#334 - All Star Third Basemen

For the All-Star third basemen, Topps uses photographs taken at their go-to stadiums - at least in this set. Brooks Robinson is at Yankee Stadium and Ron Santo at Candlestick in a photo that looks a bit more current than his regular card one did. Brooks looks a little out of whack, like he just left a Bronx barfight. But I do love that cartoon oriole on his cap. Brooks was a perennial All-Star back then as was Ron but the latter guy really is the only one of the two whose stats were appropriate for starting status. That's a good lead-in to check on those now. We start with Brooks and his AL buddies:

Brooks Robinson - .228 with 7 homers and 37 RBI's
Dave Nelson - .287 with 4 homers and 31 RBI's
Sal Bando - .265 with 18 homers and 54 RBI's
Buddy Bell - .274 with 5 homers and 34 RBI's.

Almost half the AL is represented here. Based on stats alone at this point in the season, both Graig Nettles and Bill Melton were more deserving but Graig was still trying to live down his Indian past and Bill always got dissed by voters and managers. Brooks had an admittedly tough season and is a legacy guy. Both Nelson and Bell - the sole Indian All-Star - were hitting close to .300 when chosen. Dave's other stats are a bit light but that year he was pushing for starting time at third against five other guys. Buddy's seem light too until you realize he had already nearly matched his RBI totals for all of '72. Sal was the big banger in the group. He, like Brooks, was another All-Star regular. Now for the NL:

Ron Santo - .298 with 11 homers and 50 RBI's
Darrell Evans - .271 with 27 homers and 67 RBI's
Joe Torre - .298 with 9 homers and 45 RBI's.

So Ron, also well above .300 when selected, has deserving All-Star stats. Darrell, like his infield teammate Davey Johnson, was banging the ball at a big clip that year. And Joe was already listed at first but since he played both positions I threw him in again. I think the NL clearly has the edge here. Like both catcher and second base, the starters are now all Hall of Famers. In fact the only guy on these card fronts so far NOT in the Hall is Dick Allen.


Another puzzle piece. They should have made this the second piece to keep people guessing, although I guess anyone that read a newspaper back then would have known who the subject was. We DO know it's a right-hander from this section.

In music on this date in '74 "The Way We Were" returned to the top spot in the US.

The big compelling national story in '73 and '74 - outside of inflation - was Watergate. In addition to the occasional music news I thought it would be relevant to highlight some of the important dates regarding the back story and actual events from back then. The set-up starts in '71:

6/13/71 - The New York Times began serializing a group of documents it called The Pentagon Papers. These were Defense Department Documents regarding covert and other actions during the Viet Nam War that were leaked by a department analyst named Daniel Ellsberg.

9/9/71 - A DC-area psychiatrist's office is burglarized. One of the psychiatrist's patients is Daniel Ellsberg and it is thought then that information was being sought in the burglary to discredit Mr. Ellsberg. Months later it turns out the group responsible for the burglary is employed by the White House and will be named "The Plumbers" by the media for their orders to fix media leaks that could discourage President Nixon's re-election. While the discrediting strategy would not prove terribly effective with Mr. Ellsberg it would prove so months later with a man named Thomas Eagleton who was originally George McGovern's VP candidate but had to step down after it was revealed he had been subject to electric shock therapy as a psychological treatment in his younger days. It would prove to be a big blow to the McGovern campaign.

5/28/72 - Bugging equipment was installed in the Democratic National Committee ("DNC") headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. The headquarters took up the whole sixth floor of the hotel. It would later turn out the equipment was installed by essentially the same group that burglarized the office of Ellsberg's shrink.

6/17/72 - Five burglars were arrested at 2:30 am during a break-in at the Watergate DNC headquarters. A security guard called the police after he noticed that tape he had taken off a stair doorway had been replaced to prevent the door from locking. The police then basically just followed the taped doors up to the sixth floor which was the last one taped and the burglars gave themselves up. They were caught with bugging equipment, pen-sized stun guns (?!!), and $2,300 in sequential $100 bills. The burglar's names were Edward Martin, Frank Sturgis, Bernard Barker, Eugenio Martinez, and Virgilio Gonzalez. Barker, Martinez, and Gonzalez were all native Cubans who had been involved in the Bay of Pigs fiasco early in the JFK presidency. Sturgis was a former WW II vet who was a leader of that operation. The most interesting guy was Martin. His real name was James McCord and he was an ex-CIA agent who was presently employed as security director for a group known as CREEP (Committee to RE-Elect the President).

More tomorrow.

