Gambo and T_Wil1 Photopack

[KenRaffensberger16]

Originally Posted by bearman14

Chico Fernandez- Billy Baldwin- Joe Hicks

Bearman: Thanks for Chico Fernandez, one of the 50 oldest living Phillies, who turned 83 Monday, March 2.

[rico43]

Commissioned from a friend on this site. Super job!

[Merkle923]

In the three-shot above that's pitching coach Rube Walker on the right and minor league pitching coach Chuck Estrada on the left. Dates the picture to 1970-72 I believe.

As to putting dates on Topps photo shoots and the 1967-68 union boycott, from the files it looks like there was an attempt to shoot each visiting team as they hit New York. Sometimes this would be just once a year, sometimes it would be multiple visits. San Francisco and later SF/Oakland operated ad hoc in the beginning and then grew to the effort to shoot each team at least once each year there.

This resulted in some weirdness with the Mets and Yankees. Topps shot Gerry Arrigo - who only spent about half a year with them in '66 - at least three different times that year.

Shoots in other parks were kind of random. You'll see a lot of Angels at Fenway (1967 shoot) and Cleveland (1966 shoot), some Cubs at home, etc.

As to exactly when the MLBPA boycott began, it was pretty random. For instance, some of the many players called up by the Mets in August and September, 1967 (Joe Grzenda, Billy Connors, Joe Moock) posed, others (Bill Graham, Al Schmelz, Billy Wynne) did not. Tom Seaver didn't pose for Topps after spring training 1967, until the 1969 season. Meanwhile, no Yankee added to their roster after Bob Tillman (August 8) posed for Topps that year.

[rico43]

Merkle is certain that Topps did not shoot Parker, so I hope that this comes as a pleasant surprise.





Link is to faithinflushing.com

[BklynJace]

Originally Posted by rico43

Merkle is certain that Topps did not shoot Parker, so I hope that this comes as a pleasant surprise.


Attachment 387992


Link is to faithinflushing.com

Faith and Fear is a site I co-write, but the Salty colorization is by Warren Zvon of metsfantasycards.blogspot.com. Salty turns out to have been a really interesting guy, BTW.

[Merkle923]

While he's front of mind - here is a scan of the original image of Folkers during his two-year stint with the Padres, in the 1976 SSPC set

[Amazin69]

My attempts to improve the Mets pics, including dealing with the oversaturation of FatJack's Bob D. Johnson (great job fixing the perspective on that one, btw), getting the shadows off of Hicks's face, and trying to cure that "Yellow Skies of Chi" phenomenon in the Billy Baldwin.

(Useless note: I went to college with the other Billy Baldwin, Alec's brother.)



Wish I could have done more to get the shadows off of Baldwin's face, but I could only crank the brightness so high. Enjoy.

[FatJack]

Originally Posted by Amazin69

Wish I could have done more to get the shadows off of Baldwin's face, but I could only crank the brightness so high. Enjoy.

As the person who bought that Billy Baldwin, I can promise you there's not much you can do with it. Oh, I could paint the sky blue, but those shadows over his face are impossible. This was the best I could manage and, man, I tried for hours.

Edit: Looking at it now, all big like that, I'm not sure whether some of the earlier ones weren't better. Take your pick: #6 up top, #4 below (as labeled...doesn't mean I only tried six stages...just the tries that I kept). Probably not much different.

[BklynJace]

Originally Posted by Merkle923

As to putting dates on Topps photo shoots and the 1967-68 union boycott, from the files it looks like there was an attempt to shoot each visiting team as they hit New York. Sometimes this would be just once a year, sometimes it would be multiple visits. San Francisco and later SF/Oakland operated ad hoc in the beginning and then grew to the effort to shoot each team at least once each year there.

This resulted in some weirdness with the Mets and Yankees. Topps shot Gerry Arrigo - who only spent about half a year with them in '66 - at least three different times that year.

