It's cool when you recognize a couple of the names

The '64 Topps set is easily one of my favorites, despite the fact that the set was released 3 years before I was born.  Because of this, there are quite a few players in the set that I've never even heard of.

Good in some ways, not so good in others.  For example, no offense to Messrs. Lamabe and Cardwell, but I've never heard of either of you fellows before.

Mr. Lamabe played for 7 teams in a brief 7 year big league career.  Mr. Cardwell pitched in just over 400 games during a 14 yr career, and won 102 of them with 5 different teams. 

Now, moving on to some guys I'm sure that a lot of you have heard of before.  Let's start with Bobby Richardson:

I've always been a fan of guys who don't strike out a lot, and Richardson is an excellent example.  In 1448, regular season and post season games, Richardson only struck out 3 times in a game once.  Some fellow named Koufax struck him out 3 times in Game 1 of the '63 series.  In Richardson's final 6 seasons, he had  4215 plate appearances, and only struck out 172 times, or once every 24.5 at bats.

You may know this next guy also, Roger Craig.

I'd known of Craig as a manager and pitching coach for many years in the bigs, including the world champion '84 Tigers.  What I wasn't aware of is that Roger was one of the original Mets, and suffered through two tough seasons in '62 and '63, losing 24 & 22 games during those 2 years. 

Finally, I picked up a Boog Powell card for a measly 50 cents.

Surprise, I learned something else today.  I wasn't aware that the first three full seasons of Powell's career were spent in left field.  It wasn't until '65 that Powell starting playing first base, splitting his games between first and left, before moving full time to 1st base in '66.  I also don't ever recall seeing Orioles uniforms with that type of bird logo on the sleeve.  I had to do a little research on that bird as well, and I found out that the Orioles used that type of logo as an alternate between 1955-1963.

I was able to pickup 15 more cards towards the '64 set at last weekend's show, leaving me 23 cards short of the halfway point. 

Hopefully there will be a few more names that I recognize along the way as well.

thanks for reading, Robert