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Galen Bernard Cisco
New York Mets
Pitcher
Born: March 7, 1936, St. Marys, OH
Signed: Signed by the Boston Red Sox as an amateur free agent before 1958 season
Major League Teams: Boston Red Sox 1961-1962; New York Mets 1962-1965; Boston Red Sox 1967; Kansas City Royals 1969
Originally signed by the Red Sox, Galen Cisco found little success in Boston during his first two seasons in the majors, going 6-12 with a 6.28 ERA over 51 appearances. He was selected off waivers by the Mets on September 7, 1962, and while his numbers aren't pretty, Cisco was arguably one of the Mets' best pitchers during the expansion team's early years. He went 7-15 for the Mets in 1963 with a 4.34 ERA, making 17 starts and appearing in 51 games overall. In 1964, he was arguably the staff "ace" for the 10th place team that lost 109 games. Cisco appeared in 36 games, making a career-high 25 starts and was 6-19 with a respectable 3.62 ERA over 191 2/3 innings pitched. He once again served as an innings-eater for the Mets in 1965 and then spent all of 1966 in the minors, first pitching for the Mets' top farm team in Jacksonville, but then being sold back to the Red Sox, where he pitched for their top farm team in Toronto.
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| 2000 Phillies Team Issue #40 |
Building the Set
December 4, 2021 from The Philly Show (Uncle Dick's Cards, Babylon, NY) - Card #426
You'll be seeing this particular passage on my 1965 Topps blog for quite some time as we added a whopping 97 cards to our set during the December Philadelphia Sports Collectors Show. If I'm ambitious and compose posts for five cards a week, I should be completely caught up by the end of May. If I'm not as ambitious, I might still be going through this stack by the time we hit July. Either way, I'll enjoy the process and I'm looking forward to taking my time. I've posted a complete summary of this fantastic show over at The Phillies Room.
After securing Doug's Jim Thome autograph, I returned to Uncle Dick's and their neon green shirts, pulled up a chair, and settled in. Over the course of 45 minutes or so, I found 79 cards needed for our set, including this Cisco card which was a little less than $2 after the dealer discount. I was surrounded by six or seven other seated collectors, all who looked similar to me, with a touch of gray, focused on their individual quests. I wiped out Uncle Dick's two 1965 Topps commons binders, paid for my haul and then retreated to a table with Doug to update our checklist.
The Card / Mets Team Set
The back of the card, looking for something anything to write about Cisco's pitching career, notes he once struck out four pinch-hitters in a game.
1965 Season
Cisco was on the Mets roster for the entire season, making 35 appearances, including 17 starts. He was 4-8 with a 4.49 ERA in 112 1/3 innings pitched. The Mets used 16 different starting pitchers in 1965, a year they lost 112 games. Only Jack Fisher (#93), Al Jackson (#381) and the 44-year-old Warren Spahn (#205) made more starts than Cisco.
Following the dismissal of Jim Fregosi (#210) in 1996, the Phillies hired Terry Francona to manage the team in 1997. Francona, in his first managerial job, assembled a staff of several coaching veterans, including Cisco as his pitching coach. While with the club, Cisco helped guide young pitchers including Randy Wolf, Robert Person and Paul Byrd. The Phillies, clearly going through a rebuilding phase, lost 94 games in 1997, had a few semi-respectable years in 1998 and 1999, and then lost 97 games in 2000. Francona was dismissed following the 2000 season, with most of his coaching staff - Cisco, hitting coach Hal McRae, first base coach Brad Mills and bench coach Chuck Cottier - going with him. Cisco appeared in four Phillies team-issued photo card sets during his tenure as the team's pitching coach.
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First Mainstream Card: 1962 Topps #301
Topps Flagship Set Appearances (8): 1962-1965, 1967, 1969, 1973-1974
Most Recent Mainstream Card: 1974 Topps #166
50 - Cisco non-parallel baseball cards in the Beckett online database as of 1/22/22.
Sources:
Baseball Reference
Beckett Database
SABR
The Trading Card Database
Wikipedia
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Next Card: #365 Jim Gentile - Kansas City Athletics
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