Steve Carlton's 329th Win, August 8, 1987

Press photo and ticket stub for the August 8, 1987 game at the Metrodome: Minnesota Twins versus the Oakland A's. The game would be Steve Carlton's 329th and final win in the major leagues. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

Ticket stub for the August 8, 1987 game. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

On August 8, 1987, Steve Carlton won his 329th major league game. It would prove to be his final win in the majors. It was Carlton’s only win with the Minnesota Twins. I wish Lefty could have won one more game to finish at 330 instead of 329, but so it goes. Lefty has such a Zen attitude about life, I’m sure he doesn’t care if he finished with 330 wins or 329. 

1987 was a frustrating season for the future Hall of Famer, but Carlton still had moments of brilliance on the mound. Over 4 starts in June for the Indians, Lefty threw 2 complete games, and had a sparkling ERA of 2.56.  

Carlton was traded to the Twins at the deadline on July 31st, and his first start for the Twins came on August 4th, against fellow 300-game winner Don Sutton of the Angels. Sutton won that game, as Lefty surrendered 9 runs in 5 innings.  

But on August 8th at the Metrodome, Lefty turned back the clock and held the Oakland A’s scoreless for 8 innings, needing just 74 pitches to get through 8 frames as he tried for his first shutout since August 15, 1983. In the top of the 9th, the A’s scored 2 runs off Steve, and manager Tom Kelly called on George Frazier to get the final out of the game. Reggie Jackson was pinch-hitting with the bases loaded, and Frazier got him to fly out to left field.  

After the game, Lefty talked to reporter Howard Sinker of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. In a 2017 article, Sinker recounted that he had talked to Carlton before, off the record. Fitting with Lefty’s reputation as a thinking man’s ballplayer, they chatted about Being There, the Jerzy Kosinski novel made into a great film starring Peter Sellers. Sinker thought that Carlton was breaking his decade-long media silence by talking to him, but that wasn’t the case. Carlton actually gave press conferences when he was signed by the Giants and the White Sox in 1986.  

So, what did Steve say about the game? “That felt good...it was frustrating (losing the shutout) I have 3 complete games, but not a game like this, not a shutout for 8 innings. Not even close.” Tom Kelly said of Steve’s performance: “I thought he did an outstanding job.” Kirby Puckett also praised Lefty: “He was going right at the hitters and did his job. He got us off the field real quickly and gave us chances to swing the bat.”  

Lefty struck out Mark McGwire twice for his only strikeouts of the game.  

Pictured is a ticket stub from Lefty’s 329th win, and a press photo from that game, two of the highlights of my Steve Carlton memorabilia collection.  

1,033 Steve Carlton Cards!

 

My 2 boxes containing 1,033 Steve Carlton cards. Sharp-eyed baseball card collectors will be able to tell there's quite a few 1987 Fleer, 1987 Donruss, and 1988 Fleer cards in here. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

I bought a lot of 1,033 Steve Carlton cards on eBay a couple of weeks ago. Now that I’ve gone through and organized the cards, I can report the details to you, faithful readers. About half of the cards were from when Carlton was an active, with the other half dating from the 1990’s to the present. The oldest card was Carlton’s 1976 SSPC card. The 1976 SSPC set was an attempt to compete with Topps’ monopoly on baseball cards. Ultimately, the company ended up being sued by Topps and never produced another comprehensive set. Fun fact: the text of the back of the 1976 SSPC cards was written by Keith Olbermann.

Steve Carlton, 1984 Star card #13.

The lot had a nice variety of 1980’s oddities, including several of Carlton’s Sportflics cards, and various stickers from the 1980’s. There was one card from Star’s 1984 24-card set of Steve Carlton. Star made two sets featuring Carlton, one in 1984 and one in 1987. Card #13 from 1984 shows Carlton on the road, in the Phillies’ phantastic powder blue uniforms. Carlton is in mid-stride, and you get a sense of the power of his pitches, as you see his 6’5” frame about to whip a pitch towards the plate. An intimidating sight. I really like this photo, and I think it’s a much better one than a lot of the other action photos that appeared on Carlton’s Topps cards. Judging from what I can see of Steve’s grip on the ball, I’d say the batter is about to get a slider, the pitch that transformed Carlton into a great pitcher, and added many strikeouts to his lifetime total of 4,136. Carlton threw his slider using the same motion as his fastball, making it all but impossible for batters to guess which pitch was coming. Keith Hernandez wrote about Carlton: “Carlton threw the slider like an automaton: outside corner black, at the knees, every time.” (Pure Baseball by Keith Hernandez and Mike Bryan)

The back of the 1984 Star card shows you Carlton's All-Star Game appearances. It even tells you what city the All-Star Game took place in.

