Wednesday, August 24, 2011

1980 TCMA Quad City Cubs Baseball #5, Tom Morris

TCMA produced 45 numbered team sets in 1980 and the Quad City Cubs mark my 21st blog post about them, so we're almost halfway done. Today's set used the economical black-and-white player photos, a fairly plain card compared to teams like the sun-drenched Hawaii Islanders (#5 profile).


Best thing about this card: Tom Morris and ESPN's Mel Kiper, Jr., separated at birth.


Tom Morris's pro career ended after just two seasons in the Quad Cities, a four-town metro area that spans the Iowa-Illinois border and our fair Mississippi River. It's not clear whether he stuck with baseball in another capacity after he hung up the spikes. (See the 1975 Quad City #5 profile for more about my Quad City baseball experiences and its mid-70s squad, the single-A Angels.)


I'm surprised this card doesn't include any 1979 stats, since Tom kept the same uniform in 1980 and TCMA had printed cards for Iowa franchises since the mid-70s and knew the area. Perhaps the team itself kept dodgy stats; his career stats page shows few details outside of an 0-7 record.

Value: This #5 cost a couple of dollars on Beckett Marketplace, like most non-star minor league singles.

Fakes / reprints: Haven't seen any reprinted TCMA cards.

3 comments:

Mad Guru said...

Spooky resemblance.

Anonymous said...

Tom is Jack Morris' younger brother . He had a legendary curve from the left side....a playground and high school legend from St.Paul Minn.

Matthew Glidden said...

No kidding! I guess we know a little better what Jack Morris would look like without a mustache...