Random Topps Card of the Day: 1970 Topps #280 Donn Clendenon

It's Retro Sunday!!! Thanks to the Topps Card Randomizer, introducing the Random Topps Card of the Day for Sunday, March 21, 2010:

• Official Card Set Name and Card Number: 1970 Topps #280.
• Player Name, position, team: Donn Clendenon, first baseman, New York Mets.
• Major League Debut: September 22, 1961.
• Last Line of Statistics: 1969 stats (Expos-Mets): 110 G, 331 AB, 45 R, 82 H, 11 2B, 1 3B, 16 HR, 51 RBI, .277 AVG.
• Any special information about player: Signed by Pirates as a Free Agent before 1957 season. Traded by the Expos to the Mets 06/15/1969. Bats: right, Throws: right.
• Any special information about this specific card: Clendenon's ninth regular Topps card (total does not include any combo cards, or the 1969 Topps Expos variation). The famous gray bordered set from 1970. Very hard to find centered cards from this set (and the picture used here is no exception). The backs were bright (did they not use the normal gray stock for these cards????) with blue and yellow colors on the backs for easy reading. A few things about the back of Donn's card: there is no transaction information in the vital information (the one that includes height, weight, bats, throws, etc), which I didn't know wasn't included on here at the time. Also, his minor league stats are still on the card, even though he played more than seven seasons with the Pirates before taken in the expansion draft by the Expos. And instead of separating his stats with les Expos and the Mets, they combined the stats for a yearly total. Did you know that he was originally traded to the Astros in exchange for Rusty Staub, but refused to report? You mean this guy WANTED TO STAY in Montréal??? Maybe there was something that's not being reported (was he not going to get playing time with the Astros if he joined the club?) It is just as well. The Expos eventually traded him to the New York Mets in 1969, just in time by the way, as these Mets somehow overtook a certain NORTHSIDE TEAM FROM CHICAGO for first place in the NL East, and by some "miracle," beat the Braves in the first ever NLCS, and won the World Series over the Baltimore Orioles!!! Did you know who won the MVP for the World Series? That's right...Mr. Clendenon. Back to the card though. The font used for the player's name appears 24 years later in the 1994 Topps set. The gray borders do stand out on this design better than the gray borders in the 2000 set (probably a brighter shade of gray in 1970). The blurb on the back of the card, above the stats, mentions that as "MVP of 1969 Series, Donn set a mark with 3 Homers in 5 games." What mark that would be I'm not sure as it seems that if it was a record, it's been broken countless times since.
• Lo-Hi Beckett value: $0.60-$1.50.
• How many cards of this player do I own?: 0 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. (You have to stop by and visit them now. They just announced that they are allowing more people to enter the museum at one time.)

Well, it's back to normal on Monday. Tomorrow's card will be: 1978 Topps #546. 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