UPDATED 5/9: Which Cards Made the 2014 Topps "Top 50 Rookies" Buyback Checklist?

2014 Topps is here and the past few weeks have seen multiple eBay sales of buyback rookie redemptions. The only thing is, Topps hasn't publicized which rookie cards have been included in their top 50. It begs the question: Which cards should make the "Top 50 Rookies" buyback checklist?

Here's my shortlist. I updated it to include recent eBay sales prices:

			eBay Sale $	Sold/Unsold?
1	1952	Willie Mays	$2,500.00	Unsold
2	1952	Mickey Mantle
3	1952	Ed Mathews
4	1954	Al Kaline
5	1954	Ernie Banks
6	1954	Henry Aaron
7	1955	Sandy Koufax
8	1955	Roberto Clemente
9	1955	Harmon Killebrew
10	1956	Luis Aparicio
11	1957	Jim Bunning
12	1957	Brooks Robinson
13	1957	Frank Robinson
14	1957	Don Drysdale
15	1958	Orlando Cepeda
16	1958	Roger Maris
17	1959	Bob Gibson
18	1960	Carl Yastrzemski
19	1960	Willie McCovey
20	1961	Billy Williams
21	1961	Juan Marichal
22	1962	Lou Brock
23	1962	Gaylord Perry
24	1963	Willie Stargell
25	1963	Pete Rose
26	1964	Phil Niekro
27	1965	Steve Carlton
28	1965	Joe Morgan
29	1965	Tony Perez
30	1965	Jim Hunter
31	1966	Ferguson Jenkins
32	1966	Jim Palmer
33	1967	Rod Carew
34	1967	Tom Seaver
35	1968	Johnny Bench
36	1968	Nolan Ryan	$899.00	Unsold
37	1969	Reggie Jackson
38	1972	Carlton Fisk
39	1973	Mike Schmidt	$127.50	Sold
40	1974	Dave Winfield
41	1975	Jim Rice	$46.98	Sold
42	1975	Gary Carter
43	1975	Robin Yount
44	1975	George Brett
45	1976	Dennis Eckersley
46	1978	Eddie Murray	$22.49	Sold
47	1979	Ozzie Smith
48	1980	Rickey Henderson
49	1982	Cal Ripken Jr.
50	1983	Tony Gwynn
	1984	Darryl Strawberry	$7.50	Sold
	1984	Dwight Gooden	$36.01	Sold
	1990	Frank Thomas	$51.00	Sold

Update 5/9/14 - Am I missing something here? Why is a Frank Thomas rookie card—usually $4 max—selling for $51?!? Seriously, what is wrong with this picture? The thing about all of these newer cards being included in this buyback program is that it means a more hallowed card from the Fifties (or Sixties or Seventies) is not included. Thomas I understand. Darryl Strawberry I do not.

Update 3/12/14 - Not only is it interesting that Dwight Gooden is considered a top-50 rookie, but that it sold for $36.01! If this is his card from 1984 Topps, we're talking about a $3 card, at best. Why would you pay 12 times that much for the same card? So with Gooden and Strawberry in the top 50, my thinking now is that a couple from the 1960s didn't make the cut.

Update 2/19/14 - It looks like Darryl Strawberry's 1984 Topps rookie made the cut. A redemption card recently sold for $7.50 on eBay (2/17/14). This means that (at least) one of the cards listed above is not included as a buyback.

Bolded entries are cards that have been offered for sale on eBay, confirming they're being offered as part of this buyback insert.

Taking into consideration that these cards are buybacks, that would lead me to believe that they'll all be vintage, and that Topps wouldn't go to great lengths to buy back a 1989 Topps Traded Ken Griffey Jr. card and release it as part of this set, even if you could make a legitimate case that Griffey's rookie is one of the company's top 50.

"Rookie" is a tricky word here, though, as Mays's and Mantle's 1952 cards are not technically rookies, as both players' rookies are in the 1951 Bowman set. That said, my list does not include Bowman cards; if we're including Bowman, then Albert Pujols's 2001 Bowman Chrome autographed rookie would definitely be included above.

