Awwwww, Tom Seaver looks ADORABLE. The kid's kinda skeevy looking though. Looks like he's up to somethin'.
I keed, I keed. I'm sure Lil' Tom Seaver was perfectly wholesome. That little league field looks like it's in the middle of a refugee camp, but I might just be used to the professional grade East Cobb fields. Rich folks are CRAZY 'bout their baseball 'round here. It may not be immediately obvious from the wacky font and little yellow stars, but this card is from the 1972 Topps set. 1972 Topps chock full of wacky subsets padding out the 787 card set including the In Action cards, Award Trophy cards, Traded cards and these kid pics. All these subsets are making it difficult to work on this set as all the super-duperstars in the checklist have twice as many cards to chase. If not three or four times. Tom has FIVE cards to chase in this set, the base, In Action, two league leaders cards and this Boyhood photo card here. That's a lotta Seaver. Tom Terrific cards are expensive too. He's like the Met version of Mantle. I overpaid for this one to the tune of a fiver, but it was worth it to plug another hole in my '72 set.
The backs have a nice little writeup on Tom's amateur career. Little things like this are why 1972 Topps is the best set of the '70s. Also the LSD-inspired border design, but I digress. Have I mentioned that Tom really should have been a Brave? I have? Imma gripe again. William Eckert is a Fink. Tom was still one of those larger than like figures when I was growing up. I'm still kind of miffed that the Big Red Machine decided to break down as soon as Tom got traded over there. I relished pulling those Seaver cards out of '83 Topps, Donruss and Fleer even though as a Braves fan the rest of the Reds could go jump in a lake. I even enjoyed pulling his cards when he was slumming with the Sox. I don't think I managed to get my hands on a Seaver card from his first stint with the Mets until I was in my 30s, but it was worth the wait. Still got two more to track down from the '72 set though - oy vey!
Here's the complete list of Top 20 posts. See if you can guess what cards are coming up!
#20 - Wantlist Fail Part 1
#19 - Dollar Box Gem
#18 - At Least He's a Hall of Famer Now
#17 - Thurman Inaction
#16 - Cocktail Hour
#15 - Kid Stuff
#14 - Clubbed Cub
#13 - Cheapest High Number I Could Find
#12 - '59, Dude!
#11 - Look at the Whistler
#10 - Heartbreaking Taunt
#9 - '54 Ford With a Beat Up Chassis
#8 - King of the Bums
#7 - Joy of a Completed Page
#6 - HOW THE HELL IS THIS NOT IN THE TOP FIVE?!?!
#5 - Oh, because this one is...
#4 - Awwww, come ON.
#3 - Admit It, You Knew This Was Coming
#2 - Wantlist Fail Part 2
#1 - Feat of Clay
2 comments:
Great card... I remember buying the Stargell version at a card show in the 80's and thinking it was better than a "rookie card" because he was pictured as a teenager.
I was pretty excited when they did these for the 2010 Topps set, I had no idea they did them back in the day as well. The only dumb part is that the pictures of the kids didn't always have them in baseball uniforms, like the Damon card from that has him wearing a mickey mouse shirt.
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