I wrote this admittedly bizarre but also kind of wonderful post a dozen years ago, shortly after I got a complete set of 1976 baseball cards. I was even more nuts then than I am now. I¡¯m reposting it here as I wrote it then ¡ª errors and all ¡ª because it leads into an item in Thursday¡¯s Batting Order. I hope you enjoy. |
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January 15, 2013 |
I spent joyous hours sorting a bunch of old Topps cards, putting them in plastic pages, flipping the pages, reminiscing about the Father-Son cards and the Sporting News All-Time Player cards (as a kid I ALWAYS seemed to get the Pie Traynor). It really is a blast. I get lost in them. |
Here are the Sporting News All-Time All-Stars as of 1976 (and who would probably be on the team now): |
1B: Lou Gehrig (Same. Pujols could pass him, maybe) |
2B: Rogers Hornsby (Same. I prefer Joe Morgan) |
3B: Pie Traynor (No. It would be Mike Schmidt. George Brett has his fans) |
SS: Honus Wagner (Same) |
RF: Babe Ruth (Same) |
CF: Ty Cobb (No. Willie Mays) |
LF: Ted Williams (Same. Barry Bonds could not win an all-time election) |
C: Mickey Cochrane (No. Johnny Bench or Yogi Berra, I think) |
RHP: Walter Johnson (Maybe same. Greg Maddux or Tom Seaver ¡ª Pedro Martinez or Roger Clemens) |
LHP: Lefty Grove (Maybe same. I happen to think Randy Johnson is the best lefty starter ever) |
But the point today is not the cards themselves. Today, for your benefit, I have done what I have to believe is one of the most pointless research projects in the history of Planet Earth. I have gone deep on the Topps Numbering System. |
When I was a kid, I noticed ¡ª as countless kids before and since have noticed ¡ª that while the Topps numbers on the back SEEM random (not by team, not by position, etc.), there was an odd coincidence: The best players seemed to get the round numbers. |
I don¡¯t remember this hitting me all at once ¡ª it was just something I noticed. Hey, Tom Seaver is No. 200! Hey, Johnny Bench is number 500! That¡¯s weird! |
And the more it went on, the more I thought: Did they do this on purpose? |
And then I started to realize: Oh yeah, they DEFINITELY did do this on purpose. The biggest stars very often have card numbers that end in 00 or 50 (I call these "Topps Prime" cards to make them sound important ¡ª I even capitalize "Prime"). |
But it¡¯s not just the prime players. Even minor stars almost always have numbers that end in 0 as well. |
Let¡¯s look at a few of my 1976 cards from 360 to 410: |
360: Jeff Burroughs. Former MVP. |
367: Bruce Miller |
370: Ron Cey. The Penguin. All-Star. |
374: Dan Warthen |
380: Bobby Bonds. Another All-Star. Mr. 30-30. |
386: Ed Goodson ¡ª who along with Bill Todman produced The Price Is Right and ¡ oh, no, that was Mark Goodson. |
390: Don Gullett. Ace pitcher of world champion Reds. |
393: Paul Mitchell |
400: Rod Carew. Annual batting champion. Superstar. Hall of Famer. |
406: Ed Hermann |
410: Ralph Garr. Batting champion. All-Star. |
And so it goes. Tito Fuentes? He gets No. 8. Lou Brock? He gets No. 10. And so on. |
So here was my idea: I figured I could go through all the Topps checklists ¡ª yes, I said all the Topps checklists (hey, this is my blog, not yours) ¡ª and pull out the players whose cards ended with 50 and 00. And I would see which players have been most honored by Topps. |
And, more to the point (as if there is a point), I would see which players were viewed as truly great and popular and awesome WHILE they were playing. One of the things people say about Jack Morris is that he was viewed as a dominant pitcher during his playing days. Well, I honestly don't remember it that way. I remember him being a good pitcher, but I don't remember him being Tom Seaver or Jim Palmer or even Ron Guidry. |
So, I thought, hey, why not see how often Morris' card ended with a 00 or 50. |
Let¡¯s create a scoreboard! |
Before we get to that scoreboard, though, here are a few quick words about the scoring process, which should interest you even less than the rest of this: |
00 is better than 50. The best of the best get 00 on the end. The players who have 50 at the end of their numbers ¡ª some are great, some, frankly, are not. For this reason, in my system, players get 10 points for every 00 card they achieved. They get 5 points for cards that end in 50. I add up the points, multiply that by the number of Topps Prime cards they were on, and voila, we have the final Topps score. Topps was VERY inconsistent in its numbering system. They started messing around with giving good players 50 and 00 numbers in 1955, but they grew more committed to the idea in later years. And then they more or less stopped. There was a time in the mid-2000s when they gave the cherished No. 300 to Andy Marte, Brayan Pena and Ryan Garko. I have no idea why they did this. But they seem to have fixed it. Topps has been quirky. There were certain players that the people at Topps obviously loved who, let¡¯s be honest, were not deserving of the big numbers. Bucky Dent in back-to-back seasons got a number that ended in 50 (to be fair, he was an All-Star both seasons but ¡ come on). Vic Wertz twice got 00 numbers.
