5 Baseball Cards at the End of the Road
5 Baseball Cards at the End of the Road
Each one like a ball drop in a wax pack
Hey you … Happy New Year!
With 2023 ending and 2024 about to begin, I had a choice to make when it came to how to regale you with baseball cards that fit the occasion.
Do I celebrate new beginnings?
Or do I rue old endings?
Couldn’t decide, so I compromised — let’s celebrate some cardboard endings!
So off we go…
1955 Bowman George Susce (#320)
George Daniel Susce was the “son” half of a father-son duo that began with his dad, George Cyril Methodius Susce. The elder George Bush Susce was a catcher who spent eight years in the major leagues from 1929 through 1944, but mostly in the forties and mostly for the Indians — year-wise.
Mostly for the St. Louis Browns, game-wise.
But back to George “junior” …
This George Susce was a pitcher from 1955 through 1959, spending parts of four summers with the Red Sox, parts of two with the Tigers.
And even though George the Younger didn’t debut in the bigs until April of 1955, that was early enough to land him a spot on the end of Bowman’s checklist later that year.
He barely squeezed into the Bowman scene at all, since this was the company’s last baseball card ever before the big bad Topps wolf came along and blew their house of cards in.
1970 Topps Seattle Pilots (#713)
“Woohoo!” said Seattle baseball fans in 1968 when the Seattle Pilots officially winked into existence with the approval of the future Kingdome.
“We’ll get ‘em next year — maybe next decade,” said those self-same fans when the Pilots were expansion-terrible in 1969 (64-98-1).
“I’m telling everything,” said hurler Jim Bouton when he wrote Ball Four, partially a chronicle of that first season in the Emerald City, released in June of 1970.
“Here, have a look at your team,” said Topps when they drew up card #713 in their 1970 set, the first Pilots team card.
And, well, the last Pilots team card.
Because, before the 1970 season ever even twinkled …
“I’ll take those losers off your hands,” used car salesman Bud Selig told Pilots owner Dewey Soriano.
And then, on the way out the door, “Oh, I’m moving them to Milwaukee.”
1980 Topps Steve Yeager (#726)
After Topps dispatched Bowman to the commons bin of history, never to be seen again (where “never”==“not until 1989”), they had the hobby to themselves for a quarter century.
Give or take a cherry cookie from Fleer here or a black-and-white photo-booth snapshot from Leaf there.
But in 1980, Fleer’s many-years antitrust lawsuit against The Real One was winding down.
Fleer won a $1 settlement, the right to produce baseball cards, and the right to compete against Donruss for the title of Most Putrid Newcomer in 1981.
Before Topps could “welcome” the new kids onto the playing field, though, they were delighting collectors with one last solo effort.
And the very last card in the very last base set from the First Topps Kingdom was none other than Dodgers catcher Steve Yeager.
He looks thrilled — thrilled, I say — to have had such an honor bestowed upon him. Or he got a Dodger Dog caught sideways.
1992 O-Pee-Chee Dave Winfield (#792)
Starting in 1965, gum-maker O-Pee-Chee (OPC) worked with Topps to produce a set of cards for the Canadian market that paralleled the base Topps issue for a given year.
Some years, OPC covered the entire Topps checklist, some years only part of it. There were always some interesting wrinkles that made OPC cards interesting, like white cardstock instead of the Topps brown mush, bilingual (French and English) copy, and on-card “traded” stamps.
Then, in 1991, O-Pee-Chee branched out on their own with Premier, a standalone foray into the premium card market. But they also kept the Topps relationship burning.
And that flame flickered again in 1992 before the cross-border ties were severed for good.
The last OPC parallel of a Topps card? Yeah, it’s the one above, showing future Hall of Famer Dave Winfield with the Angels, even though he was by then “Now with Blue Jays.”
That fall (1992), the big man helped the Blue Jays — and Canada — win their first-ever World Series, completing some sort of baseball-baseball card cosmic loop.
1994 Fleer Mike Piazza & Eric Karros (#713)
In 1982, Fleer “wowed” the world with a run of special cards at the end of their set, beginning with an aerial shot of the All-Star Game in Cleveland (#628).
The hit parade continued with “Pete and Re-Pete”, “Red Sox Reunion”, and “Dynamic Duo.”
Fleer would up their game the next year (1983), with pun fun entries like “Smith Bros.”, “Black & Blue”, “The Silver Shoe”, and other gems. Not only that, they christened their campy subset “Super Star Specials.”
The silliness became a tradition and ran all the way through the 1994 Fleer set. That’s when the Superstar Specials (“Super” and “Star” had found each other and merged auras by then) ran headlong into the awe and glory of Mike Piazza and Eric Karros.
Deciding they could never again live up to the coolness of two Rookie-of-the-Year Dodgers, Fleer deep-sixed their flagship corn.
—
And that’s a wrap for 2023.
Closing time.
You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here. Well, you can, but you’ll just have to read the same words over and over again.
Until next time, at least, when there’ll be something else to talk about. There always is when baseball cards are involved.
Have a great New Year’s Eve and an even better New Year. A Gus Bell New Year.
And, yes, I’ll see you next year, with a smile on my face (you’ll just have to trust me on that part).
Thanks for reading.
—Adam
More cardboard fun: