I’m Done Chasing 1977 O-Pee-Chee Baseball Cards! …Probably…

For those who aren’t familiar with 1977 O-Pee-Chee baseball, it’s not your typical vintage or semi-vintage OPC set. Like it’s OPC Baseball siblings it is largely a Canadian, bilingual subset of the Topps set of the same year, but in 1977 – probably because of the Toronto Blue Jays joining the American League that season – there were many cards which got updated for player movement and, in the case of the Blue Jays and Expos, took advantage of OPCs later production date and replaced Topps images with spring training photos.

I learned a lot about this set through the retired blog (and valuable reference tool) Oh, My O-Pee-Chee… hard to believe that it’s been over ten years since that blog wrapped up!

So my objective with 1977 OPC has been to collect all of the cards which were different enough to make “1977 Me” sit up and take notice.  Generally speaking, that means OPC cards which have different photos or which weren’t in 77T at all. With some exceptions, I ignored the OPC cards which were missing All-Star Rookie Cups or the “ALL-STAR” banner on the bottom…

…or which were cropped differently than the same photo on the Topps card.

In all, I targeted 78 cards out of the 264 in the set, and the last four of those wants arrived in a recent COMC box.

First up is Phil Roof, an established veteran who was acquired by the Jays before the expansion draft but who played just 3 games for the Jays to wrap up his career.  As you can see, he posed for a photographer in spring training.

His Topps card features one of the better Blue Jay airbrushing jobs on a sub-par photo.

Here’s a fun bit of Phil Roof trivia… as a coach in the 1980’s, he was the last Mariner to wear #24 before Ken Griffey Jr.!

Al Woods was selected from the Twins organization in the expansion draft, made his Major League debut on opening day that year and played 122 games for the Jays.  This card is unique to 1977 O-Pee-Chee

Woods appeared in 1977 Topps on a Rookie Outfielders card.

Tom Bruno was selected from the Royals in the expansion draft and would pitch 12 games of relief with a 7.85 ERA and a 2.345 WHIP.  The following spring he’d be traded to the Cardinals for Rick Bosetti, and he would appear on his first and only Topps card in 1979 as a “Cardinals Prospect”.  This 1977 card is unique to O-Pee-Chee

These three Blue Jays cards were a bit of a pain to find.  I didn’t see many around, and a few COMC sellers were asking ridiculous prices for players that even die-hard Blue Jays fans would have trouble picking out of a police lineup.

After I got these cards, I thought I was done with 1977 OPC… but I went back to the 1977 entries for Oh My O-Pee-Chee! and double-checked to make sure I didn’t miss anything… and I didn’t.

…but I also changed my mind on the OPC Jeff Burroughs which has a minor difference that I decided was worthy of acquiring.  Y’see, I originally thought this was just a matter of changing the team name up top while leaving the photo as-is:

…but look at the jersey.  They took a Rangers jersey and airbrushed it into a mid-1970s style Braves jersey (along with moving the signature).  I said “OK, fine, just this one last card!” and bought that on COMC.

So with that I figured I was done chasing after 1977 O-Pee-Chee baseball cards.

That’s when I made a mistake of listening to a voice in my head which was thinking about this post and asked the innocent question “There aren’t any Blue Jays cards which are largely the same within both sets, right?  I mean, they wouldn’t use Topps airbrushing when they could use spring training photos”.

So I took a look, and for whatever reason the cards of Dave Hilton and Steve Hargan are airbrushed in both Topps and OPC.  Maybe they couldn’t get spring training photos of those two.  The thing is, they OPC has a very minor “update” on both cards.  Here are the Topps versions…


On both cards each player was given red, white and blue collars as part of their Topps airbrushing, but for OPC the collars are tweaked to a more accurate dark blue, white and light blue.  The facsimilie autograph was also rearranged, for those who are interested in that type of thing.

I could chase down these last two cards so I would have a complete Blue Jays team set of 26 cards, but I suspect that if I let my collecting impulses settle down I’ll go back to regarding myself done with this set… but I wouldn’t completely rule it out for the future.

