Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Bobby Bonds (#630)

Welcome to the re-booted 1969 Topps Baseball Card blog! This blog was started by Pack Addict back on 3/13/2009, but has been inactive for quite some time. Today, he turned it over to me, so I will be posting some of my 1969 cards that have been burning a hole in their binder for all these years. I will be starting with several stars from the hard-to-find 7th series' high numbers.

Thanks, Pack Addict! Yours is the first blog I found in Google Blogger, about a week before I jumped aboard in late September 2009.



This is Bobby Bonds' rookie card. Although Bonds had been tearing up the minor leagues for several seasons, Topps somehow forgot to include him in the 1968 set. In fact, they forgot a Giants Rookies card altogether. Thankfully, Steve at WhiteSoxCards has rectified that problem.



Bonds began his career in 1965 with the Giants' class-A team at Lexington, NC, and made his major-league debut on June 25, 1968. He took over the Giants' right field job immediately, and also made 23 starts in center field when Willie Mays was given a day off. This RF/CF arrangement continued until May 1972, when Mays was traded to the Mets and Garry Maddox took over the center field job.

Bobby played for the Giants for his first 7 seasons. After the 1974 season he was traded to the Yankees for outfielder Bobby Murcer. The last 7 seasons of his 14-year career were spent playing for 7 different teams. By the time he played his last game on October 4, 1981, he had amassed 332 home runs, 1024 RBI, and 461 stolen bases.

Bonds played in several dozen triple-A games in 1981 and 1982 before hanging up his glove.

3 comments:

Erik said...

I love the the big trophy's that Topps put on their All Star Rookie cards in the 60's and early 70's.

Jim from Downingtown said...

Yes, they're much better than the small cups Topps used in later years.

As a Phillies fan since 1967, it was great to see Don Money ('70) and Larry Bowa ('71) get these in back-to-back seasons.

I was just looking through all my 1960s' binders yesterday, and noticed that the 1966 Angels have 3 players with Topps all-star rookie trophies (Marcelino Lopez, Jose Cardenal, and I forget the other one - maybe Paul Schaal).

Erik said...

I believe it was Paul Schaal.

In the 1964 Topps Set, the White Sox had three all-star rookies. Pete Ward, Gary Peters and Al Weis.