- Official Card Set Name and Card Number: 1960 Topps #210.
- Player Name, position, team: Harmon Killebrew, third baseman, Washington Senators.
- Major League Debut: June 23, 1954.
- Last Line of Statistics: 1959 stats (Senators): 153 G, 546 AB, 98 R, 132 H, 20 2B, 2 3B, 42 HR, 105 RBI, .242 AVG.
- Any special information about player: Signed by the Senators as a Free Agent 06/19/1954. Bats: right, Throws: right.
- Any special information about this specific card: Killebrew's fifth regular Topps card. The 1960 Topps set was voted by readers of Topps Magazine as the number 1 set of the 1960's (Topps Magazine, Spring, 1991, #6). And why not? Horizontally oriented cards, plus the use of two pictures (the large colored one plus the thin black and white "action" pose), the multicolored letters to spell the players name. The classic team logos. And all the Hall of Famers included that year? Of course it's a classic set. Too bad, however that when Topps uses a card to represent the 1960 set, they've only used Willie McCovey's All-Star Rookie Team card, or Carl Yaztrzemski's "Youth of America" Rookie Team card. While both are classic cards in their own right, I feel Topps has neglected this set by not including a regular card as a proper representative as to what the cards really looked like. The Killer was starting to show the nation that he was a slugger to be reckoned with in the American League. The year before, he became a first-time All-Star, led the league in home runs, and was an MVP candidate. There would be many more of both (including an MVP season in 1969) to come in the decade. The back of his card features his statistics, of course, along with a cartoon stating that Harmon "tied Sievers' Washington HR record with 42 blasts." While the Killer would go on to higher HR totals, these were accomplished after the original Senators moved to Minnesota. Speaking of homers, the season's highlights featured to the left of the cartoon mention nothing but his home run exploits: April 9: Home run on Opening Day; May 12: 2 Home runs, 5 rbi's to beat Detroit; May 17: 2 Home runs to beat Chicago; May 30: Becomes 12th player to hit 15 hr's in a month (card says May 31...ERROR CARD!!!); June 19: Hits longest home run ever in Griffith Stadium at 480 feet; July 11: Hits a 450 blast against Orioles; September 27: Goes 4-5 against Red Sox (final game of the season...oh yeah, one home run). One of the greatest sluggers in baseball's history, Harmon Killebrew was inducted to baseball's HOF in 1984.
- Lo-Hi Beckett value: $15.00-$40.00.
- How many cards of this player do I own?: 20 cards.
In case you're actually wondering, I don't own this card, but was able to get a crystal clean copy of the image from the from the Baseball Card Cyber Museum. So thank you Joe McAnally and the folks at the BCCM.
7ell, it's back to normal on Monday. Tomorrow's card will be: 2008 Topps #317. Post will arrive at 1:00 PM CST. Come on back then to see what the Topps Card Randomizer gets us to look at then.
Sincerely,
JayBee Anama
1 comment:
Great card! For some reason I always think of the design of the 60 set as being weak compared to the cards before and after it, then I see cards that that that remind me it's pretty damn good as well.
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