 

Contrast And Compare: Another Four From 1977 O-Pee-Chee Baseball

The subject of 1977 O-Pee-Chee baseball came up on Twitter the other day, so I figured I’d take inspiration where I could and I decided to write another in a series of posts about 1977 O-Pee-Chee Baseball.

1977 OPC is a 264 card set that, like most OPC baseball sets, is a sort of parallel of the same year’s Topps set.  Unlike other years – probably because it was the first year of the Toronto Blue Jays – OPC was updated and contained many different Blue Jays and Expos than the Topps set.

I’m kind of surprised I hadn’t featured the Gary Carter cards before.  Here’s his 1977 Topps card:

For reasons unknown, OPC replaced the catching photo with a batting photo.

I think I like the catching pose better, but then again if OPC hadn’t have updated the photo I never would’ve tracked down that card.

Pete Vuckovich, who had been taken from the White Sox in the expansion draft, had a particularly unflattering photo in 1977 Topps.  They didn’t even bother to try to airbrush over the black White Sox jersey.

His 1977 O-Pee-Chee card is leaps and bounds beyond the Topps card

Vukovich was a reliever with the Jays, but a couple of years and a couple of teams later he would win the 1982 AL Cy Young Award while with the Brewers.

Pedro Garcia was with the Tigers in 1976, but was released during the offseason

He would sign with the Blue Jays early in 1977 and would play 41 games before being released in June

This last pair of cards is a little odd… Here’s Dock Ellis’ Topps card:

And here’s his O-Pee-Chee card:

Since the pose is so similar, I wonder if when they were doing OPC someone said “Hey, hand me that photo of Dock Ellis where he’s standing with his hand in his glove.”

Something about this photo on the OPC struck me as odd and it took me a few minutes to realize what it was… and it was actually two things.  First off, the spacing is unusually wide between the letters in “NEW YORK” on Ellis’ jersey;  and second, just the fact that Dock Ellis is shown in his Yankees road uniform was pretty unusual in itself.  I did a very quick review of Topps Yankees cards from 1974 to 1978 and out of what must be more than 100 cards there I counted just 7 which showed the road uniforms.

US vs. Canada In The “1977 Baseball Card” Competition

It’s been a busy week and the past day or two I’ve been spending my small amounts of free time watching Olympic mixed doubles curling… So out of necessity this post is going to be relatively quick, and will involve comparing three 1977 Topps Baseball cards to their corresponding (yet different) 1977 O-Pee-Chee Baseball cards.

First off, we’ll start with the Blue Jays’ John Scott.  Scott was the Padres’ 1st round draft pick (and 2nd overall behind Chris Chambliss) in the January, 1970 draft.  In 1976 he played for the AAA Hawaii Islanders under Roy Hartsfield, who would become the Jays’ first manager… so it’s no coincidence that he was among the first players obtained by the Jays (purchased from the Padres on Oct 22, 1976).

For Topps, he shared a rookie card with Andre Dawson, Gene Richards and Denny Walling.

But since he was a Blue Jay, he got his own card in the O-Pee-Chee set.

John Scott did not play well in his only long look in the Majors, batting .240 with 26 runs, 15 RBI and 10 stolen bases.  He’d never play in MLB after 1977, but he would play in Japan for the Yakult Swallows and make his way into the 1979 TCMA Japanese Baseball set.

As long as I’m sharing John Scott cards, here’s his 1976 SSPC card from his time with the Padres.

OK, getting back to 1977…

In 1976, Phil “Scrap Iron” Garner was the starting second baseman for the Oakland A’s, and was named to the All-Star Game, backing up starter Bobby Grich.

The A’s were, at the time, cleaning house of all of the players who were likely to leave as free agents, and Garner was involved in a 9-player trade that had him going to the Pirates.

Garner’s numbers with the 1977 Pirates were similar to his numbers with the 1976 A’s, except he went from 54 runs scored to 99, and his homers more than doubled from 8 to 17.

