

Those polyester White Sox softball uniforms were not kind to Greg Luzinski. "The Bull" was still a good player with the White Sox, but he was definitely a player ignored while I was collecting in the 1980s.  I think Luzinski was my first run-in with a professional athlete who did not look the part.  I first started to appreciate Greg Luzinski when I moved to North Carolina roughly 15 years ago and started reading up on the Durham Bulls.  

He was a member of the 1969 Raleigh-Durham Phillies, which was a renamed version of the Durham Bulls.  It was a really dumb idea to rename the team briefly, but it was not as bad as the team splitting half of its games between Durham and Raleigh.  Despite a lot of bad off-the-field decisions by the Phillies, the team absolutely bludgeoned the rest of the Carolina League.  It's arguable one of the better teams in the history of the franchise.  

The team led the league in almost every team offensive category and almost every team pitching category.  Many of the players on the team also were league leaders in individual categories. Luzinksi was an 18 year-old fresh out of high school and hit 31 home runs and drove in 92 runs.  

I have posted a bunch of Luzinski cards here over the years.  Been a fan for awhile.  

Love the 1960 Topps design on this card and Luzinski has a great signature.  

Overall, I am happy to add these two cards to my collection and I am glad that I learned a little bit more about these two players who were "old and washed up" when I first started collecting cards.  

Procrastination Post

I am supposed to be creating a portfolio of everything that I did this year as a virtual and hybrid (50% in-person and 50% online simultaneously), but I am finding it hard to get started.  I have a large stack of cards on my desk at the moment since my blogging is down to almost nothing.  So many to choose from, but I decided to go with some random old 1960s, 70s, and 80s cards of former Durham Bulls players.  

When summer hits, I am going to work on putting together the Durham Bulls cards from the 1960s or 1970s set, similar to what I did last year with the 1975 Topps Mini set.  In the meantime, it's fun to just find some of these old cards for cheap.  This group of cards cost me more than $10 after shipping, so roughly a dollar per card.  Hard to pass up.  

Here's what I found, in sequential order by year.  

 

  

 

First up is a 1960 Topps of long-time Major League catcher Clint Courtney.  His claim to fame was starting several fights with the Yankees during the 1960s.   I believe he was a Yankees farmhand at some point and held a grudge against them.  Clint Courtney ended up on the Bulls at the end of his career.  He was the old guy on a Carolina League team.  

 

 

 

This is a 1974 Topps Rusty Staub card from the World Series Highlights subset.  The Mets did not win, but Rusty hit .429 during the 7 game series against the Oakland A's.  Always good to find a Rusty Staub card.   Easily one of my favorite Durham Bulls players from the early 1960s.  

 

 

Next up is a 1976 Topps Ken Singleton.  This set has really grown on me over the years.  I have already found a few of the other Durham Bulls players in this set, plus I have a bunch of the Cardinals too.  I have never put together a full 1970s baseball card set as a project on here.   This would be fun.  Great looking Singleton card with the cartoon Oriole bird uniform.  

  

 

 

Another 1976 Topps card, only this is from the Traded set, which is famous for the Oscar Gamble card.  That airbrushed Tigers logo is terrible, but I still like the card.  This near the end of Rusty's career as an everyday player, also his last year making an All-Star team.  

 

 

 

 

 

Last Rusty Staub of the post.  He was everywhere at the end of his career, including the Rangers for the 1980 season.  He ended up going back to the Mets as a free agent after this year where he played out his career as a bench player.  I remember getting a few of his cards as a kid.  He was the token old guy on the team.  

The last two cards are from the same set.  

 

 

 

 

 These are both from the 1981 Topps Scratch-Off set.  I have one or two of these hanging around somewhere, but not many.  There have been a few other bloggers who have posted some of these cards over the last few months.  Seemed like a fun pair of cards to add to the collection.  

 

I Will Just Make Up My Own Set

There was no Minor League Baseball season this year, which means there was no post on this year's Durham Bulls team set.  It's an annual rite of fall.  Lining the cards up as straight as possible on scanner, hoping that they don't all shift when I close the lid.  I need to start running those posts with a five year delay.  They are actually more fun to look at now then at the time the cards were produced.  

Look at this group from 2014.  

You've got the reigning National League leader in saves, a guy with three gold gloves, and the manager of the Toronto Blue Jays.  I think Enny Romero might have been the highest rated prospect in this group in 2014 and he's not even playing anymore.  

