First Look - Oakland Athletics

Here's the last in a 5-part series where we get the first look at a new team's uniforms.

Not an expansion team this time, but the recently-relocated Athletics. They moved from Kansas City after the 1967 season, but it took Topps 1 1/2 years to catch up with new player photos.

Included below are the rookie cards for Reggie Jackson, Joe Rudi, and Ed Sprague.

The multi-player card shown above was also posted to this 1969 blog in August 2009 by the blog's previous owner. That is the first blog post I found (not even realizing that Google Blogger existed at that time). A few days later I created an account, and here we are 7+ years later!

#556 A's Stars

The first thing that comes to mind when I look at this card is, why did Topps choose these 3 for this card? With my limited knowledge of A's stars and 1969 baseball, I would have gone with Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue and Rollie Fingers. But, looking back at the timeline in all these player's careers helped me see better, for myself, the answer to my question.

Sal was the up-and-comer who had established himself well the year before and really hit his stride in 1969. He was selected to his first All-Star Game, hit 31 home runs and batted .281. Bert was an obvious choice. He was just scary on the base path, swiping 62 that year. His previous year he led the majors with another 62 steals, was 11th in MVP voting and was selected to his first All-Star Game. Danny finished 2nd to Yaz in the AL batting titled in 1968, "The Year of the Pitcher", hitting .290 to Yaz's .301.

As for Reggie, Vida and Rollie, they were all still fresh outta the minors from Iowa and Vancouver! And along with Catfish, they would go on to become legends a little later winning 3 championships in a row for Oakland.

I picked up this card on eBay last week for 25 cents, along with 5 more commons all for a quarter or two each. This was the first time I had seen the team stars format for this set, since I mostly only have lower numbered cards. I really love this card and can't wait to find more like it for the other teams!