Before he was a Yankee, Reggie Jackson was a Oriole. Already a baseball superstar as a member of the Oakland A's with three championship rings, his road to glory in New York City went thru Baltimore. Traded on April 2nd, 1976, he was in the final season of his contract and free agency had just begun. The owner of the Athletics, Charles Finley, was not going to spend the money to keep his dynasty together and began selling and trading his players at will. Reggie played the 1976 season with the Orioles and, shortly afterwards, signed as a free agent with the Yankees.
9 comments:
As a fan of 'cards that never were' and of players in strange places, I love this idea. I am hoping you will do one for one of Reggie's teammates, although not as big of a star as Reggie...Kenny Holtzman with the Orioles.
How about a card of Willie McCovey as a member of the 1976 Oakland A's, or Tom Seaver with the 1986 Boston Red Sox.
In 1976 Joe Rudi and Rollie Fingers were members of the Red Sox for about 24 hours. They actually were in uniform one night, but the deal with A's was nullified, and they returned to Oakland the next day.
Jose Canseco with the 2000 Yankees. The Yankees didn't need him, but picked him up late in the season just to keep the Red Sox from signing him.
Can't forget Gaylord Perry with the Yankees in 1980.
I'm definitely looking forward to more of these.
Fantastic card! I agree that the 1974 design is one of the best that Topps ever created. I'm going to add a link to your post on my post about Reggie playing for the Orioles:
http://fleersticker.blogspot.com/2009/05/reggie-jackson-baltimore-orioles.html
Two popular players that played briefly for the Phillies in the 1990s-Fernando Valenzuela and Andy Van Slyke.
I have a picture from a sports card mewspaper from the 90's of their interpretation of the Jackson "77 Topps. Its a great job with a profile pic of Reggie in the O's cap and jersey. They wrote an article how for the '77 Jackson "traded" card was airbrushed into a Yankee. I always disliked how they airbrushed the new teams uni on the cards. Or when the A's moved to Oakland they blacked out the "KC". Topps really needs to hire you on to redesign those old cards for us collectors can fix our sets.
Post a Comment