Cards from the Old Man: Part 5

This is the fifth in a series of posts about cards I received from the old collector in our town who had library catalogs full of cards from the 1950's-1970's. You can see those original posts here and here if you missed them.

I picked this card because the player was a catcher. I was a catcher in Little League and I would pretend to be Johnny Bench or this guy.

At the time, I wasn't too concerned or excited that this 1973 Topps Carlton Fisk had the Topps All-Star Rookie logo. I just knew that I liked catching and I liked Carlton Fisk because he was a catcher. I also didn't realize at the time I got this card just what kind of overall career Fisk would have.

Fisk was the Rookie of the Year in 1972 and added his only Gold Glove the same year. He made 10 All-Star teams and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2000 with 79.56% of the vote.

Baseball-almanac.com has a quote, attributed to Carlton Fisk, that epitomizes what I love about catchers. "If the human body recognized agony and frustration, people would never run marathons, have babies, or play baseball." - Carlton Fisk (after getting hit twice in the crotch with a batted ball). Catchers have a reputation of being big, dumb and slow. One thing I know for sure is they are TOUGH.





Topps must have had production issues in 1973. This card is well-centered on the front, but the back is very off center. Is that a normal issue for 1973 Topps? This is the last of the 1973 Topps Cards from the "Old Man". Next week we move on to 1972.

As we move forward with this series, there will be cards of people that I had never heard of in 1982, but they were still stars of their day. The old man, not being completely there mentally, pulled out many good/great players that he had duplicates of because he thought we would like those. At the time, we were very agreeable to his suggestions because to us they were just great old cards. It wasn't until years later that I was able to appreciate the greatness of the cards/players we got.