Archive for the 'Card of the Week' Category

Card of the Week has moved to Wednesdays!

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This is a wonderful baseball card that shows you everything great about the hobby. This photo for the 1991 set was taken in spring training of 1990. Nagy was a minor-leaguer, hoping to make it to the show that year. He's fresh-faced, and he's not even standing on the field--he's behind a couple of chain-link fences with a tractor and a big trash barrel visible in the background.

What a totally unique photo!

Ummm...

Except for the fact that his 1991 Upper Deck photo is almost identical!

If you look carefully at the two cards, you can see that the photos were probably taken by different photographers. That would make sense, since teams usually hired their own personnel to go take the photos (as opposed to buying them from free-lancers who might sell different photos to different card companies.) Aside from the different facial expression Nagy's making, notice that the fence to the right is in a very different position. The Upper Deck photograph must have been a couple of steps to the right, creating more space between Nagy and that fence. Also notice that the clouds are further to the right behind Nagy, although they might have moved a bit between photos.

In any event, these two photos were probably taken within a few seconds of each other.

Getting back to the 1991 Donruss card, I really hated this design. They added all those stripes with random color and texture. They add absolutely nothing to the card. (For collectors, they remind me of the 1990 Topps design, with all their random colored borders...really annoying.) For comparison purposes, just look at the clean and classy 1991 Upper Deck design. Despite Nagy's funny face, it's quite the superior card.

Nagy holds the distinction of being the last pitcher to get a hit in the All-Star game:

This doesn't include last night, on the off chance a pitcher got a hit (can you tell I wrote this on Tuesday?) It also doesn't include any pitchers who might have gotten a hit as a pinch-hitter.

The last pitcher to get an extra-base hit was Steve Carlton in 1969 and the last pitcher to triple was Lon Warneke in 1933. The only pitcher to appear on this list twice is Bucky Walters--he got a hit in 1941 and surrendered one to a pitcher in 1944.

Starting next week, Card of the Week moves to Wednesdays.

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Here we have one of the classic sets, 1955 Topps. So much has been said about this set in other places, I don't feel I have much to add. See the end of the post for some links to other sites that talk about the set.

One interesting thing, for total card newbies, is you'll notice that the picture on the front is a drawing and not a photograph. That's the way virtually all card sets before the 1960s were, I assume because of the cost and technical limitations of photography at the time.

Another thing to love about this set is the use of multiple pictures, in the sense that the drawing features both a headshot and an action shot. The illustration along with the simple but bold name banner, the background color fade, and the crisp back of the card make this set simply wonderful.

Bobby Hofman makes an interesting list of players since 1901 to play at least 10 games at both catcher and second base in the same season:

In 1955 Hoffman actually played 19 each at catcher and second base, another 24 at first base, and 5 at third base. Over the course of his career, he played a bunch at all 4 positions, including more than 40 games at 1B, 2B, and 3B.

Hoffman had some serious power, it would seem. In 1953 he hit 12 HR with 34 RBI in just 182 plate appearances. At the moment, his most similar batters list includes Ian Stewart and Ben Zobrist. That's because Hofman didn't hit or play much in 1956 and 1957 and didn't play in the majors again. He finished his career with a little over a full season's plate appearances (755) with 32 HR and 101 RBI.

Take a peek down at the back of the card. You gotta love the Puzzlers trivia question, along with the graphic showing 3 players wearing collars.

I don't know if the 1908 Cardinals still hold the record for most times getting shutout. Doing a quick Team Batting Game Finder search for runs = 0 reveals this list:

The search covers 1920-1939 and 1952-present. Since the '08 Cards held the record as of 1954 (when this Hofman card was printed) and the search covers back to 1952, I presume that team still holds the record.

Further reading:

• Roberto Clemente at Cardboard Icons
• Sandy Koufax at The Golden Age of Baseball Cards
• "Spook" Jacobs at Poor Old Baseball Cards
• 1955 Topps misprint at The Baseball Card Blog

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Well, the experiment is over. A. J. Hinch has been relieved of his managerial duties in Arizona. A move that made sense to very few people at the time has been reversed.

Topps started putting Olympics cards in their sets in 1985. These were cards for the players on the American team in the Olympics. That 1985 set includes the first cards for future major-leaguers including Mark McGwire, Cory Snyder, and Oddibe McDowell. They next included them in the 1988 Topps Traded set to cover the players from Team USE in the 1988 summer Olympics. That set included rookie cards for Jim Abbott, Robin Ventura, Mickey Morandini, Charles Nagy, and Andy Benes.

I'm not entirely sure what these 1993 cards represent. If they were players from the 1992 Olympic team, I'm not sure why they weren't part of the regular 1993 set, plus Hinch was not on the 1992 Olympic team. Anyway, within the 1993 Topps Traded Team USA cards are rookie issues for Carlton Loewer, Todd Helton, Dustin Hermanson, Todd Walker, Danny Graves, and Paul Wilson.

The 1993 Topps design is nice. I believe this was the first regular-issue Topps set that included photos on the back (this was true for both the regular 1993 Topps set and the 1993 Topps Traded set.) It makes for a nice card with a big photo on the front, small headshot on the back, nice colors and basic design, and the traditional stats and bio. A nice, traditional set.

Please leave a comment below with a caption for the photo above, telling us what Hinch was thinking as this photo was taken.

Hinch did not have a particularly notable major-league career as either a player or manager.

Let's take a look at some of his career achievements, such as they are:

• He had 26 go-ahead plate appearances, although only one of them came in the 7th inning or later. That was in this game when his 7th-inning single scored Dave Magadan to break a 1-1 tie.
• He homered off 31 different pitchers, but just one of them, Kelvim Escobar, gave up more than 1 to Hinch.
• The most RBI he had in a game was 4, twice:

  Rk	Date	Tm	Opp	Rslt	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	WPA	RE24	aLI	BOP	Pos. Summary
  1	2002-05-14	KCR	MIN	W 8-1	4	4	2	2	0	0	1	4	0	0	0.085	1.938	.780	8	C
  2	1999-08-14	OAK	TOR	W 13-5	5	5	1	1	0	0	1	4	0	0	0.093	0.949	.236	9	C

  Provided by

Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 7/2/2010.

I don't have too much else to say about Hinch, except this: I think it's a shame that he became a manager so early in his career. He would have been well-served to manage in the minors for a while. He was a victim of a poorly-run Diamondbacks organization (the same one that just fired a GM with no previous head-GM experience and more than 5 years remaining on his contract.) I am afraid that we might never see Hinch on the field again--a fate much worse than he deserves.

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Ahh, the 1984 Topps set. This one is pretty well-liked by many collectors. As Night Owl has pointed out, the design is a fairly straightforward evolution of the successful 1983 set. (He also ranks it as the 8th best set of the 30-some main sets produced in the 1980s by Topps, Fleer, Donruss, Score, and Upper Deck.) Ben Henry of The Baseball Card Blog puts both 1984 Topps and 1984 Topps Traded in his top 30 sets of the 1980s (his list includes 53 sets.) Ben includes a nice writeup of the set on that post.

The card I chose, NL Active Stolen Base Leaders, isn't terribly representative of the set since it's a multi-player card from a small subset. Click those links above to see examples of more traditional cards from the set. I picked this particular card because of the three intriguing players featured.

Let's start with Joe Morgan. This the only Morgan card I've ever seen that shows him in the pinstriped home Phillies uniform. (I'm tempted to count the 1984 Fleer "Reds reunited card".) Morgan spent just one year with the Phillies and, despite a .230 batting average still had a 116 OPS+ and 3.4 WAR.

A stat like WAR really helps show just how incredible Morgan was at his peak. Most players never even sniff a 10.0 WAR season but Morgan had 3 of them (1972, and of course the incredible seasons of 1975 and 1976.) In those 2 middle years of 1973 and 1974 he managed WARs of "only" 9.9 and 9.1.

Check out Morgan's overall lead in WAR from 1972 to 1976:

That, my friends, is what we call a blowout. Incidentally, he has just as big a lead when looking at just Batting Runs, too.

Two other things of note about that list above:

• With 3 players in the top 7, the Reds should have been called the Big WAR Machine.
• Check out who's at number 3...our next subject.

Cesar Cedeno might be the most underrated player in the last 40 years. A lot of people have never even heard of the guy, which is almost inexplicable. Cedeno came up with the Astros fairly close to the time when they traded Morgan away to Cincinnati. Interestingly, Cedeno later went to the Reds a couple of years after Morgan left there, too.

Cedeno's peak was at nearly the exact same time as Morgan's, and as you can see above he racked up the 3rd most WAR in all of MLB from 1972-1976.