Another point is whether Topps includes Pete Rose's rookie, or if it opts to go with someone safer, like Don Mattingly or Bert Blyleven. As a collector, you'd hope that they'd include Rose, as it's the right thing to do. But remember how Topps didn't mention Rose by name as the all-time hits leader on the backs of cards in 2013's flagship set? I distinctly remember the company line being that their action was the "right thing to do" (I'm paraphrasing here). So when it comes to Rose, the "right thing to do" has one meaning inside the walls of One Whitehall and a decidedly different meaning in the rest of the world.

It will be interesting to see whose rookies are included in the official checklist, and what sort of hoopla this set will generate.

Another update: What's also interesting about this buyback is how much these cards are reselling for. I think you can chalk the high Rice price up to a newness factor, and that the buyback redemption was pretty much unexplained at the time of the sale. I can't think of any other reason why someone would pay 5x the going rate for a Jim Rice rookie card. (In fact, the Schmidt went for about double the going rate for an ungraded version of this card.) The Ryan has been offered three times with no purchase: $1,499; $999; and $899, though all as a fixed-price "Buy it Now." The Murray, Rice, and Schmidt cards have been offered as straight auctions.

One final thing: It has not been advertised if the cards received will be raw or graded. I'm pretty sure Topps would announce the cards as graded if it were the case, so if the cards received are raw, what condition will they be in? Did someone just pay nearly $47 for a Jim Rice rookie card in very good condition?

The Baseball Card Blog Is Alive & Well, Thank You for Asking

Thanks to our intrepid readers, The Baseball Card Blog is back! Not sure what happened there, but you may have seen this in your blogroll today...

I may not have blogged in a while, but no, I didn't up and change the topic of the blog. I'm actually still very interested in sports cards. I'm currently putting together the 1969 Topps set, I'm getting excited about the 2014 Topps Heritage set and will be on the receiving end of a full unopened case (yes, you read that right; it's the first time I've ever got a case). I'm also contemplating buying up unopened boxes of 2013 Topps Update, if just to chase the Boston Strong insert set. I'm also totally intrigued by the Top 50 Rookie Buyback redemption insert in 2014 Topps. 

Because It Should Exist: 1963 Topps #299 Rookie Stars

Let us now praise anonymous men

When players come into the league, they either do or do not live up to their hype. Doesn't matter who—Alex Rodriguez, Fred Lynn, Bob Hamelin, or Stephen Strasburg—it seems like everybody is subject to hype. (A great movie about this, in a roundabout way, is Sugar.)

But what about the guys who fly under the radar? Guys who just sort of show up? Where do they stand? In a world dominated by information, it's hard to imagine a player making it to the majors today without at least one news source commenting on his talent (or lack thereof).

I'm not old enough to remember John Doherty. His statistics suggest he didn't really belong in the major leagues, or the high minor leagues, for that matter, but he hung around the California Angels for parts of two seasons (1974, 1975), and triple-AAA for six others.

But you'd think someone must remember him, right? You'd think fans of the game or little kids collecting cards in the mid-1970s would know about John Doherty of the Angels. And maybe they do, but I'd venture a guess that the circle is relatively small—say, limited to the Los Angeles, California–area. The reason? This card of Doherty (1975 Topps) was his only Topps card. Ever.

And it's not a memorable card. The only reason I pulled it from a stack last night was because I didn't recognize the face or the name, and because his face was so close to the camera. Right away that's a bad sign, possibly meaning no photo of him in game-play action, or the batting cage, for that matter, was taken (though he's wearing a left-handed batting helmet). Even the signature (from his Topps contract) emblazoned across his neck is hurriedly scrawled, as if Doherty, too, was surprised by the dumb luck of his being called up.

The game's history is filled with "cup of coffee" guys. For some players, that means one inning of mop-up duty, or a few games as a fourth outfielder. For others, it's parts of a few seasons, or an exceptional first season followed by a disappointing second. And then nothing.

We will remember Stephen Strasburg, no matter how he performs in the majors, just like we remember Clint Hurdle and Brien Taylor.

But John Doherty? All I can say is, Who?

The Rookie Card Through the Years

In a conversation with Andy of the 88 Topps blog, this topic came up: How long has the hobby been obsessed with the rookie card? Or, perhaps more importantly, how long has the rookie card been important to card manufacturers? And has it become more important through the years, or is its importance just a quality we as collectors project?