…and how about that airbrushing job?

For the most part I’m collecting 1977 O-Pee-Chee cards which have photos which have different photos or are airbrushed, and I skip past cards which have different cropping.  This last card falls into that category, but I didn’t realize it until after I got the OPC.  Here’s the Topps card…

In 1977, Larry Parrish was 23 and in his third season as the Expos’ starting 3rd baseman.  He struggled a bit in 1976 and 1977, but would bounce back nicely in 1978 and have an All-Star season in 1979.

O-Pee-Chee cropped his photo much tighter than Topps did.

Like Phil Garner, Parrish would later manage in the Majors.  Like John Scott, Parrish would play in Japan for the Yakult Swallows (and also the Hanshin Tigers).

 

Contrast And Compare: Six Cards From Three Decades

Running through some Topps cards and their variations-of-sorts, as an admittedly last-minute post.

Doug Ault had a cup of coffee with the Rangers in 1976, got selected by the Blue Jays in the expansion draft, and shared a rookie infielders card with Rich Dauer, Orlando Gonzalez and Phil Mankowski.

Because he was a first-year Blue Jay, O-Pee-Chee gave him his own card.

Ault hit two homers in the Jays’ first game, was a regular with the team and made the Topps All-Star Rookie Team.  He wouldn’t repeat the success he had in his first year and was done in the Majors after 1980.

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In 1980, Omar Moreno was coming off two seasons of leading the N.L. in steals.

That got him into the 1980 Burger King Pinch Hit & Run set in the “Run” category and a different photo was used… but he’s still pictured with a bat instead of running. Go figure.

In 1980 Moreno got a career-high 96 stolen bases… but would finish one behind Montreal’s Ron LeFlore who had 97. In 1981 he’d finish second to a different Expo, Tim Raines.

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In 2013 Doug Fister went 14-9, 3.67 for the Tigers, surprising people by breaking out when he was 29 years old.
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After that season, the Tigers traded him to the Nationals for Ian Krol, Steve Lombardozzi and Robbie Ray. Since Opening Day gets released after Topps Series 1, a different photo of Fister was photoshopped into a Nats uniform.

Fister went 16-6, 2.41 in that first season with the Nats, but has been inconsistent since then and is currently with the Red Sox. The argument could be made that the best player in that trade was Robbie Ray, who was an all-star this year for the Diamondbacks. He was traded to Arizona in the three-team trade that sent Didi Gregorius to the Yankees.

Not Flagship Topps, But An Incredible Simulation

Today’s cards are all recent acquisitions which look like Topps cards at first glance, but are actually something different.

We’ll start off with this 1977 O-Pee-Chee card of original Blue Jay Chuck Hartenstein, who had an interesting career path.

Although he’d been a reliever his entire career and made his pitching debut in 1966 with the Cubs, Hartenstein appeared in one game in 1965 as a pinch runner.  He’d pitch from 1966 to 1970 with four different teams, then was out of the majors for six years until the Blue Jays came along.  First year manager Roy Hartsfield had previously managed the Padres AAA team in Hawaii, and he encouraged the Jays to pick up a few players he’d managed there, including Hartenstein.  He logged 13 games worth of  unimpressive relief to cap off his playing career.

Here’s the corresponding 1977 Topps card, gloriously airbrushed.

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I recently did a post about the 1990 Topps Major League Debut set which featured everybody who had, in 1989, appeared in a game for the first time.  That put me in mind to get some cards from the other two Major League Debut sets, so here (speaking of gloriously airbrushed) is the 1991 Topps Major League Debut card of outfielder Chuck Carr.

I’m thinking that this photo was taken in a minor league ballpark with Carr wearing a minor league uniform, because there’s no other reason for his cap logo to be airbrushed.  For what it’s worth, Carr appeared in the base sets for 1991 Upper Deck and Fleer, but this appears to be his only Topps card from that year.

Here’s the back.

Carr would become an original Florida Marlin in 1993 and would lead the National League with 58 stolen bases.