Here are the leaders (1901-present) for career WAR among centerfielders (minimum half career games in CF):

Cedeno's 15th all-time, ahead of Bernie Williams, Johnny Damon, Ellis Burks, Vada Pinson, Fred Lynn, Kirby Puckett, Eric Davis and anybody else you don't see above. His 1972 seasons ranks as one of the 10 best by a centerfielder from the last 40 years based on batting runs above replacement:

I've limited my discussion of Cedeno to a couple of all-encompassing stats but I encourage you to look more at his career and get to know this relatively anonymous guy who was once a major star player.

Larry Bowa, meanwhile is at the other end of the spectrum, so to speak.

Since 1901, Bowa has the worst batting runs above replacement in all of MLB:

Now, this shouldn't be misconstrued to mean that Bowa was the worst hitter in the big leagues. Clearly, there were many, many guys far worse than Bowa who were so bad that they didn't get enough playing time to amass such a big negative number. Bowa was, perhaps, the worst hitter among players good enough to deserve to play every day for a whole bunch of years. Just don't forget that he was good enough to play every day for a whole bunch of years.

Bowa's overall runs above replacement (RAR) for his career was +198, so he made up for his offensive deficiencies by being a really good defensive player at the most important defensive position (SS).

Since we're at the end of the post, let me just comment on the back of the card a little bit. I always like this dark blue back. Topps used very similar designs for all of the backs of their 1980s sets, but this one used by far the boldest colors.

It's amazing that Rickey Henderson, already a star in 1984, doesn't appear on the lists on the back of the card. These days, he's on the top of the all-time stolen base list.

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Leaf started out in the 1980s as the Canadian version of Donruss. Starting in 1985, Donruss produced a mirror set with some modifications under the Leaf name to be released just in Canada. By the 1990s, though, Leaf became more of a premium edition card set. It wasn't a simple mirror of the base Donruss release nor was it limited to just Canada.

Still, most old-school collectors immediately think of Canada when they hear the name "Leaf" and that makes the design of this card, clearly invoking the American flag, ironic.

Overall I am fond of the design of this card. Yeah, there is a lot of red and there are a lot of stripes. But they used many different colors in the set and did a great job matching card colors to team colors. Each card featured a whopping 3 unique photos, which is simply fantastic, especially since one was a posed head shot and the other two were action shots. Look, for example, at Jay Buhner's card from this set, which features two great action shots and an interesting head shot, all with a great navy and green color scheme that matched that year's Mariners colors.

This card also features some foil, on both the Leaf name on the front and the circular patch on the back. One thing I find weird is the large text that says "Card Number", which seems needless. It mirrors the position text ("Shortstop", in this case) on the left side of the card but still doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Using the stripes to act as line dividers for the stats on the back was a very nice touch.

Ahh, those stats on the back. Let's take a look at those.

All the way on the right we see Valentin's career stats including both SLG and OBP...nice. What really catches my eye, however, is the monthly split data. Back in 1995, this sort of data was extremely hard to come by unless you tabulated it yourself. Monthly split data has always been interesting to me. I like to see players who are consistent from month to month. All the games count the same so ideally a player should hit the same for the whole season. It seems that a number of players have slow Aprils--Mark Teixeira and Don Mattingly spring to mind--which always bothers me.

Notice how Valentin, through 1994, had 4 to6 homers every month except May, when he had 0 career homers in 95 AB?

Here are his career splits by month, 1992-2002:

He caught up with his May numbers thanks in large part to 7 homers in May of 1995.

That brings me to John Valentin's 1995.

Check out the leaders in Wins Above Replacement (among batters) for 1995:

Yup.Valentin was never an All-Star and finished 9th in the AL in MVP voting in 1995. Valentin finished first in WAR by putting together very solid seasons both with the bat and in the field at shortstop.