Andy made the point that historically, rookies had to prove themselves in the minor leagues with at least a few good seasons under their belts, before they made the jump to the big leagues and got their card in a baseball card set. In contrast, in the last 20 years, young players have been on cards from the moment they were drafted, and sometimes even before they were drafted (the Team USA subsets in 1985 Topps and 1988, 1991, and 1992 Topps Traded).

It seemed obvious, at least to us, that the rookie card has taken a much more significant role in sets as the years, and hobby, have progressed. But then after the conversation ended, I got to thinking: Do rookies really take up a larger percentage of today's sets than in years past? I looked at ten random sets: the T206 White Border monster, 1954 Bowman, 1957 Topps, 1966 Topps, 1978 Topps, 1983 Fleer, 1991 Donruss, 1994 Bowman, 1998 Upper Deck, and 2006 Topps. Here are the percentages:

T206 White Border: 2.1% (11/525)
(incomplete tally, though most glaring rookie omission is that of Hall of Famer Harry Hooper, which is surprising considering the set included more than a few cards of flashes-in-the-pan like Lucky Wright.)

1954 Bowman: 1.8% (4/224)
(I didn't count cards of players making their manufacturer debut, like Jim Gilliam and Bill Bruton, much like you can't count Mantle's 1952 Topps card as his rookie card.)

1957 Topps: 5.4% (22/407)

1966 Topps: 16.6% (99/598)
(This set included many team and league rookie cards. In those instances, I counted each individual player, not card.)

1978 Topps: 20% (145/726)

1983 Fleer: 3.5% (23/660)

1991 Donruss: 11.8% (91/770)
(Coincidentally, this set and others in the early 1990s got screwed out of having more true rookie cards because of earlier player appearances in other sets. In this set, the most notable instance is Tino Martinez, whose only 'true' rookie is his Team USA card in 1988 Topps Traded.)

1994 Bowman: 26% (177/682)

1998 Upper Deck: 3.1% (23/750)

2005 Topps: I can't find a single rookie in this set


It's surprising that the second highest concentration of rookies in this list of random sets is in 1978 Topps. I would've guessed that the later sets had more. But what's even more surprising, if we follow our earlier assumptions, is that there were a handful of players pictured in the monster 1909-1911 T206 White Border set that were only in a league for one or two seasons, guys like Harry Gaspar and Lucky Wright (this smacks of the modern-day Bowman plan of giving everybody a card). Their inclusion may not seem important to the makeup of the set, but by including cards of Gaspar and Wright, American Tobacco left others (perhaps more deserving) out of the set, most notably Harry Hooper.

Another interesting idea is raised, this one for modern sets. When a player is included in a set many years before his actual major league debut, can those cards issued directly preceding or after his major league debut be considered rookie cards? Let's go back to the example of Tino Martinez. He made his cardboard debut in 1988 Topps Traded, as a member of Team USA that participated in the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. His next cards came three years later in 1991, as a member of the Seattle Mariners. None of his cards from 1991 are considered his rookie card, but is this fair?

Maybe. Maybe not. Whatever your opinion, this issue is an important one that still affects the hobby (thus the need for and adoption of an official 'rookie card' notation in recent years).


(The card shown, 1989 Topps Gregg Jefferies, is not his rookie card.)

1990 - 1994 Countdown: #6. 1991 Bowman

Back before card manufacturers had (somewhat) strict rules about who and who was not eligible for a rookie card, anybody was pretty much fair game. And coupled with the vast hype focused by the media and collectors on the rookie bubble as part of the hobby explosion in the early Nineties, it was only a matter of time before a manufacturer capitalized on the situation. Enter 1991 Bowman.

More so than any set before it, Bowman’s 1991 release was all about rookie cards. Legitimate rookies, guys who would never set foot on a major league diamond—like I said before: everybody was fair game, and everybody was included.


