Why this card is awesome: Because of another poor card number choice. I realize that Lopes wasn't playing much (or very effectively) toward the end of his career, but I probably would've tried to give him a little better card number than 226. I also find calling him "Dave" weird. I've never heard of him called anything other than "Davey."
Cool stat: Lopes had more seasons of 40 SB and 10 HR than all but 5 other guys. Not bad. Can you name the 5 ahead of him? I bet you miss at least one. Here's the list.
4 comments:
Wow, that list has some young studs that could top Rickey by the end of their careers...Crawford, Reyes, and Hanley. Impressive list.
Andy, can you explain the card # significance you keep alluding to? What was the reasoning behind placing good players on cards ending in 0 and 5? Maybe I'm reading more into it than there is, but is there any methodology / philosophy to it?
Sure. Topps historically (not sure when they started, but it wasn't all the way since the beginning of their run, but certainly by sometime in the 1970s) assigned round numbers to players whom they thought were better. Look in any Topps set from the 1980s at cards # 100, 200, 300, etc, and they are all superstars, such as Mattingly, Boggs, Brett, etc. And they carried they down to other numbers, as well, with great players getting numbers ending in 50, and really good ones getting numbers ending in 25, and less star or semi-star players getting numbers ending in 5 (such as 215) or 0 (such as 420.) So, to a large extent, the superstars are pretty obvious, but Topps used its own discretion in selecting the lesser and semi-stars. My recent comments here about card numbers just take small issue with a few of their choices. In tne end, it's entirely subjective and entirely up to Topps (not officially stats-based.)
they stopped doing that, in what, topps 93?
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