#270 - Ron Santo

The second double post in a row is of a guy a bit more familiar than the last post subject. Sometimes these Traded cards come in bunches and this one pretty much represents the last hurrah of Ron Santo's playing career. In '73 he hit .386 early in the season as the Cubbies made their last serious division run for a few years but both he and the team faded right after the All-Star break and only Don Kessinger would return from the infield starters for the '74 season. This card has a pretty good supporting cast on it in what looks like the Cubs' spring training facility. That looks like Bobby Bonds in the Giants uniform and that guy without a cap is Leo Durocher, then the Cubs' manager (between this card and the Houston manager one we have two near misses for Leo the Lip in this set). That means this photo is from '72 at its most recent since Leo left the team during that season.

Ron Santo grew up in Seattle where he was a super athlete and played third base in high school until his senior year when he switched to catcher and made a national team. He was signed by the Cubs in '59 and in spring ball that year so impressed the Cubs' hitting instructor, Rogers Hornsby, that he went to Double A that year and had no problem hitting .327 with 11 homers and 87 RBIs while playing third. In '60 he moved to Triple A where his offensive numbers down-ticked a bit but his defense improved considerably. By the end of the season he was up in Chicago where he would take over third base from Don Zimmer and hit and field well enough to come in fourth in NL ROY voting and make the Topps rookie team. Ron then settled in for a long run as one of the NL's best third basemen. After a great sophomore season in '61 his average took a hit in '62 but his RBI total stayed pretty fat. Then in '63 began a long run of accolades. That year he made the first of what would be nine All-Star selections in the next 11 seasons. In '64, perhaps his best offensive season, he won the first of his five successive Gold Gloves. That season he led the NL in triples and walks and for the next eight seasons he would average over 90 walks a season, giving him some pretty hefty OBA totals, peaking in '66 at .412. By that year the Cubbies' solid infield turned them from losers into contenders, no year moreso than in '69 when they held a pretty significant lead over the Mets most of the season. Ron was involved in that run in two big ways that had nothing to do with his playing: he would jump up and click his heels at the end of every Cubs win which the fans loved (and then hated); and he famously had a black cat cross in front of him while playing third in a game that began the team's fall from grace that year. In the Seventies he continued to post pretty good power numbers and in '72 put up his second highest average. After his hot start and fade-out in '73 he moved across town in this trade, clearing the way for the next Cubs super third bagger, Bill Madlock, who came over in the Fergie Jenkins trade. While big things were expected with the ChiSox - a sort of power platooning at first, third, and DH with Dick Allen, Bill Melton, Carlos May, and Ron was the plan - Ron's average took a big hit as he played as much second base as third and way too much DH for his liking. He retired after the season leaving behind a lifetime .277 average with 342 homers and 1,331 RBIs and a .362 OBA. He is yet another guy whose stats put him right on the cusp of HOF levels and there has been some pretty strong advocacy for his inclusion.

Santo was pretty successful off the field and while playing he began his own insurance agency - and employed his buddy and teammate Glenn Beckert there - which he later sold. After playing he moved to the broadcast booth and was a Cubs color guy for as long as he could be. In 2010 after a couple amputations his diabetes finally caught up to him and he passed away at age 70 but not before endearing himself to a whole new generation of fans as an announcer and a spokesperson and fund-raiser for his disease. He has another very detailed bio on the SABR site that I have linked to here.

The Traded card is another pretty generic one for which there is no shot at guessing a locale. The artist got pretty lazy this time and didn't even put on a logo.


Nicely, Topps gives Ron props for his fielding, which despite the Gold Gloves, was often overlooked for his offense numbers. Ron grew up near Sicks Stadium in Seattle and worked there as a kid. Sicks would rather infamously be the home of the Seattle Pilots in their initial season.

This trade was sort of a push for both sides. I'd give the edge to the Cubs since Swisher - Nick's dad - would be a quasi-starter and All-Star for them in the mid-'70s. Stone won a bunch that one year but he did that for the Orioles. That last line would unfortunately not be true as Allen's MIA the last month of the season, Melton's drop-off in power, and rundown pitching would keep the Sox from making a big play for the division.

Over in the music world, on October 30, 1973 the Osmonds began a UK tour by being mobbed at the airport by thousands of fans. Wow. That's enough to bring this site back to baseball only.

This trip takes us through both leagues:

1. Santo and Larry Gura '70 to '73 Cubs;
2. Gura and Cookie Rojas '76 to '77 Royals;
3. Rojas and Bob Johnson '70 Royals.