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Here we have a 1963 Fleer card featuring Roger Craig. I knew Fleer as only the card company from the 1980s and 1990s so I asked dayf from Cardboard Junkie to explain a bit of the history to me. Here's what he had to say:

"Basically, Fleer is the company that first developed a good quality bubble gum back in the '20s They'd been a long time confectioner before that and put out a cheap 'strip card' set that included Cobb and Ruth back in 1923. They had dabbled in bubble gum cards in the '30s but didn't really jump on the baseball card bandwagon until the '50s. By the time they got in, Bowman and Topps were already in huge legal battles over exclusive contracts and they had no good way of getting their foot in the door. They signed Ted Williams to a big exclusive contract in1959 and put out an 80 card set of all Ted which flopped. Then in 1960 and '61 they tried doing Legends sets of retired ballplayers and they didn't do much better. In 1963 they did a real baseball card set with a stale cookie instead of gum to skirt Topps' trademark of cards+gum, got sued and had to lay low through the rest of the '60s and '70s doing oddball sets and stickers. They sued again in the '70s and won, partly because Marvin Miller wanted to sell more card licenses to make the union some money. They sued again, won the case and got the right to put out a set in 1981. Then the card market exploded, they got in over their heads with some bad entertainment licenses, went bankrupt and are now a subsidiary of a failing card company.

So basically, yes, the '60s Fleer cards are the same company as the '80s Fleer cards with some stickers in the middle. Check out the fleer sticker project if you want to know what they were up to in the '70s."

The photo on this card is interesting and looks like it was taken late in the day. I like the silhouetted stadium in the background and the overall dark aspect of the card really highlights Craig's face.

From a design standpoint this card is a bit unusual. The yellow diamond depicting Craig's position is awfully large, especially given that it's a generic drawing (not of Craig specifically). The off-white area featuring the name, team, and position is also large given the amount of information it contains. Still, these features give the card a simple, clean look which is certainly welcome in comparison to some modern-day cards packed with all kinds of colors, marks, foil, chrome, and other nonsense.

The back of the card is equally simple and clean. Unusually, it features the card number near the center of the card.

Within the years we have box scores, the 1963 season by Roger Craig features the most losses where the starting pitcher allowed at most 1 earned run. These are tough-luck losses.

As you can see, there are a number of good pitchers on this leader board

What's odd is the text on the back of Craig's card (see below.) It may sound like it refers to the 1963 season but of course the card was released before the season and instead refers to Craig's 1962, in which he also lost a bunch of games in which he didn't allow many runs. That year, the expansion Mets scored only 617 runs in comparison to the 948 they allowed while on their way to a 40-120 record. Craig actually lost only 1 game that year that he started and allowed no more than 1 earned run. In his entire career beyond 1963, he had only 7 such games, as compared to the 8 in 1963 alone.

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I had another card planned for this week but with Ken Griffey Jr. retiring I decided to pinch-hit with this card.

The card we see here--the first card of the first set ever produced by Upper Deck--is one of the most important cards produced in the last 30 years. In the off-season before the 1989 season, Ken Griffey Jr. was the most-anticipated rookie coming that season (and most-anticipated in years.) Topps had survived challenges from Donruss and Fleer in 1981 and Score in 1988. However, they made a critical error in 1989, which was the omission of a card for Ken Griffey Jr. in the regular-issue 1989 set. This omission was keeping with Topps' tradition up to that point, when they usually did not issue cards for players who had not yet appeared in the major leagues. Donruss and Fleer did not make the same mistake, and neither did Upper Deck, who came on the scene with extremely high-quality cards featuring wonderful photography, high-gloss thick card stock, and the first use of holograms on major-release cards.

This Upper Deck Griffey card immediately became a fan-favorite fetching high prices at card shows and helping Upper Deck to sell out all of the cards and sets it produced for the 1989 season. By the end of the year, unopened packs were going for a premium well above the label price due to demand for the Griffey card. These days, a graded gem mint example of this card sells for $200-300 on eBay.

Topps obviously survived and had the last laugh thanks to the demise of Score, Fleer, Donruss, and Upper Deck losing its MLB license after last year. However, the lack of a Griffey card in 1989 was one major reason why Upper Deck got so much attention and cut into Topps' sales.

Let's talk about the photo used on this card. The picture has a lot to do with why the card was so popular. They could have used an action shot but recognized that this kid (or should I say "Kid" with a capital 'k'?) had a wonderful, enthusiastic smile and was going to bring joy and excitement to the game. They understood what Ken Griffey Jr. meant to the fans and that he was a special rookie, not just another phenom who was going to flame out.

What's funny about all of this is that it's easy to forget that Griffey didn't stat off on fire. In fact he finished, appropriately, as a distant third in the 1989 AL Rookie of the Year voting:

In 1990, Griffey came to resemble the player we all know today. He hit .300, had an OPS+ of 135, and drove in 80 runs batting mainly 3rd and 5th for a fairly bad Mariners team.

