#109T Darrin Jackson

It's a nice action shot of Jackson, but what I find truly interesting is the kneeling ball girl in the background. There's something you don't see every day on a baseball card.

Best phrase on the back is definitely "groin area."

#94T Jeff Pico

Some serious chunks of dirt flying there! Nice!

Here is a list of shutouts in first career start, coming for the Cubs. The back of the card refers to only the first start in a career, not the first start for the Cubs, which is why they ignore Cardwell. That list goes back only to 1956.

Best word on the back? "Auspicious."

#82T Damon Berryhill

This is a great example of the kind of action photo that Score could use due to the use of the headshot on the back. Hitting a baseball requires the batter's head to be down, watching the ball, and thus Berryhill's face is almost completely invisible. But that's OK since we can see it on the back of the card, and we get the awesome action shot of the ball about the be whacked.

Most unusual word on the back is the rather pedestrian "displaced."

#80T Mark Grace

Mark Grace is one of those guys who looked the same on his last baseball card as he did on his first baseball card. His body shape was the same and he aged very well. This is a nice photo, except for the poor batboy who is blocked by Grace's knee.

The card back is pretty interesting to read. Richie Zisk thought that Grace had 25-HR power, but he never topped 17 HR in any season.

Best words on the back? The phrases "good head" and "best looking." Heh.

Interesting to see 3 other players mentioned on the back too: Zisk, Chris Gwynn, and Keith Hernandez.

Grace had a great career but will never make the Hall of Fame.

#39T Calvin Schiraldi

OK, folks. I've you've been reading my blogs, you know that I love seeing interesting things in the backgrounds of card photo.

I give you the MOTHER OF ALL CARD BACKGROUNDS.

Behind Schiraldi, we have Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg playing second base. This is the third card I know of that features Sandberg in the background. (The others are here and here although I'm sure there must be more such cards.)

As if that's not enough, behind Sandberg is Andre Dawson (very likely future HOFer)!! That's two fantastic Cubs on a card behind one big dud.

#16T Vance Law

CARD

This set has a lot of rubber-looking bats, including Law's. Any photographer know why? I'm assuming that it has to do with the speed of the film, and therefore how long the shutter needed to be left open in order to get the right amount of light. Topps' photos of the time didn't look like this--bats in motion were always crisp.

Notice too that the ball is passing right along the bottom edge of the photo. Looks like it's going to be a swing-and-a-miss for Vance.

STAT

What I wrote above got me curious to see how much Vance struck out. Here are all the players since 1901 with 600 to 610 career strikeouts. The list includes two active players. Law's total of 4298 PAs is pretty much in the middle in terms of career PAs to achieve such a a strikeout total. It's tough to say much more than that since this list would really needed to be corrected for average strikeout rates across different eras to make sense. But you can compare Law just to his contemporaries on the list: Boone, Doran, Kemp, Brookens, and Bernazard to see that his strikeout totals weren't particularly noteworthy.

CAREER

Law actually pitched in 7 games, probably among the leaders in the last 40 years for guy who really were not pitchers at all. One guy, Bill Almon, faced him twice, in two different games!

I don't have much else to say about Law's career...

#14T Goose Gossage

CARD

Score chose to go ahead and put "Goose" on the card, unlike Topps did, calling him "Rich."

Also, what the heck is that big green blob in the stands behind Gossage? It looks like someone dressed up like an ear of corn for Halloween.

STAT

To demonstrate the changes in how relief pitchers are used, check out this list of pitchers appearing in at least 1000 games since 1901. I ranked them by IP. Ignore Eckersley since he started over 300 games. Hoyt Wilhelm and Gossage pitched far more innings than everybody else, despite appearing in just about the same number of games. Even with nearly 100 starts, Jose Mesa isn't close.

CAREER

What can be said about Gossage's career? The guy is in the HOF already, the first HOFer we've seen in this update set. I think it's interesting how much people forget about the late part of his career. He had an off year with the Cubs in 1988, but then finished up strong with good years in San Fran, Texas, Oakland, and Seattle. His K/BB fell off quite a bit at the end, but his ERA was better than league average in all those years but one.