Crazy stuff.  

With no Durham Bulls team set coming out in 2020, I decided I would just work on putting together another team set from a different year.  After checking out what was available on Ebay, I decided that was actually not much of a challenge.  So, I am making up my own Durham Bulls set to collect.  

Something I don't already own.  

Something with interesting players.  

Something with a decent quantity of cards.  

Something that will require me to work harder than placing one Ebay or COMC order.  

After a lot of thought, I am putting together a 1975 Topps Mini Set of the Durham Bulls.  There were a ton of Durham Bulls players who were in the Majors at the time.  The cards are fun to collect.  While they are easy to find, it's such an odd combination of players that I cannot just click a few Ebay listings and have all the cards. 

In fact, I am still making the checklist.  I think the answer is between 15 and 20 cards.  I will let you know for sure with the next post.  So, for tonight, I have my first group of cards fresh out of the mailbox.  

Scans are jumbo, cards are minis.  

#476 - Ed Figueroa - 1968 Raleigh-Durham Mets 

It makes me cringe when I see the "Raleigh-Durham" one the back of a baseball card sometimes.  What person thought it was a good idea to change the name of the Durham Bulls?  Obviously someone in the Mets front office, but the Phillies kept it later on.  Figueroa was on the Raleigh-Durham Mets.  He's a player I learned about after moving to North Carolina.  Ed had two Top 10 Cy Young finishes and pitched for two World Series winners with the Yankees.  

He actually hurt his arm while pitching here, hence the 7 games, and quit baseball to join the Marines.  After a stint in Vietnam, he ended up in the Minors with the Giants, but was traded to the Angels.  Ed Figueroa made his Major League debut pitching in long relief for Nolan Ryan who had given up 3 runs in the first inning and had walked the bases loaded in the second.

 

#245 - Mickey Lolich - 1959-1961 Durham Bulls 

Lolich is best know for winning Game 7 of the 1968 World Series.  He also retired as the all-time left-handed strikeout leader before being passed by Steve Carlton.  Randy Johnson and C.C. Sabathia have also passed him, making him fourth.  Lolich ranks 20th overall, roughly 150 strikeouts away from 3,000.  I don't think Mickey is a Hall of Famer, but he's better than Jack Morris.  Maybe he is? 

#351 - Bob Boone - 1969 Raleigh-Durham Phillies 

Another Raleigh-Durham card.  Bob Boone played 19 years for the Phillies, Angels, and Royals.  He also managed the Royals and Reds for awhile in the late 1990s and early 2000s.  Boone was on the 1980 Phillies World Series winner.  He didn't win the MVP in that series, but he did hit .412.  While Boone did not win the World Series MVP, he did win 7 Gold Gloves.  

Is the jacket he is wearing under his uniform from an Army surplus store?  

#630 - Greg Luzinski - 1969 Raleigh-Durham Phillies 

I am a little disappointed that Luzinski's Minor League stats were not included on the back of his card considering that he and Boone were in Durham the same season.  Luzinski was shuffled between the Minors and Majors several times during his first few seasons, so maybe with the multiple teams over multiple seasons it would not have fit on the card.  He hit 31 home runs that season with the Raleigh-Durham Phillies, which would look nice on a baseball card.  

Luzinski was an old guy on the White Sox by the time I started watching baseball.  "The Bull" is not a Hall of Famer, more a great of his era.  He and Schmidt were a pretty scary tandem in the middle of the Phillies lineup.  

Last night.  

#44 Pat Dobson - 1960 Durham Bulls 

This card was made near the end of Dobson's career.  He played with the Durham Bulls while he was coming through the Minors with the Tigers.  The 1960 Bulls were 20 games under .500 and had a starting rotation with both Pat Dobson and Mickey Lolich, who were both on the 1968 Tigers World Series team.  Dobson also pitched for the 1971 Orioles, who made it to the World Series, but lost to the Pirates.  

More 1975 Topps Minis and a checklist next week.  

Set Appreciation Post #6 - 1983 Topps

This was the first year that I collected cards, but I opened more packs of Fleer than Topps.  I went back and collected this set later on in life, and it is an absolute favorite.  This is the largest set that I have featured on one of these posts, so I have picked out more than one card for some of the categories.  

Design 

One of my favorite Topps designs of all-time, and in my opinion, the best from the 1980s.  I know a lot of people rave and rant about 1987's wood borders, but this is much better.  Maybe I am biased towards the sets from my childhood, but no matter where I am as a collector or what I am interested in collecting, the cards in the 1983 Topps set have always had a strong appeal to me.  