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See if you can spot the incongruity in this list of players who got the 250 number in the 1960s: |
1960: Stan Musial 1962: Norm Cash 1963: Stan Musial 1964: Al Kaline 1965: Willie Mays 1966: Sammy Ellis 1967: Hank Aaron 1968: Carl Yastrzemski 1969: Frank Robinson |
Sammy Ellis? Huh? Yes, he was coming off a year when he won 22 games and was an All-Star, but ¡ Topps, you really gave him No. 250? |
Oh, also, I only count the card if it is a regular player card. I don¡¯t count All-Star, In-Action or Specialty cards. For instance, you will notice that 1961 is missing from the No. 250 cards ¡ª that's because it was a "Buc Hill Aces" card featuring Vern Law and Roy Face smiling at somebody off-camera. Fun! But it doesn't count for the scoring system. |
OK, with those caveats in mind ¡ here are the Topps players of all time: |
Honorable mention: Cal Ripken (520 points); Don Mattingly (490 points); Mike Schmidt (490 points); Ken Griffey Jr. (480 points). Mattingly is the highest player on the board who is both eligible for the Hall of Fame and not in the Hall of Fame. His golden numbers will tell you how immensely popular and respected Mattingly was as a player. Topps loved him. Well, we all loved him. |
But do you know who the next highest eligible non-Hall of Famer is? Take a guess. Take two guesses. Take five. Be back with that classic in just a minute. |
No. 10. Pete Rose, 630 points?Rose didn't get his first Topps Prime card until 1971. He got much more respect from Topps when he was no longer a good player than he ever did in his star days. He got Prime cards each year from 1983 to 1986. |
No. 9. Nolan Ryan, 720 points?Starting around 1990, Topps began giving Ryan the treasured No. 1 card. He was the first card in the set three years in a row. I believe it was Ryan getting that No. 1 card that inspired Topps to start giving the number to a great player every year: Since Ryan, Topps has given No. 1 to Frank Thomas, Barry Bonds, Cal Ripken, Roger Clemens, A-Rod (four times), and, the last two years, Ryan Braun. |
No. 8. Mickey Mantle, 880 points?When the Mick was at his best ¡ª in the mid-to-late 1950s ¡ª Topps had not yet settled on their numbering system. If they had, Mantle would be No. 1 on this list; every year of the 1960s except one he got a 00 or 50 card. |
No. 7 (tie). Henry Aaron and Barry Bonds, 900 points?Irony abounds! Aaron had 6,856 total bases in his career. That is SEVEN HUNDRED more than anyone else. Barry Bonds could have hit 200 more home runs and still not had as many total bases as Henry Aaron. |
No. 5 (tie). Rod Carew and George Brett, 1,155 points?Each appeared on 11 Topps Prime cards. I wonder if people forget how great a hitter Rod Carew was. Brett, he's still around, active, he'll say classic things now and again. But Carew seems to have been somewhat lost to history, which is a shame because there was nobody like him. Every at-bat, he seemed to have a slightly different batting style. He hit .344 from 1969 to 1978 and won seven batting titles. I think Carew, had he played in the 1990s, might have hit .400. |
No. 3. Willie Mays, 1,200 points?Mays got a Topps Prime card every year but one from 1959 to 1971. The one year he did not get a Prime card was 1969, following the Year of the Pitcher. Bob Gibson, Denny McLain and Don Drysdale all got Prime cards. Mays had what seemed for him like a down season ¡ª he only hit .289 with 23 homers. Topps gave a Prime card to Felipe Alou, among others, but not Mays. |
No. 2. Alex Rodriguez, 1,380 points?A-Rod, from age 20 to 31, had EIGHT seasons with a WAR higher than 8.0. That¡¯s insane. Only Hornsby, Bonds, Ruth and Mays had more 8.0 WAR seasons than A-Rod. |
Not that Topps was thinking about this, of course. |
Trivia answer!?The next-highest eligible non-Hall of Famer on our list? Jose Canseco. |
No. 1: Reggie Jackson, 1,440 points?Reggie appeared on 12 Topps Prime cards, and all 12 were 00 cards. I don¡¯t know that I would have predicted Reggie to win ¡ but now that he has it really does make perfect sense. When you combine greatness, popularity, controversy, power and charisma, Reggie Jackson really is the Topps player of the last 50 years. |
A few other quick notes: |
Jack Morris appeared on only one Topps Prime card, No. 450 in 1982 ¡ª the year after he led the league with 14 wins during the strike season. He appeared on as many Topps Prime cards as Dave Stieb, and two fewer than Ron Guidry. |
Steve Carlton also appeared on only one Topps Prime card: No. 300 in 1973, after his extraordinary 27-win season. At least he got a 00 card. |
George Foster (330 points) and Steve Garvey (240 points) were Topps favorites in the 1970s. |
Joe Morgan did not get a Topps Prime card until after he won his second MVP award. He got three lifetime achievement numbers after that, but this sort of confirms what I have always believed: Morgan was criminally underrated until he became so ridiculously good that everybody couldn¡¯t help but notice. |
Bo Jackson (225 points) and Darryl Strawberry (200 points) were a couple of Topps favorites in the 1980s. |
Other players Topps loved: Sam McDowell (three Prime cards), Bill Madlock (four), Dick Allen (four), Joe Torre (four), Tony Oliva (four), Jim Rice (five), Tom Seaver (seven), Kirby Puckett (seven). |
I'd give you the whole list but, let's be honest, this was ridiculous to start with. Fun. But ridiculous. |
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