All-Star Cards

Here are the All-Star cards... those players selected as All-Stars in 1968 by The Sporting News. As with the All-Star cards in the 1968 set, the players getting the cards were not necessarily the starters.

In the actual game, the NL had Don Drysdale, Jerry Grote, Willie Mays, and Hank Aaron starting at P, C, CF, and RF respectively. The AL lineup included Luis Tiant, Harmon Killebrew, Jim Fregosi, and Frank Howard starting at P, 1B, SS, and RF. Otherwise, the starters were those you see in the 2 large blocks of cards below.

For the NL, Curt Flood started out of position in left field. Pete Rose and Bob Gibson were on the team, but did not play. (I assume they may have been injured.) Johnny Bench only played the 9th inning, so maybe he was banged up as well. Jerry Koosman pitched the final 1/3 inning of the game.

For the AL, Carl Yastrzemski started in center field, while Ken Harrelson, Bert Campaneris, and Tony Oliva all played later in the game. Denny McLain pitched the 5th and 6th innings, and Sam McDowell pitched the 7th.

The Sporting News selected a lefty and a righty in each league. Here are the lefthanders, who didn't fit into the Brady-Bunch-style collage above.

The backs of these 20 cards formed 2 photos - Pete Rose and Carl Yastrzemski (Yaz also made the puzzle in the '68 set.) Contrary to what I would have thought, the 2 puzzles were not made exclusively from the player cards from Rose's or Yaz' own league. (My scanner bed is not large enough to hold all 10 cards, hence the cut-off tops.)

RECAP:
3 Cardinals
3 Reds
3 Tigers
2 Cubs
2 Red Sox
2 Twins
1 each from Giants, Mets, Athletics, Orioles, Indians
.

#419 Rod Carew Sporting News All -Star

Here's a young Sir Rodney on his Sporting News All-Star card #419. Only in his third season, he was on his way to win his first of 7 AL batting titles with an average of .332 that year! This was his 3rd All-Star selection in his, count em', 18 consecutive All-Star selections! He also stole home 9 times that year. Wow.

According to Beckett.com, there were 20 All-Star cards, all with puzzle pieces on the back. The first ten, including this one, featured a Carl Yaztremski puzzle. The other ten featured Pete Rose.

This card, along with another dozen, were sent over from Dean at Dean's Cards just because of his love for the 1969 Topps Baseball set! After Dean contacted me, I checked out his store and was really impressed by the sheer volume of singles listed, and the quality of the layout. They've pretty much got the last 100 years of sports trading cards covered, along with a large amount of non-sports cards, mostly from the 1930's through the 1960's. In most cases, you'll have a choice of which grade you want. This card, for instance, shows 5 EX/MT, 15 EX and 4 VG cards in stock! Check 'em out.

Here's the other cards sent over from Dean that will be shown on this blog in the near future:

# 1 AL Batting Leaders -Yaz / Cater / Oliva
# 120 Pete Rose
# 136 Cardinals Rookies - Huntz / Torrez
# 139 Andy Kosco
# 158 Joe Gibbon
# 334 Phil Roof
# 388 Tom McCraw
# 389 Dan Coombs
# 391 Ray Culp
# 436 Gene Alley
# 445 Bobby Knoop
# 553 Ron Davis