After that, there was no looking back. Other than his injury-shortened 1995 season, Griffey went on to post 9 straight seasons with an OPS+ of at least 133.

In 1993-1994 he led the majors in homers:

But that wasn't his only peak. From 1996 to 2000 you know that Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were 102 in total HR, but Griffey was right there at #3:

Over that same period, he was way out in front in RBI:

After 2000 he was never again injury free and didn't put up huge numbers again. He still had great seasons in 2005 (35 HR, 92 RBI, 144 OPS+) and 2007 (30 HR, 93 RBI, 119 OPS+.)

Griffey was also an amazing defensive centerfielder for the first half of his career. In 1996 he posted 32 total zone runs, the 4th-best season ever for a CF. That year Griffey also posted 9.6 Wins Above Replacement. Since then, just a handful of players have posted a higher number:

In short, this guy was a stud. He was arguably the very best player of the 1990s due to his play on both sides of the ball.

Further reading:

Check out my account of the time Griffey and his dad hit back-to-back homers in the same game. This is easily my favorite moment in baseball history.

(I grabbed these scans from checkoutmycards.com but this post was inspired by Night Owl Cards.)

I am not a fan of this 1982 Donruss set but a lot of folks are. Like many sets by Topps from the 1970s and early 1980s, this set include some childish baseball imagery, specifically the baseball and bat that run across the bottom of each card. Of course, what I dislike is exactly what many other folks like.

There are some things I like about this set, though:

• the prominent and retro Donruss logo (well, retro by today's standards)
• the equally prominent year of '82, making it easy for kids to identify the set of origin
• big photos that occupy most of the card with some border color variations, but the colors don't dominate the overall appearance of the card

Greg of Night Owl Cards made a lot of interesting observations about the photo used on this card. Click the link above to read it, but the summary is that the photo was probably taken in 1978. Greg used numerous clues about Yaz' uniform, including the pullover jersey, red helmet, and striped socks. Neat stuff.

There are a few other things I like about this specific photo:

• Yaz is bunting. How cool is that?
• He's got only one glove on. I can't find any other pictures of Yaz where he's got only one glove on.
• Check out the people in the stands in the background. Still have any doubts that the photo was taken in the 1970s?

When I think about Yastrzemski's career, one of the first things that always comes to mind is his league-leading .301 batting average in 1968, a year of very low offense.

Here is that season for Yaz:

He led the league in walks, BA, OBP, OPS, and OPS+.

Now 170 is a huge value for OPS+. To understand how this stat works, just look at Joe Mauer's stats from last year:

Mauer is the only player to have an OPS+ of 170 in 2009. Whereas the 170 OPS+ was good for a .301 BA for Yaz in 1968, Mauer had to hit .365 to earn it last year. Yaz's raw OPS was .922 for a 170 OPS+ but Mauer's was 1.031.

This clearly illustrates why OPS+ is such a good stat. It bridges the gap across different seasons and conditions to demonstrate just how much above or below average a player was. Kids today who look at Yaz's BA in 1968 and see that .301 don't necessarily realize just how impressive it was that year. They just think he hit a lot less than Mauer did last year. Strictly this is true, but the real meaning goes beyond the raw numbers.

I'm looking for posts on card blogs to feature on the Card of the Week segment on the B-R blog. If you are an author or a fan of another card blog, please email me a link to the post you'd like me to consider. Ideally the post would include scans of the front and back of the card and contain some interesting or otherwise entertaining commentary.

My email address:

Images courtesy of Condition: Poor

The 1933 Goudey set is one of the grand-daddies of baseball card collecting. Goudey had been around as a chewing gum company for a while and became the first company to ever package baseball cards with bubble gum with this 1933 240-card release. The design might look quite familiar to modern-day collectors, as Upper Deck released a set a couple of years ago under the name Goudey that closely resembled this set.

The Dave Harris card shown above is quite typical of cards from this set. It's common to find cards that have been written on as back in 1933 kids were far more interested in the cards as a mechanism for learning and remembering modern-day players than as collectibles. As you can find on the source blog the L and F on the front were probably written by a kid who noted that Harris played left field. There's also a W in the lower right that at first looked to me like it was written on there, but it's actually the W on the sleeve of Harris' jersey.

