Baseball's Best Fifth Round Draft Picks 1970 - 74

Thanks to Immaculate Grid game #212's new category (first round draft pick) for inspiring me to bone up on MLB's Rule 4 amateur draft, which kicked off in 1965. Baseball Reference's statistical history includes Rule 4's complete record, broken down by draft phase and pick. I already covered 1965-69 in my prior post and will keep looking at five-year blocks until we run out of steam.

Two of these names from the top of 1970's fifth round found similar overall success, right around WAR's break-even point.

Pat Scanlon, who shares his name with an uncle of mine, played parts of four seasons for Montreal and San Diego. He appeared on a pair of standard cards, one SSPC...

...the other, 1978 Topps, airbrushed his Montreal cap and uniform with a foreshortened SD.

Thanks to dedicated blogger and image updater WthBalls, we can enjoy one more Scanlon, based on a real Padres photo.

As good as those three cards turned out, Pat's -0.3 career WAR sits well below our best choice for 1970.

1970: Rick Waits (14.2 WAR)

Rick turned into a Cleveland innings-eater for five years before slowing in 1982 and closing his career as a Milwaukee reliever. His first appearance (September 17, 1973, for Texas) gave him a save that might not be granted today. He pitched the ninth, gave up one run, and finished ahead by seven runs.

Easy to pick my favorite Waits card, a "waiter" card, as marked up by BaseballCardVandals.com.

1971: Charlie Moore (10.3 WAR)

Charlie's name feels more familiar than most, as a Wisconsin native and 1980s card collector. Milwaukee's "tools of ignorance" looked great in blue and gold, with Moore wearing them on cards at least twice.

Moore also spent a lot of time in right field and batted well during a 1982 postseason that brought his Brewers to the World Series against St. Louis.

1972: Randy Jones (17.8 WAR, 1976 NL Cy Young, 2x All-Star)

Randy fell a few votes short of back-to-back Cy Young awards, finishing second to Seaver in 1975 before winning the following year. His flip side Jim Palmer managed that feat, joining the cadre who won at least two in a row.

These two cards show the significance of a great mid-1970s hairdo, whether you're feeling Randy or feeling Jim.

1973: LaMarr Hoyt (12.1 WAR, 1983 AL Cy Young, 1985 All-Star)

Hoyt also led the AL in wins twice (1982-83) and picked up a Cy Young of his own. He followed Randy's example with lofty curls and classic, vintage uniforms.

As inscribed by his own hand, LaMarr started that 1985 All-Star Game (for San Diego) and took the win-plus-MVP in a 6-1 NL victory.

1974: (tie) Steve Henderson (11.5 WAR), Jim Morrison (12 WAR)

For my first time so far, two players vie for the trophy. While Henderson remains closer to my heart as a former Mariner, I prefer his Buntin' Cub 1983 card's more interesting composition.

Jim Morrison started his teen years about when the famous Jim Morrison peaked and I bet he rode a rollercoaster of seeing that name in the papers, for reasons good, bad, and ugly. In an echo of Mr. Mojo Risin's animal magnetism, Topps used portraits of Jim's handsome mug on several cards.

I give the "best pick" edge to Jim over Steve for his three scoreless pitching appearances as a 1988 Brave. Remember his name the next time IG asks for an Atlanta Brave with season ERA under 3!

Pepsi's Junior Mariners and the Deadly Ramps of the Kingdome

The Kingdome! It lived, it died, I kissed many Seattle Mariners ticket stubs goodbye.

As a young transplant to Washington state in 1979, I took to local baseball from day one, joining Pepsi's Jr. Mariners fan club and enjoying sweet swag like this iron-on patch. (Image not mine, though I owned one or two back then.)

Seattle charged $3 to join those Jr. Mariners in the early 80s, a tough-to-beat deal for bleacher seats at seven MLB games. While the M's no doubt expected parents to drive kids to games and increase their overall take, those adult seats cost just $2.50, not a big payout.

As promised, I got to be that kid, snapping an outfield photo with Mariner All-Star Bruce Bochte. Dreams come true!

Excited to be a Jr. Mariner, circa 1980

Attending several games each year made me familiar with the Kingdome's sinuous concrete ramps and exterior peccadilloes. This oversized (if distant) 1990s Griffey, Jr. poster shows what popped up around the stadium entries during baseball season. When placed well, fans climbing to upper levels saw them from close, far, and in-between.