I like the two photographs on the front of the card and the color schemes that Topps used around the edges of the card.  I know there are some similarities to the 1963 set, but I like this version better.  Every team has their own color scheme, which often has nothing to do with the actually team colors, but still looks good.  

The back of the cards are nice too.

This might also be one of my favorite card backs.  The stat lines are the same old same old, but the contrast between the orange and gray background and black print is easy on the eyes.  It makes things easy to read.  I also like that the highlights and facts on the back of the card focus on that player and their performance on the field, not something random which is the case with other Topps sets.  Nothing like, "Tony Armas set a record for total bases in a Major League game", which is on the 1982 Topps Gene Richards card.   

The silhouettes are a nice touch too.  

Overall, I give this base set high marks.  Again, personal favorite, and I know that there are plenty of other collectors who have differing opinions of this set ranging from indifferent to dislike.  

The Super Veteran Bulls 

One of the most recognizable subsets in the 1983 Topps set are the Super Veteran cards.  The subset also has a strong connection to the early 1960s Durham Bulls, who were the Carolina League affiliate of the expansion Houston Colt .45s.  Two notable Major Leaguers rolled through the Durham Athletic Park during the 1962 and 1963 seasons.  

Rusty Staub appeared on the 1962 Bulls, winning the Carolina League MVP that season.  He was in the Majors with the Colts the following year.  During the 1983 season Staub was playing with the Mets, which was his second stint with that franchise. He was a good player for a long time, and not one that I place with just one team.  Staub was a bench player at this point during his career, so especially neat that Topps gave him this card.  Don't get many fourth outfielders and left-handed bats off the bench with subset cards.  I love the old photo with the Colts.  

Joe Morgan was on the Bulls in 1963, and for a long time was their only former player who was in the Baseball Hall of Fame.  Oddly enough, the Durham Bulls had a former player in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, 1940s quarterback Ace Parker, before they had one in the Baseball Hall.  The old photo of Morgan is fantastic.  You get to see the front of his Colts jersey too.  Morgan played for a bunch of teams at the end of his career, but was still a decent player.  My interest in baseball and Morgan's career barely interested, so he's a player a mostly know about through others, reading, videos, etc.  It's weird not seeing him on the Reds.  No, I don't remember watching him play at all.  

Topps re-did the Super Veteran subset in the 2014 Topps set.  It was as disappointing as you can imagine.  That old fashioned photo of Matt Holliday feels really inauthentic.  

Just makes me sad.  

This is really the only thing not to like about the 1983 Topps set.  I am not sure how many times Topps has used the card designs from this set over the past decade, but I know it has at a minimum appeared in Topps Archives and as an insert set in a Topps base set.  They are never as good as the original.  

Best Cardinals Cards 

I have two favorite Cardinals cards in this set.  I have picked one in each of the other sets that I have featured in one of these posts, but none of those sets were almost 800 cards.  One was a no-brainer, so let's talk about that one first.  

There are three rookie cards that most collectors know in the 1983 Topps set, those are Sandberg, Gwynn, and Boggs.  However, there is also a rookie card of Willie McGee.  

He won more batting titles than Ryne Sandberg.  He won more World Series rings than Sandberg and Gwynn.  He won more MVP Awards than Wade Boggs and Tony Gwynn combined.  Also, all three of those players might be in the Hall of Fame, but none of them won a batting title for the National League while playing in the American League.  

Seriously, Willie was a good player.  There is some weird contingent of Cardinals fans who thinks he should be in the Hall of Fame (no), and that the team should retire his number (no).  If I made a list of really important must-own Cardinals rookie cards from the 1980s, this 1983 Topps Willie McGee card would definitely be on the list.  

Second Cardinals card.  

This was not my first Ozzie Smith card, that was likely a 1983 Fleer, but I still owned this card.  Ozzie was easily the most likable player on the Cardinals when I first started collecting cards and following baseball.  His cards were important to me as a six year old, and since he did not retire until I was in college, they have always remained important.  

I like the action shot on the card.  Not sure if this is a hit or not, but it looks like Ozzie has at least a chance to make it a close play.  I like that there is another player talking to a fan in the background.  

Favorite Former Durham Bulls 

There were quite a few to choose from in this set, but I went with two members of the Bulls teams from the 1960s.  First up, I will go with my second Rusty Staub card of the post.  

