This is the first time in a while that I have had the time to post twice in one day over here. I have a tiny of free time ahead on Saturday morning and I am going to try and post ahead a little bit. I also dug up some more 1961 Topps and I have acquired some 2010 Topps Heritage, so there will be some good "Old Vs. New" posts in the near, near future.
For now we will settle for a quick post of the night. In today's Card of the Day I showed the National League's Strikeout Leaders for 1967. I picked the card because it showed 3 Hall of Fame pitchers lined up in a row and I pointed out some of the huge names on the back of the card who were not in the Top-10. Obviously they had reasons, but the bottom line was that none were among the test best strikeout pitchers in 1967. However in 1969, all 3 of those Hall of Fame pitchers joined one and other as the Top-3 ERA Leaders in the National League. Tonight's Nitty Gritty Card of the Night is card #67 from 1970 Topps. It shows the Top 3 ERA leaders in the National League for 1969. Juan Marichal earned the crown for lowest earned run average in the NL with a mark of 2.10. 1969 was the only year in his career that the Dominican Dandy paced the league in this category. He cracked the top-ten 7 times, but only led the league once.
His career ERA of 2.89 is 132nd of All Time. Steve Carlton finished 2nd with a mark of 2.17. Lefty would pace the league in ERA in 1972 with a 1.97. He would also lead the league in wins and pick up his first Cy Young Award that year. Bob Gibson finished third, just 0.01 points behind Carlton. Gibby had led the NL with a ridiculous 1.12 mark the year prior. Fellow Hall of Famer Tom Seaver placed 4th with a 2.21 mark while Gaylord Perry and Phil Niekro rounded out the top-10 at 9th and 10th respectively. Thanks for reading! I love this game, I love it's rich history and I LOVE this hobby! Oh, yes, this card is very off center top to bottom, it was miscut. It is pretty sharp otherwise. 40 years LATER!
Today's Nitty Gritty Card of the Day is card #320 from the 1965 Topps Baseball set featuring St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Bob Gibson. If you don't think Bob Gibson is Nitty Gritty you are gonna have some sore ribs cuz a brushback is coming! I have lucked into several Gibby cards of late and I plan to feature them all eventually so I won't get into too many of Hoot's amazing accolades as a player. His Cardinals defeated the New York Yankees in the 1964 World Series and there is a World Series subset (which I have completed!) in the '65 set which celebrates his postseason heroics. The back of this card mentions that Gibby won 2 games against NY in the series and also shows his complete stats up to that point. One thing I find interesting is Gibson didn't exactly put up huge numbers in the minors. Decent, but not indicative of what was to come from the most dominant right hander of his generation. After winning the Championship in '64 the Cards fell from grace a bit and finished in 7th place in 1965 with a record of 80-81. At 29 years of age Gibson was just hitting his stride. He won 20 games for the first time that year, was an All Star, won a Gold Glove and struck out 270 batters. What I found most interesting and perhaps most Nitty Gritty was his hitting that year. He batted .240 with 5 homers, 19 RBI and a couple of stolen bases. 
Those are very respectable numbers for a pitcher, but if you compare him to his teammates in '65 his homerun total equaled the total of Dick Groat, Julian Javier and Mike Shannon. Those 3 combined for 1181 plate appearances and totalleed 5 homers betweeen them. Gibby hit 5 in just 119. Thats just awesome. More Gibby to come. I love this game, I love this hobby! 45 years LATER!