It wasn’t a bad thing for a set like this to exist. For one thing, it set up a nice working model for 1992 Bowman (as classic and hobby-defining a set as there is). It also made a relatively strong rookie class and made it stronger, not by adding more quality rookies but adding more rookies and career minor leaguers in general. It’s a ‘phonebook’ set: if you made it to Spring Training, you probably had a Bowman card. It’s also a ‘sidelines’ set: a sea of faces, crouches, poses and the odd throwback painted card. Few and far between are actual cards that feature what could be considered ‘action’ shots: out of a 704-card checklist, I only found only 189 (the best being of Cal Ripken’s back, excuse me, I mean Junior Ortiz). That’s less than 30% of the set. Action shots comprise almost 100% of brand flagship sets today. It’s funny how trends die out and others take hold.

Anyway, this set reminds me of an essay I wrote last August that addressed the idea of why baseball cards exist. If my thesis has some merit—that cards exist to validate the hard work minor leaguers put in to make the big leagues—then 1991 Bowman exists so that guys like Pat Lennon can get a major league rookie card. Think of it this way: just because only seven of the 12 guys at the beginning of this article ever made it to the major leagues doesn’t mean the others didn’t try just as hard. More often than not, guys just don't get there, or they're the odd man out if and when they do make it (just ask Pat Lennon). Only Sean Cheetham failed to have any semblance of a baseball career: the other 11 combined to tally service in 3,365 minor and 185 major league games.

As I mentioned above, this set was blessed with a strong rookie class (beyond just those on their ways to long minor league careers), made stronger because with no insert sets to speak of, there was nowhere for them to hide but amongst their team set. Rookies of guys either destined for the Hall of Fame or the Veterans Committee ballot like Chipper Jones, Jeff Bagwell, Jim Thome, Ivan Rodriguez, Mike Mussina, Javy Lopez, Kenny Lofton, Tim Salmon and Luis Gonzalez and other guys like Rondell White, Reggie Sanders, Ryan Klesko, Raul Mondesi (yeaahhh boy-eee!), Mike Lieberthal, Jeromy Burnitz, Roberto “Father Time” Hernandez, Bret Boone, Jeff Conine, a flameout like Todd Van Poppel and the colossal jerk Carl “Someday I’ll Head-butt an Umpire” Everett; all of them got their start in 1991 Bowman. This is not to say that other sets didn't feature one or most of these guys as well, but all of them together in a one-series regular set? Bowman was your only option.

Don’t get me wrong. There were problems with this set. The design was an afterthought, the backs made no sense, the photography was at best uninspired and at worst terrible and as I said, it was both a ‘sidelines’ and a ‘phonebook’ set. But so what? The checklist was incredible. And it had a purpose: to include not just everybody, not even just everybody who was anybody--but everybody who was everybody, everybody who was anybody and everybody who was never going to be anybody. And that’s the very reason baseball cards exist.

The Arms Race Continues

Boy, what a year Topps has put together, eh? They started 2007 with Jeter, Mantle and The Prez. From there it was on to what seemed like six long months of speculation, back-stabbing boardroom greed and the eventual buyout that polarized the hobby. So how have they followed it up? With a whoopsie on Michael Vick and now a slew of 'errors' in their brand-new baseball Series 3.

What can we take away from all of this? At its most base, it shows that it's a hobby for us but a cutthroat business for the manufacturers. One minute Topps is fighting off a hostile takeover from Upper Deck, the next they're figuring out ways to head UD off at the pass not only with Joba Chamberlain and Jacoby Ellsbury rookies, but with a Joba error and a super-rare Ellsbury not even on the set checklist.

And what's with that Ellsbury, anyway? Traditionally, Topps Series 3 (or Traded, or Updates & Milestones, or whatever) has been for late-season call-ups, trades and other stuff they couldn't fit in the set. But didn't this change with the designated rookie card? I thought the point of all the hoopla about using the standard 'rookie card' logo was to eliminate cards of guys like Jacoby from regular sets. First of all, he didn't have enough at-bats to qualify for rookie status. So that opens up a whole can of worms in trying to determine his true rookie card, because after his stellar play in September and just this past week on the national stage, you know he's going to be one of the major rookies for 2008 sets.

I don't know how I feel about all of this. Topps' strategy towards their baseball card products has been somewhat predictable this year, and these developments only cement their reputation. It begs the question: Do they employ the worst quality-control staffers in the business? Or do they have such a grim outlook towards their own product that they feel it won't sell without an error or two?

Goudey Trade-away #20: LaRoche for Wilson

This trade comes in from Daniel in Provo, Utah.

