#332 - All Star First Basemen

For the first basemen we get Dick Allen in what appears to be Yankee Stadium and Hank Aaron who appears to be signing autographs. This card represents a bit of the nuances that were sometimes attached to All-Star selections. Hank barely played first base for Atlanta in '73 and Dick was hurt about a month before the game and was pretty much shut down the rest of the season. His place in the starting lineup was taken by John Mayberry who with teammate Amos Otis produced pretty much all the offense the AL had for the game.

Now let's get to the stats. First for the NL:

Hank Aaron - .255 with 27 homers and 52 RBI's
Joe Torre - .298 with 9 homers and 45 RBI's (Joe also played third in the game)
Nate Colbert - .271 with 10 homers and 49 RBI's (the sole Padre)

Joe hit a ton earlier in the year and at selection time was probably still north of .300. Nate had that big '72 and Hank would ramp up the RBI totals down the stretch. Now for the AL:

Dick Allen - .310 with 16 homers and 41 RBI's
John Mayberry - .297 with 20 homers and 80 RBI's
Jim Spencer - .280 with 3 homers and 32 RBI's
Carl Yastrzemski - .259 with 12 homers and 52 RBI's.

Dick's totals don't seem so great until you realize he put them up in only about 2 1/2 months. Mayberry would play the whole game at first as Spencer only pinch hit and Yaz did not appear. Jim was also north of .300 at selection time and was only playing in about half the Ranger's games at that point so his numbers can be amplified. And Yaz was all over the place in '73 which probably contributed to his sub-par - for him - stats. I think because of Mayberry's ribbies the AL gets the nod for this position.


So what the hell is on the back of this card? Well, it's a photo, and it's not a sideways monolith but part of the puzzle that when assembled would show the All-Star Game's MVP. You can probably figure out who it is by looking at the box score. This piece obviously doesn't reveal too much but that just keeps the drama going.

So ironically on Valentine's Day there's no music news. Not even an appropriately sappy song I used to hate to throw out there. Just all baseball.

#6 - Hank Aaron Special

This is the last card of the Aaron commemorative set, showcasing his four most recent cards. While I like the array of poses, especially the '71 card which takes over the "closest to a smile" race and the action card from '73, I have to say that the '70 card is the all-time worst card of Aaron's by far. Maybe he was just bummed to see the 60's end but he looks like he was just busted doing something he wasn't supposed to. And where was the photo taken? It looks like an alley somewhere. Maybe it's the same background Topps used for their early basketball cards. Anyway, echoing my sentiments about the '69 card, couldn't they find a better shot? I mean, it was Hank Aaron, for crissakes!

For the back of the '70 card, Topps returned to multiple tones, but picked pretty ugly ones - blue and yellow. The back on the '71 card was pretty cool, or so I thought at the time. It would be an aberration for the time since it was a reversion to the one-season stat deal. But it had a second black and white head shot of the player and was nicely arranged, although in Hank's case the back photo was the same as the front. In '72 we get everything back - the cartoon, the neat arrangement and even Hank's minor league stats. Finally, in '73 Topps tries a black frame, loses the minor league data, but compensates with the Hank-specific cartoon. That was always my favorite set.

The back of the last card highlights his important homers, basically every 50th one he hit, plus his first and 713th, the last one being the last homer he'd hit in '73. It is a pretty good list of pitchers that occupy this list: a couple Hall of Famers, a bunch of 20-game winners, an oddball or two, and at least one of the great all-time nicknames ("The Springfield Rifle"). I am pretty sure that Jerry Reuss was happy to get his name off the list once the record was broken.

#5 - Hank Aaron Special

Here we go with more half-smiles, although the '66 card has the closest thing to a full smile in years. I like the busy background of the '67 card. In '68 and '69 Hank reprises the static poses from '54 to '56. Topps really couldn't track him down for a new shot for '69? 1968 is actually a special set for me because that was the first year I had any of my own income - from a paper route, remember those things? - to buy any cards. I never got the Aaron, so I will consider its duplication in '69 to be an homage to my start in collecting. Very considerate of them.

For the '66 card back, Topps gets a little stylish with a rose tone and a compartmentalized layout. In '67 things get green and vertical. We also get two cartoons (it reminds me of the back of the '71 set) but Topps does stay stylish by actually using the word "fabulous" in the narrative. '68 backs look a lot like '66's but with a yellow/orange tone. In '69 we get Big Pink - to celebrate the Band album? - and no cartoon for Hank. It was also the first year Topps dropped his minor league stats. No room!


On the back of the card, Topps continues the year-by-year commentary of Aaron's career. No creative writing this time; the numbers are enough. It really was some career.

