1977 N.L. CENTENNIAL: KEN GRIFFEY (SR.)

Today's blog post has us adding Ken Griffey Sr. to my long-running 1977 N.L. Centennial sub-set, creating cards featuring stars of the Senior League during the 100th anniversary 1976 season with the special patch designed for the occasion:

As for the Senior Griffey, he put in a brilliant 19-year career that saw him hit .296 with 2143 hits in 7229 at-bats, with 1129 runs scored, 152 homers and 859 runs batted in.
He was named to three all-star games during his career, and was a member of the “Big Red Machine” Cincinnati Reds of the 1970’s, taking home two consecutive World Championships in 1975 and 1976.
Of course, we HAVE to mention something else he did, which was father a kid who would become one of the players of his generation, Ken Griffey Jr, recent Hall of Fame inductee and super-star extraordinaire.
I still think one of the coolest moments in baseball history was when Griffey Sr and Griffey Jr BOTH hit homers for the same team in the same game!  I just couldn’t believe it actually happened.

EXPANDED LEAGUE LEADERS- 1977 N.L. BATTING

On the blog today, we move on to the 1977 Topps set and “fix” the league leader cards with “expanded league leaders”, starting off with the National League and their top three hitters of 1976:

 

 

We start off with Chicago Cubs hitting machine Bill Madlock, who won his second straight batting title in 1976, hitting .339 after hitting a blistering .354 the previous season.

Turns out the man would go on to win four batting titles before he was through, taking home the other two in 1981 and 1983 while with the Pittsburgh Pirates, hitting .341 and .323 respectively.

By the time he retired, he finished his career with a .305 batting average, with 2008 hits in 6594 at-bats over 1806 games between 1973 and 1987.

Just three points behind Madlock in the batting race, Cincinnati Reds outfielder Ken Griffey (Sr.), who came into his own in 1976 (as if the “Big Red Machine” even NEEDED yet another star hitter!), hitting .336 with 189 hits in 562 at-bats.

He also scored 111 runs and stole 34 bases for the eventual World Champions, who possessed a line-up that was just silly: Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, George Foster and Griffey.

He would put in 19 seasons as a Big Leaguer, also topping 2000 hits (2143), with a career average of .296 between 1973 and 1991.

Of course, he also had a son who would go on to do a few things on the baseball diamond. Not too shabby!

In third place with a .330 batting average was the DEFENSIVE outfielder extraordinaire, Garry Maddox of the Philadelphia Phillies, who set his career-best average with 175 hits in 531 at-bats, slapping 37 doubles and stealing 29 bases for the N.L. East champs.

That season he also took home the second of his eight Gold Glove Awards, appreciated as one of, if not THE best defensive outfielder in the game at that time, leading to his now classic nickname, “The Secretary of Defense”.

By the time he hung up the cleats, he finished with 1802 hits in 6331 at-bats, good for a .285 average over 1749 games between 1972 and 1986.

Next week, we move on to the American League and THEIR top three hitters!

See you then!

OPC VARIATIONS- 1977 KEN GRIFFEY

Thought it would be fun on the blog to start going through some OPC to Topps variations through the decade, throwing a spotlight on some of the cards that were given different images or airbrushing treatments between releases of the two brands.

We'll start off with the 1977 card for Cincinnati Reds outfielder Ken Griffey (Sr.), who for some reason had two different images released:

 

OPC card

TOPPS card

 

No particular rhyme or reason to the different images shown here, though I am partial to the Topps image to be honest.

It is interesting to see that for the OPC image, it seems it was clearer, less saturated with also a lot less contrast, making for a "cleaner" card.

I wonder why this was, or what the differences were, if any, with the printed processes between the two.

As for Griffey, he put in a brilliant 19-year career that saw him hit .296 with 2143 hits in 7229 at-bats, with 1129 runs scored, 152 homers and 859 runs batted in.
He was named to three all-star games during his career, and was a member of the “Big Red Machine” Cincinnati Reds of the 1970’s, taking home two consecutive World Championships in 1975 and 1976.
Of course, we HAVE to mention something else he did, which was father a kid who would become one of the players of his generation, Ken Griffey Jr, recent Hall of Fame inductee and super-star extraordinaire.
I still think one of the coolest moments in baseball history was when Griffey Sr and Griffey Jr BOTH hit homers for the same team in the same game!  I just couldn’t believe it actually happened.

GUEST WRITER "RAJ" WITH SOME GREAT EXAMPLES OF TOPPS & AIRBRUSHING IN 1979

I received a GREAT email recently from blog-reader "RAJ" with some excellent examples of Topps and their airbrushing choices which really left me wondering how many other examples like these exist throughout the 1970's.
I liked the email so much I thought it'd make a perfect post.
Some good stuff here! Thanks Robert!

"Here is a great example of how Topps would remove certain elements in the background of photos for their cards using airbrushing when it really didn’t seem to be all that necessary.  On the left we see Mike Lum batting against the Pirates in Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium during the 1978 season.  On the right is a photo take during that same game, with no Topps airbrushing applied to it.  I’m not sure what was gained by painstakingly removing the photographers and their tri-pods.  

I guess Topps was wanting a clean background for this card as well as the cards for Johnny Bench and Dave Concepcion (below):

However, they chose to leave photographers and their equipment in the cards for Ray Knight, Ken Griffey, and Joe Morgan although they certainly removed portions of a photographer who was wearing blue jeans and a red shirt because you can see remnants of him in the Griffey and Morgan cards: 

In the cards we also see some strange happenings in the crowd as it appears that there are flesh-colored arms (or limbs of some sort) next to and below the big fella in blue in the Lum card.  What could they have done THAT for?

Hope this was of interest to you.  It always fascinated me the airbrushing “hack jobs” that Topps pawned off on us with some of those horrific baseball hats as well as the terrible football helmets in the 70s.  Classic..."  

DEDICATED ROOKIE: 1974 KEN GRIFFEY SR.

Here’s a “dedicated rookie” for former all-star Ken Griffey Sr, who was on a multi-player rookie card in the 1974 set:

Griffey began what was to become a brilliant 19-year career that saw him hit .296 with 2143 hits in 7229 at-bats, with 1129 runs scored, 152 homers and 859 runs batted in.
During the 1973 season he made the most of his short stay, hitting .384 in 25 games with 33 hits in 86 at-bats.
He was named to three all-star games during his career, and was a member of the “Big Red Machine” Cincinnati Reds of the 1970’s, taking home two consecutive World Championships in 1975 and 1976.
Of course, we HAVE to mention something else he did, which was father a kid who would become one of the players of his generation, Ken Griffey Jr, recent Hall of Fame inductee and super-star extraordinaire.
I still think one of the coolest moments in baseball history was when Griffey Sr and Griffey Jr BOTH hit homers for the same team in the same game!  I just couldn’t believe it actually happened.