Giving: Adam LaRoche, #152
Getting: Preston Wilson, 2000 Upper Deck

Daniel writes: "Enjoy this card of Preston Wilson in a reflective pose. He is probably pondering over the fact that he will never hit over .300."

Daniel, you could very well be right. Either that, or he's trying to figure out if the good times will last. It's funny how some players can seem to figure the system out, but only for a very short period of time. Some guys make that period last for a year or two (like Preston Wilson), while other guys can't last for even a whole year.

Probably the most famous contemporary flame-outs are one-hit wonders like Kevin Maas and Jerome Walton. But there are others. Take this year's Red Sox. At one point they had two or three guys in Hideki Okajima, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Dustin Pedroia, who were in serious contention for AL Rookie of the Year. Now we're just looking at Pedroia, as Okajima has hit a wall as of late and whenever I watch Matsuzaka pitch, he's always working with guys on base ("Taking the Gas-pipe," as my father calls it).

By the way, do you think it would be weird if you could also call your step-dad Uncle Mookie?

Goudey Trade-away #19: Wasdin for Francoeur

This trade comes in from Pat in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Giving: Jeff Francoeur, #56 (red back)
Getting: John Wasdin, 1995 Topps

Pat writes: "One of my favorite things about baseball cards is looking back at 'future star' cards of players who turned out to be quite forgettable." I agree. There's nothing like coming upon Steve Searcy's 1989 Topps Future Star card and trying to figure out who he is. Or Mike Harkey. Or Pat Dodson, Todd Van Poppel, Jeff Juden, Earl Cunningham, Nigel Wilson, David Nied--stop me if I'm hitting nerves here. I mean, we all bought into these guys.

The only thing better, when it comes to rookie cards, is going back through old stacks and finding an overlooked star rookie. I have very clear memories of finding about six or seven of the 1986 Topps Cecil Fielder rookie during his breakout 1990 season. I also just pulled a few Torii Hunters and Derrek Lees from old stacks of 1994 Score (which, by the way, is a very clean, attractive set with a nice array of inserts. Unopened wax is also abundant and cheap, if you've got an itch for ripping old wax).

A couple fun things about Wasdin. The back of this card is just classic Topps: two photos on the back that are exactly the same. Good times. Also, although he's out of the game, he's in MLB: The Show 06, which I still play (I'm in season nine of my Red Sox franchise). And no matter how many runs I'm down, if the computer puts Wasdin in the game, I know I'll be able to tie the score or take the lead in one inning. I mean, he wasn't called Way Back Wasdin for nothing.

Countdown #42: 1974 Topps

First, a little background to give this set a sense of history in terms of design, checklist and overall make up. This set was the last to do a dual-league all-star by position subset (until the mid-Nineties), the last to feature the landscape orientation on regular base cards (until 1991 or 1992, I can never remember which) and it was the set that showed Topps how to properly perform hero worship on a still-active player (Hank Aaron), so successful in fact, that it emulated it to near-perfection twelve years later with Pete Rose in 1986.

1974 is a classic example of ‘the strongly designed set’, or a set where the main graphical element is present on every card. In ’74’s case, it’s the streamlined pennant (stolen and reconfigured from the classic design of 1965) on nearly every card. Those goddamn pennants…they’re ugly as hell, and you sure do get sick of them after about 20 cards, but you have to hand it to those Topps designers, because six years later in 1980 they take the same tired pennants, skew them 45 degrees and somehow make everything seem pleasing and fresh.

The ’74 backs were hard to read, set in a dark green, and, despite their misgivings, managed to establish their own place in history: they laid the groundwork for 1982’s not-quite-as-hard-but-still-hard-to-read dark green backs.

Finally, the checklist: You got a second-year Schmidt in there, plus early career Fisk, Munson, Reggie, and all the other great early Seventies stars from the A’s, Reds and everywhere in between, plus a few nice subsets. As I mentioned before, the dual-league All-Star cards are cool, and that subset wasn’t done again—by Topps or anyone else—until Topps brought it back in 1993.

