Steve Carlton: 60 Baseball Cards

 

I found a cheap lot of 60 Steve Carlton baseball cards on eBay last week, so I decided to get it. There was nothing truly rare or amazing in this lot, but with shipping and taxes, I paid $7.50 for it, and at 12.5 cents a card, I felt it was too good of a deal to pass up. The lot included a mixture of Carlton cards from 1978-1987, beginning with Carlton’s 1978 Topps card, which gives us the following grammatically incorrect sentence on the back: “Steve led major in Wins in 1977.” Indeed, Carlton won 23 games in 1977, and had a sparkling 2.64 ERA. After the 1977 season, Carlton won his second Cy Young Award.

1978 Topps 1977 Victory Leaders card. Only one of these four pitchers had a best-selling underwear poster. Dennis Leonard's underwear poster was only available as a special giveaway with Die Hard batteries at select Kansas City Sears locations. (I made that up.) Steve Carlton did do a Jockey ad in 1977. (I didn't make that up.)

On the 1978 Victory Leaders card, we see Carlton and the three pitchers who tied for the AL lead in wins in 1977: Dave Goltz of the Twins, who hailed from Pelican Rapids, Minnesota, Dennis Leonard of the Royals, who had 3 20-game winning seasons in the span of 4 years, and Jim Palmer of the Orioles, who had his 7^th season of 20 wins in 1977. (Palmer had one more 20-game winning season in 1978.) Fun fact: Dennis Leonard and Steve Carlton were the pitchers of record in 4 of the 6 games of the 1980 World Series. Leonard lost Game 1, Carlton won Game 2, Leonard won Game 4, and Carlton won the decisive Game 6. Is Dennis Leonard the most obscure 3-time 20-game winner? He’s probably the only 3-time 20-game winner to not even be an All-Star. You could probably win some bar bets with this trivia question: who had more 20-game winning seasons, Greg Maddux, or Dennis Leonard? It’s Leonard, 3-2. (Maddux won 211 more career games than Leonard and won 19 games in a season 5 times.) Carlton and Jim Palmer faced off in Game 3 of the 1983 World Series. Palmer didn’t start the game, but he entered the game in the top of the 5^th, with the Phillies leading 2-0. Palmer pitched 2 innings and didn’t give up any runs. He was still the pitcher of record when the Orioles scored 2 runs in the top of the 7^th to take the lead, 3-2. That ended up being the final score of the game, as Palmer was the winning pitcher and Carlton was the losing pitcher. It was both pitchers’ final World Series game, and it ended up being the last win of Palmer’s illustrious career. That win gave Palmer an amazing achievement: he won World Series games in 3 different decades.

Steve Carlton, rocking a perm on his 1981 Fleer, 1982 Topps, and 1982 Fleer cards.

The oldest cards in this lot, from 1978, 1980, and 1981, and show some wear. Their corners are a little battered, but that’s okay with me—I take it to be evidence that the previous owners enjoyed these baseball cards, and frequently flipped through them. In the early 1980’s cards, we get Steve with a perm, which was actually a thing back in the 70’s and 80’s for guys. I’m pretty sure Steve’s 1981 Fleer, 1982 Fleer, and 1982 Topps cards were all taken at the same game, just moments apart. Fortunately, the perm quickly recedes into the past by Carlton’s 1983 cards. 1982 Fleer also gave us one of the truly great baseball cards: Steve Carlton and Carlton Fisk. The card is titled: “Steve & Carlton, Carlton & Fisk.” The photo was taken at the 1981 All-Star Game, which was the first game played after the 1981 strike was resolved. Oddly enough, Carlton and Fisk did become teammates briefly on the 1986 White Sox. Fisk only caught Carlton twice, on August 12, 1986, in Carlton’s first start for the White Sox, and on September 13, 1986. Unfortunately, no one from Fleer thought to revisit their classic 1982 card when the two became teammates.

1982 Fleer: Steve & Carlton, Carlton & Fisk. You can see from this card how short Steve Carlton's torso is, and how long his legs are.

Included in this lot was one of the 1983 Topps League Leaders Sheet, which I discussed in this post. It’s not a valuable rarity, but it’s one of those odd cards that I didn’t know about until I was an adult. There’s a generous sampling of Carlton cards from 1984, including the Topps All-Star Glossy Send-In, and the Ralston Purina.

1984 Topps NL Active Career Strikeout Leaders, featuring 3 of the best pitchers ever.

The back of the 1984 Topps NL Strikeout Leaders card. The top 10 strikeout leaders is a pretty impressive list of pitchers.

There were also 2 cards of the 1984 NL Active Career Strikeout Leaders card, which is one of my favorite Steve Carlton cards, as it shows Steve as the all-time strikeout leader, a title he held at various times in 1983 and 1984. It’s also a very cool card, as it features Carlton, Nolan Ryan, and Tom Seaver—three of the greatest pitchers ever. From the back of the card, you can see the top 10 leaders in strikeouts at that time. It’s incredible to see how far ahead of everyone Walter Johnson was. No pitcher got within 500 strikeouts of Johnson until Bob Gibson in 1974, 47 years after Johnson retired. Granted, if Bob Feller hadn’t lost so many seasons to WWII, or if Sandy Koufax hadn’t been forced to retire at age 30 because of arthritis in his elbow, they might have made it to 3,000 strikeouts. Sneaking in at number 10 on the all-time list is Jim Bunning. I didn’t realize until I read in Jim Bunning’s obituary that when he retired after the 1971 season, he was second on the all-time strikeout list behind Johnson. (If Bunning had pitched one more season for the Phillies, he would have been a teammate of Carlton’s.)

It’s also interesting to look at the top 10 strikeout pitchers, and to see that all of them, except for Walter Johnson, were pitching at roughly the same time: all 9 were active from 1966-1971. This shows us that strikeouts were becoming more and more common, but also tells us what an amazing generation of starting pitchers that group was.

1981 Topps 1980 Strikeout Leaders card. The photographer didn't seem to care that Steve's face is half in shadow, half in light.

Back of the 1981 Topps 1980 Strikeout Leaders card. Who knew that Moose Haas was 9th in strikeouts in the AL in 1980? Thanks to Moose's 1987 Topps card, I know that he's also an amateur magician and a certified locksmith. AND he has a black belt in Tae Kwon Do! Truly a Renaissance man.

Oh, and can we talk about how dominant Steve Carlton’s 1980 season was? Carlton’s spectacular 1972 season, in which he won 27 games while pitching for a last-place team, rightly gets a lot of ink, but his 1980 season was pretty amazing as well. Carlton threw 304 innings in 1980, thus becoming the last pitcher to throw 300 innings in a season. (A record that I suspect he will hold for many more years.) Carlton struck out 286 batters, 86 more than any other pitcher in 1980. Carlton’s strikeout total was 99 more than the AL leader, Len Barker. Carlton led all players in the NL in WAR with 10.2. His total of 24 wins led the NL, but wasn’t quite enough to lead the major leagues, as Steve Stone reeled off one of the most improbable seasons ever, as he won 25 games for the Orioles. 1980 was the only season of Carlton’s 4 Cy Young Award-winning seasons in which he didn’t lead the major leagues in wins. Carlton narrowly lost the ERA title to Don Sutton, as Sutton had a 2.20 ERA and Carlton finished second with a 2.34 ERA. Carlton was amazingly consistent throughout the season, and from May 27^th to July 2^nd, his ERA was under 2, with his lowest ERA of the year being 1.74 after his start on June 18^th.

So, there you go, another look into the baseball cards of Steve Carlton.