My first baseball card post for 2009 is none other than Willie Howard Mays. Some regard Mays as the greatest all around baseball player ever (if not number one certainly in the top five on everyone’s list). While I was able to see him play in person only twice, his career numbers are incredible.
660 homeruns, .302 career batting average, 1903 RBI’s, to go along with 338 stolen bases, 20 time all-star, 2 time National League MVP (1954 and 1965), 12 time gold glove award winner, 1951 Rookie of the Year and naturally his uniform # 24 is retired by the San Francisco Giants. If that was not enough, the current Giant stadium (AT&T Park) is addressed as 24 Willie Mays Plaza.
The 1970 card of Mays, # 600 pictured here is one of my favorites. I like the cards from 1970, simple gray border, name printed in script and a posed picture with Mays’ eyes looking for that perfect pitch to be thrown.
As in some of my earlier posts, I like the back of the card even better. The nine basic statistical categories and the listing of his entire career year by year; unlike the 1971 cards listing only stats from 1970 and career. Take a look at games played and you will see a player who played in over 150 games 13 years in a row – look at most of today’s players and the number of games played, it is a joke.One most interesting stat on the back is homeruns. Mays ended the 1969 campaign with exactly 600 round trippers . . . his card is numbered 600. As I mentioned before in my Roberto Clemente 1973 post, I have termed this sort of coincidence as a “Clementi-ism” . Do you know of other cards with this sort of “coincidence” ? Let’s share . . .
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