Aaron was rightly worshipped with his own subset, and really this is his set (and it’s too bad, too, that Hank couldn’t have accomplished his homer heroics in the Summer of ’74, so that Topps could’ve put out a commemorative card in the late-series Traded series and then put out a special hero-worship subset in the 1975 set. That would’ve catapulted 1975 into the top ten sets ever made. Can you imagine? Cards 653-659 could’ve been ‘Hank Aaron Years’ cards, with card #660—his penultimate regular card, with maybe a photo of him at his car lot down in Atlanta, or smoking a cigar at home plate, or pushing away shaggy Braves fans as he rounded third, or, wait for it, a photo of him as a young call up for the Boston Braves in ’53? How about that?), which is just too bad, because there are a number of signs that this set is the quintessential one-step-away-from-greatness set, the ‘Biding Our Time’ set, the ‘Wait Til Next Year’ set…really, besides the Hank Aaron cards and the Winfield rookie, this set is a load of garbage.

Let me back that wild claim up with some rockhard facts. Not too many subsets, and these Seventies sets almost live or die on their subset inventiveness. 1972 had a late-series ‘Traded’ subset, 1975 had the MVPs through the years, 1977 had ‘Big League Brothers’ featuring the shell-shocked Reuschels. 1976 had the All-Time Team. 1972 had ‘In Action’ and a few ‘Boyhood Photos of the Stars’. 1973 had some more Boyhood Photos, including one of Catfish Hunter clutching a farm animal. What did 1974 have besides the Aaron Hero-Worship to open the set? World Series cards, dual-league leaders, All-Stars and a team variation. I guess you have to also count the Traded series as a subset for this set, but since I’ve already counted it separately, let’s forget it. Also, forget the team variation as a legitimate subset. So that leaves us with three subsets that were by this time pretty tired. OK, next.

Landscaped base cards. You may think that that would be a good thing, and in theory I’d agree with you—1960 is one my favorite designs. But the photography is especially bad in this set, and it’s a doubly bad sin, since most of the cards are action shots...out of control, out of focus action shots. Topps did a courageous thing three years earlier with the 1971 set: they moved out of the dugout and off the sidelines and incorporated action shots onto base cards. Then, in 1972 they introduced ‘In Action’ and corralled the action shot into a more manageable subset. 1973 was dominated by headshots and posed action sideline shots with actual action shots tossed in to make a strong mix. The photo quality suggested a special color front-page newspaper photo, or a spread in Sport. Then between 1973 and 1974 it’s like the Topps photo and art departments had a collective nervous breakdown, hit the bottle and just gave up. Really, if it had been me, I would’ve quit after producing the masterful Yellow Submarine, Electric Company 1972 set and not even had to stoop to producing the whitebread IBM punchcard 1973 design. If it were up to me, I would’ve commissioned Andy Warhol to do his take on the 1949 Leaf design, and then after shelling out three-quarters of the year’s budget, he’d probably just show me the same design, I’d call it Brilliant!, and we’d go from there. I’d start hanging out at The Factory, get kicked out for being a grown man and always talking about baseball cards while not being high, then start my own hip inner circle drop-in-hang-out-print-fume-inhalation-room place on the other side of Union Square and call in The Sweatshop. It would be totally
awesome and big shots like Elliott Gould, Tom Seaver and Karen Black would come by, like, all the time, and the difference between my place and The Factory would be that instead of sitting around and trying to act all cool in front of each other, we’d sit around and make shit. Hell, we’d sit at long tables and make shit for hours, well, the celebrities would sit, and make stuff, like pot holders and fake designer handbags and leather boots, and I’d sit in my air conditioned office and talk with suppliers on the phone and then come out periodically to make sure that everybody was having a good time. And if they weren’t—and I’m talking big shots here, like Bud Harrelson and Clyde Frazier, Harvey Keitel and Henry Kissinger—well, then I’d launch into a long-winded speech on why Gus Triandos was completely undeserving of a 2nd Tier number in the meritocracy of the Topps checklisting universe of the 1960s…and they'd snap right back to work, because I happen to feel strongly about that and can go on about it for a long time (and really nobody wants that)...

Anyway, the photography (action, sideline, all and every kind) wasn’t very good in the 1974 set and I think there was something wrong with the color.