Griffey, Jr. ramp poster, © Pete Hanson, June 27, 1999

Any posters and art stood out because Kingdome ramp designers did little to pep up their gray and featureless concourses. Each incline looked like the next, blending level-to-level upwards into Seattle's often dingy cloud cover.

One expects little from stadium concourses beyond conveyance, so this 1983 piece hints at a larger, unwelcome "design problem" -- easy access off Kingdome ramp edges into open space.

Spokane Spokesman-Review, Feb 19, 1983

You read that right, three fatal ramp falls in just sixteen months. In those days, Kingdome exterior ramp railings rose to about adult chest level, ran a flat foot wide, and then...air. No trouble at all to see a drunk dude try to impress himself by tightrope-walking, with a hard six-to-twelve stories down if you bungle it.

Ramps presented another problem beyond beers and bravado: almost everyone trudged up the whole thing, fit or not.

Spokane Daily Chronicle, Dec 8, 1978

"There are a hell of a lot of steps and it's a long way up to the top, no doubt about it." That could quote anyone with seats in the Kingdome's 300 level, no pulmonary degree required. As an excited kiddo, I skipped up that first ramp. By its top level, some counted any remaining steps in gasps.

When you visit modern ballparks with bank after bank of escalators helping fans connect floors, think of these endless Kingdome ramps sending medical crews to the top for CPR.

Ghosts of those who perished on ramps inspired something I now understand as an adult: The 1980s Kingdome "falling guy." For several years before those Griffey Jr. concourse posters, at least one level 300 concrete post sported a 30-foot-tall stick figure doing this.

And then at level 200, this.

And then level 100, this.

In other words, someone with authority over Kingdome decor decided to warn people with these midair consequences of testing your balance after some beers. No text accompanied this falling guy, so you can debate whether this qualifies as a serious warning or macabre pop art.

As a kid, I knew nothing of people dying on its ramps, so Kingdome's falling guy became my earliest concrete memory of black humor. Imagine Seattle's facility administrator taking the trouble to design this person spinning to their death and posting it where thousands of fans would see it coming and going to their fun night out. "Nothing lasts forever, people," falling guy says, "this could be you, someday."

Falling guy met his own end, in the end. By 1990, the Kingdome beefed up those exterior rails, replacing "walk-on-me" flat surfaces with peaked dividers, and replaced the doomed descent with sports-oriented posters and banners on interior posts. Despite an earnest search, I remain unable to find photo evidence of falling guy's stick art, as almost no-one wasted film on those bland interior concourses.

Until a day we find such photos, many other Kingdome classics exist, inside and outside the stadium. This Pinterest board features more than 200.

1980s Kingdome basketball seating, where my Sonics hosted rookie Michael Jordan

Many fans, myself included, came to its last Mariners home game on June 27, 1999. Fellow attendee Pete Hanson's site shows several photos from that season, with this past-to-future look across from Kingdome's top ramp to Safeco Field.

Safeco Field from Kingdome, © Pete Hanson, June 27, 1999

And then, as we said goodbye to falling guy, Seattle sent the Kingdome to its end, imploded in 2000.

Seattle Times, "From Dome to Dust," March 19, 2000 

Fans feel complicated nostalgia for Seattle's concrete bunker the way Houston wonders how to honor its mouldering Astrodome and Oakland (I think) looks forward to missing its Oakland-Alameda Country Coliseum. Massive, multi-sport stadiums will never be classic ballparks and yet it's where you watched great things happen. Your mind tells you to move on to newer things and your heart...

Your heart buys stuff like this. Have to drink from something, right?

One for Five : The History of Topps According to 2016 Anthology

Today post follows the spirit of a pair of posts from spring 2016 and give you a head-start on the evolving business of 1950s Topps baseball sets. Feel free to check those out first.

• How and Why Topps Created the All-Star Set
• Comparing the Rookie Stars of 1959 and 1960 Topps All-Star Rookies subsets

Modern card collectors will know Topps often revisits their past glory with Heritage sets, vintage reprints, throwback inserts, and so forth. Back in 2016, Topps beefed up this tradition by releasing a Topps Anthology series that reprinted many significant baseball cards from their past on pricy, postcard-sized (5"x7") paper in boxed albums.

2016 Topps Anthology, 1951 - 2016

The marketing blurb accompanying Anthology gave me pause, as it mixed facts and errors in pursuit of a kitchen-to-castle story of Topps baseball and the collecting market in general.

