5 Cards that Party Like It's 1969

Or 1983, as the case may be

The two League Championship Series get started this week, which means it’s the time of year old-timers like me get to pretend like baseball is the same as it used to be.

Regular Season + ALCS + NLCS = World Series

All it takes is a bout of selective short-term memory.

(If you’re a pre-1969 old-timer, just hold on a couple of weeks, and then you can pretend, too.)

And as long as we’re being selective about memories as the LCSs get rolling, let’s break out some classic LCS baseball cards to pop the cork.

(Note: The following sections contain affiliate links to eBay listings for the cards being discussed.)

1970 Topps Seaver Wins Opener! (#198)

This is the first ever Topps card dedicated to the League Championship Series, and featuring Tom Seaver was a fitting way to start. Seaver’s Game 1 over the Atlanta Braves was a harbinger of the magic the Miracle Mets had in store for the baseball world that October.

And it only hurts a little, and just deep down, that the pic from 1969 looks like it might have been snapped in 1869.

1971 Topps Reds Celebrate! (#202)

Yeah, baby! This one belongs to the Reds!!!

The 1970 team was the first time the Big Red Machine started to rev its engine, even though it would be a few years before Cincy augmented their horsepower and ran away from the field.

They’d run into an untouchable Orioles pitching staff (though the Reds did score some runs) and a human vacuum cleaner named Brooks in the 1970 World Series, but this black-bordered beauty is still pretty cool.

As the man’s jersey says … Bravo!

1973 Topps Foster’s Run Decides It (#202)

This is one of those cards that I have rarely seen in the wild, so it always surprises me when I do see it.

It feels new each time.

And, yeah, it’s another Reds card — I’m a homer — but so what. Where else you going to find George Foster, Pete Rose, and Alex Grammas romping around the green-painted asphalt in their Garanimals with the blue haze of smoke we used to call air settling gently about them?

See how great it is?

1974 Topps A.L. Playoffs 1973 (#470)

Reggie sort of stunk it up on the 1973 ALCS, which makes him sort of a funny choice for this card … until you consider that he’d go on to win World Series MVP honors just a couple of weeks later.

That laid another brick in the Mr. October wall and was enough to make Topps pretend, too … that he deserved the ALCS cardboard nod.

1981 Topps A.L. Championships (#401)

This is one of the few LCS or World Series cards I ever pulled live from a real wax pack, because Topps stopped celebrating October after Fleer and Donruss stole their cheese.

And this was so early in my “collecting” career that I hated every card I pulled. I wanted toys, not paper.

Even so, this one immediately struck me as dramatic, even though I didn’t know what a Brett was or understand how the words on the card fit together to make any sort of sense.

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This list leaves out some great cards, like the complete run of 1975 Topps postseason Chiclets, for example.

So go ahead and root through your own stores of October cards to find the ones that make you sing — we have a complete rundown of Topps World Series cards on the blog if you need some inspiration.

Until next time, enjoy the LCS action, and keep partying like it’s 1969 … or 1983 … or 1993. Not so much any year after that, though.

Thanks for reading.

—Adam