Before there was Doug Fister, there was Dan Pfister. This is the third and final Topps card featuring Pfister, who last played in the Major Leagues in 1964. His 1962 rookie card was a five-player combo card also featuring Jim Bouton.

Like the cards for several other A’s in the ’64 set, the photo used here was actually taken in 1962. Kansas City ditched the red/blue color scheme after the ’62 season and went to the familiar green/yellow combination that we associate with the A’s today. In fact, this card just reuses the photo from his 1963 Topps card.

The question on the back asks “what was the biggest score of a ballgame?” The answer is the same now as it was in 1964: on August 25, 1922, the Cubs beat the Phillies 26-23 in the highest-scoring game ever. The most a single team has scored in the World Series era is 30, which the Rangers put up August 22, 2007 against Baltimore (the final was 30-3). That game is also notable in that Texas pitcher Wes Littleton earned a save for pitching the last three innings in a game his team won by 27 runs (although it was “only” 14-3 when he entered the game).

Dan Pfister pitched in parts of four seasons with the A’s, and the vast majority of his 249.1 career innings came in 1962, when he started 25 games and went 4-14 with a 4.54 ERA, 1.431 WHIP, OK enough 8.0 H/9 and icky 1.16 K/BB ratio. In his first career start, he threw a complete game three-hitter but lost 1-0 to Detroit.

He worked his way through the KC system, starting in 1957. He didn’t pitch particularly well at any level and was hideous in AA in 1961, but since the A’s were terrible he got a cup of coffee with the team that season in September.

After a full season in ’62, he made only three appearances in 1963 before being shut down for the season (presumably due to injury but I have no confirmation as to why he didn’t pitch after April 27).

He returned in 1964 as a reliever and spot starter, but after posting a 6.53 ERA in 41.1 IP with 29 walks, 21 strikeouts and 10 homers allowed, he was done as a big leaguer as of July 31. He went to AAA and pitched fairly well, but by 1965 was demoted to AA. Pfister was out of pro ball at age 28.

After retiring, he became a firefighter in Hollywood, Florida, and also turned into an avid softball player. In 1994, he went with an over-55 softball team to a world series in Las Vegas.

Pfister is currently 75 years old.

From the scan, this card looks pretty good. But it is creased right through the upper half of Koufax’s face, which knocked it down into a good price range for me to pick up a couple of years ago.

The trivia question asks “who holds the lifetime mark for times at bat?” Now, I’m not sure if Topps meant plate appearances or at bats, but the answer in 1964 would’ve been the same: Ty Cobb. In terms of at bats, Cobb broke Honus Wagner’s record in 1926 and finished with 11,434. He held the record until 1974, when he was passed by Hank Aaron. Pete Rose passed Aaron in 1982 and still holds the record at 14,053. The story is much the same in plate appearances. Cobb clipped Wagner’s mark in late 1925, and he again held the record until 1974 at 13,068. Again, Aaron took over the record in 1974 and held it until Rose broke it in 1982. Rose still holds the record at 15,861.

There’s not much that can be said about Sandy Koufax that hasn’t been said elsewhere. Koufax is of course considered one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history despite a general lack of longevity. But until 1963, his numbers were not spectacular, largely due to a lack of control. His stat line from 1955 through 1962 looks like this:

68W, 60L, 3.71 ERA, 110 ERA+, 1.31 WHIP, 7.4 H/9, 4.4 BB/9, 9.3 K/9, 1.0 HR/9

Now, these aren’t terrible numbers, but it doesn’t look like he’s headed for a HOF career at this point, although the strikeout rate and hit rates are nice. 1962 is really where things started to turn around for him, when he got the walk rate down to 2.8 and had a career-high K rate of 10.5. He also led the NL in ERA at 2.54, despite having to miss some starts due to a hand injury. This was to some degree affected by the Dodgers moving from the L.A. Coliseum to Dodger Stadium, a move that greatly favored pitchers in general.

In 1963, Koufax began what is likely the most dominant four-year stretch by a modern pitcher. The numbers from those years (the last four of his career):

97 W, 27 L, 1.86 ERA, 172 ERA+, 0.91 WHIP, 6.2 H/9, 2.0 BB/9, 9.3 K/9, 0.6 HR/9

These were startling stats, especially considering the intense pain Koufax pitched through over (at least) the last three years. He won the Cy Young in 1963, 1965 and 1966. His 1964 season was cut short by the arthritis that caused his career to end at age 30. He threw “only” 223 innings and won “just” 19 games, but had an ERA of 1.74 and finished third in the Cy Young voting (Dean Chance had a really great year for the Angels, and these were the days before there were awards for each league).