On the back of the card (see scan below) we see "200", which might actually be a price of $2.00 written on the card sometime in the 1960s. (Amazing to think that somebody would write a price directly on a card, but that's the way it used to be.) It also appears that someone wrote "MAN." but I can't guess what that refers to. Harris was never a manager. Maybe he was just a man plain and simple?

In this condition, this card is worth at most a couple of bucks. There are numerous examples on eBay that are in better condition--similarly rounded corners but no writing, for example. Such cards go for $20-30.

One other thing--I am very surprised to see Harris' first name listed as "Dave." I was under the impression (mistakenly, obviously) that the nickname of Dave didn't come into common use until much later.

Harris had himself a nice career. He played parts of 7 seasons finishing with a 111 OPS+ in just under 1,700 plate appearances. His 1931 season was particularly good.

These are the only players since 1901 to have at least 50 RBI and an OPS+ of 145 in a season with no more than 300 plate appearances. I would think that most of these players were injured for part of the season as it would be tough to sit a guy powering to an OPS+ of 145 or better. As you can see, it's a list of impressive players.

Further reading:

Lots of baseball card blogs show examples of cards from this set. There is 240 Baseball Stars, a blog dedicated solely to the 1933 Goudey set. The author hasn't posted too much there yet.

Check out a 1933 Goudey Dale Alexander post at Mark's Ephemera.

(all images courtesy of oh my o-pee-chee! Click on images for larger versions)

Just about any card collector will know this, but in case you don't: O-Pee-Chee is the Canadian version of Topps. My understanding is that O-Pee-Chee was a Canadian company that utilized the Topps photographs and designs for card releases specifically in Canada. The sets were usually smaller, ignoring some of the non-star players, and sometimes the sets included extra players for the Canadian teams. See the "further reading" section at the end for more on this.

Another difference with the O-Pee-Chee set is that it was released later during the off-season than the Topps sets and this allowed the Canadian company to modify some of the cards to reflect off-season movement of the players. Brewers and Red Sox fans alike will recall that George Scott moved between the two teams during the off-season between the 1976 and 1977 seasons. This followed his earlier move between the same two teams between the 1971 and 1972 seasons.

Scott's trade will explain why the card above might look a little funny. If you still don't see it, take a look at his Topps card from the same year:

That's a real photo taken sometime in 1976 showing Scott in his Brewers' uniform and helmet. By the time O-Pee-Chee had produced its set, however, they had time to airbrush his jersey and helmet to reflect his trade to the Red Sox. (Note, however, that they kept his bling very much intact.) It's also interesting that they moved his signature.

The source blog for these scans and information is oh my o-pee-chee! (oh mon o-pee-chee!) written by GCRL, better known for the Garvey Cey Russell Lopes blog dedicated to Dodgers baseball cards. GCRL's O-Pee-Chee blog is focused on variations between cards due to modifications that O-Pee-Chee was able to make to the Topps designs each given year. If you enjoy this post about the George Scott card, you'll want to check out his blog because he has many, many more examples. You can also see the back of the Scott Topps card and see how it varies.

Speaking of card backs, if you check out the back of the Scott card below, you can immediately see one of the trademark differences between O-Pee-Chee and Topps. The Canadian company includes a French version of all the commentary on the card. Pretty cool--kids who spoke English as their first language could learn that "meilleur frappeur de puissance" means "best power hitter" in French.

I don't know all that much about Scott's career but I see he had two pretty lackluster years in his Age 24 and 25 seasons, putting up just 19 HR and 77 RBI in about 1,000 plate appearances across those two campaigns. That's a shame because if he had performed near his career average for those years, we can presume that he would have finished with 300 career HR and a batting average in the .270s.

Starting the next season, 1970, Scott was among the best power hitters in the game. Over his 8 peak years from 1970 to 1977, he was in the top 10 in HR:

Not to mention RBI:

And it's amazing how times change. Scott was the Brewers' all-time slugging leader in 1977 with a .456 mark for the franchise. Nowadays that doesn't even crack the top 10:

Slugging %

However, this is one of the benefits of OPS+, which adjusts for overall offense levels in the league, among other things:

Adjusted OPS+

Scott is 5th all-time in OPS+ for the Brewers, just ahead of HOFer Paul Molitor and just behind John Briggs, of whom I had never heard before writing this.

Further reading:

Back at my old card blog 88 Topps Cards I wrote all about the 1988 O-Pee-Chee set. You can also see some examples of cards featuring Blue Jays and Expos that were not included in the Topps set of the same year.