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At my recent show I ran across a couple of semi-recent Topps retail team sets for $1 each, and for a price that low I was willing to take a gamble to see if there were any cards which were different from the same player’s “regular” Topps card. First up is the 2013 Topps Los Angeles Angels team set.

The final card in the set was one of the ballpark.  I’m honestly not sure how common that is in team sets, I generally only buy them if they’re really cheap.

The only other card which wasn’t a parallel-of-sorts was this Jason Vargas card.

The prior winter, Vargas had been traded from the Mariners to the Angels for Kendrys Morales.  Vargas’ base Topps card shows him with the Mariners, and while he does have a card in Update which shows him in an Angels uniform, it’s a different photo (and not photoshopped like this one is).  Vargas was an All-Star this year and is currently tied with Chris Sale for the most wins in the A.L., so I should be able to flip this card on eBay for BIG MONEY!  Yup.  Uh-huh, uh-huh… that’s just what I’m gonna do.

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The 2014 Red Sox set turned out to be even less interesting…  The only card which wasn’t a renumbered, foil-free pseudo-parallel of the corresponding Topps card was Fenway Park.

Not that anybody from Topps is likely to listen to me, but I’d rather have cards like this than the random assortment of celebrating players that are currently the team cards used by Topps.

I was also amused by the inclusion of this nearly three-year old coupon which came with the set.

…So if you’d like to save fifty cents on the purchase of some 2014 Topps MLB Chipz, I’m your man.

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This last card looks like a 1975 Topps card of Luke Walker, but it’s from the “Mini” set.

As much as I love 1975 Topps, I’ve never been much for parallels and/or mini versions… But I made an exception for my Luke Walker player collection.

Two 1977 O-Pee-Chee Cards Without Peer

I’ve been featuring 1977 O-Pee-Chee baseball cards for a while, and usually when I write one of these posts I’ll feature the OPC card and the corresponding Topps card.  This time around, however, I won’t be featuring the Topps card… because there isn’t one.  Not a direct corollary, anyway.

We’ll start off with the Blue Jays Coaches card.  These guys did share a Topps card with Blue Jays manager Roy Hartsfield, but they get more “real estate” in O-Pee-Chee.

First Base coach Don Leppert was a catcher who broke into the Majors with the 1961 Pirates as a 29-year-old rookie. Two years later, he’d be an All-Star with the “New” Senators, aided by a relatively hot first half.

Pitching coach Bob Miller is “Righty Bob Miller” who pitched for 10 different teams from 1957 to 1974… including with the 1962 Mets where he was a teammate of “Lefty Bob Miller” (as I talked about here a couple of weeks ago).

Third base coach Jackie Moore played just 21 games in 1965 with the Tigers, but he was a long-time coach with the Brewers, Rangers, Jays, A’s, Expos, Reds and Rockies.  He also managed the A’s in the mid-1980’s

Bullpen coach Harry Warner was a long-term minor leaguer who never made it to the Majors.

This leaves out the hitting coach, who is probably the most accomplished and well-known of the bunch.

Bobby Doerr, who would later be inducted into the Hall of Fame and have his #1 retired by the Red Sox, was the hitting coach for the Blue Jays for their first couple of seasons, and yet he wasn’t included on this card.  I have a theory – or a guess, depending on how you want to look at it – as to why this was… but first I have a couple of more scans to show you.

First off, here is the back of this card.  “Instructeur” sounds a lot more impressive than “Coach”, but I guess that’s the case with a lot of job titles when translated into French.

Here’s the Topps card which shows the Jays’ field staff:  Manager Roy Hartsfield and the same four coaches.

OK, now it’s time for my theory:  In 1977, Doerr had been out of baseball for a number of years, so it’s not unreasonable to think that Topps didn’t include him on their card because they didn’t have any photos to use.  As a result, the bullpen coach who would be largely unknown to most fans gets priority over someone who, as a player, had started for thirteen years and been an All-Star for nine.  Later, when O-Pee-Chee made their version of the set and presumably had photos of all of the Jays’ coaches, they followed Topps’ lead, used these four coaches and left out Doerr.  Again, this is only a theory.

