Tuesday, April 6, 2010

1981 New York Mets



Brighter Days Ahead
The 1981 version of the New York Mets wasn't very good, finishing second to last in the old NL East, ahead of the Chicago Cubs. They were managed by Joe Torre, who would make a bigger name for himself 15 years later managing the other New York team. Two of the starters on the 1986 Mets team debuted in 1980, so they had their rookie cards in the 1981 sets. Mookie Wilson was on the multi-player rookie card for the Mets in the Topps set, which I listed under miscellaneous cards, but he gets his own card in the 1981 Donruss set. Wally Backman also has his rookie card in the 1981 Fleer set (sorry, don't own this card and couldn't find a good picture of it anywhere online).

1981 cards
Veering away from the Mets, this is the first post I've made showing a sample of each of the major card sets put out in 1981.

I really like the Topps set from this year, it makes good use of team colors with the hats in the corners and the photography was really good.

I also really like the debut set from Fleer with the simple baseball in the corner with the team name inside and the simple name and position next to it in a yellow box and plenty of room for an uncluttered picture. Trust me, I generally hate Fleer cards, they always seemed like the cheap set to me, even before Score, Upper Deck and some other high end sets came out later in the decade. They were always thinner than the Topps cards and the designs looked like they were thrown together at the last minute. Wait until we get to 1982 with Fleer to see how awful they could make cards.

The debut set for Donruss is also nice, but they would do better as the decade wore on. I think they put out the best sets available for several years in the mid-'80s from a design standpoint. I have no inside knowledge of this, but I wonder if Donruss was the first to use computers when designing their cards. I can point out why I think this when we get to the 1984 cards. For 1981, I like the Fleer set better, and that is why I have a preference for them when making these checklists for 1981 when there is a player who is in both Fleer and Donruss sets, but not in the Topps set. This will change when I move onto 1982.

I am not sure how distribution of cards was in the 1980s, but until there were card shops everywhere and you just bought cards in the candy sections of the grocery store, I always was able to get near complete sets of Topps and Donruss cards, but rarely ever even got one Fleer card. Usually, I picked up Fleer cards at an outdoor fleamarket in a large farmers field my parents would go to every Sunday morning to get fresh vegetables, and there was one guy there with a table full of current baseball cards for sale. This is sort of where I came up with the idea to just get the players that didn't come in the other sets, because he would charge premium prices for the rookies and hot players (OK 25 cents a card seemed outrageous when you could buy a whole pack in 1984 for nearly that price), so I would dig through the box for players that I didn't have in the other sets. Mostly this amounted to backup catchers, who for whatever reason only showed up in the Fleer set, and I could get them for a nickel, which seemed more reasonable. Perhaps this is why I think Fleer is the cheap set, because I have almost no star players on a Fleer card, unless I bought them in the ebay era.

Starters
__ TO 428 C John Stearns NYM
__ TT 781 1B Dave Kingman NYM
__ TO 634 2B Doug Flynn NYM
__ TT 742 3B Hubie Brooks NYM
__ TO 343 SS Frank Taveras NYM
__ TO 510 LF Lee Mazzilli NYM
__ DO 575 CF Mookie Wilson NYM
__ TT 849 RF Ellis Valentine NYM
__ TT 835 1B Rusty Staub NYM

Starting Pitchers
__

SP Ed Lynch
__ TO 109 SP Mike Scott NYM
__ TO 224 SP Pat Zachry NYM
__

SP Greg Harris
__ TT 777 SP Randy Jones NYM

Relief Pitchers
__ TO 322 CL Neil Allen NYM
__ TO 117 RP Pete Falcone NYM
__

RP Terry Leach
__ TO 359 RP Tom Hausman NYM
__ TO 472 RP Dyar Miller NYM
__

RP Ray Searage

Other Players
__ TO 23 C Alex Trevino NYM
__ TO 58 RF Joel Youngblood NYM
__ TO 698 UT Mike Jorgensen NYM
__ TT 732 MI Bob Bailor NYM
__ TT 752 3B Mike Cubbage NYM
__

SS Ron Gardenhire
__ TO 537 C Ron Hodges NYM
__ FL 336 IF Wally Backman NYM
__

OF Mike Howard
__

MI Brian Giles
__

RP Mike Marshall
__ TO 456 RP Jeff Reardon NYM
__

RP Jesse Orosco
__

RP Dan Boitano
__ TO 57 SP Dave Roberts SEA
__ TO 189 SP Craig Swan NYM
__

RP Charlie Puleo
__

SP Tim Leary

Minors
__ FL 69 MN Bruce Bochy (or DO 20)
HOU

Manager/Coaches
__ FL 325 MG Joe Torre (or DO 506)
NYM

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