#420 Larry Jackson - Chicago Cubs

Lawrence Curtis Jackson
Chicago Cubs
Pitcher

Bats:  Right  Throws:  Right  Height:  6'1"  Weight:  175
Born:  June 2, 1931, Nampa, ID
Signed:  Signed by the St. Louis Cardinals as an amateur free agent before 1951 season
Major League Teams:  St. Louis Cardinals 1955-1962; Chicago Cubs 1963-1966; Philadelphia Phillies 1966-1968
Died:  August 28, 1990, Boise, ID (age 59)

One of the most underrated National League starting pitchers for 14 seasons, Larry Jackson won 14 or more games 10 times, leading the league in wins with 24 in 1964.  His 194 career wins are the most for any right-handed pitcher since 1900 who never played for a first place team and therefore never reached the postseason.  A reliable workhorse, Jackson made the All-Star team in 1957, 1958, 1960 and 1963.

He led the league in games started (38) and innings pitched (282) in 1960 and topped the league in 1966 with five shutouts.  He was also an outstanding fielder, as demonstrated by his perfect fielding percentages in 1957, 1964, 1965 and 1968.  Pitching for mostly bad teams, Jackson nevertheless compiled a lifetime record of 194-183 with a 3.40 ERA.  Drafted by the Expos in the 1968 expansion draft, Jackson chose to retire rather than report to Montreal.  He'd later serve four terms in the Idaho House of Representatives and ran for governor of the state in 1978.

Some text for this post originally appeared on my 1956 Topps blog.

Building the Set
March 6, 2022 from The Philly Show (Sports Cards Plus - Cooper City, FL) - Card #573

This is the 89th of 102 cards acquired for our set from the Baseball Card Sports Memorabilia Show, affectionately known as The Philly Show, held in the basement of the Valley Forge Casino Resort in King of Prussia in early March.  We went nuts and left the show needing only 12 more cards to complete our 1965 Topps set, and I wrote about the show in detail over at The Phillies Room.  After our 51 card haul from Uncle Dick's, and with more card spending budget still in place, I set out to find another dealer with a binder of 1965 Topps cards with reasonable prices.  I had purchased cards from Sports Cards Plus before, finding the last few cards needed for our 1971 Topps set from this dealer back in December 2019.

Settling in, we found 37 cards needed for our set with an average price per card working out to around $6.  The lot, including this Jackson card, consisted mostly of semi-stars and team cards.  After paying for this mini haul, we were officially 13 cards away from a complete set, with one more purchase coming to end the day.

The Card / Cubs Team Set
This is Jackson's second appearance in the set, as he's front and center on the 1964 Pitching Leaders card (#10) with Juan Marichal (#50) and Ray Sadecki (#230).  The back of the card highlights his 28 wins while pitching for  the Class C Fresno Cardinals in 1952.  As mentioned above, and on the back of this card by Topps, Jackson was also one of the best fielding pitchers of his era.

1965 Season
Coming off his career-year and 24-win season, Jackson was again a workhorse in the Cubs' starting pitching rotation, making 39 starts and pitching at least 250 innings for the fourth season in a row.  The Cubs were not a good team though, and his record of 14-21 reflected that.  Jackson had a 3.85 ERA, pitching 12 complete games and throwing four shutouts.

Phillies Career

The Phillies acquired Jackson and Bob Buhl (#264) from the Chicago Cubs on April 21, 1966 for three questionable prospects - John Herrnstein (#534), Adolfo Phillips and Fergie Jenkins, who would go on to enjoy a Hall of Fame career.  Jackson slid into the Phillies pitching rotation behind Jim Bunning (#20) and Chris Short, recording a 41-45 record over three seasons with a respectable 2.95 ERA.  He led the Phillies staff with a 2.77 ERA in 1968, but the team decided to leave the 37-year-old veteran unprotected in that offseason's expansion draft.  Selected by the Expos, Jackson held true to a promise he had made to retire unless he was playing for a west coast team.  As compensation for losing Jackson, the Phillies sent infielder Bobby Wine (#36) to the Expos, who became the team's first regular shortstop.

Jackson appears with the Phillies in the 1966, 1967 and 1968 Topps sets and he also received a few Phillies photo cards and oddball cards from that era.

1956 Topps #119

1959 Topps #399

1962 Topps #83

1964 Topps #444

1968 Topps #81

Other Notable Baseball Cards
First Mainstream Card:  1956 Topps #119
Topps Flagship Set Appearances (13):  1956-1968
Most Recent Mainstream Card:  1978 TCMA The 1960s I #286

73 - Jackson non-parallel baseball cards in the Beckett online database as of 9/3/22.

Sources:  
1956 Topps Blog

Baseball Reference
Beckett Database
The Phillies Room
SABR
The Trading Card Database

Wikipedia

Previous Card:  #419 Ruben Amaro - Philadelphia Phillies

Next Card:  #421 Twins Rookie Stars

#10 1964 N.L. Pitching Leaders - Jackson, Marichal & Sadecki

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.

Building the Set
July 8, 2020 from Cincinnati, OH - Card #116
In need of some cardboard therapy as we approached the four month anniversary of the start of our social distancing, I went on a mini eBay binge the first week of July.  We had a vacation planned for the last week of June, first week of July, and that vacation had been unceremoniously cancelled at some point in April.  Major League Baseball was showing signs of coming back, the Black Lives Matter movement was finally gaining momentum, the pandemic showed no signs of going away any time soon and a complete lack of intelligent national leadership wasn't helping anything or anybody.  I needed some old baseball cards.

17 cards arrived on July 8th, including this pitching leaders card purchased from Dean's Cards for $10.50.  I browsed the Dean's Cards eBay store, setting a reasonable budget and determined to click Buy It Now on 10 cards.  Another group of 7 cards were won in eBay auctions from Greg Morris Cards on the same day.  The 17 cards added put us just over the 20% completion point for our 1965 Topps set.

The Card / Cubs Team Set / Giants Team Set / Cardinals Team Set
I've always wondered why Topps labelled these cards "Pitching Leaders" and not "Victory Leaders" since they were showcasing the pitchers with the most wins?  Admittedly, I'm way more familiar with Juan Marichal (#50) than I am with either Larry Jackson (#420) or Ray Sadecki (#230), and Jackson even played for the Phillies for three seasons.

1964 was Jackson's best season statistically speaking, as he went 24-11 with a 3.14 ERA, finishing second in the Cy Young voting behind the Angels' Dean Chance (#140).  He would have won the award if it had been split between leagues at the time, but Major League Baseball didn't start awarding two Cy Young Awards - one for each league - until 1967.  Jackson had never won 20 games before in his career, and he wouldn't repeat the feat again.  He won 14 games for the Cubs in 1965 and was a 15-game winner with the Phillies in 1966.  His 24 wins are even more impressive when measured against the Cubs performance for the entire year.  The Cubs won 76 games in 1964, with Jackson winning almost a third of those games.

Future Hall of Famer Marichal won 21 games in 1964 and he'd reach the 20-win plateau in six of his 16 seasons in the majors.  Marichal topped the league in wins in 1963 with 25 and 1968 with 26.  This was Sadecki's only 20-win season and while he'd pitch until 1977 he'd never win more than 12 in a season again.  Sadecki's 20th win came on September 29th, and if not for that win there would have been a five-way tie for third place in the N.L. victories category.

Previous Card:  #9 1964 A.L. Pitching Leaders

Next Card:  #11 1964 A.L. Strikeout Leaders