Koufax threw a no-hitter in each season between 1962 and ’65. His 1964 version came on June 4 against the Phillies. The only baserunner came on a walk to Dick Allen.

Very few hitters had Koufax’s number, especially late in his career. In 1964, it was Deron Johnson that hit him hard, getting three homers against Koufax that season in 17 PA — he was the only player to hit multiple homers off Koufax in ’64.

As far as careers go, Hank Aaron had the most success of Koufax. He hit .362/.431/.647 with seven homers in 130 PA. Ernie Banks, Frank Robinson and (oddly) Felipe Alou also hit seven homers off Koufax.

I’ve only been able to see Sandy pitch via some old filmed games that have been posted over the years on MLB.com. It’s often been said that Koufax tipped his pitches by the way he positioned his hands in his wind-up, yet opposing batters still couldn’t hit him.

Koufax was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1972 at the age of 36 and is still alive and well at age 75, though he has remained largely out of the public eye since resigning as an instructor with the Dodgers in 1990.

This is, without a doubt, the worst card I have in the set, condition-wise. It’s literally being held together with a piece of tape, and the tape appears to be about as old as the card itself.

As I have learned as I continue this project, Topps had no problem with reusing photos for cards in the 1960s. Gonzalez’s photo on this card is just a zoomed-in version of the one that appeared on his 1963 card:

A Cuban native, Gonzalez played 12 seasons in the Majors from 1960-71, and actually had some really good years with the Phillies. He was signed by the Reds in 1957 when they had their AAA franchise in Havana (the Sugar Kings were in the International League from 1954 until 1960, when Fidel Castro nationalized all U.S. enterprises, forcing the team to move to New Jersey) and made his debut with Cincinnati in 1960. Midway through the season, he and Lee Walls were shipped to the Phillies in a deal that brought Wally Post and Harry Anderson to the Reds.

Gonzalez was a mainstay in the Phillies outfield for the next eight seasons, and he was an above-average hitter in each season, hitting OPS+ marks of 134 in 1962, 133 in 1963 and 147 in 1967. For his Phillies career, he hit .295/.359/433 with 77 home runs.

Power-wise, he peaked in 1962, hitting 20 homers and posting a .302/.371/.494 line in 490 PA. The following year, his homer ouptut dove to 4, but he set career highs with 36 doubles and 12 triples to go with a .306 average.

He garnered some attention in 1964, when he became one of the first (if not the first) player to wear a helmet with a protective ear flap, as shown in this photo.

Gonzalez had an outstanding season in 1967, finishing second in the batting race to Robert Clemente with a .339 average. His 5.6 WAR ranked him ninth among NL position players, but didn’t garner a spot on the All-Star team. He was remarkably consistent: after May 22, his average never dipped below .310 for the rest of the season and peaked at .343.

After his worst year with the Phillies in 1968, the team left him unprotected for baseball’s expansion draft and replaced him in 1969 with young Larry Hisle. The Padres took Gonzalez with the 37th pick in the NL draft, which stocked San Diego and Montreal.

Gonzalez started in center field in the first-ever Padres game, a 2-1 win over Houston. He hit well early in the season, but fell into a slump in May and never dug himself out. After a 3-for-36 stretch that pushed into June, the Padres traded him to Atlanta for three guys who never amounted to anything.

He regained some magic with the Braves, hitting .294/.354/.447 with 10 homers and 50 RBI in 89 games. He followed that season with his only postseason appearance, going 5-for-14 with a homer off Tom Seaver in the Mets’ three-game sweep of Atlanta in the first NLCS.

He spent another season in Atlanta before finishing his career with the Angels in 1971. Gonzalez played in Japan in 1972, and gave it one more chance in the states in 1973, getting 29 AB for the Phillies’ AA affiliate in Reading before hanging it up for good.

Gonzalez is currently 75 years old.

Al Stanek appears in the Topps set in three consecutive years. But he didn’t play in the Majors in any of the three seasons he’s depicted. This is his rookie card, which follows the only year in which he actually played Major League baseball.

