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Card Corner, 1971 Topps: Thurman Munson

In 1971, Topps photographed players in action shots for the first time in its history. Most of the action shots are presented in the traditional portrait (or vertical) landscape. The Munson card is shown in the alternative landscape (or horizontal) format. It’s one of the best action photographs in that set. Munson is shown in the midst of a thick cloud of dirt, applying a tag to an unknown Oakland A’s player. I had originally guessed that the umpire called the Oakland runner out, based on the firm grip that Munson appears to have on the ball and the position of his glove in relation to the runner. But having looked through the 1970 box scores of the meetings between the A’s and Yankees in New York, I could not find a single instance where Munson tagged an Oakland runner out at the plate. (I also checked 1969, the year of Munson’s debut, but again found nothing.) So that left me another avenue of sleuthing: Facebook. Ahh, the trusty Facebook. I posted the image of the Munson card to my Facebook page and received several replies. With capable researchers like Jim Gagne, Darren “Repoz” Viola, David Jordan and Tom Cullen at the ready, they quickly delivered the right answer: Chuck Dobson . They identified the specific game as well: the first game of a doubleheader on July 16, 1970, won in complete game fashion by Dobson and the A’s, 8-2. And who, might you ask, is Chuck Dobson? No relation to Pat Dobson (the former Oriole, Yankee and Indian right hander), Chuck was one of Oakland’s starting pitchers, a hard-throwing third-starter type who would later develop major arm problems and miss most of the A’s world championship run from 1972 to 1974. Dobson was particularly good in 1970, when he pitched a league-leading five shutouts and won eight straight games. He led all American Leaguers in starts, but paid the price with elbow problems, which left him with a sore arm at season’s end.

Topps in the Modern Baseball Card Industry » TradingCardReviews.com

While “Traded” or “Update” sets were originally conceived to deal with players who changed teams, they became increasingly important for a reason. In order to fill out a 132-card set (the number of cards that fit on a single sheet of the uncut cardboard used in the production process), it would contain a number of rookie players who had just reached the major leagues and not previously appeared on a card. They also included a few single cards of players who previously appeared in the regular set on a multi-player “prospects” card; one notable example is the 1982 Topps Traded Cal Ripken, Jr.. Since a “rookie card” is typically the most valuable for any given player, the companies now competed to be the first to produce a card of players who might be future stars. Increasingly, they also included highly touted minor league players who had yet to play in the major leagues.

For example, Topps obtained a license to produce cards featuring the U.S. Olympic baseball team and thus produced the first card of Mark McGwire prior to his promotion to the major league level, and one that would become quite valuable to collectors for a time. This card from the 1984 squad appeared in Topps’s regular 1985 set, but by the next Olympic cycle the team’s cards had been migrated to the “Traded” set. As a further step in this race, Topps resurrected its former competitor Bowman as a subsidiary brand in 1989, with Bowman sets similarly chosen to include a lot of young players with bright prospects.

Also beginning in 1989 with the entry of Upper Deck into the market, card companies began to develop higher-end cards using improved technology. Following Topps’s example, other manufacturers now began to diversify their product lines into different sets, each catering to a different niche of the market. The initial Topps effort at producing a premium line of cards, in 1991, was called Stadium Club. Topps continued adding more sets and trying to distinguish them from each other, as did its competitors. The resulting glut of different baseball sets caused the MLBPA to take drastic measures as the market for them deteriorated. The union announced that for 2006, licenses would only be granted to Topps and Upper Deck, the number of different products would be limited, and players would not appear on cards before reaching the major leagues.

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