Stalking Mike Marshall

As some of you might know, 1970s relief ace Mike Marshall was not a huge fan of Topps… or maybe baseball cards in general given that he didn’t appear in 1975 Hostess despite winning the Cy Young the season before.  Of course, Hostess cards were created using Topps photos… at any rate, I won’t get into the details here, other than to say that he was well known for not cooperating with Topps photographers and was completely missing from baseball cards for four years towards the end of his career, including one season where he lead the league in appearances and saves.

I recently looked over his cards as a whole and thought it would be fun to just do a career retrospective of sorts and take a look at how many different things Topps did to get Mike Marshall on their cards.

Things start off normally enough with his 1968 rookie card.

Marshall spent all of 1968 in AAA, was selected by the Seattle Pilots in the 1968 expansion draft, and his 1969 card reflects that with a capless photo… nothing unusual here to the casual observer. Since this photo is clearly taken at Yankee Stadium, I would guess the photo is from 1967.

Marshall pitched in 20 games with the Pilots, but doesn’t appear in 1970 Topps.  After the 1969 season, his contract is sold to the Astros, and then in June, 1970 he’s traded to the Expos.

I have two gaps in my Mike Marshall “collection”… not that I truly collect him… but one of them is the 1971 Topps High #’ed card.  I “borrowed” this image from Trading Card Database.  Gotta love the airbrushing and the solid cyan “sky”.

Still, as he was with the Expos through much, not all, of 1970, his 1971 card doesn’t automatically send up red flags.

1972 Topps seems normal.

1973 is where things go off the rails.  His 1973 Topps card shows him an airbrushed cap when he’d been with the Expos for a couple of years, and with a jersey which seems to have navy Tigers piping on it, which would mean it’s at best from 1968 Spring Training… and the same photo was used on Marshall’s 1974 Topps Traded card.

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Update: 

Keith Olbermann, via Twitter, says that this photo is from 1968 when Marshall was with the Toledo Mud Hens (Tigers AAA).  The original photo has Marshall holding a fungo bat, and while most of that has been cropped out and replaced by fake sky, you can see the handle on the 1973 card, running between his neck and the “R” in “MARSHALL”

The 1973/1974 Traded image is actually an airbrushed shot of Marshall with the Toledo Mud Hens in 1968. In the original – which appears on the 1973 proof sheet – he has a fungo bat on his shoulder. Marshall actually never went to spring training with Detroit.

— Keith Olbermann⌚️ (@KeithOlbermann) November 19, 2020

End of Update

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For Marshall’s regular 1974 card, it seems like they said “Screw this guy, we’ve got action shots, we’ll just use one of those”.

…But that didn’t help with the “Leading Firemen” card, so they used the image from 1971 Topps.

Marshall’s base 1975 card is the same… let’s use an action shot.

Marshall had a record-setting year in 1974, appearing in 106 games and pitching 208.1 innings of relief.  For the ’74 Highlights card, Topps still used what looks like a “conference on the mound” shot while most of the other Highlights cards used posed shots (Lou Brock’s Highlight card used a dugout head shot).

Most tellingly, on the “League Leaders” card, the photo is an on-field shot while everybody else has a posed head shot.

1975 Kellogg’s managed to get a posed shot of Mike Marshall in a Dodgers uniform… Maybe because they weren’t related to Topps? Maybe Kellogg’s got their photos from a different source?  Or maybe someone jumped out from around a corner and surprised him.

This card’s image is also from TCDB.

1976 Topps went back to the action shot well and since Marshall didn’t set records or lead the league, Topps didn’t have any subsets to worry about.

For 1976 and the beginning of 1977,  Marshall played for the Braves, but nothing changed but the uniform.  More distant action.

OK, here’s where things get even more fun.  We go from stalking Mike Marshall to no Mike Marshall at all.  Perhaps Mike Marshall completely cut ties with Topps, because he didn’t appear on a Topps card after 1977.  Granted, he only made 16 relief appearances that year so you can see him not being on a 1978 card, but after signing with the Twins in May 1978, he pitched well enough that year and the year after to get Cy Young votes… but no baseball cards resulted.

Marshall was on some team-issued Minnesota Twins postcards and I was tempted to make a 1979 custom out of one of them, but naturally “When Topps Had Balls” beat me to it.

1981 Fleer and Donruss don’t have Mike Marshall, which is interesting because they dealt with the MLBPA rather than individual players… but maybe there weren’t any photos to work with.

Suddenly in 1982 Mike Marshall popped up in that year’s Fleer set… Despite the Mets releasing him in October 1981 and Marshall not pitching again after that.  At least we get career stats on the back!

Since then he’s appeared in a couple of very oddball issues, but I’m thinking you’re not seeing this Mike Marshall in Topps Archives or Panini Diamond Kings any time soon.