Card of the Week: 1976 Topps #467 Woodie Fryman
Posted by Andy on March 13, 2010
We return from a one week hiatus to bring you a new card of the week!
The 1976 Topps set was a sort of antidote for their 1975 offering. That 1975 is better remembered by collectors due to its brash colors as well as large borders, not to mention some big rookie cards for players including George Brett, Robin Yount, Jim Rice, Gary Carter, and Keith Hernandez. (The 1976 set, in comparison, has Dennis Eckersley as its best rookie card followed by a slew of second-tier stars.)
Anyway, at the time, that 1976 set seemed quite tame by comparison and this Woodie Fryman card is a particularly good example. The color scheme is great, with the red, white, and blue card colors matching the Expos' uniform colors nicely, not to mention the blue sky and stadium background. Fryman has a classic pitcher's pose for a baseball card, which I both love and hate. I love being able to clearly see a guy's face but in general I much prefer action shots on cards. This is why I love sets that feature action photos on the front and then posed head shots on the back (such as 1988 Score.)
The back of the card is very 1970s Topps, with attempts to integrate simplistic baseball imagery into the design. (Note the ball, bat, and pennant-shaped name banner.)
Also check out the comment at the bottom, noting that Fryman hurled in the 1972 playoffs. He pitched pretty well, starting 2 games and earning a 3.65 ERA while allowing only 11 hits and 2 walks in 12.1 innings. However, he got the loss in both games. So perhaps when Topps says he "hurled" in the playoffs, perhaps they mean to say that he vomited.
Turns out that Fryman holds an obscure record of sorts. He and Jerry Reuss are the last 2 guys to have a save in every single relief appearance they made in a season (minimum 2 relief appearances):
| Rk | Player | Year | GR | SV | Age | Tm | Lg | G | GS | W | L | IP | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jerry Reuss | 1976 | 2 | 2 | 27 | PIT | NL | 31 | 29 | 14 | 9 | 209.1 | 3.53 | 98 |
| 2 | Woodie Fryman | 1976 | 2 | 2 | 36 | MON | NL | 34 | 32 | 13 | 13 | 216.1 | 3.37 | 111 |
| 3 | Jerry Koosman | 1975 | 2 | 2 | 32 | NYM | NL | 36 | 34 | 14 | 13 | 239.2 | 3.42 | 101 |
| 4 | Sandy Koufax | 1965 | 2 | 2 | 29 | LAD | NL | 43 | 41 | 26 | 8 | 335.2 | 2.04 | 160 |
| 5 | Jim Bunning | 1964 | 2 | 2 | 32 | PHI | NL | 41 | 39 | 19 | 8 | 284.1 | 2.63 | 132 |
| 6 | Al Downing | 1964 | 2 | 2 | 23 | NYY | AL | 37 | 35 | 13 | 8 | 244.0 | 3.47 | 105 |
| 7 | Jim Bunning | 1962 | 6 | 6 | 30 | DET | AL | 41 | 35 | 19 | 10 | 258.0 | 3.59 | 113 |
I showed as far back as 1960 but recall that the save wasn't an official stat until 1969 and was modified a couple of times thereafter.
Overall Fryman had a pretty good career. Yes his career W-L record was just 141-155 with an ERA+ of 96 but he got a late start in the majors, not coming up until age 26 and he was good enough to continue pitching through age 43. He was twice an All-Star, including in 1976.
Further reading:
- To see lots more on the 1976 Topps set, including many card images, check out Cardboard Junkie, one of the best baseball card blogs around. The author has a post on the similarity of 1976 Topps and 2009 O-Pee-Chee (an Upper Deck product) right here.
- For a refresher on the 1975 Topps set, check out 1975 Topps (it's far out, man) a card-by-card look at that set by another one of the best card bloggers around.
March 13th, 2010 at 7:53 am
This is why I love sets that feature action photos on the front and then posed head shots on the back (such as 1988 Score.)
What do you think of the new MLB-unauthorized Upper Deck cards, which use action shots to obscure team logos and front posed head shots?
March 13th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Given the constraints that Upper Deck had to work with, I love the set. I find it ridiculous that MLB sees no more room for more than 1 company to produce officially-licensed cards, but that's a separate issue.
The only thing that bugs me about the 2010 UD cards is that they use the same photo on the back as the front black-and-white version--I don't see any point to repeating the same photo on the front and back. I would have just left the B&W one off the front, but I guess without the team logos (or even the team names) the fronts would be a bit barren otherwise.
March 13th, 2010 at 4:02 pm
I always liked those Expo uniforms.
March 13th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
The 1976 Topps will always be special for me. I was 15, and old enough to buy the whole set through the mail. I was so excited when that long, white box arrived! It's funny, but up until about ten years ago, I thought the Expos' logo read "e-l-b" because of the three colors. I thought it stood for "Les Expos Baseball". Do you think it was done this way on purpose
March 13th, 2010 at 9:43 pm
During my childhood and the early part of my adulthood (1960s and 1st half of the 1970s), I always thought that someone should come up with a way that people could buy a whole set of baseball cards at once, or individual cards of their choice, instead of getting random ones in bubblegum packs. I was probably either ahead of my time with that idea or, if such a practice had existed back then, I wasn't worldly enough to have discovered those distribution channels. I do remember that in the early 1960s, some drugstores had vending machines that sold baseball cards, and I don't think bubblegum came with them, but I'm not sure about that.
One day in the 1976 season, I went into a store in downtown Washington, DC, called The Locker Room that had been established in the heat of Redskins mania a few years ago to take advantage of the city's newfound love affair with their suddenly-hot NFL team by selling officially licensed memorabilia. By 1976, they had branched out into other sports stuff. It was close to where I waited for the bus home from work. (Metro was just opening at the time, with just one short line, and all commuting between DC and the suburbs on public transportation was still done by bus.) One day when I went in, I was pleasantly surprised to find a box containing a complete set of the 1976 Topps trading cards for sale. I don't remember the price, and I didn't make much money then, but I remember figuring that it was just what I'd like to have. So if it was rather pricey, I probably decided to do without something else that week or month (such as new clothes or record albums).
I still have it, and it still remains the only year for which I ever bought a complete set of baseball cards. I remember going through it at some point in the late 1980s or early 1990s and noticing the lack of decent players' rookie cards. In fact, I looked only at the ones actually marked "rookies", and the only player with such a card that had become someone who had a career of much substance seemed to be Ron Guidry. I will have to dig the box out (I think I know where it is) and see if the Eck's card was also designated as a "rookie" or if it was a regular card.
March 15th, 2010 at 11:28 am
The 1976 set was significant to me because the dimensions of the card were normal again. I didn't realize what was up at the time, but I lived in a test market area that saw only the 'mini' version of the 1975 sets. It would be nearly ten years before I knew that 'normal '75s even existed.
March 15th, 2010 at 11:29 am
That is utterly bizarre JDV. I had no idea there were test markets for those minis.
March 15th, 2010 at 11:59 am
Toledo, Ohio...I don't know how extensive the test area was. As a 13-year-old, I didn't get around much.