The back of the 1984 Star card highlights Carlton’s 10 All-Star selections. Carlton started the 1969 and 1979 All-Star games, and was the winning pitcher in the 1969 game. As you can see from the back of the card, Carlton threw 3 innings in 1969—not something that would happen now in an All-Star game.

Sorry Upper Deck, Steve Carlton didn't actually win 3,000 games.

One of the more humorous errors on these cards is the one on the Upper Deck Baseball Heroes card. It’s meant to commemorate Carlton’s 300^th win, on September 23, 1983. Ironically enough, the Phillies were facing Carlton’s former team, the St. Louis Cardinals in Saint Louis. Carlton gave up only two runs and struck out 12 Cardinals to nail down his milestone victory. (Carlton also beat the Cardinals 5 days earlier for his 299^th win.) However, the Upper Deck card tells us that Carlton achieved his 3,000^th victory in 1983, an utterly amazing feat!

3 Steve Carlton cards from the 2000's.

Pictured above are three cards from the 2000’s that I think look pretty cool. Something that I like about cards from the 2000’s of players who played in the 1970’s and 1980’s is that you get to see photos of them you’ve never seen before. Back in the days before the internet, the main way you were able to see photos of your favorite players was on their baseball cards. It’s fun to see photos you’ve never seen before. On the Panini card in the middle, you may wonder why the Baseball Hall of Fame logo is in the middle of the card, blocking the Phillies logo on Carlton’s hat. Well, that’s because Panini isn’t an officially licensed set, so they can’t reproduce the logos of MLB teams on their cards.

2004 Playoff Steve Carlton, with my hand and my iPhone visible in the reflection.

The back of the 2004 Playoff card, featuring Carlton's unimpressive stat line for 1988.

The 2004 Playoff card is cool one, as it has a shiny, silvery surface on it. (That means that it’s impossible to get a good photo of the card, however.) But I’m more interested in the back of the Donruss card. It gives us Carlton’s career stats, and his stats from his last major league season, when he appeared in 4 games for the Twins in 1988 before being released. Carlton appeared in 3 games in relief, and his last appearance was his 709^th major league start, on April 23, 1988. Carlton pitched 5 innings against the Indians, giving up 9 hits and 9 runs. (That actually lowered his ERA for the season.) Carlton struck out 4 batters that day, including Pat Tabler in the top of the 5^th inning for his 4,136^th strikeout. The last batter Carlton faced in the majors was Andy Allanson, who hit a double off of him, scoring Mel Hall. It’s so weird to just see that stat line, because, as you can see, Carlton wasn’t very effective in 1988. So why put that stat line on the back of this card? It’s an odd choice. For all the retired players in that set, they have their stats from their last major league season. It’s rather sobering to see how many great players left the game on a not-so-great note.

Goodwin Champions, by Upper Deck, featuring Steve Carlton not in a baseball uniform.

Three of the stranger cards are the Goodwin Champions by Upper Deck from 2011, 2012, and 2013. They all feature Carlton out of uniform, a result of MLB essentially giving Topps back their monopoly on baseball cards. Upper Deck can produce cards featuring player’s likenesses, but they can’t use team logos. So, we get a drawing of an older, post-retirement Steve Carlton wearing a blank hat, a drawing of young Steve Carlton talking on the phone, and a drawing based on a 1994 photo of Steve Carlton at his Hall of Fame press conference.

1999 Upper Deck commemorating Steve Carlton's selection as the 30th best baseball player of all-time.

The back of the 1999 Upper Deck card, which shows us Carlton's complete major league stats, from 1965 to 1988. That is a very long time to play major league baseball.

I really like post-retirement cards that have all of Steve Carlton’s career stats on the back, like this 1999 Upper Deck Century Legends card. Steve Carlton only had one 1988 baseball card, made by Fleer. For whatever reason, Topps, Donruss, and Score chose not to include Carlton in their 1988 sets. Although Topps was going to include Carlton at one point, since there are checklists that list Carlton as card #455. Carlton was replaced as card #455 by Shawn Hillegas. I’m hoping that somewhere deep in the Topps vault is a proof of a 1988 Topps Steve Carlton card. That would be an awesome piece of memorabilia to have! But I digress. Because Carlton was released so early in the 1988 season, he didn’t any 1989 cards, so there weren’t any cards with his complete stats on the back until his post-retirement cards. This wasn’t that uncommon, even for big stars. Topps was surprisingly unsentimental about giving retired players one final baseball card with all of their career stats on the back. From a marketing standpoint, I would think that Topps would have wanted to include some of those players just as an additional selling point. “Sure, we know Stan Musial isn’t going to play in 1964, but let’s give him one final card.” Nope, didn’t happen. How about a 1974 Willie Mays card? Nope. 1977 Hank Aaron? Nope. Oh well, I guess I’m more sentimental than Topps executives.

