Play Ball! Celebrating the Game(s) with Some Action Cards

Mementos from our seasons in the sun

Actual Spring Training games got underway this week, which means we’re seeing some real baseball action for the first time in nearly four months.

To celebrate, how about a romp through some action-packed baseball cards of our (relative) youth?

Yeah, sounds like a swell idea to me.

Here are five gems to get us started …

1971 Topps Bud Harrelson (#355)

In terms of figuring out who the featured player is, this card is a mess.

Sure, Topps says it’s Bud Harrelson, but it just as easily could belong to the second baseman (Al Weis? Ken Boswell?).

Or the Giants runner (Bonds?) .

Or even the umpire.

And Nolan Ryan is unmistakable in the foreground.

It’s pure confusion.

But from a baseball action standpoint, this card is exquisite, and one you could study for hours.

1978 Topps Len Randle (#544)

The 1977 Mets and Padres each lost more than 90 games, but one of their matchups that summer gave Topps the chance to whip up this perfectly color-coordinated action-packed masterpiece.

There is probably more than one specific possible explanation for the play shown on this card, but I’m going with Lenny Randle’s seventh-inning triple at Shea Stadium on July 30.

That’s predicated on the notion that left fielder Jerry Turner ran in to cover third, of which I have no other specific evidence.

It’s a particularly appealing idea since Turner himself led off the game with his own triple, against Nino Espinosa.

1982 Topps Fred Lynn In Action (#252)

The strike-torn 1981 season was a mess in so many ways that you pretty much lose count right after “Rollie Fingers, MVP.”

But Fred Lynn sort of epitomized the whole thing, starting with a contract snafu that would have made him a free agent had the Red Sox not traded him to the Angels in January and culminated with an ugly .219 batting average in just 76 games, thanks largely to a knee injury.

In between, though, Lynn got some time in the sun with his new team. He looks young and crisp and color-coded on this “hockey stick” 1982 Topps In Action deal.

It’s a nod to those countless moments in every game, in every season — in every life, if you’ll forgive the drippy sentiment — when time stops, for just a wink, and anything seems possible.

1983 Topps Fernando Valenzuela (#40)

Spring of 1983 was when baseball finally sucked me in, after a couple years of “collecting” that including beating the heck out of whatever cards came my way because they were just toys.

Those 1983 sets will always stand among my favorites, and some of the individual cards were directly responsible for my hopeless cardboard situation today.

This Fernando was one of them.

I’d heard of Fernando by then, of course, because you pretty much had to have been snarled in a Van Winkle nap to not have felt the rumblings from Fernandomania.

But when I pulled this card from a pack, I was mesmerized — by the sunshine and the name and the unusual setting that could have been a Little League dugout.

And also by Fernando’s chin shining in the afternoon brilliance, looking like an actual baseball glued to the bottom of his face.

1985 Donruss Action All-Stars Dave Parker (#35)

For a variety of reasons, the Reds were my team when I started breathing baseball that spring 40 years ago now.

Still are.

And, for most of that run, they’ve been mediocre, bad, or terrible.

They were bad-to-terrible in both 1983 and 1984, finishing last and next-to-last in the old National League West, respectively.

But in between, in December of 1983, hope glimmered on the Riverfront when Cincy surprisingly signed free agent slugger Dave Parker.

Suddenly, we had a Big Name to root for, even if he was flawed.

The following summer Cobra provided pretty much all the fireworks until Pete Rose returned as player-manager in August.

And then, with his hometown feet fully under him, Parker broke out the big stick in 1985, treating us to a summer full of vicious swings like we see on this beautiful — if seldom appreciated — baseball card.

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As always, I’d love to hear about some of your favorite game-action baseball cards. You can never have too much diamond beauty in your life, after all!

Until next time, enjoy the games and whatever signs of spring might be nibbling around the edges in your corner of the world.

Thanks for reading.

—Adam