1978 Kellogg's Baseball Card Backs #31-33

Back for more unless the keys freeze up - yeah, still no heat in my house.  I'm slowly getting through the 1978 Kellogg's baseball card set. 

#33 - Greg Luzinski

What a great year he had.  Third in HRs and second in RBIs. The Illinois native was a top prospect.  He homered off of Jim Palmer in the All-Star game at Yankee stadium.

Not on the card - he played football as a kid.  His alma mater is playing my school this week in the state football playoffs.  

Not on the card - he had only one regular season homer against Palmer since "The Bull" only played in the AL for four years. 

Not on the card - he led the league on year by striking out 140 times.  With 140 K's he'd have ranked 41st this year.

#32 - Eric Soderholm

Another bowler.  I know he likes golf because my son caddied for him.  I didn't remember him missing an entire year due to knee surgery. 

Since he was injured in 1976 he wasn't a desirable choice in the re-entry draft.  That allowed the White Sox to sign him without a lot of competition.  

FYI on the Re-Entry draft - this draft was created after the 1976 season.  Check out what baseball-reference.com mentioned about it - Re-Entry Draft

#31 - Garry Templeton

Singer Gary Lewis, the son of comedian Jerry Lewis?  No, this just happens to have the middle name of Lewis, so he's Garry Lewis Templeton.  

Garry had a great start to his career, becoming the youngest shortstop to get 200 hits.  18 triples is a lot.  

Not on the card - since 1978 only 11 players have exceeded 18 triples.  One of them was Templeton who got 19 a few years later.

Kellogg's expected Garry to become a longball threat even though he had eight homers in 1977. 

Not on the card - his season high in homers was nine.    

1978 Kellogg's Baseball Card Backs - #34 - 36

Back for a look at a few more card backs from the 1978 Kellogg's baseball card set.

#36 - Tommy John

I didn't know that he won the last playoff game against the Phillies, but it doesn't surprise me.  

When I start making my own Kellogg's cards with Photoshop I would like to make a change to this card.  It's great that the card mentions that he missed all of 1975 due to arm surgery.  I'd like the stat line to appear as follows -

1975                         Did Not Play  -  Tommy John Surgery.  

#35 - Dave Goltz

Great to see the Minnesota native play for the Twins.  I like that the scout is mentioned by name too.  Too bad that they mentioned that there were many doubters of Goltz.  His 20-win season certainly quieted them.

Not on the card - he won 15 and 14 games in the next two seasons.  Then he signed with the Dodgers.  He played from 1967 to 1983 without ever being traded.  He was a free agent twice.

#34 - Reggie Smith

Smith's hobby - working with plastics.  What does that mean?  Could he have helped create the plastic coating for his own card?

He is currently second only to Mickey Mantle in career homers by a switch-hitter.  Mantle got mentioned on a few cards without having his own.  He hit three homers in the World Series in 1977.  

Not on the card - current leaderboard for HRs by a switch-hitter - Mantle still leads with 536, Eddie Murray 504, Chipper Jones 468, Carlos Beltran 435, Mark Teixiera 409, Lance Berkman 366, Chili Davis 350, Reggie Smith 314.   I didn't realize that Chili hit so many homers.  Yes, he was just fired by the Cubs.  

Not on the card - he had six World Series homers.  

So Much for Not Being Busy

Marathon - done.  Hosting the conference cross country meet - done.  Time on my hands?  On my way home from the meet I am told that we have no heat at home.  My lame attempts at analyzing the situation lasts about 30 minutes.

Six days later we are still without heat.  But, I've certainly spent way too much of my time getting estimates for our old system and learning about the different brands and companies.  Oh, and I went to school and coached after school each day.

I hope to get back to the 1978 Kellogg's set tomorrow.

Getting My New Macbook Back to Where It Was

I still didn't find my backup hard drive so that I can get some of my checklists for Kellogg's and Sportscaster cards back on the Macbook.  At least I finally got the baseball database loaded again.  One problem - I added a table on the database to link all of the Kellogg's cards to the baseball data for every player.  I need my backup for that. 

