The main way I organize my keeper collection is by player. But there are a lot of cards out there that feature more than one player on them. Sometimes I might get 2 copies and put one with each player. An example is the Alan Trammel/Paul Molitor RC. I have 2 and each player gets one. That works sometimes, but I rarely have 2 copies of some of these cards.
So I have a whole box dedicated to multi-player cards. Here are a few of my favorite examples:
One of the most common card types in the multiplayer box are the League Leaders cards from the 70's and earlier. And as I was recently looking through this box, enjoying the star power, I noticed that I had a lot of this one same guy on a bunch of my 70's league leaders cards. The guy, in this case, was Nolan Ryan, who led the league in strikeouts for 7 of the 10 years in the decade.
And it turns out that I have 6 of the 7 strikeouts league leaders cards of him! He was the league strikeout leader in:
1972 - don't have this one... sad
1973, 1974, 1976, 1977, 1978 and 1979
Here are the 6 that I have:
However, I do think I need to add the final Nolan Ryan League Leaders card to my collection. It commemorates his 1972 season, and is 1973 Topps #67. I added it to my 'Top 9 Most Wanted' widget in the upper right of the blog. Anyone got one they'd be willing to trade?
Nolan Ryan has quite a few "woah" kinds of stats. I think that it is hard to consider him one of the top few pitchers of all time, but he is interesting and unique enough that he has always held my attention. I already mentioned his weird 8 year gap in leading the league in strikeouts. How about this one. In 1987, the year he started leading leagues again, he not only lead the league in strikeouts, but also led it in ERA, with a 2.76 mark. That's not the funky part. That year his record was 8-16! Man, Houston must have been a really, really bad team!
And cool Nolan Ryan stats or stories?
Not really a stat, but I've always thought it a cool trivia point that Ryan played for four teams in his career, all of which were the first four expansion franchises.
ReplyDeleteI only keep one copy of any given card. It does lead to conflicts sometimes; generally I prioritize with binder guys taking priority over team bag guys, but sometimes the players are on the same level. For Syndergaard, deGrom, and Harvey, they share enough cards that I made the horizontal pages a mix. Multi-player relics go separately from single-player relics. Speaking of which, that Doc/Carter/Straw card is great!
God point about the expansion teams, that is cool. Not sending you that Doc/Carter/Straw card, but I do have a slightly less cool Mets three player card set aside for the next time I send cards your way!
DeleteI might have that '73 Ryan card for you, but I won't be able to look for it until at least Sunday or Monday.
ReplyDeleteThat would be cool, I am looking for stuff for you!
DeleteA few of the shown cards are in one of my collections or the other, and I see a few that I may have to hunt down for my collections. Do you include manager cards with two shown in your collection? Real quick story about one of the shown cards. I also have the Musial/ Mays card in my collection. A former co-worker won a box of mixed sports cards at an auction for $10. He kept the football and basketball cards, and gave me the baseball and few cards for nothing. The Mays/Musial card was in that stack. It is not in great shape, but the card has found a home in my Hall of Famer collection.
ReplyDeleteOn the managers cards, do you mean like the 73 and 74 topps ones? Where they have their coaching staffs on there with them? I also remember some cool Managers duo cards in 1993 Topps I think. And the Mays/Musial for free!! Wow, that's quite a giveaway.
DeleteMy favorite piece of Nolan Ryan trivia: he NEVER won a Cy Young award!
ReplyDeleteI also have separate boxes for my multi-player cards - hope to move them to a binder one of these days. That "Latin Heat" card is a perennial favorite of mine since it shows my two favorite ballplayers.
Yeah, that whole set that Latin Heat is from is great, but there are a few that really stand out.
DeleteI know the card is meant to be artistic license, like a painting or something, but showing Gehrig hugging Ripken is so weird to me.
ReplyDeleteGood point, that is a little strange. A better pose or concept would have been better.
DeleteI have a small side collection of league leaders cards that exclusively feature hall of famers... like the 1974, 1975, 1977, and 1978 strikeout leaders you featured above. The trivia about Ryan's 1987 season was pretty interesting. I guess Wally Joyner's bat couldn't carry that team's offense.
ReplyDelete