First things first. The trivia question on the back asks how many bases Ty Cobb stole in his career. The answer is 897. Cobb retired with a bunch of MLB records, but he came up 17 stolen bases short of Billy Hamilton’s mark of 914. Hamilton’s record stood until 1978, when Lou Brock passed him. Rickey Henderson, of course, eclipsed Brock in 1991.

As a 19-year-old in 1963, Al Stanek earned a spot in the Giants bullpen and pitched 13.1 innings over 11 outings. He never appeared in a Major League uniform again. Still, Topps decided to feature him in the 1964, 1965 and 1966 sets, probably because they assumed a guy who had big league experience at age 19 would somehow get back. He didn’t, and because of that, Topps had to use what appears to be a slightly-different picture from his 1964 photoshoot for 1966:

Of the 11 games Stanek pitched in, the Giants lost 10. His appearances spanned from April 26 to September 27, and he was never sent down to the minors at any point. Which means there must’ve been a lot of boring days for Al Stanek. Four times, he went at least three weeks between outings. He never got a decision or a save. The only home run he allowed was to Hank Aaron.

In 1964, Stanek had a really good year in AAA for Tacoma, posting a 2.83 ERA and striking out 220 hitters in 223 innings. But, according to this very informative article from earlier this year, Stanek suffered a shoulder injury in Army basic training in 1965 and was never the same. He was demoted to AA in 1966, and although his ERA was good in 1967 (2.94), he walked 36 and struck out only 24 in 52 innings. That was it for Stanek’s pro career.

Stanek did return to play for a semi-pro team in his hometown of Chicopee, Mass. He also managed that team. According to the news story linked above, Stanek worked for Hamilton Standard for more than 40 years and now enjoys watching his grandsons play baseball. He’s 67 years old.

Due to expense, I’m not a high-grade collector, so this is one of the very best cards I have in terms of its condition. I think it could grade out at a 7. That’s about as good as it gets for me.

Don Buford is clearly the more accomplished player on this combo rookie card, but Fritz Ackley is one of those names that will always be a footnote in card collecting history (and here, it appears as if he’s been photographed in his back yard). Ackley pitched in exactly five games in his MLB career for a grand total of 19 1/3 innings, so he’s not really going to be remembered for anything he did on the field. However, Ackley had the honor of being featured two years in a row on a combo rookie card. The first is the one you see here. The second, in 1965, is card #477, which he shares with Steve Carlton. Carlton and Ackley combined for 330 career wins. Ackley had one of those.

Ackley never got a baseball card to himself. He was purchased by the Cardinals after the 1964 season, so the card he shares with Carlton features him as a Cardinal — but he’s wearing a White Sox uniform in the picture. They just airbrushed out the logo on his hat. Ackley never pitched in a game with the Cards. He did, however, pitch in the minor leagues from 1954 until 1967. As a 26-year-old in 1963, he went 18-5 with a 2.76 in his first year in AAA and was named Pitcher of the Year in the International League. That earned him a look in the bigs, but he didn’t stick and ended up back in AAA until quitting at age 30.

Ackley died in 2002 at the age of 65.

Buford was a player who would’ve both excited and horrified Billy Beane. When he went to the Baltimore Orioles in 1968 and played in three World Series in the last five years of his career, he was an OBP machine, posting a .385 over those five seasons. That number was dragged down by his dreadful final season in 1972, in which he hit .206/.326/.267 in 485 PA.

But before that, Buford was a dream for a guy like Earl Weaver, who could plug Buford in as a leadoff hitter and watch him get on base for the sluggers hitting behind him. In the three consecutive seasons the Orioles won the AL pennant (1969-71), Buford’s OBP was .397, .406 and .413. He scored 99 runs each season, averaged 16 homers and walked 115 more times than he struck out.

But then there was the base stealing. Actually, for most of his career Buford was pretty good at stealing bases, but overall he was caught about a third of the time. In 1969 — an otherwise solid season — he went just 19-for-37 on steals.

Buford was 27 by the time he got a full-time job with the White Sox in 1964. His best season in Chicago was in 1965, when he hit .283/.358/.389 with 10 homers and 93 runs scored. But he never really had a great season with the Sox. After the 1967 season, he was packaged in a deal that brought Luis Aparicio back to Chicago from Baltimore. It turned out to be a pretty good deal for the Orioles.