Because we’re talking field staff and I haven’t shown this card in 3 years, here’s the O-Pee-Chee card that features just manager Roy Hartsfield and his non-airbrushed uniform:

Moving on to the other “card without peer”… This is Doug Howard’s only mainstream baseball card, made even more interesting by the fact that he never played for the Blue Jays in a regular season game.

Howard played a few handfuls of games for the Angels, Cardinal and Indians, and was one of the first players obtained by the Jays when he was acquired with Alan Ashby in a 11/5/1976 trade with the Indians. Howard, however, got cut just before the Blue Jays broke camp, and he never made it back to the majors.

Here’s the back of his card.

After being cut by the Blue Jays, Howard’s career was over even though he was just 29 years old.

Update:  Apparently today is Bobby Doerr Day, because by sheer coincidence, When Topps Had (Base) Balls is featuring a 1979 Topps custom of Bobby Doerr with the Blue Jays.  I swear we did not coordinate on this one!

1977 O-Pee-Chee vs. Topps – Bobby Murcer & Bill Singer

1977 O-Pee-Chee baseball was one of the more unique sets put out by Topps’ Canadian partner.  Instead of what had been a sort of bilingual parallel set, OPC took advantage of their later production dates in an expansion year, giving us new and different cards featuring the Montreal Expos and newly-born Toronto Blue Jays, and updating some other transactions in the process.

Here is the 1977 Bobby Murcer card most of us are familiar with… Bobby trying to hide behind Cardinals’ catcher Joe Ferguson.

Murcer, who had been “The next Mickey Mantle” during his early career with the Yanks, was traded to the Cubs in a five-player deal that saw Bill Madlock heading to San Francisco.

For his part of the deal, Murcer got a pretty decent airbrushing job:

At this point, Murcer’s best years were behind him, but he’d put in another few years as a slightly-above-average player.

Bill Singer was the 28th pick in the expansion draft that filled the rosters of the Blue Jays and Mariners. Singer was drafted from the Twins, as you can kind of see from the un-airbrushed jersey.

As they did with Blue Jays and Expos, O-Pee-Chee went the extra yard and got a picture of Singer in Spring Training.

Singer was the starting pitcher in the Jays’ first game, but he’d go 3-8 for Toronto before being released in July.  That would be the end of his career.

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Quick reminder… We’ve got real barn-burner going on in the vote to determine the template I’ll use for next Spring’s World Baseball Classic set! If you haven’t voted yet, the choices are laid out below with the voting at the bottom. Thanks again!

Contrast And Compare: 1977 Bill Madlock and Darrell Porter

Hello, and welcome back to “Contrast And Compare”, where we take a look at distinct cards of the same player from different but related sets!

…Because I couldn’t think of another way of starting this post without channeling a TV announcer…

Today we’re going to compare two pair of cards from 1977 Topps and 1977 O-Pee-Chee.  In each of the following, I’ll show the Topps card first, followed by the updated OPC.

Four-time batting champion Bill “Mad Dog” Madlock was drafted by the Rangers and traded to the Cubs after the 1973 season as part of the Fergie Jenkins deal.

In February, 1977, Madlock was traded to the Giants in a deal that also involved Bobby Murcer. Presumably because of the short notice, the airbrush artist did not do a particularly great job on Madlock.

Darrell Porter was drafted by the Brewers and made the All-Star team in 1974.

In December, 1976 he was part of a five-player trade between the Brewers and Royals. This is a far better airbrushing job than Madlock got.

Porter would play four years with the Royals before crossing the state to join the Cardinals as a free agent. While with the Royals, he’d be an All-Star three straight years… he would never make the all-star team again, although he would be the MVP of the 1982 NLCS and World Series.

