1974 Topps - John Grubb

John Grubb, or Johnny Grubb, is the greatest baseball player of all-time... or at least, for a short time, he was the greatest in the eyes of a eight-year-old boy. And that makes it true. John Grubb joined the Tigers in 1983 and played for them during that sweet spot of time that are the golden years of my childhood. He was mostly a bench player, though he DH'd and played outfield some. He was a pretty good hitter and had success pinch hitting. I must have seen him come into a game one time and hit a home run to save the day. That is all it took.

I had several favorite players over the course of my younger days, Trammell, Gibson, Lemon, Nokes. But Grubb was the only one that I had to myself. No one else had Grubb as their favorite. No one else traded whatever Yankee cards they had to get Grubb's from his pre-Tiger days. So Johnny Grubb, though he was supplanted by others in the years hence, holds a special place. He is the archetypical favorite player. I even wrote a poem about it (at the very bottom).

The featured card is a beauty for a few reasons. For one, it is his rookie card. John was a top prospect in his day. He was a monster in college at Florida State. And in he first years with San Diego, he was an All-star. Injuries and some other oddities slowed down his career in the late 70s and early 80s, but he had a respectable rebound with the Tigers. You may be thinking, "John looks a little bit preoccupied in this photo, I bet it was because he it was his first card photo and he hadn't figured out photo day." But it turns out that a high percentage of his cards from his career are much like this, him standing or sitting around looking off somewhere.

Another feature of the card - it is signed... hopefully by him.

But one of the stranger things about this card is the team name "Washington Nat'l Lea." The Padres were only 5 years-old at the time, but they stunk and the owners were selling the team. It looked like a buyer was lined up to move them to Washington D.C. (the Senators had resently split for Minnesota and D.C. was itching to have a team again). Topps, like many others at the time, assumed it was a done deal and started printing Padres cards with Washington on them. Ray Croc, owner of McDonalds, and undoubtedly drawn to the Padres' delightful brown and yellow team colors, swooped in and bought the team, keeping them in San Diego. Topps had to scramble to change the print run

1974 design was okay by itself, but it is boring in a group. This is the first year Topps made the whole set available. I consider this to be one of the worst moves in hobby history. Set-building and trading are two of the best parts of card collecting. When Topps sold complete sets they put a serious dent in set-building. And common cards became virtually worthless. In 1973, perhaps you were building a set and you needed Lerrin LaGrow. They only way you could get Lerrin LaGrow was in a pack or via trade. So LaGrow, a player I never heard of before today, had value for set builders. But in 1974 you could just by the whole set. Boooooo. Set-building isn't nearly as interesting when the whole set is available to you in a complete package.