Remembering the Summer of '69

Today is the final post to this 1969 set blog. 

This blog was started in 2009 by a blogger named Pack Addict (who later changed his handle to Socially Awkward Jelly Fish). After it sat idle for almost 2 years, I approached him about me posting on his blog (since I had a lot of 1969 cards) and he turned it over to me completely in January 2012. (My first post here was about Bobby Bonds.) 

But now I too have found it difficult to maintain interest in blogging, so I am retiring most of my blogs.

The 1969 cards were the 3rd set I collected in my youth. Many have maligned it for the huge number of capless and airbrushed photos, but that was unavoidable, given the 4 new expansion teams and the whole Houston/Astros mess. 

 

But the set does have a lot going for it: 

 

4 more teams (requiring 2 new color schemes for Topps) 

 

68 more cards than the previous year. (You would think with 4 more teams, that would mean 100 more player and 4 more manager cards, but many of the expansion teams' players appeared on Rookie Stars cards, or were journeymen not on a major-league roster in 1968, so they were not included in the next year's set.) 

 

We get our first look at the Oakland Athletics uniforms, and in later series, our first look at the expansion teams' uniforms. 

 

The final cards for Mickey Mantle, Don Drysdale, Johnny Podres, and many others (as seen in the previous post here). 

 

THREE different insert subsets: 

    Deckle edge cards 

    Decals 

    Stamps 

 

There was so much to see and collect!

 

After the 1969 set, I took 2 years off from collecting cards (although my 1-year-younger brother continued to do so in '70 and '71). I returned for one last year of collecting in 1972, then I was out of the hobby until 1981 (which I've mentioned in this post). 

 

So now I have retired my '63, '65, '66, '67, '68, and '69 blogs. After two more posts, the '70 blog will close down as well. 

 

 

If you haven't seen it already, please scroll down to the end of the sidebar to read comments about the set that I wrote, and posted on Zistle some years ago.

Final Card: Re-capping all 78

I have 6 more final cards that I was going to post (Billy Harris, Bob Skinner, Dave Adlesh, Galen Cisco, Hank Bauer, and Lou Johnson), but I am going to skip ahead to the recap, because like my other blogs, this blog is sailing off into the sunset, and 7 more posts just isn't gonna happen. 

I posted the final cards recap for the 1966, 1967, and 1968 sets back in 2012, and wanted to get this one completed as well. 

 

The 1969 set includes the final cards for 72 players and 6 managers, all pictured below in order of years of service, from Mickey Mantle's 18 years to Jon Warden's one season.

A few of these guys played their last MLB game in 1968 (Mantle, Nixon, Monbouquette, among others). Others even before that (Gonder in '67, Sheldon in '66), but most of these players wrapped it up in 1969.

Bob Rodgers and Lee Elia would have manager cards in later years.

The always-jovial Joe Schultz is listed last among these 78 cards. I wonder what 2-syllable expression he would use if he knew that?