Card of the Week: 1974 Topps #343 Kansas City Royals
Posted by Andy on April 24, 2010
The 1974 Topps design was enjoyed by many folks. It had a simple but colorful approach, using clean name banners such as the one seen here. This design is the predecessor to the 1980 pennant design, better-remembered but not necessarily an actual better design.
I love and hate team cards. I'd certainly rather have them in a set than not, but sometimes they leave a lot to be desired. Team photo cards like this one were included in most sets in the 1960s and 1980s but largely disappeared in the 1980s and 1990s. Fairly recently they have been re-introduced in some sets in the 2000s.
I love these cards because it's a very baseball moment. Posing for the team photo is something that every team does every year and it's nice to get a card featuring the entire team, plus manager, plus (in this case) trainers and batboy. It's nice to see all the players standing together to get a better sense of who is taller and who is shorter, etc.
What do I hate? Simply not being able to identify the players. This particular card is a really good example. The Royals of 1973 didn't have uniform numbers on the front, so the only thing you can judge the identity of these players by is their appearance. There isn't even a team checklist on the back. In many other sets, the backs of the card included a roster of players on the team (and maybe even their card numbers in that year's set.) This set instead contains a list of franchise records and previous years' records. If there had been a player checklist, you might at least be able to narrow down which guy was which.
Back in 1974, this sort of thing could be a real problem. Today, it's easy to find photos of any player past or present. Plus, it's easy to get the 1973 Royals roster to help you figure out who is in that photo. Back in 1974, neither was easy for the casual fan.
Check out the teams to get the most triples in a game since 1952:
| Rk | Date | Tm | Opp | Rslt | PA | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | SF | LOB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1986-08-02 | PHI | CHC | W 12-2 | 44 | 40 | 12 | 18 | 7 | 5 | 0 | 11 | 4 | 6 | 0 | 8 |
| 2 | 1978-07-30 | MIL | TOR | W 10-5 | 44 | 38 | 10 | 15 | 4 | 5 | 1 | 9 | 4 | 8 | 2 | 7 |
| 3 | 1978-06-04 | KCR | CHW | W 13-2 | 45 | 38 | 13 | 18 | 4 | 5 | 0 | 13 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 8 |
| 4 | 1974-08-07 (2) | KCR | MIN | W 5-1 | 36 | 31 | 5 | 10 | 2 | 5 | 0 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 1 | 7 |
| 5 | 1958-07-27 | KCA | BAL | W 11-6 | 41 | 38 | 11 | 16 | 0 | 5 | 2 | 11 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 6 |
Three of those games involved Kansas City teams (one by the Athletics) but that 1974 Royals squad managed to score only 5 runs despite 5 triples. I would think that is extremely difficult to do, since any runners on base will score on most any triple and a runner on third often scores himself later in the inning.
If you click on the date above, you can see the box score. Jom Wohlford, the second batter of the game for the Royals, tripled home Freddie Patek and then scored on a sacrifice fly. Later in the game, George Brett and Frank White hit back-t0-back triples, each scoring one run. White was stranded at third. So that's 4 runs from the first 3 triples. In the next inning, Amis Otis tripled to lead off and scored on a double by Hal McRae. There are the 5 runs. Later, George Brett tripled with two outs and was stranded when Frank White struck out. It all makes perfect sense but it's definitely unusual.
Further reading
1974 Topps cards on:
April 24th, 2010 at 11:05 am
At some time in the mid-1970s, the Royals and the Boston Celtics both had players with the last names of White (Frank, Jo-Jo), Cowens (Al, Dave), and one other name, possibly Nelson (Don on the Celtics). We're talking last names here, so it would have had to have been Roger Nelson, not Nelson Briles. Roger Nelson was traded by the Royals after the 1972 season but did come back briefly in 1976. So maybe I made this silly connection during the 1976 season.
The mid-1970s was a time of new leagues and sometimes even new sports, at least to U.S. sports fans, starting up. There were new arenas and stadiums in a lot of cities, and some of these venues needed new events to bring in customers during the off-seasons of their main tenants. The big things that did this, mainly for indoor arenas but sometimes also for stadiums, were rock concerts. But the new sports leagues, such as World Team Tennis, the World Football League, and multiple soccer leagues. One or more of the soccer leagues may still be in existence, but the other leagues generally folded or maybe got merged into more established ones.
One such sport that was the subject of a new league around 1974 was box lacrosse. A team called the Maryland Arrows played in the Capital Centre in Landover, MD. As someone who was much more interested in baseball than box lacrosse, when I looked at the Arrows' roster in 1974, I noticed that it contained three names that could also be found among those wearing the uniform of the Chicago White Sox that year: Pat Kelly (admittedly a common name, one that has been the name of two other major leaguers since then), Wayne Granger, and Chuck Tanner, who was the White Sox manager that year.
April 24th, 2010 at 2:29 pm
And to bring things around full circle, the only current major leaguer born in 1974 in La Crosse, Wisconsin, is Jarrod Washburn.
April 25th, 2010 at 1:46 am
The all-time record for triples in a game is 9, Baltimore vs Cleveland, 3 September 1894, 1st game.
The post-1900 record is 8, Pittsburgh vs St Louis, 30 May 1925, 2nd game.
The AL record is 6, done three times, most recemtly in 1922.
April 27th, 2010 at 10:50 pm
Why do you only post cards with a checkoutmycards.com mark on them?
April 28th, 2010 at 8:49 am
Just because that site is a good source of card images. I don't really have time to scan all the cards I might like to feature, plus my own collection is very very small.