My checklist hasn't changed recently since I've not been purchasing anything.  I haven't gone to flea markets much this year due to marathon training on the weekends and the card shows don't exist much.  Online I haven't seen much to buy, plus once it comes to getting a duplicate I am not willing to pay much.

My favorite purchases are large lots that I can dig though, but I haven't seen anything like that in a long time. 

In the 1970s we'd get mis-cut Topps cards all of the time.  I don't see many Kellogg's cards like that.  I'd like to get some of these, especially for some of my favorites - Cubs, Gehrig, 1773, 1974, 1976. 

1978 Kellogg's Baseball Card Backs #37 - 39

So, I survived the marathon only to get caught up in two other big things this week - hosting our conference cross country meet and having two days of parent-teacher conferences.  Luckily, I teach at a competitive school so the conferences weren't bad at all.

As for the meet, that took up lots of my waking hours this week since the actual course is 35 miles from my school.  For the first time in four years our team won, so that made the lack of sleep this week a bit easier to tolerate. 

Back to the countdown.

#39 - Bob Bailor

He was a rookie, he hit .310 and he was a Blue Jay.  I guess that made him a good choice since no Blue Jay exceeded 19 homers or 64 RBIs.  No pitcher exceeded 13 wins or eight saves.  It shouldn't surprise anyone that the team won only 54 games.  

Lots of professional athletes were stars in other high school sports.  Bob was an all-state basketball player - you don't see a lot of 5-10 guys doing that today.  

#38 - Alan Bannister

Bannister had the same career as Bailor.  Maybe they are twins separated at birth.  Both were #1 draft picks too.

                     years      G      AB     H    AVG  HR  SB

Bailor           75-85   954   2937   775   .264   09   90

Bannister      74-85   972   3007   811   .270   19  108

I think Bannister had a great start in 1977, which got him a card in 1978.  It also helped that the stars of the 1977 Southside Hit Men, Oscar Gamble and Richie Zisk, were gone from the White Sox after 1977.  

He got to the White Sox in a trade that sent Jim Kaat to the Phillies.  

Kellogg's mentioned that Bannister didn't have any power.  19 homers in 3007 at-bats in his career proved Kellogg's to be correct.  

Jim Kaat came up in a trivia question that I got partially correct recently.  I had to come up with a batter from the 1930s who faced a pitcher while that same pitcher faced a second hitter who played past the year 2000.  I didn't get Kaat without looking at a baseball database, but without using the computer I came up with a combination of three players that went from 1940 to 2007.  I had the other two players that combined with Kaat in this odd trio.  Any ideas?

#37 - Ralph Garr

This set certainly has some interesting choices for Chicago players.  The Road Runner was fun to watch.  At this point in his career his career average was .313.  

Not on the card - he finished his career with an average of .306.   He hit .307 during the 1970s.  Can you name the other five players who hit over .300 during the 1970s with at least 4,000 at-bats?  I made up that number to rule guys out who started in 1975.  

He won an NL batting title.  He attending "football famous" Grambling.

1978 Kellogg's Baseball Card Backs #40 - 42

Today is a day where I expect to sit a lot.  Maybe I will do today's post and one for tomorrow.  The rain in the marathon really got to me yesterday.  I like the rain, but once my shoes got wet and no longer had any useful cushioning, my back, feet and ankles got sure. 

I kept going because I know my team would give me a hassle if I didn't and I knew that even with the last four miles being really slow I'd still hit the Boston Marathon qualifying time.  Too bad I have no interest in running another paved marathon.  I still to trails for anything longer than 13.1 miles, if I am even ever going to race that far again.

Back to the cards.

#42 - Burt Hooton. 

At least Kellogg's got his name correct.  Hostess had a tough time with that. 

Wow, only 102 innings in the minors.  And 35-3 with a 1.14 ERA in college.

I didn't know that Tommy Lasorda saw him pitch in winter ball and then got the Dodgers to trade for him. 

Not on the card - The Cubs got Eddie Solomon and Geoff Zahn.   Solomon lasted just over two months and six innings while Zahn played the remainder of the 1975 season and all of 1976 with the Cubs before they released him.  Zahn played nine more years, eight as a regular in the starting rotation.  He even got a 1979 Kellogg's card.

