5 Baseball Cards that Sneaked into the Batting Race
And one to grow on...and to inspire all the rest
Howdy,
Tomorrow is George Vukovich’s birthday, and I ended up writing about him for tomorrow’s daily newsletter. Something I learned while putting that piece together was that Vukovich ended up on the fringes of the 1984 American League batting race, which counts as at least a mid-level surprise.
Sandwiching a .304 between a .247 and a .244 is not something most players do (or at least did before “batting average doesn’t matter” became a battle cry).
So in the spirit of Vukovich’s (distant) flirtation with Don Mattingly, Dave Winfield, and Wade Boggs, here are the baseball cards of five other guys who made surprise runs at a batting title, but didn’t quite get there.
1976 Topps Von Joshua (#82)
From 1969 through 1974, Von Joshua appeared in 253 major league games, came to the plate 436 times, and hit .246, all for the Dodgers.
Los Angeles had seen enough and placed Joshua on waivers in January of 1975. But heading into his age-27 season, Joshua was in his physical prime, and the division-rival San Francisco Giants came calling
The Giants themselves were pretty milquetoast that summer, finishing 80-81 and in third place in the old National League West. But Joshua spent most of the season in centerfield and hit a fairly blistering .318, good enough for seventh in the Senior Circuit, right between Steve Garvey and Pete Rose.
The next year, Topps gave us this busy but pretty cool card of Joshua, his first in orange and black.
From there, Joshua lasted less than half the 1976 season in San Fran before the Giants told him to the Brewers. After a season-plus of OK hitting in Milwaukee, it was a quick decline, and Joshua was out of the game by the end of 1980.
He never again hit higher than .282, with a .238 thrown in, and the .260s his usual neighborhood. Overall, Joshua hit .273 in parts of ten big league seasons.
Joshua didn’t quite bring a batting title to San Francisco, but neither did anyone else in the Giants’ first 44 seasons in the Bay.
1980 Topps Miguel Dilone (#541)
Entering the 1980 season, Miguel Dilone had played more than 73 games in the big leagues just one time — he hit .229 in 135 games for the 1978 A’s. That summer, he also “led” the American League by getting caught stealing 23 times.
Dilone split 1979 between Oakland and the Cubs and hit just .220 overall. He did manage a more optimistic .306 in 43 games with Chicago, but that encompassed just 38 plate appearances.
Even with that relatively lofty batting mark, the Cubs had no place for him in 1980 and sold him to the Indians in May. That relationship clicked right away, and Dilone played in 132 games that summer, mostly in the outfield, including 119 starts.
More importantly, he found his batting stroke, batting a robust .341. That would have copped the crown in many seasons, but of course 1980 was the year George Brett made his run at .400. And Cecil Cooper had a career year, too, batting .352.
While Dilone was unleashing his own big year — which included 61 stolen bases — you gotta figure Cubs collectors were eating their hearts out every time this card popped out of a pack.
Dilone never scaled those heights again, hitting .290 in 1981 and .278 in 1984, but he only managed as many as 100 games one more time, in 1980. But if it weren’t for a couple of breakouts from superstars, Dilone might well have retired with a batting title to his name.
1982 Topps Leon Durham (#607)
By 1982, Leon Durham already had plenty of weight on his shoulders. That’s just what happened when you showed an ability to hit home runs in St. Louis in the 1980s, and especially when you were traded for Bruce Sutter, as Durham was after the 1980 season.
The Bull continued his upward trajectory with 10 home runs for the Cubs in the strike-shortened 1981 season, too. And that’s what Durham was really expected to supply — big power.
Despite hitting .300 most years in the minors and .290 in 1981, most folks expected more Reggie Jackson than Rod Carew from the young slugger.
And Durham delivered more of the same in 1982, clubbing 22 home runs and driving in 90. But he also showed a polished eye at the plate and came away from his first full season with a .312 batting mark, good for third in the National League behind Al Oliver and Bill Madlock.
Looking back, Durham’s dalliance with the upper reaches of a batting race looks even more out of place, considering he never hit higher than .282 again and finished his career with a .277 average.
Nothing to sneeze at, of course, but not quite the rare air Durham was swatting through as collectors ogled his 1982 Topps baseball card.
1986 Topps Kevin Bass (#458)
Bass was sort of like Durham, at least in the sense of showing some pop in a place where home runs went to die. That would be the Astrodome in Bass’s case. He also didn’t come with quite the hype that Durham did, though he was part of the deal that sent Don Sutton to the Brewers.