#4 - Hank Aaron Special

This next card highlights something I kind of picked up on the last card. Hank's expression is always a half-smile. It is pleasant enough but never exactly gleeful ("glee" being a popular word these days). It certainly doesn't approach what I always thought was the happiest pose by a major leaguer I ever saw, the '71 Vida Blue card. Given the name of this blog, I feel it is only appropriate to mention the pennants on the '65 set, which I think are stylishly superior to the ones on this set. I will say that the ones in '74 are much more symmetrical, however, as will soon be seen.

The back of the '62 card was sort of dull, with a brown/cream color for the tone. In what seems to be a back-and-forth, that year Topps again did the one season thing for the stats. I will say the cartoon that year is highly stylized and realistic. In '63 things got brighter with an orangy tone and multi-year stats again, although the cartoon comes back to the familiar generic ones. In '64 Topps got clever: the card back was pinkish-orange with no visible cartoon...unless one had a nickel. That was the year one had to rub the space on the card back to find the answer to that card's quiz question. Very high tech! For '65 things on the back got blue and simple with big lettering, multi-year stats - now the norm - and an un-rubbed cartoon.


The first thing that I will say about the back of this card is that I did a much better scanning job. Since the blog is about the cards, however, and not me, there are a couple real tidbits on the back of this one. The first is that by '74 I had of course heard of Bobby Thomson. This was the first time, though, that I was able to link him with something or somebody "real time." I had also not known until this card that Aaron replaced Thomson in the lineup. Thomson had always up to that point been strictly associated with the Giants. To continue this tangent, there was a book written in the '90's called "Underworld" by Don DeLillo. It is a huge wonderful book and one of the plot threads involves what happened to the baseball hit for a home run by Thomson in the '51 playoffs, the "shot heard 'round the world." A couple years before the book was published, what became the prologue of the book was published in Harper's as a Folio story called "Pafko at the Wall." It is probably the most amazing piece of sports literature I have ever read. It is a fictionalized account of the game - Andy Pafko was the Brooklyn outfielder over whose head the homer was hit - and has Jackie Gleason, Sinatra, J. Edgar Hoover, and other period guys as attendees. Even if you don't read the book - a mounting task - I would encourage anyone interested in the game to read the prologue.

Back to the card, I love Topps' choice to write something meaningful for Aaron's '62 season. The first Valley Girl baseball card.

#3 - Hank Aaron Special

This is the third Aaron special card in the set, the second of the four-card displays. A lot of basic colors on those cards, especially yellow. I like his compact signature on the '59 card - very dignified. It's much neater than the one on the first card of this set. Maybe the latter was done when he was rounding the bases, which he did a bunch in '73.

A few words about the backs of these individual cards might be appropriate here. In '58 the stats were for the former year only and they were broken down by stats vs. each team in the league. Also the narrative was signed by "the Editors of Sport Magazine." In '59 they were back to multi-year stats and his cartoon is hilarious; he looks like a combination of Babe Ruth and John Dillinger. In '60 Topps reverts to the one season format - like in '52 - to make room for a bunch of season highlights. And in '61 we get back all the seasons along with three cartoons. In one cartoon Hank is pictured winning the '59 batting championship at about seven years old.

The back of this card has a list of Aaron's most memorable home runs. Who knows, maybe they actually asked him. I wouldn't be surprised to find out Topps did these all on their own. I guess they seem legit. I would think his first big league homer would finish higher than fourth but the guy had over 700 at this point so he gets to make his own priorities.

#2 - Hank Aaron Special

The second card of the Aaron special set is the first one that shows all his Topps cards sequentially, four old cards to one new one. I guess Topps could have gone either way on this card, landscape or regular. This card has his true rookie card as '54 was Aaron's first year in the majors. The '54 set was Topps' fourth and it was a beautiful one. The back of that original card may be seen at www.goldenagebaseballcards.com, a very nice site to view and review 1950's Topps cards. I like those old cards - they were very colorful. The back of the '55 card was very similar in color and had fielding stats with a cartoon that was a true/false type with a general subject. In '56 the card backs were all cartoons and all about the subject on the front. In '57 Topps went back to one cartoon and the stats included all Hank's seasons for the first time. Meanwhile on the card fronts, one of Aaron's best baseball traits - his consistency - apparently applied to his poses; he didn't move a muscle for his first three years! Of course, that gets shot to pieces with his '57 card when he mysteriously turns up as a lefty, but that's just Topps reversing the image. That should have been an easy pick-up by those guys given Hank's number, but what are you going to do?

The back of the card is loaded with data. Topps lists a bunch of records held by Aaron at the time, from the obvious to the surprisingly obscure. Who even kept track of data like "Extra bases on long hits" in that pre-Bill Jamesian time? Topps, I guess.

I thought it would be interesting to see where Hammerin' Hank stands currently in regard to these records, so here goes:

Most Total Bases, Lifetime - Aaron, with 6,856 is the leader. The closest active guy is ARod, but he is 1,900 back.

Most Seasons, 30+ Home Runs - Aaron, still with 15. Barry Bonds has 14. ARod has 13 and may not get there this year.

Most Seasons, 20+ Home Runs - Aaron tied with Bonds at 19. ARod should have 15 soon (he has 17 as of today).

Most Consecutive Seasons, 20+ Home Runs - Aaron with 19 again. Bonds and ARod are or will be at 15.

Most Sac Flies, Lifetime - Aaron tied for fourth (with Frank Thomas) at 121. Eddie Murray leads with 128.

Most Intentional Bases on Balls, Lifetime - Aaron is second with 293. Bonds is first - no surprise - with 688!!!

Most Long Hits, Lifetime - now called extra base hits, Aaron leads with 1,477. Manny Ramirez has 1,118.

Most Seasons, 100+ Runs - Aaron has 15. ARod has 13.

Most Consecutive Seasons, 100+ Runs - Aaron tied at 13 with ARod and Lou Gehrig (yay!). ARod has 52 this year.

Most Home Runs at Age 37 - this won't change, Aaron had 47, Bonds had 46.

Most Home Runs at Age 39 - Aaron at 40. Bonds beats him with 45.

Most Seasons Leading league in Total Bases - Aaron with 8. Ruth, Cobb, and Williams did it 6 times, ARod 4 times.

Most Seasons, 300+ Total Bases - Aaron with 15. ARod has 9.

Most Seasons, 100+ Total Bases on Long Hits - the one I love. Aaron, with 19, I don't even know how to check.

Most Consecutive Seasons, 100+ Total Bases on Long Hits - Aaron again. See the last one.

Most Seasons, 150+ Games - Aaron with 14 gets beat by Rose, with 17. Cal Ripken Jr. had 15.

Most Home Runs for One Club - please!!!

#1 - Hank Aaron

This is the second year in a row Hank Aaron appeared on the first card in the set (in 1973, he was joined by Willie Mays and Babe Ruth), which is appropriate given what was going on in his career at the time. I think his '73 numbers are pretty awesome - 40 homers and 96 RBIs on less than 400 at bats. Yes, he had two other 40-homer batters in the order and would have therefore been seeing a lot of good pitches, but still these are very impressive numbers. There is not too much commentary I can add about this man that isn't out there in much more deservedly prestigious forums. One bit is that I once read that as a kid Aaron had to bat cross-handed to keep him from over-swinging. Also, I think he is under-rated.

This is the first card of the six-card commemorative set. The front of it is way different from the standard player card - no pennant. It is nice to see Aaron smiling given all the crap he was putting up with at the time the photo was probably taken. The photo is from the '73 All-Star Game, which was held in Kansas City (that is the Royal's crest on the scoreboard behind Hank). For the '73 game Hank was voted in as the starting NL first baseman, an interesting choice given he played not a game at first during the regular season.

Hank Aaron is one of a plethora of major leaguers in this set who hailed from in or around Mobile Alabama (Cleon Jones and Tommie Agee are two more just off the top of my head). His family was quite poor and Hank - then called Henry - was an excellent athlete at his segregated high school. For his junior and senior years he managed to hook up with a local prep school and in summers he played semi-pro ball, during his HS time primarily as a shortstop. He graduated in '51, signed with the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro Leagues, and helped that team to the '52 league title, hitting .366. That June he signed with the Braves, then still in Boston, and the duration of that season hit .336 in C ball and finished the season as his league's rookie of the year. In '53 Hank moved to A ball, where he was one of the first black players in the Sally league. Despite some initial antagonism, Hank won over fans with his .362, 135 RBI season. The next year he moved up to Milwaukee.

Aaron put up a pretty good rookie year in '54 and never looked back, putting up 21 All-Star seasons, three Gold Glove seasons, and one MVP year. The coming cards have plenty of commentary through the '73 season. Hank broke The Babe's record early in '74, in a season that was generally a pretty big discount to his prior one. After that year he returned to Milwaukee via a trade to the Brewers for Dave May. Hank did two years as a DH and then retired following the '76 season. He finished with a .305 average on 3,771 hits, 755 homers, and a still-record 2,297 RBI's. In the post-season he was even better, hitting .363 with six homers and 16 RBI's in 17 games. He was elected to the Hall on his first shot in '82.

After playing Aaron did lots of admin work for the Braves and ran his stable of fast food restaurants and auto showrooms (he sold the latter stores off in 2007).

By the way, my scanning skills are less than optimal. Some of the cards so far look a lot more crooked than they actually are. I will hopefully improve and also work on making the site more appealing. That said, Hank's card on the back is a typical player one for the set. A name and signature fill in the top part and when space allows there is a series of "star bullets" that indicate playing highlights for each player. Than come the stats and over to the right some personal info and a cartoon. This cartoon may be the only one I have ever seen on a Topps card that refers to a future event.