Finally, 1974’s rookie class is one of the weakest of the decade, if not the weakest. It hurt the make up of the set that Topps didn’t do team rookie cards in ’74. Instead there are a handful of by-position major-league rookies at the end of the set and base cards for the rest of the set. If some of them happened to be rookies (like Dave Winfield and Dave Parker), well, that’s cool, but still. I would rate the rookie class of the 1974 just below that of 1976, and even 1976 was pretty weak.

Here’s how the rookies of 1974 stack up against those from the rest of the decade.

Worthwhile 1974 Rookies
Dave Winfield
Dave Parker
Bill Madlock
Frank Tanana
Ken Griffey
Frank White
Manny Trillo
Brian Downing
Bake McBride
Bucky Dent
Gorman Thomas
Gene Garber
Steve Rogers
Randy Jones
Bill Campbell


Granted, fifteen’s not a bad number. Hell, there are more rookies than that in the set, but you know, no offense, but you have to draw the line at Elias Sosa and Dick Ruthven. Anyway, if you really wanted to be strict about calling rookies ‘worthwhile’, you’d probably have to trim that list at least in half. Now let’s look at it again:

Worthwhile 1974 Rookies
Dave Winfield (HOF)
Dave Parker
Bill Madlock
Frank Tanana
Ken Griffey
Frank White
Manny Trillo

Not so great anymore, huh? Just one HOFer, and I don’t know if Parker will ever get there even after a thousand years on the Veterans Committee ballot, assuming he’s on there. Anyway, the point is, this is one heck of a weak rookie class…though you know, the more I think about the Seventies, the more I’m realizing that those years were really hit or miss in terms of rookie classes. I bet that if we go set by set from 1970 to 1979 about half would have a Worthwhile Rookie Checklist about as long as 1974 and the other half maybe a little longer. I’m going to guess that 1972, 1975 and 1978 will have the longest lists, 1973 and 1979 will have the shortest, and 1974 and 1976 will still be tied for the weakest.

Worthwhile 1970 Rookies
Bill Buckner
Bill Lee
Vida Blue
Gene Tenace
Jerry Reuss
Thurman Munson
Darrell Evans
Reggie Cleveland

Worthwhile 1971 Rookies
George Foster
Dave Concepcion
Bert Blyleven
Ken Singleton
Ted Simmons
Dusty Baker
Don Baylor
Steve Garvey

Worthwhile 1972 Rookies
Carlton Fisk (HOF)
Cecil Cooper
Darrell Porter
J.R. Richard
Chris Chambliss
Richie Zisk
Steve Stone
Rick Dempsey
Ron Cey
Ben Ogilvie

Worthwhile 1973 Rookies
Mike Schmidt (HOF)
Dwight Evans
Rich Gossage
Buddy Bell
Jorge Orta (Mexican HOF)
Dave Lopes
Bob Boone

Worthwhile 1974 Rookies
See above


Worthwhile 1975 Rookies
George Brett (HOF)
Robin Yount (HOF)
Jim Rice
Fred Lynn
Gary Carter (HOF)
Keith Hernandez
Rick Burleson

Worthwhile 1976 Rookies
Dennis Eckersley (HOF)
Mike Flanagan
Ron Guidry
Willie Randolph
Chet Lemon
Jerry Remy

Worthwhile 1977 Rookies
Bruce Sutter (HOF)
Dale Murphy
Andre Dawson
Garry Templeton
Mark Fidrych
Tony Armas
Dennis Martinez
Jack Clark
Len Barker

Worthwhile 1978 Rookies
Eddie Murray (HOF)
Paul Molitor (HOF)
Alan Trammell
Jack Morris
Lou Whitaker
Lance Parrish
Willie Hernandez
Warren Cromartie (big in Japan)

Worthwhile 1979 Rookies
Ozzie Smith (HOF)
Pedro Guerrero
Lonnie Smith
Dwayne Murphy
Bob Welch
Willie Wilson
Bob Horner (wanted to be big in Japan)

Well, I was wrong. I would have to say that 1975 and dark horse 1971 are tied for strongest rookie class, though 1977 is by far my favorite. Any set boasting rookies of Barker, Templeton and The Bird—all three of which I can probably purchase for under a dollar combined—is a friend of mine. But anyway, you see what I mean about the Seventies: these sets don’t have more than one or two worthwhile rookies each, which is a shame. Especially in the case of 1974, since there aren’t many other reasons to collect it.