After some part-time roles in 1982 and 1983, though, Bass found a more regular gig in 1984. By 1985, he was more or less Houston’s regular rightfielder. He also quickly established himself as a 20/20 threat and a stealth All-Star candidate.
What Bass didn’t do, though, was hit for average. Entering the 1986 season, he sported a .253 mark after hitting a then-career-high .269 in 1985.
But it was no coincidence the Atros made their run to an N.L. West title and a showdown with the Mets in the NLCS the same year Bass hit his own peak. That summer, Bass clubbed 20 homers, drove in 79 runs, and stole 22 bases.
Oh, he also hit .311, good for fourth in the National League.
Suddenly, it was sort of cool to pull a Kevin Bass baseball card.
From that point forward, Bass hit .300 or better two more times, but he played fewer than 90 games in each of those seasons. And when his career was done, he had hit .270 over parts of 14 summers in the majors.
1987 Topps Larry Sheets (#552)
The way I remember it, Larry Sheets was the biggest “prospect” of all the guys on this list, at least in terms of the hobby. You can thank the times he played in and his particular player profile for that: Sheets was a power hitter debuting in the heart of the rookie card craze.
Sheets’ minor league numbers suggested he might someday have a chance at hitting .300 in the big leagues, too. He hit above three bills three times in the Orioles farm system, after all, including a .302 mark for Triple-A Rochester in 1984.
But his first full(ish) seasons in the majors, 1985 and 1986, were a bit tougher in that regard for Sheets, who hit .262 and .272. He also struck out a lot — maybe not by today’s standards, but he fanned 50+ times each of those summers in about a half-season’s worth of at-bats.
Sheets was ready to take full advantage of the launching pad otherwise known as the 1987 season, though. Starting 128 games, mostly split between left and right fields, Sheets connected on 31 bombs, drove in 94, and hit .316. That batting mark landed him in ninth place in the American League, between Julio Franco and Robin Yount.
The Orioles were terrible that year and would be worse in 1988, but collectors were more than happy to pull a woodgrained Sheets all summer long. It also sent us scrambling to dig up his 1985 and 1986 rookie and first-by-company cards.
Alas and alack, Sheets cratered to .230 with just 10 long balls in 1988, and you can make chicken-and-egg arguments about how much he contributed to the O’s collapse and how much the team malaise contributed to his spiral.
The Orioles made a spectacular turnaround in 1989, no thanks to their primary DH — Sheets, that is — who hit .243 with seven homers.
He would be gone to Detroit in 1990 (for the late Mike Brumley), out of baseball in 1991, in Japan in 1992, and then back in the States for one last hurrah with the Mariners. In all, Sheets batted .266 in parts of eight major league seasons.
A brief interlude for a question I asked over on the daily newsletter —thought I’d ask you, too…
In the course of researching and writing this newsletter, I often come across fascinating (to me, at least) pieces of baseball history that I didn’t know about.
Like how Lou Gehrig and Dave Van Gorder debuted on the same day (OK, give or take 59 years).
Or how Joe Morgan’s last game took out a few other hobby regulars — if not exactly stars — of the 1980s.
Or how George Vukovich, Von Joshua, Miguel Dilone, Kevin Bass, and Larry Sheets made stealth
Anyway, some of these tidbits end up in posts, but most of them either just wink at me on my way to wherever I’m going or end up on the cutting room floor.
So my question is, would you be interested in reading one or a series of short ebooks, each focused on a particular (maybe obscure) topic from baseball history? You know, along the lines of what I described above?
If I went down this road, the current format of this (free) newsletter would remain the same, but I’d make the ebooks available as part of a paid subscription and/or through platforms like Kindle, Kobo, etc.
Let me know what you think!
Now, regarding those ephemeral “average” stars…do you remember any of these flirtations with the batting leaderboards? And did you buy into any of them?
I’ve generally been more likely to pin my hopes on a 15-homer guy turning into a 30-homer guy than on a .308 guy turning into a .350 guy. But I was pretty convinced, once upon a time, that Tony Fernandez would win a batting title someday.
As it turned out, he gave it a good ride four or five times in his career.
Speaking of rides, it’s time to exit this one for another week.
Thanks for reading.
—Adam
Von Joshua hit the first homer I saw live. He was a Brewer. It was my first game; a doubleheader at Royals Stadium. Hank Aaron played as well. A magical day I will never forget.