Monday, April 24, 2017

no. 651 - jerry robertson


Who is the man: Jerry Robertson had already played his final major league game when this card appeared in packs. He was traded from the Tigers to the Mets in March of 1971 and spent the year pitching for Triple A Tidewater. So he never played an actual game for the Mets.

Can ya dig it: This is one of the more prominent airbrushed caps in the 1971 Topps set. For starters, it's color-coded. And it's very close up. We'll see more of this look as the set moves along.

Right on: I wonder if the guy behind Robertson can tell us what team Robertson is really playing for here? I suspect it's the Tigers, Robertson's 1970 team. The guy in the background looks like a Tiger.

You see that cat Robertson is a bad mother: Robertson pitched in the first Montreal Expos game, throwing 1 1/3 innings of relief in the Expos' 11-10 win over the Mets on April 8, 1969. Robertson would finish the season with the best earned-run average (3.96) of any regular Expos starting pitcher.

Shut your mouth: The Topeka Golden Giants, a summer collegiate league baseball team in Kansas in 2010, renamed their field after Robertson during a ceremony on June 2 of that year. Robertson, a native Kansan, died in a car accident in 1996.

No one understands him but his woman: After the season in the minors in 1971, Robertson left baseball to become the assistant executive director of the Topeka YMCA and then became the executive director. He later was the athletic director at Washburn University, his alma mater.


(A word about the back): The "Life" line displays Robertson's final career major league statistics.

2 comments:

  1. The poor artwork on the NY on the back picture is probably why they didn't try it on the front.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Career walk total of "186" is an uncorrected error - s/b "86."

    ReplyDelete