1975 Topps Jim Rice

Well, if we do a card for one Gold Dust Twin, we have to do the other, right? As with Freddie Lynn, Jim Rice was stuck in a 4-in-1 rookie timeshare card. Here's Jim Ed in his rightful solo glory.

Advanced 1970s-80s Red Sox collectors will notice I swiped this Rice pic from the 1980 Topps Superstar Photo set, with the blue facsimile sig changed to black. This photo might be from spring training 1979, when the Red Sox ditched their 1975-78 red hats for the classic blue versions, but kept the pullover jerseys until opening day, when they returned to the pre-1972 button-down jerseys and belted pants.

Chad Finn's wonderful countdown/nostalgia trip of the Top 50 Red Sox Prospects of the Past 50 Years ranks Rice at No. 1.

Speaking of the Spirit of '75, we're going to celebrate the 1975 World Series soon with a series of 1976 Topps World Series cards. Each card will be posted on the 40th anniversary of the day the game was was played, which means Game 1 is coming up in two days. Check it out!

1941 Goudey Lefty Grove

During its short life on earth, the Boston-based Goudey Gum Co., made some of the most beloved and influential baseball-card sets of all time.

The 1941 set is not one of them.

The '41 set, Goudey's dying last gasp of a set, displays none of the hallmarks that made its cards so popular during the 1930s. Blank backs. Black and white photos. (And why are the logos airbrushed out? What is this, the King-B beef jerky set?) A cheesy "Big LEAGUE Gum" logo in the corner. A stark yellow background. Or red. Or blue. Or green. Each of the 33 players came with four different backgrounds. It's as if Goudey didn't have enough players and this was its way of padding out the checklist. Does this mean Goudey invented parallel cards?

Ah, the player selection. It sucks. Mel Ott and Carl Hubbell and the biggest names. This would be like a modern set whose only good players are Felix Hernandez and Giancarlo Stanton, and the rest of the player roster is filled out with the Jeremy Guthries of the world.

The lone Red Sox player in the '41 set is a pitcher named Emerson Dickman, who compiled a 22-15 record despite a 5.33 ERA (good run support, you say?). His main claim to fame is coaching Princeton to its only College World Series appearance, in 1951, which is pretty neat.

Here are my '41 Goudey creations of a Sox pitcher of slightly greater stature: Lefty Grove, who won his 300th and final game that year before retiring. The card is numbered 36. And where are Nos. 34 and 35? They'll pop up on this blog eventually. ...

1975 Hostess Marichal, Cooper

Nineteen seventy-five was a watershed year for a few reasons:

1) I was born;
2) The Red Sox went to the World Series;
3) Hostess began its five-year run of baseball cards.

Any baseball fan who grew up in the 1970s likely has fond memories of chowing through a combination of flour, artificial chocolate flavoring and high-fructose corn syrup while cutting a Pete Rose or Mike Schmidt off a box of Hostess dessert-like product. Of course, any youngster with a Hostess card was likely to "adorn" it with jagged edges and cupcake stains. It may have ruined the monetary value, but likely sent the nostalgia value through the roof. 

Here are a couple of '75 Hostess cards that didn't make the cut: past-his-prime Hall of Famer Juan Marichal, who pitched for the Sox in '74, and first baseman Cecil Cooper, who went on to greater success with the Brewers from 1977-87 while the Sox plowed through a half-dozen or so first basemen. 

Marichal-with-the-Sox is a popular fantasy card subject, but I'm pretty certain this is his first Hostess creation. Have some Ho-Hos and celebrate!

1974 Topps Jim Rice

A little while back, we looked at the mythical 1974 Fred Lynn card. Here's the version for his Gold Dust Twin, Jim Rice. I used a photo from the 1987 Kmart boxed-set card (see below), one of the few Rice pix out there with the pullover jersey and blue hat, which the Sox wore from 1972-74 and again in spring training '79. I dunno, I always thought it was a strange combo. I've always identified the pullover shirts with the red hats, and one without the other is just ... wrong.

 

Much like pig and elephant DNA, red Red Sox hats and button-down jerseys
just don't splice.

Welcome Aboard!

Hi, and welcome to the Lost Sox Drawer. This blog is going to take a coulda-shoulda-woulda of Red Sox cards and turn them into reality. 

Roger Clemens didn’t have a 1984 Topps Traded card, but he will now. Hawk Harrelson never had a good Topps Red Sox card, but that will be fixed here. Gary Gaetti’s glorious five-game stint with the Sox never produced a baseball card, but that blight on society will be corrected.

The cards featured here can be divided into roughly three categories:

Cards That Never Were: Think a 1982 Wade Boggs (he was on the Sox roster that whole year but was inexplicably left out of the Topps Traded set), a 1955 Topps Jimmy Piersall (he was an exclusive with Bowman, Topps’ main competitor from 1951-55) or a 1978 Hostess Fred Lynn (left out of a couple of the popular 1970s Hostess sets — perhaps he had endorsement deal with a competing bakery?).

New and Improved: Where sub-par cards of a Sox player get a badly-needed makeover. Think the 1975 Topps Fred Lynn and Jim Rice rookie cards (forced into a timeshare with three other rookies), a 1986 Topps Traded Tom Seaver (the legend gets a crappy airbrush job) or a 1968 Topps Hawk Harrelson (an old Washington Senators photo is used instead of a fresh Red Sox picture).

You Mean He Played for the Sox?!: For guys you may not have known suited up for the Red Sox. This includes veterans who were cut/demoted in spring training, players who were with the Sox for a week and were designated for assignment or minor leaguers who were dealt away and became stars elsewhere. Think Chris Bosio, Mark Prior, Gary Gaetti, Ryan Roberts, Jose Cruz Jr., Joe Oliver, Anibal Sanchez and Anthony Rizzo.

Of note: As we get into the 90s and 2000s, baseball card designs become more complicated, with fancy graphics and enough foil stamping to wrap up your leftovers. From 2001 onward, I find it easier to use the Topps Heritage designs for our lost Sox. Besides, Topps has been using the same damn design since 2009 for its base set anyway, so that’s no fun.

Another note: This could not have been possible without the Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book, which pretty much set the template for the modern baseball card blogosphere. Its unique blend of nostalgia, whimsy and snark has been often imitated, never duplicated … or is that often duplicated, never imitated? I could never get that right. 

One final thing: Don’t take anything I say too seriously. Have fun.

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Ted Williams wasn’t a leadoff batter, but he’ll be the first to the plate in this blog. Everyone’s done a fantasy 1952 Topps Williams (he was in Korea that year, and didn’t appear in any card sets), so I’ll throw my hat in the ring:

And here’s a 1949 Bowman. Some of baseball’s bigger stars (Williams, DiMaggio, Musial) weren’t in the early Bowman sets. Perhaps they asked for more money? We’ll probably never know. I love this picture, which is originally in color, so I had to downgrade it to make it adhere to '49 Bowman standards:

And if you’re a football fan, particularly New England college football, check out my other blog at gridiriongarb.blospot.com, in which I look at the history of the region’s college football uniforms. Give it a look-see.