Sunday, March 14, 2021

My Favorite 1968 Cards

1968 was the second year I collected baseball cards.

It seemed like the first series had a lot of players who were in the not-to-be-found 1967 high-numbered series. (Tom Seaver, Rod Carew, Brooks Robinson, Vada Pinson, Rocky Colavito, Al Ferrara, Cookie Rojas, and Juan Pizarro to name a few.) So I quickly had cards for those missing players. 

These were my favorite cards from that set.

Bobby Wine - I always liked this photo, but I'm not sure why.  Although I was a Phillies fan, I was not particularly a Bobby Wine fan, nor was he one of the team's top dozen or so players.

Gary Sutherland - I do know why I liked this card.  His rookie card in 1967 was in the high-numbered series, so I didn't get that until years later.  Plus, here's a kid only a few years older than my pre-teen self at the time, and he was IN THE MAJOR LEAGUES! Surely he would be the Phillies' "shortstop of the future", with only the aging Dick Groat and weak-hitting Bobby Wine to contend with.

NL ERA Leaders - Two Phillies among the league's top three!

Super Stars / Manager's Dream - These 2 cards were in the 6th or 7th series, and were 2 of the 3 multi-player cards in the 1968 set.  The players were from a mix of teams, which was a departure from Topps' usual multi-player cards.

NL Batting Leaders - In 1967, Tony Gonzalez had worked his way up from platoon left-fielder to every-day center-fielder, and finished with a .339 batting average. (In the late-60s, Phillies' fans had to find positives anywhere we could!)

Tom Seaver - I still don't have Tom Seaver's 1967 rookie card, so this was my first Seaver card. ROY, shiny trophy, what's not to like?

Denny McLain - I admit, I jumped on the Tigers' bandwagon sometime during the 1968 season, and followed McLain's trek to 30 wins and the World Championship.

Mickey Mantle - A favorite card of mine and 99.99% of all the other kids.


4 comments:

Unknown said...

The Topps 1965 Bobby Wine is one of my favorites. 1965 with those pennants on the cards makes that season my favorite 60's set. Wine's pose throwing the ball and wearing that beautiful Phillies cap set him apart!

Flitgun Frankie said...

It looks to me like the two multi-player cards (Super Stars & Manager’s Dream) are using old pictures taken at the 1964 All-Star game. That definitely looks like Shea Stadium to me, and at what other time in the history of Shea Stadium were star players from both leagues present at Shea Stadium? So Topps was using a couple of 4 year old photos for these cards.

Jim from Downingtown said...

And in 1968, they used a photo of Jim Grant's time with the Indians, rather than airbrushing a more recent photo while with the Twins.

Jim from Downingtown said...

(I meant to type 1969.)