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Beginning in 1961, Topps started including league leader cards in its sets and there are 12 league leaders cards kicking off the 1965 Topps set.
August 21, 2020 from Charleston, SC - Card #141
In my largest (by volume) purchase to date, I spent an enjoyable hour or so in mid-August browsing the eBay store of seller mantlerulz and clicking Add to Cart on 30 different cards. We had previously added 29 cards to our set back in February from the Philly Show. The 30 cards, all commons, cost me $52 total (before shipping and taxes) with the cards ranging in prices from $1 to $6. I love this haul and I found the seller's store by accident when I was browsing eBay in an attempt to add a few more cheap cards from the set's first series. With the exception of the cards for Dick Howser (#92) and manager Birdie Tebbets (#301), along with the few former Phillies in the lot, most of the players featured on these cards are unknown to me. In the coming weeks, I'll go through each of these new cards for our set in detail, and we've now passed the quarter mark for completion of the complete set. We still have a long way to go, and quite a few pricey cards to add but any day I can add 30 commons in excellent shape and at a low prices is a great day.
This league leaders card was $2.50, and we now have 9 of the 12 league leaders cards in the set.
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I'm assuming to be consistent with the N.L. ERA Leaders (#8) card, featuring only Sandy Koufax (#300) and Don Drysdale (#260), Topps decided to feature only the top two A.L. ERA Leaders here as well. That means Whitey Ford (#330) and his 2.13 ERA got the shaft here, all because Chris Short wouldn't sign a contract with Topps and couldn't be featured on the N.L. ERA Leaders card.
This is the third and final appearance for Dean Chance (#140) on an A.L. leaders card, as he's also on the A.L. Pitching Leaders (#9) and A.L. Strikeout Leaders (#11) cards. Chance's four appearances on four different cards in the set has to make him one of the most represented players (if not the most represented) in the entire 598-card run. This was the only time Chance led the league in ERA during his 11-year career.
Joel Horlen (#480) finished second twice in ERA with a 1.88 mark in 1964 and a 2.43 mark in 1966. He finally topped the league in 1967 with a 2.06 ERA over 258 innings pitched - a career high for him. The 1964 White Sox starting pitching rotation boasted three different pitchers in the top five for ERA in 1964 with Horlen at second, Gary Peters (#430) fourth and Juan Pizarro (#125) fifth.
Angels Team Set / White Sox Team Set
Prior Card: #6 1964 N.L. RBI Leaders
Next Card: #8 1964 N.L. ERA Leaders
That's a weak decision by Toppa, to omit Whitey Ford just because there were only 2 players on the NL card (because of the Chris Short snub).
ReplyDeleteOther times when they've shown 4 or 6 players because of a tie, they didn't expand the other league's card to 4 or 6 players, so they shouldn't have concerned themselves with symmetry this time.