Random Topps Card of the Day: 1973 Topps #412 Manny Mota

It's Retro Sunday!!! Thanks to the Topps Card Randomizer, introducing the Random Topps Card of the Day for Sunday, May 30, 2010:

• Official Card Set Name and Card Number: 1973 Topps #412.
• Player Name, position, team: Manny Mota, outfielder, Los Angeles Dodgers.
• Major League Debut: April 16, 1962.
• Last Line of Statistics: 1972 stats (Dodgers): 371 AB, 120 H, 16 2B, 5 3B, 5 HR, 48 RBI, .323 AVG.
• Any special information about player: Signed by the Giants as a Free Agent before the 1957 season. Traded by the Expos to the Giants 06/11/1969. Bats: right, Throws: right.
• Any special information about this specific card: Mota's eleventh regular Topps card (his rookie card). The 1973 Topps set continued the use of action photos in their base cards. The design was clean and included a silhouette player based on his position. Mota was named to the All-Star team in 1973, but it was in 1972 that he saw him in the running for MVP consideration (helps that he had a .375 batting average). In fact, according to the cartoon caption on the back of the card, "Manny has had a BA of better than .300 for the last 7 out of 8 years." Towards the end of his career, he was used primarily as a pinch hitter/defensive replacement. And by the time he ended his career in 1982, he finished with a batting average of .304.
• Lo-Hi Beckett value: $0.75-$2.00.
• How many cards of this player do I own?: 8 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.

Well, it's back to normal on Monday. Tomorrow's card will be: 1993 Topps Traded #47T. 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