After a bad year in 1972, Buford went to play in Japan for four seasons. After that, he got into coaching and served on Frank Robinson’s staff with the Giants, Orioles and Nats. He also managed a few seasons in the minors. His son, Damon, played nine years in the Majors.

Don Buford is currently 74 years old.

It’s unclear what exactly Topps was thinking when making this card for Steve Boros in 1964. Boros hadn’t been a Cub for months when this card was distributed — the back of the card itself even mentions that Boros was sold to San Diego of the PCL in December 1963. San Diego was an affiliate of the Reds at the time, so if he was even worth depicting at all, it should have been as a Red. But since he didn’t even have a Major League contract for 1964 (at the time — he did play for the Reds eventually), why even give him a card?

Ultimately, Topps decided to just pretend that Boros was still in Chicago.

The trivia question on the card asks what the smallest crowd ever at an MLB game was at the time. The card (which is tough to read) claims the answer is 21, from a game in the late 1800s (I couldn’t read the exact year). This site claims the answer to be 23, at an A’s-Yankees game in Philly in 1916. Also pointed out is the announced crowd of 653 that came out to see the A’s (now in Oakland) play the Mariners in 1979. And you think crowds are bad at the Mausoleum now.

Steve Boros didn’t do much as a Major League player, and you can argue that he didn’t do much better as a Major League manager. He only played what amounts to three full seasons. He actually had a fairly decent year in 1961 as a rookie with the Tigers (he had a cup of cofee in the bigs in 1957 and ’58), getting on base at a .382 clip in 485 PA. He only hit five homers, but drove in 62 runs and walked 26 more times than he struck out (68 to 42). Being a Michigan native, it looked like he could’ve had a promising career ahead of him.

Things went a bit south in 1962. He did hit 16 homers, but his batting average dove to .228. He also wasn’t a particularly good third baseman. He posted a -1.3 defensive WAR, which wiped out the 1.2 he put up on offense.

That winter, the Tigers shipped him to the Cubs for pitcher Bob Anderson, and Boros didn’t get much of a chance with the Cubs. Ron Santo was pretty much anchored at third base, so when Boros did play he usually filled in at first for Ernie Banks or in right field for Lou Brock. (I’d like to note that in limited playing time, Boros’s .693 OPS was only slightly worse than Banks’s .695 for the whole season. 1963 was not a good year for Mr. Cub.)

The Reds purchased him with the intent of sending him to AAA in 1964, but Cincinnati got rid of their third basemen from 1963 — Gene Freese and Eddie Kasko — and gave Boros the job. Boros hit .257/.342/.322, which looks bad (well, it was bad) but was slightly better than the .269/.319/.326  posted by a slumping second-year teammate named Pete Rose.

The Reds moved Deron Johnson to third base in 1965, pushing Boros out. He appeared as a defensive replacement twice and never played in the Majors again.

He kicked around in AAA until 1969, and became a minor league manager in 1970 at age 33. After five years managing low-level teams in the Royals system, he coached for the Royals and Expos for a number of years before getting a shot at a Major League job in 1983. He managed the A’s to records of 74-88 and 77-85 in 1983 and ’84. He got another chance with San Diego in 1986, going 74-88. He remained a coach and front office member in the Majors until 2004.

In 1988, while working for the Dodgers, Boros reportedly was one of the key scouts who identified what Dennis Eckersley would throw to Kirk Gibson on a 3-2 count in Game 1 of the World Series.

Boros died December 29, 2010 at the age of 74.

This is one of two autographed cards I have from the set (the other is Don Larsen’s). Davenport is a Giants lifer, and still works as a roving instructor in the organization and often comes to games for the short season Salem-Keizer Volcanoes, a Giants affiliate for whom I’m the official scorer. I had Davenport sign this card last summer. The card itself is in pretty good shape, but is cut poorly.

Davenport played 13 years in the Majors, all with the Giants. For 12 of those seasons, he got at least 300 plate appearances while starting semi-regularly at third base, second base and shortstop. He appeared mostly at third (1130 games). Nobody has played more games at third base in Giants history, and he also ranks 78th all-time in games played at third.

Davenport’s best year by far was 1962, the year the Giants famously made the World Series and came up just short against the Yankees. That year, he hit .297/.357/.456 with 14 home runs, the only season in which his OPS topped .800. His OPS+ of 118 was a career high, and he posted a solid 5.0 WAR for the season. It was also his only All-Star season.