I really like the action shots in the 1983 Topps set.  I feel like many have a story to tell.  The photo on this card shows Staub dropping his bat and heading to first base, but I have always thought that this was likely a routine fly ball.  He looks a little disappointed in his expression with his eyes are up.  Maybe I am wrong, but Rusty's face is saying flying out to right field.  If you have this set, or even just a few cards, it's worth your time to flip through and look at the action shots.  

Next up.  

I had to go with the Greg Luzinski card.  

He was on the 1969 Raleigh-Durham Phillies, which is what the Bulls changed their name to after they were forced to merge with the bankrupt Raleigh Pirates.  They were also a Phillies affiliate, so there is that part of the name.

Raleigh is a city.  Durham is a city.  Raleigh-Durham is an airport.  

Back to the Luzinski card.  

"The Bull" was a feared power hitter who was paired with Mike Schmidt for the majority of his career, but his last few years were spent as a designated hitter with the White Sox.  Greg Luzinski was out of shape, and did not really look like a professional athlete when this card was made.  He could still hit though.  Love the action shot of him wearing the softball style White Sox uniform.  Not sure what happened in this at-bat, hard to tell, definitely a fly ball though.  

He does look really annoyed in the portrait photo though.  

Best Non-Cardinal/Non-Durham Bulls Card 

I will just go ahead and tell that this card is my favorite in the set.  It's even better than the Willie McGee card, which hurts a little to say out loud in public.  

Simply put, this is one of the best rookie cards from the 1980s.  

The spots are on my scanner.  Little people were playing with it while I was working.  

The picture is a little bit odd, but I think that's one of the reasons I like this card.  This is clearly a Spring Training picture with Gwynn wearing the 53, which he never wore in a Major League game.  Always love those pictures of great players and they're wearing some odd number. Albert Pujols is wearing jersey number 68 in several of his rookie cards.  Same idea here.  

 

I also miss those brown and yellow Padres uniforms.  I am glad the team is switching back to this color scheme for the 2020 season.  

Back of the card.  

Gwynn was not in the Minors for very long, but did hit in all three stops.  This is the one card where I would have actually liked the random fact box, so they could squeeze in that he played college basketball and was drafted by an NBA team.  I am sure it is on another Topps Tony Gwynn card.  

How Does It Compare?  

You should already know.   

Not sure we need a lot of discussion here.  If I were just doing the Topps sets from my life time, this might be first overall.  Really not much to think about, this is the best set I have written up on these posts.  

6. 2000 U.D. Ionix 

5. 1986 Topps Mini League Leaders 

4. 2001 Fleer EX 

3.1979 Kellogg's 

2. 2002 Topps Super Teams

1. 1983 Topps  

Another Raleigh-Durham Post

I am not going to rehash the whole story in this post, but in the late 1960s the Durham Bulls bought and merged with the Carolina League franchise that played in Raleigh.  Long story short, we ended up with a few years of Raleigh-Durham teams rather than the Durham Bulls.  There was the Raleigh-Durham Mets, Raleigh-Durham Phillies, and the Raleigh-Durham Triangles.

Raleigh and Durham are two different cities.  They are roughly half an hour away from each other depending on traffic and which roads you take.  While the Bulls were playing as a "Raleigh-Durham" franchise, they were really playing in both cities, splitting their home game in between the Durham Athletic Park and Deveraux Meadows.

Not ideal, but the teams were actually pretty good during this time.

The Raleigh-Durham Mets finished first in the Carolina League in 1968, the Phillies came in second in 1969, and the Triangles also came in second in 1970.

There were some good players on these teams too.  I have posted a few on here over the past few years.  Last week I was fortunate enough to pick up three new cards of  two different players from the 1969 Raleigh-Durham Phillies.

Two pretty impactful players to say the least considering both were on the 1980 Phillies teams that brought the franchise their first ever World Series title.

So, I will go first with the catcher from the last out in the video.  

Bob Boone was a long time catcher for the Phillies, as well as several other teams during a long Major League career.  He is also the father of Bret and Aaron Boone.  I like the design and appearance of this card, but Topps really mangled this from the original.

If you are not familiar with the 2001 Topps Archives set, the players were featured in the set on a minimum of two cards.  Their first card in the set was their rookie, with the second card being their last appearance on a Topps card.  They took some liberties with the rookie cards that originally had multiple players on the front.