2016 Topps Anthology Series One marketing poster

How well did Topps compact their decades of hobby history into two paragraphs? Not great.

Error #1: "...started producing baseball trading cards in 1951..." is three years off.

1948 Topps Magic Photo, George Sisler

Topps first printed baseball cards in 1948 with the sepia-toned Magic Photo set. Today, you'll find type cards on eBay for low money, $10 or less. Magic Photo's gimmicky and ugly as sin, so I don't blame Topps for pretending they never happened.

Fact: "...Sy Berger designed the standard-setting cards at his kitchen table..." 

Sy Berger, 1952 style

Sy Berger garnered a great deal of credit for creating the 1952 set and it sold well, forcing other card makers to play catch-up in both design and set size. Did Sy design this seminal set at his kitchen table? Sure, why not! I'm writing this post at my kitchen table. It's comfortable and it's where the food is.

Error: "By '74...rookie cards are more valued than ever."

That's somewhat true...and yet misleading. First-year rookies didn't drop in value before 1974, so their value was indeed "more than ever." Circa 1974, premium pricing in the hobby went to stars and rarity far more than prospects and rookies. That held true until cards like this came along.

1981 Donruss #538, Tim Raines RC

Unless my memory's faulty, the mania for rookies didn't blow up until Topps' competitors Fleer and Donruss arrived in 1981 and all three looked for ways to outsell and out-promote each other. Tim Raines and Fernando Valenzuela drove high demand in 1981 itself, where Donruss was the only set to put Tim on his own card and Fleer was the only set for Fernando's own card.

1985 Topps #401, Mark McGwire RC

Remember Mark McGwire's 1985 Topps rookie card? People went nuts for it in 1986, when he broke the rookie HR record. This hobby-changer happened because Topps licensed cards for the 1984 Olympics team (made up of college players) as a way to undercut Fleer and Donruss. Anthology misses the "mark" a bit when it pushes rookies-as-savvy-investments back to the 1970s, to when local, informal pricing defined the hobby over annual price guides. (Lest this sound like a critique, I think centralized pricing helped the hobby mature and we'd still be wandering the desert without it.)

Error: "...first Traded series in late '74..." 

Topps introduced Traded in their last series of 1972 baseball by airbrushing players into post-trade uniforms, like #751 Steve Carlton going from St. Louis to Philly. Why introduce this subset in 1972 and not sooner? I credit the early stages of MLB free agency, which promoted freer movement of players. Topps hoped these up-to-date cards sold during pennant races would give fans a reason to keep buying packs in the late season months.

Error: "...stacking [1974 Traded] with rookies called up from the minors..."

1974 Topps Traded, a 44 card late-season insert set

Traded cards in 1974 feature airbrushed players who'd been traded, same as 1972. They did much the same with another Traded set in 1976. No rookies to be seen!

If what you want is vets in new uniforms and rookie phenoms, Topps first offered that in 1981 as Topps "Traded," a tidy boxed set that added 132 cards to the existing regular set, #727-858. As mentioned earlier, this kind of release followed new competition from Fleer and Donruss.

Before 1981, Topps took just three, low-quality shots at "traded" players in 1972, 1974, and 1976. Starting in 1981, they made the Traded series an appealing, annual look at fresh faces and new jerseys. To tie back to my early note about Tim Raines and Fernando Valenzuela, one could argue they created 1981's Traded set as a hedge against innovations Fleer and Donruss would release and hot players they'd miss out on.

.200, The Mendoza Line

How'd they measure up? Topps went 1-for-5 on their own history, batting just .200! I'm a little disappointed, given how easy it is to check these details via Google.

Why do I care in the 21st century about how Topps characterized their first quarter century? Because there's a business history that runs parallel to their baseball history. The financial decisions that Topps made in those years enabled them to create all those great 1950s and 1960s cards that became part of Anthology and I want that business history to be just as visible to hobbyists, even if it risks making the baseball side feel less magical.

And I'm not done with you yet, Anthology ad copy!

For my next post, I'll dive deeper into the phrase, "Selected by the youth of America." Anthology didn't give us more to chew on and, as it turns out, there's plenty of meat on that bone. What should modern collectors know about who the "Youth of America" were? How does it relate to collecting today? More to come soon.