With the emergence of Jim Ray Hart at third base and his subsequent up-and-down career, Davenport was always seen as a solid Plan B for the Giants throughout the ’60s, but he never was really a full-time player between 1963 and 1967. By 1968 he earned the starting job again, but had noticeably declined.

As noted on the back of this card, he “led N.L. 3rd basemen in fielding for three straight years.” But, that was using the old way of doing things (fielding percentage). More advanced metrics are less kind to Davenport, as his career defensive WAR is -0.3.

Offensively, Davenport’s career OPS+ stands at 89. He had more sac bunts (111) than homers (77) in his career. So, essentially, he was an average-ish player for a lot of years and happened to stick with a team that found him just good enough to keep around until 1970. After retiring, he went right into coaching and eventually became manager of the Giants in 1985. But after a 56-88 record, he was dumped for Roger Craig, who did quite well in San Francisco.

Davenport is currently 77 years old.

Duke Snider passed away today at the age of 84. He’s shown in his 1964 Topps card in the twilight of his career, giving the trademark off-camera stare he portrayed in most of his baseball cards over the years. This is a card I acquired more than 20 years ago when I bought a binder full of old cards for $50. It’s in pretty good shape, probably an EX.

Though Snider did play the 1963 season for the Mets, he was sold to the Giants on opening day of 1964. This being a card from the 2nd series, Snider’s card was already printed before that deal was made. 1964 was his last season, so Topps never made a card showing him in a San Francisco uniform.

Snider’s years with the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers are well-documented elsewhere so I won’t get into that too much, but his one-year return to New York was a bit turbulent.

His career had been declining due to injuries since the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles. He only topped 400 plate appearances once in five years in L.A. By 1962, he hit just 5 homers in 196 PA. So Dodgers GM Buzzie Bavasi decided to unload Snider’s salary by shipping him to the Mets, a team desperate for some star power.

Snider played more than he had the previous three seasons, but didn’t exactly tear up the Polo Grounds (1963 was the last season the Mets played in Manhattan). He hit .243/.345/.401 with 14 homers and a 114 OPS+, but was named to the All-Star Game by Giants manager Alvin Dark, who managed the NL squad. According to this story, Snider was chosen over Vada Pinson and Frank Robinson, who were both having better seasons (though Pinson was having a down year by his standards). It was Snider’s first appearance in the game since 1956.

After a 51-111 season with the hapless Mets, Snider asked to be sent to a contending team. So, the Mets obliged by sending him to the Giants, one of the better teams in the NL at the time. The Giants, of course, also happened (just like today) to be the biggest rival to the Dodgers. Despite Snider’s declining skills, Bavasi was not amused by this move. In a story from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that I found, Bavasi apparently felt that the Mets were not acting honorably when they sold Snider to the Dodgers’ chief rival (the Pittsburgh writer was in New York for the Pirates-Mets series that opened Shea Stadium in 1964, which is why he was writing about the Mets).

But it wasn’t Bavasi’s opinion that was the highlight of the story. Mets pitcher Tracy Stallard took this opportunity to blast Snider for his play with the Mets:

“He came to us as a hero and left as an unappreciative laggard. We lost a lot of 1-0 games and maybe if he didn’t complain so much he might have helped.”

“Snider never hustled when he was with us. He tried to live on his reputation. We really expected him to be an inspiration off his great record but he turned out to be a bad influence.”

Snider told close friends he wanted to finish up playing for a contender and didn’t have an pride with the Mets.

“He didn’t have any pride in himself,” Stallard snorted. “If he had pride, he would have played 100 percent all the time and not sat back complaining.”

“There was only one player on this team who didn’t try. His name is Snider. Everybody else did the best he could.”

Harsh words.

Incidentally, Snider batted .210 with 4 homers in 189 PA for the Giants. He started only 33 games, and mostly appeared as a pinch-hitter. He retired after the season.

Now, this might look like it’s turning out to be a hit piece, which is not the point. For guys whose careers are covered in great detail elsewhere, I just want to try and capture something about the part of their career documented in these cards that I’m writing about.

Snider was a great player whose lifetime 140 OPS+ was very good and more than made up for his reputation for posting great numbers simply because he played in a hitter’s park (Ebbets Field). He hit more homers in the 1950s than any other player, despite playing the last two years of the decade in the cavernous L.A. Coliseum. He always played third fiddle to Mantle and Mays in New York, but was often as good — or even better — than those two in the mid-’50s.

