Dec 11, 2009

Happy Card Day: 1972 Topps League Leaders

After purchasing the Steve Carlton league leader card from this year pictured here, I decided to indulge myself in as many as the league leader cards as possible from the set. The whimsy and greatness of 1972 Topps has already been espoused by more notable people such as Dinged Corners. Here are the cards I have so far for this subset.



The MVP of the league makes an appearance along with the superdurable Wood who both posted ERAs under 2. Wood was begining a string of 4 straight seasons with more than 320 innings and 5 straight with more than 42 starts.
Seaver was head and shoulders above the other pitchers and was angry about not winning the Cy Young.

Killebrew was the only hitter in the league to crack 100 RBIs in1971 with 119.

This was Torre's MVP year where he led the league in four categories and posted a 171 OPS+, though amazing, wasn't as good as Stargell's (185) or Aaron's (a career high 194 at the age of 37). By any measure, these were the three best hitters in the league in 1971.

On a side note, I would love to see a hit by pitches leader card for this year. Ron Hunt had 50! in 1971 without body armor. How many bruises can a baseball cause over a season? Now that is a question for the ages. Ron Hunt might have the answer.

1 comment:

Field of Cards said...

That Vida Blue, Wilbur Wood, Jim Palmer card is perfect. There are so many stories about all three of those players. A lot of historical facts in those dudes.

Blue with a 24-8, 1.82 era, CY/MVP at age 21.

Wood with a 24-20 record one season.

And Palmer with his three Cy Young awards while winning 20 games or more eight times in a nine year period.

And that's just the tip of their stories.

Great card.