It was good to play in the capital of baseball while it was still that. Reminds me of a tale I read somewhere about a Pirates middle reliever complaining about never getting a card, and a Topps rep shaking his head and saying, "Dude, you're on the Pirates." (Which shouldn't be that way, but what can you do.)

[Re the above: found it.]

Given the weirdness with the Mets/Yankees, do you know if Topps ever shot these guys as Mets? I'd assumed no, but perhaps that was too hasty:

Tom Sturdivant
Dallas Green
Jack Lamabe

Promise I'm now out of questions.

Regarding non-Topps images of those three, I know about the good Lamabe portrait from Chicago and the not-bad B&W Sturdivant. But have never seen Sturdivant or Green in color as Mets.

Thanks very much to all the posters for the great info and pics. Goodness I love this place.

[Amazin69]

There's a color Sturdivant in the Pitchers' Pack, but it's only 90x135, of course:



Appears to be from a Chicago shoot, most likely cropped from a larger pic, but I can't locate the original. Still, at least we know it's out there.

[Merkle923]

They shot Sturdivant and Green, but not Lamabe. No idea if it was a boycott thing.

Ironically enough, Lamabe (2nd Row, third from left) along with Nick Willhite (Back Row, fifth from right) and Salty Parker (Front Row, fourth from left) never posed for Topps, but did appear in the Mets-supplied photo that appears on the Topps Mets' Team card in the 1968 set.

[rico43]

Really strong color photo of Lamabe with Mets on page 997 of this thread.

[Merkle923]

From the Topps Vault, 1973

[Merkle923]

Oscar Gamble, Padres, 1978

[Merkle923]

More to our purposes, the Detroit outfielder who spent parts of five seasons over six years with the Tigers, yet never earned either a full-time job nor a card of his own:

[Amazin69]

For the next round of "Is that Brace photo Lamb, or is it Jim McKee?", here are four fresh pics of Lamb, two from his Pirates days, and two from the White Sox camp in 1974. He definitely has blue eyes…for whatever that's worth.



The first picture is almost a match for the Brace photo, but I'm still on Team McKee about the Brace pic. I agree Lamb has blue eyes; I just can't see them on the pitcher in the Brace pic. But JMO.

Lamb was followed by four shots of Jack Lamabe, but no Mets pics, as could be expected. Still, a bummer.

[BklynJace]

"Here's a bunch of Met Lamabes we didn't know we had. They were misfiled with Al Schmelz and Greg Harts."

Hey, a guy can dream.

[rico43]

We've seen some nice, early images of Dale Murphy; Bob Lemke has even designed a custom card of him in his first spring jersey of #52. But has anyone seen the full-sized photo that appeared on his 1977 Topps Rookie Stars card?

[FatJack]

Originally Posted by rico43

We've seen some nice, early images of Dale Murphy; Bob Lemke has even designed a custom card of him in his first spring jersey of #52. But has anyone seen the full-sized photo that appeared on his 1977 Topps Rookie Stars card?

I haven't seen it, no. But Topps later blew up that image for one of their Archives sets and it looks to me like one of Topps' airbrushed images. If it is an airbrush job, and being as they used to do that directly on the negatives (or transparencies or whatever), its likely you'll never see what the original image looked like. Just sayin'.

[KenRaffensberger16]

Oscar's 'Fro' Days are over. He's seen holding his 1976
Topps Traded baseball card, documenting his trade from
Cleveland to the Yankees. He still cuts a trim figure as
seen in this recent photo. Gamble is now 65 and was
probably 25 or 26 in his baseball card photo.
Gamble had two 20 HR seasons with a career high 31 in 1977.
He hit an even 200 home runs, in 17 MLB seasons (1969-1985).
In one of the final games of his career before his release by the
White Sox in 1985, he had a big day at the plate to help
Tom Seaver get his 300th win (over his old team - the Yankees).
Photo: New York Daily News.