But Snider’s mouth was always an issue. He famously told Brooklyn it “didn’t deserve a pennant” and admitted once that money was the main reason he played baseball. However, after he retired he spent about 15 years as a well-liked broadcaster for the Montreal Expos.

Despite a dominant stretch between 1950 and ’57, Snider never won the MVP but was an All-Star seven times. Oddly, Snider finished second in the 1955 MVP balloting to his teammate Roy Campanella because of a voting error. According to Rob Neyer and Eddie Epstien’s book, Baseball Dynasties, a voter accidentally listed Campanella twice — in first and sixth. Clearly, the voter meant to put Snider in one of those spots as Snider appeared nowhere else on the ballot. Had it been thrown out, Snider would’ve won the award. But the league elected instead to count Campanella’s first-place vote, and not give Snider any points from the ballot. So Campanella won, 226-221.

It took Snider 11 years to get voted into the Hall of Fame. Perhaps that was partially because of playing in the same era as Mays, Mantle and Aaron. Perhaps it was because his raw numbers (2,116 hits and 407 homers) weren’t huge. Perhaps his attitude had something to do with it. But he was worthy of his election in 1980, even if, as Ted Williams said at his induction ceremony, it came 10 years later than it should have.

Dick Phillips is shown here posing in front of one of Washington, D.C.’s famous palm trees. I’ve always contended that the reason so many Senators are pictured with palm trees in the background is that the Topps photographer made one stop at Washington’s spring training so as to avoid having to attend an actual regular season Senators game. The oddest part of the card is that Phillips is listed as a “1b-of,” even though he never played a single inning in the outfield in the majors.

The undisturbed trivia question asks the name and size of the Pirates’ park. We know the answer to the first part at the time to be Forbes Field, but I’m not sure what they’re looking for as an answer to the second part that can be contained in that little box. My guess is “huge.” Forbes was a big stadium at the time, and wouldn’t even be allowed to exist these days. It went 365 down the left field line — a full 10 feet further than the current longest left-field foul pole (Wrigley Field). The deepest part of the yard went to 457, with straight-away center measuring out at 442. The right field foul pole started out at 376, but new seating brought it all the way in to 300, but a 27-foot screen was erected to keep the dimensions fair. I’ve heard many people say Willie Stargell got screwed out of a lot of home runs playing in that place.

On to Dick Phillips. “Dick Phillips” is a classic ’60s baseball name. He sounds like he should’ve been a guy who was the size of a house and hit 35 homers a year despite a .220 average. Unfortunately, Dick Phillips was mostly a career minor-leaguer who spent two full seasons as a part-time player for the dismal Senators.

Phillips was, however, a pretty good minor-leaguer. He won the 1961 PCL MVP with Tacoma, and also won MVP awards in the Northern League and Southern Association. He started his minor league career in 1951 at the age of 19 after signing with the Senators. He was in the military from 1952-54, but he resurfaced in 1955 as a Braves farmhand. He stayed in the Milwaukee system until 1960, when he was traded to the Giants for the great Reeve “Bud” Watkins.

He continued in AAA while with the Giants, but did score 4 plate appearances with the 1962 NL-champion Giants. After the season, the Senators purchased his rights.

He made the Washington roster for both the 1963 and 1964 seasons. He got into 124 games in 1963, though that only resulted in 359 plate appearances. He did hit a respectable 10 home runs, but only batted .237 with an 83 OPS+. Things got worse in ’64, as he sluggged a putrid .297 (6 doubles and 2 HR in 267 PA) and his OPS+ dove to 58. That earned him a trip back to AAA, where he mostly stayed until retiring in 1967 (he did get into 25 games with the Senators in 1966).

After his playing days, Phillips managed in the minor leagues and spent one season as a coach for the Padres. In 1981, his Visalia team finished first in the California League (though they lost in the finals).

Phillips worked for the Vancouver Canadians in the 1990s and died in Burnaby, B.C., in 1998 at the age of 66.

One of the sacrifices I’ve had to make while building this set is the quality of the star cards I’ve acquired. This Willie Mays card is actually in fine shape in regards to some of the usual problem areas (like corners, edges, and centering). But then there’s the pretty obvious vertical crease right through Willie’s face that allowed this to be right in my price range. Sure, I’d love to have a sparkling PSA 8, but I don’t have $200 sitting around to buy one.

