Who is the man: Mike McCormick split the 1970 season between the Giants and the Yankees. He was traded in July of that season to New York for John Cumberland, who was featured earlier in the blog. The 1971 season, in which he pitched four games for the Royals, would be his last.
Can ya dig it: McCormick is posing in old Yankee Stadium. You can see the old scoreboard in the background, although McCormick's head is blocking the middle part, which rose up higher than the rest of the scoreboard and featured the Yankees' logo.
Right on: I still can't get over how nice ballplayers' handwriting was back then.
You see that cat McCormick is a bad mother: McCormick won the NL Cy Young Award in 1967 after winning 22 games in his first season with the Giants.
Shut your mouth: McCormick gave up Hank Aaron's 500th home run and is also credited with being the 500th MLB pitcher to hit a home run. That prompted McCormick to get a license plate that read "Mr. 500".
No one understands him but his woman: McCormick received a baseball card in the 1972 Topps set even though he didn't play beyond June of 1971. He signed with the Giants in early 1972, but he was never called by them that year. McCormick is featured as a Giant on his card with what I'm assuming is a photo from when he played for them from 1967-70.
(A word about the back): That's a monstrous ERA for 1970. No wonder Topps went way back to high school in the bio.
First Ron Hansen, now Mike McCormick, it seems the early 70s Yankees were really scrambling for players, desperately bringing in these ex-big names who were playing out the string and had nothing left. That is a great view of the old Yankee Stadium. It seems most of the Topps shots are taken in left field, it this is a view of the famous short right field. You see the scoreboard, and on very bright sunny days, you could sit underneath it and get some shade. We always in these bleachers and hoped we'd be able to get a home run ball, but in all the games we went to in the old Yankee Stadium, we never had a home run hit into the right field bleachers. The bleachers in Yankee Stadium were hard to reach. In right field, it was tough and in left field almost impossible.
ReplyDelete