1977 OPC Baseball: Some Jays Rookies Get Their Moment In Cardboard

Last Friday, I showed off a couple of “variations-of-sorts” in 1977 O-Pee-Chee, cards which are significantly different than their 1977 Topps counterparts.  Both of the OPC cards featured questionable airbrushing, but I don’t want to give everybody the idea that 1977 OPC is about airbrushing… There are a number of Expos and Blue Jays which feature fresh spring training photos, and I’ve got a couple of such Jays today.

Leon Hooten pitched 6 games in relief with the A’s in 1974.  He was taken with the 59th pick in the expansion draft, and got airbrushed and minimized on a 1977 Topps Rookie Pitchers card.

O-Pee-Chee gave Hooten his own card.

Unfortunately for all involved, Hooten didn’t make the Blue Jays coming out of spring training and his professional career was over.

Maybe I shouldn’t have started out with that card…

Mike Willis has a happier story.  He had been pitching for the Orioles’ AAA team in Rochester when he was drafted by the Blue Jays with the 55th pick.

Unlike Hooten, he made the team and would spend much of the next 4 years pitching in Toronto with stints with AAA Syracuse.

He finished his career in the Phillies system with a year at AAA Oklahoma City.

Neither of these guys would be considered a key card for this set, but I always enjoy cards of guys wearing brand-new expansion team uniforms!  It’s a shame that the Mariners didn’t get the same treatment, but I guess that’s their fault for not being in Canada.

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Shlabot-Notes:

Back before the season, I featured this custom of Johnny Gomes with the Rakuten Golden Eagles…

…and several of you commented that you hadn’t been aware that he’d gone to Japan. Well, if you hadn’t been aware that he left, you may not have been aware that he’s back. After batting below the Mendoza Line in NPB, the rest of his contract was voided by “mutual consent”. Gomes is looking to return to MLB; time will tell how much his poor showing in Japan will hurt his attempt.

BTW, this post went out about 7 hours later than I normally like on a weekday… Apologies, we had technical difficulties in Shlabotnik World Headquarters.

1977 O-Pee-Chee Baseball: And They Changed The Photos Because……?????

One type of card that is my favorite to chase down are the 1977 O-Pee-Chee baseball cards which are different than the corresponding Topps cards. Today I’m going to take a quick look at two players that are different in OPC, and anyone looking at the two cards would ask “WHY????”

First off, let’s go with Pete Falcone. Pete Falcone was a pitcher who was basically good enough to stick around for 10 years. He came up with the Giants in 1975, was traded to the Cardinals during the winter meetings in late 1975 and was still with the Cardinals in 1977. Here’s his Topps card:

Not the greatest photograph, but decent enough. Apparently not good enough for O-Pee-Chee, however.

Nope, those crazy Canadians decided to go with an airbrushed portrait:

Now remember… Falcone was traded to the Cardinals in December, 1975. He also appeared with an airbrushed Cardinals cap in the 1976 Traded set. There’s no reason for him to be airbrushed in a set that came out a year later… Yet here he is.

Movin’ right along (dubby dum, dubby dum)…

Steve Braun spent the first six years of his career with the Twins and was taken by the Mariners with the 38th pick in the expansion draft prior to the 1977 season.

I always thought this card was one of the better examples of airbrushing the 1977 expansion teams.

…and honestly, this was probably one of the more difficult things the Topps artists had had to do in a while. Not only did they have to airbrush two teams worth of players, I doubt they had much reference material to work with. Had they even seen the caps in person? Did they have photos? Color photos? Who knows.

Anyway, like I said, Steve Braun came out pretty well, all things considered.

Someone wasn’t satisfied, for whatever reason , and decided that this was an improvement:

GAAAAH!!!!

To be fair, this same photo and airbrushing was used on the Topps Cloth Stickers set, so the onus for this might be on Topps.

A third example of airbrushing is on the 1977 Hostess card of Steve Braun, but I don’t have that one yet… and now that I’m pondering it, it wouldn’t take much to get me to move 1977 Hostess Mariners and Blue Jays up on my want lists… Maybe I should go look at what’s on COMC….