The original Bob Boone rookie featured......

Skip Jutze and Mike Ivie.  A Mike Ivie autograph would be alright.  Skip Jutze?  Sure.  

This Luzinski autographed card comes from the same set.  I had another Luzinski autograph prior to owning this card.  The black border looks nice on the base card from the Archives set, but I don't like it when they are given to players to sign.  Luzinski has a nice autograph and it is a bit of shame that the signature dips into the black border area.

Still an excellent card that is a welcome addition to the collection.

Similar to the Boone card above, this card was modified from it's original two player format to feature just Luzinski.

Last card.  My favorite of the three new cards in this post.  

Luzinski has been in several Topps products as a signer over the past number of years, but this Archives autograph out of the Fan Favorites products has to be one of his toughest signatures to track down.  I have seen several over the years, but price has been somewhat of a factor in the past.  Not sure if this card was officially ever declared a short print, not shown that way on most of the checklist sites, but they are usually listed that way on Ebay and COMC.

Pretty sure that the last Luzinski autograph is going to close me out on the whole Raleigh-Durham card scene for awhile unless someone actually makes cards with the Raleigh-Durham Mets, Phillies, or Triangles in their uniforms.

That Time The Bulls Were The Phillies....

The Durham Bulls are one of the oldest Minor League teams around having started up in 1902 as an independent baseball team.  When the team was first fielded they were actually the known as the Durham Tobacconists.  Seems like a great name for a sports team from central North Carolina.  They quickly switch their name to the Bulls, Durham is the Bull City, and the nickname stuck for a few decades until the late 1960s.

In 1967 the Bulls became a Mets affiliate.  In 1968 the team name somehow got switched to the Raleigh-Durham Mets.  There are so many things that are not cool about this name.

Two minute soapbox:

• First, naming teams after their Major League affiliate is acceptable in many cases, but never when it's a long running Minor League team.  The Toledo Mud Hens are the Mud Hens, Rochester is the Red Wings, Syracuse is the Chiefs.... The Durham Bulls are the Durham Bulls... 

• Second, Raleigh is a city in North Carolina and Durham is a city in North Carolina.  The two cities make up two-thirds of the region know as the Triangle, with Chapel Hill being the remaining third.  The two cities are near each other, but nobody who actually lives in "The Triangle" actually calls it Raleigh-Durham.  I lived in Durham once and now I live south of Durham and west of Raleigh in neither city.  I don't live in Raleigh-Durham and calling a team by this name isn't cool.    

Really, the Durham Bulls bought out the Raleigh Pirates in 1968 and decided to split their home games between The Durham Athletic Park and Devereaux Meadow in Raleigh making the whole Raleigh-Durham thing slightly more palatable.  Still upset about the Bulls thing though.  

So, in 1969 the franchise picked up a new affiliation with the Phillies.  They kept the whole Raleigh-Durham thing, but changed their name to the Phillies.  The Raleigh-Durham Phillies were actually a good team finishing with a 79-62 record which placed them second overall in the Carolina League behind the Tigers Rocky Mount Leafs team.  

Which brings me to the most disappointing facet of the team not being named "Durham Bulls" during these few years.  In 1969 the Raleigh-Durham Phillies star player was an 18 year old first baseman whom the Phillies has drafted out of high school the previous summer.  The players name?  Greg Luzinski.  If you did not know, his nickname is "The Bull".  This seems like a marketing failure of the highest degree....

Luzinski even has Bull Barbecue Sauce now, which looks like it does not have enough vinegar in it to be the good North Carolina sauce (go Eastern NC BBQ!!), but still.....

Welp.  Enough about city names, team names, and nicknames.  Let's look at a card.  

As a former Durham Bull, err Raleigh-Durham Phillie, I have had some interest in finding cards of "The Bull".  While his common cards are fairly easy to find, and inexpensive, he does not have too many autograph or memorabilia cards.  I have actually been looking for one of these cards for the better part of half of year, but they are not too common.  A few popped up along the way, but they were often a little more than what I had hoped to pay for a Greg Luzinski autograph.  

Finally, this 2012 Topps Archives autograph was put up for auction.  There is so much to like about this card.  It's an on-card autograph and Luzinski has a really nice signature.  I also live that Topps put him in a powder blue uniform with the zip up front that the Phillies wore for a large part of the 1970s.  Perhaps one of those all maroon uniforms form 1979 would have made this slightly better, but this card is pretty hard to top....