I like this particular card a lot because Mays isn’t posing for the photo. It looks like he was completely unaware of the camera when the picture was snapped, making this one of the most candid shots of Willie on a baseball card. Another thing I love about this card is the uniform, which is, more or less, exactly the same road jersey the Giants wear today (the Giants, of course, took a detour into the hideous for a while, jersey-wise, but righted the ship eventually).

I’m not going to sit here and dissect Willie’s career here, as there are thousands of pages written about it elsewhere. But 1964 was an interesting year for Mays. He started the season almost impossibly hot. Here are his stats after his first 22 games:

.478 BA, .495 OBP, 1.000 SLG, 1.495 OPS, 13 HR, 34 RBI, 27 R

While these numbers are almost cartoonish, despite the small sample size, the oddest thing about this is that he had a grand total of 4 walks and 3 strikeouts over that stretch of 95 plate appearances.

Mays was already a huge superstar at this point, but it looked as if he might be unleashing one of the great seasons of all time. Alas, it wasn’t to be, but he still led baseball with 47 homers and a .607 SLG. His .296 average was his lowest since 1956, when he also hit .296.

The Giants went, roughly, as Mays did that season, starting 15-5 and spending most of the first three months of the season in first place. They still sat on top of the standings on July 20, but that would be their last day in that spot. Eventually, the Giants finished fourth with a record of 90-72, though they ended up just three games back of the Cardinals.

As San Francisco faded, Mays did as well. He hit .244 over the last two months, though he did hit 18 homers in that span. The Giants led the NL in home runs with 165 (Jim Ray Hart and Orlando Cepeda each hit 31), but only batted .246 and got on base at .310.

Mays posted a 172 OPS+ in 1964, which (ridiculously) was just the sixth-best OPS+ of his career. In 1965, he would set a career high in OPS+ at 185, which included a career-best 52 home runs. Mays led the league in WAR a remarkable 10 times, including a 10.2 in 1964 (anything above an 8 is considered MVP-quality). He finished sixth in the MVP voting that season, with only one of the five players above him honestly having had a case to get more votes (Frank Robinson). Ken Boyer won the award that year, I assume mostly because St. Louis won the pennant. Boyer had a nice year, but .295/.365/.489 with 24 homers and 119 RBI doesn’t necessarily look like an MVP line. Even more inexplicably, Johnny Callison and his .316 OBP finished second in the voting.

Willie would make good, though, in 1965, winning the MVP for the first time since 1954. He only won the award twice, but finished in the top six another 10 times. In 1964, he made his 11th of 20 consecutive All-Star appearances (well, actually he played in 24 straight All-Star Games, because there were two in each season from 1959-62).

After 1966, Mays began a decline phase, but that decline was from “superhuman” to merely “very good.” He even found ways to reinvent himself late in his career. At age 40, with his average falling to .271, he walked a career-high 112 times and led the NL in OBP at .425. He even stole 23 bases that season. And while some people deride his final days with the Mets, he actually played quite well in his limited duty in 1972, getting on base at a .402 clip. Sure, 1973 didn’t go well, but at least he knew it was time to walk away.

The end of Mays’ career may have gone much differently had he not spent most of the 1952 season and all of the 1953 season in the military. One could reasonably have predicted that Mays would have hit at least 54 home runs over that span (about 272 games), which would have put him past Babe Ruth’s 714 (he hit 660 home runs). With Hank Aaron getting close to Ruth’s number by the end of the 1973 season himself, Mays might have been swept up in a head-to-head showdown with Aaron, though Hank was a much more viable home run hitter at the time.

Mays’ final plate appearance came on October 16, 1973 in Game 3 of the World Series at Shea Stadium, at the age of 42. He also played in the World Series as a rookie in 1951, also for New York’s NL team. Unfortunately, his team lost both series. His postseason career was rather unremarkable — he hit .247 in 99 PA with just one home run, which he hit as a 40-year-old in the 1971 NLCS (he won his only World Series ring in 1954).

As usual, a handful of voters declined to vote for him for the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility, but he still got 94.7% of the vote in 1979 and went to Cooperstown.

After spending time with the Mets as a hitting instructor, and then a few years banned from baseball for working as a casino greeter, Mays returned to the Giants organization in 1986, and he still holds a (largely ceremonial) position with the club. He’s currently 79 years old.