1976 Caruso Salt Lake City Gulls Baseball #5, Carlos Lopez

With my lengthy history as a Mariners fan, I should've gotten to know Carlos Lopez by now, but for some reason I haven't. I might've even known off the top of my head that he played 99 games for their 1977 expansion squad and was traded thereafter in a swap for pitcher Mike Parrott, but I didn't. Hmph.

1978 Topps #166, Carlos Lopez

Given this limited knowledge, my thanks to the 1978 Baseball blog for the (above) happy-go-lucky scan of Carlos Lopez and check out that powder blue Seattle expansion uni. The only way to make Carlos any bluer would be to print him entirely in blue ink. Which is what (below) today's type card did.

1976 Caruso SLC Gulls #5, Carlos Lopez (blank back)

Caruso printed a lot of 70s team sets and some render better than others. All that stars & stripes bunting is a fine nod to the 1976 USA bicentennial, but you need red bunting with the white card and blue player to complete its "AMERICA!" effect. All that green bunting puts me off my hot dogs and apple pie.

As a player, Carlos Lopez did a lot more than pose in blue and green. He played at least 17 seasons of pro baseball, starting as a fresh-faced Mexican Leaguer in 1969, "peaking" in the US as an Angel, Mariner, and Oriole (1977-79), and returning to the Mexican League for his 30s (1980-1985). His known career stats tells a story lived by many Latino players, who traveled far from home to follow their horsehide dreams.

Seattle Police postcard, Mike Parrott

Compared to Carlos, I know a lot more about aforementioned trade-mate Mike Parrott, who's still coaching in the PCL and "putting sanity to the test," as pitching coaches do in a league known for its hitter-friendly environments. Check out that linked article for a nice look at Mike's state of mind after 40+ years in pro ball.

Value: After years of watching eBay for Caruso singles, I nabbed Carlos in early 2019 for $2 + shipping. None of the 1976 SLC Gulls became a MLB star, so others should cost about the same.

Fakes / reprints: Caruso cards use thin white stock and were sold at ballparks in bagged, complete team sets. Haven't seen any Caruso fakery in the marketplace, but minor league cards of future star players are vulnerable to it, so be aware of that chance, if you prefer to purchase type cards of well-known players.

Fifth Anniversary Giveaway

As baseball's dog days soon breeze into harvest season, so did I miss recognizing this blog's eponymous fifth anniversary earlier this season. How could this happen! Did I forget my glove?

Always, always bring your glove

With nearly 800 posts under my belt, it might be the shrinking number of vintage (pre-1981) sets to profile that left my brain unawares. By the numbers, only a few dozen type cards remain unaddressed and several of those prove so obscure that I've yet to see even a photo to represent them, let alone put my hands on a real card.

MOAR PIX, RANDY

The good news is that even if we run low on vintage stuff, modern companies printed everything under the sun thereafter, so there's no end of potential post-1981 profiles. (Indeed, I have a plethora of potential post-vintage profiles.)

...or perhaps I'll segue into a multiplayer type collection. THERE ARE SO MANY GOOD ONES. (Including this one in part to remind you September 17th is baseball's Roberto Clemente Day!)

In belated honor of the fifth anniversary, let's give something away in the theme of giving things away. Readers might know Spike Owen's one of my favorite players from his days with Seattle, his first of several teams in a long, productive career.

The Mariners ultimately sent Spike and teammate Dave Henderson to the Red Sox in mid-1986 and that's the pair of them celebrating a near-title in Fenway Park. So close, but not quite!

Seattle received this gentleman in return, who took over Spike's position at short, and went on to frustrate both my adolescence and the Mariners and Pirates franchises.

Pitchers & Poets covered the complicated on- and off-field life of Quinones in A Hard Man To Understand. In short, Rey couldn't focus enough to play at short. What he had in skills, he lacked in consistency. Those impressed with flashes of success also felt blocked with inscrutable obstacles. So close, but not quite.

HOW TO ENTER: What's your favorite story of almost, but not quite? Add a comment with the ignominious card goof, near-perfect game you attended, or other famous (or in-famous) baseball stumble, as in "1986 Red Sox" or "Rey Quinones" or "blog that forgot its own anniversary."

WHAT YOU WIN: Selected cards from your favorite vintage team (and I'll try to include a Hall of Famer)! That's the next best thing to a prospect that delivers on his promise.

I'll take "almost, but not quite" nominations until the end of Friday (Sept 20) and pick a random winner from all entries. Good luck and thanks for reading!