1979 Topps Baseball

The 1979 Topps Baseball set has 726 standard-sized cards   Subsets include League Leaders, Record-Breakers, Record-Holders and Team Rookie Prospects, multi-player cards featuring black and white pictures of players, sometimes even in minor league uniforms.

Long-time Kansas City Royals second baseman Frank White was in the prime of his career.

While it was great to see Ken Holtzman back with the Chicago Cubs, the results were not great.  This would be Holtzman's last season, although he would get a career-capper card in the 1980 Topps set.

The one-time phenom Clint Hurdle was still trying to establish himself.

Rich Goose Gossage was in his prime, although he would go on to pitch through 1994, before eventually being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

By the time this card was released, Bob Bailey had played his last game, ending a solid 17 year career.

Andre Thornton was entering his prime and would go on to have many more successful years with the Indians.  He is another good one who got away from the Cubs.

This is the perfect picture of the classic backup catcher.  Montgomery spent the 1970's as Carlton Fisk's backup and earned a place in my Backup Catcher Hall of Fame.

Brother of Jose and Tommy, the versatile veteran was traded to Cincinnati in midseason.

Montanez shows the classic 1st base pose.  He would be traded to the Texas Rangers (his 6th team) in midseason.

The versatile Kurt Bevacqua would have his best season in 1979.  The Topps Bubble Blowing Champ of 1976 retired after the 1975 season.

Knuckleballer Joe Niekro was in the early part of the best stretch of his career.  He would go 21-11 in 1979, finishing 2nd (to Bruce Sutter) in the Cy Young Award voting.

Veteran slugger Lee May was nearing the end of his excellent career.  He played 18 seasons, collecting over 2,000 hits, before retiring after the 1982 season.

1979 Topps Regular Baseball

It has been quite a while since I posted here last, but since I am in full-swing with my "Tribecards from Outer Space" daily pack break, I thought I would share some of the packs that I open.

Today, I am bringing you a pack of 1979 Topps Baseball Regular.  Before I start, though, I would like to point out that this pack was purchased from eBay and had a nearly perfect wax sealing on it. Usually, that means the pack was opened, searched, stars removed and replaced with commons or not-quite-stars, then heat-sealed with a blow dryer. In any case, it is still fun to open a pack from the 70's.

We've got Willie Horton, Rick Bosetti, and Rick Auerbach. I like that the photos are nearly the full size of the card with just a hint of border. Of course, this was the 70's, so centering might be all over the place. The photos themselves bring back memories of Polaroid cameras. Or, really, the old 110 film camera that I carried around as a kid. I digress. Often.

Next up, Doug DeCinces, Roger Freed, and the Braves Checklist. Had I opened this pack in 1979, I would have been thrilled to snag a DeCinces card! I have several of his cards in my "Non-Indians Players" collection.  When I was a kid, we never thought about condition, so the Braves checklist would have been marked up with any Braves cards I had.

Finally, at least as far as scanned photos go, we've got a Rangers Prospects card, Ed Glynn, and Fred Lynn.

When we were kids, my brother and I had a nickname for each of the card sets. This was "The ribbon kind," I believe.

The entire pack consisted of these cards:

Willie Horton - Blue Jays
Rick Bosetti - Blue Jays
Danny Darwin, Pat Putnam, Billy Sample - Rangers Prospects
Rick Auerbach - Reds
Doug DeCinces - Orioles
Mike Jorgensen - Rangers
Ed Glynn - Tigers
Enrique Romo - Mariners
Brian Downing - Angels
Fred Lynn - Red Sox
Roger Freed - Cardinals
Bobby Cox - Braves Team Card