The 1999 Upper Deck Century Legends card commemorates The Sporting News’ 1998 list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players. Carlton was ranked number 30, just below Sandy Koufax and just ahead of Bob Gibson and Tom Seaver. You can read the list of 100 players here.

This concludes my look at my whopping lot of 1,033 Steve Carlton cards. I’ve now written about all the Steve Carlton lots I’ve bought lately, so it might be a while before the next post about Steve Carlton baseball cards.

A Box of 833 Steve Carlton Cards!

 

833 more Steve Carlton cards! Woo-hoo!

Carlton's 1983 O-Pee-Chee card, and his 1984 O-Pee-Chee All-Star card, or "Etoile" card.

Lots of French on the back of Steve's 1984 O-Pee-Chee card. Steve is a wine collector, or "oenophilie." I think this has to be the only baseball card that mentions wine collecting on the back.

A while ago, I bought a lot of 833 Steve Carlton baseball cards from eBay. I know, more Steve Carlton cards? But these were too cheap to pass up. All of the cards were from the 1980’s, and there were some fun oddities included, like some O-Pee-Chee cards. O-Pee-Chee was a Canadian candy company that had an arrangement with Topps to sell Topps baseball cards in Canada under the O-Pee-Chee name. O-Pee-Chee cards can usually be distinguished from Topps by the thinner, cheaper cardboard they were printed on, and the lighter backs of the cards. Also, from 1970 onwards, O-Pee-Chee cards had text in French! It’s thanks to O-Pee-Chee that I know a pitcher is a “lanceur,” and an outfielder is a “voltigeur.” I hardly ever remember buying packs of O-Pee-Chee during my childhood, or even seeing them for sale, but somehow I’ve ended up with some random O-Pee-Chee cards here and there. I also bought the complete set of 1987 O-Pee-Chee, because the 1987 Topps set is the most beautiful set of cards in the history of baseball cards.

Two extremely similar pictures on Carlton's 1985 Topps Collectors' Series and 1985 Drake's Super Pitchers cards. If I were a batter, I wouldn't feel too confident seeing this picture, since it probably means there's a slider coming at me.

The back of Carlton's 1985 Drake's card. Much easier to read than the awful green of the 1985 Topps cards.

There were some other fun 1980’s oddities, like Carlton’s 1985 Drake’s Super Pitchers card, which was included with Drake’s snack cakes. According to Wikipedia, Drake’s is largely distributed in the Northeast, which explains why I’ve only heard of them because of these baseball cards. Drake’s had some kind of licensing deal with Topps, as their cards used the same backs as Topps did. But the front of the Drake’s cards had different photos from Topps cards, making them a desirable oddity, at least in my eyes. Drake’s cards featured “Big Hitters,” and in 1985 they expanded it to also included some “Super Pitchers,” like Steve Carlton. The 1985 Drake’s cards also featured a red back, rather than the awful green back found on 1985 Topps cards, which made them extremely hard to read.

Cards number 1 and 10 in Star's 14-card Steve Carlton set, from 1987.

The back of card 10, showing Steve's amazing 135-55 record at the Vet in Philly.

There were also two cards from the 14-card Steve Carlton set issued by Star in 1987. Star issued sets of well, star players throughout the 1980’s. I don’t know how these were distributed, if you bought packs that had different players in them, or if you bought sets of the same player, or what. Star had also issued a 24-card Steve Carlton set in 1984. On the back of Carlton card number 10 from the 1987 set, you can see Carlton’s amazing dominance at Veterans Stadium: he was 135-55 at the Vet, for a winning percentage of .711. Wow. The 1987 Star set also features a rare card: Steve Carlton giving a press conference after he signed with the San Francisco Giants in 1986.

Steve Carlton's last card as an active player, his 1988 Fleer card, which is also the only card that shows him with the Minnesota Twins. Steve doesn't look too thrilled with the photographer.

The back of Carlton's 1988 Fleer card. When you pitch for so long that they run out of room on the back of your baseball card.

In this lot there were 121 cards of Carlton’s 1987 Topps card, and 50 of Carlton’s 1988 Fleer card, which was his last card as an active player, and the only card that pictured him with the Minnesota Twins. Even today, in 2021, there’s never been a card commemorating Carlton’s time with the World Champion 1987 Minnesota Twins. Which is kind of surprising, since Topps clearly has no shortage of random cards of retired players. So, Topps, get on that already! Yes, I know, Carlton was out of gas by the time he joined the Twins, and he only won one game for the team, but it was still a World Series-winning team, even if Carlton was left off the postseason roster. At the very least, we need a card commemorating the Twins’ visit to the White House after the World Series, where Carlton was listed in photo captions as an “unidentified Secret Service agent.”

It was a lot of fun to sort through these cards and find the fun oddities contained therein, as I continue my look into the baseball cards of Steve Carlton.