Not on the card - a good choice for inclusion in the set this year.  He finished second to Gaylord Perry in the Cy Young voting in 1978.

#41 - Cecil Cooper

I had forgotten that Cooper played with the Red Sox at the start of his career.  I need to look at my 1970's Topps card more often.  He finished his career with 11 seasons in Milwaukee - AL.

That was quite a big trade with Boston - Cooper for Bernie Carbo and George Scott in  December of 1976.   That didn't make sense since I knew Carbo was in the 1975 World Series with the Red Sox.  Carbo was traded to Milwaukee in June of 1976 - something I certainly didn't remember.  I do remember Scott being on the Brewers and Red Sox.  Scott also had previous been traded to the Brewers from the Red Sox.

Cooper hit .311 for the 1975 Red Sox.  I would not have been able to place him on that team.  That shows how much less I knew about the American League.

He had his best season in 1977.  More was to come - he got MVP votes every year from 1979 - 1983 and he led the league in RBIs twice.

#40 - Reggie Jackson

A great write-up.  He had just hit three homers in a World Series game to tie Babe Ruth's record.

Not on the card - he hit five homers in the six game to win World Series MVP, which he also won in 1973 with the A's.  

The Reggie Bar debuted in 1978.  Reggie had said "if I played in New York they'd name a candy bar after me".

Other quote by Catfish Hunter about the Reggie bar - 

"When you open it, it tells you how good it is".

1978 Kellogg's Baseball Card Backs #43 - 45

Sorry for the lazy pictures, but things in Chicago are quite intense this week.  Working at a school near downtown and running the marathon this weekend have put quite a wrench into my boring teach, coach, train, blog life. 

Here are the next three cards in the set.  Maybe the last few were boring because they ran out of time.  Let's hope that the text get better as we move toward #1.  Oh, I sounded too much like Casey Kasem there.  Today's long distance dedication (26.2 miles) goes out to all of those friends, alums and kids on my team who promised to cheer for me this weekend.  Nah, back to the cards.

#45 - Rick Reuschel

So, we just took 50 pictures of Rick.  Let's pick the best one for his baseball card.  How about this one where his eyes are closed and it looks like Rennie Stennett is up again.

He had double-digit wins with the Cubs for his first six seasons including 20 wins in 1977.  A nice way to start a career.  

Not on the card - he pitched until 1991 and he had 17 wins in 1989.   He had 214 career wins.  Not many people would guess that he had over 150 wins.

His younger brother Paul was a Cub for the last three seasons.

Not on the card - Paul.  He didn't get a Kellogg's card since he had 198 less than wins than Rick.  Oddly, Paul pitched in 198 career games.  

Not on the card - the brothers combined to pitch a shut-out, something that hadn't been done before.  I don't think it has been done since either.  They had Big League Brothers card that didn't mention the shutout.  They are also prominently listed on the back of Rennie Stennett's 1976 Record Breaker card.  Stennett went 7-for-7 against the Cubs.  Rick gave up his first hit and Paul gave up the seventh one.

#44 - Steve Ontiveros

Another Cub from my youth.  His hobby was working with youth, but that didn't include me or anyone that I knew.  

He had a nice first season with the Cubs, hitting .299.  

I was almost over the fact that the Cubs traded Bill Madlock until I read about it again here.  They got Bobby Murcer and Ontiveros.  Madlock did win two more batting titles after winning two with the Cubs.  

Searching baseball-reference.com didn't even first bring up this Steve Ontiveros.  The other Steve only had a 34-31 record but he shows up by default.

This Steve Ontiveros only played until the age of 28.  I forgot that he went to Japan for six years where he was a star player. 

#43 - Sparky Lyle

Photography is a great hobby for a closer.  They've got plenty of free time.  

I would never have guessed that he was the first AL relief pitcher to win the Cy Young Award.  As of 1977 he had the career lead in saves with 165.  621 games and none as a starter.  I think I mentioned that on one of his other cards.  

There wasn't much room for other information on the card.  Here are a few things.  

Lyle's Cy Young was in 1977.  That didn't stop the Yankees from signing Rich Gossage to be their closer.  In 1978 Lyle only had nine saves and Gossage had 27.  Lyle was traded after the season ended.