1977 blue jays coaches

o-pee-chee went hog wild in 1977, producing more variant cards than ever before (and since).  i suppose with the blue jays coming on the scene, there was a demand and o-pee-chee set out to meet it, and then just kept going with cards of other players and other teams.  in all, there are over 200 cards with some sort of variation in the set, and that's out of only 264 cards!

just like the 1978 set, o-pee-chee released a smaller set than topps, with no correlation between the two as far as players or card numbering.  there are proportionally more blue jays and expos featured in the set, including a whole mess of variations.  one of the blue jays card variations is this coaches card.

as we'll see in a moment, in addition to it being a checklist variation (you'll see why i consider it a checklist variation in a moment), it's also a photo or pose variation, times 4!  all four of these gentlemen served as coaches for the blue jays from 1977 - 1979 (paralleling the service of manager roy hartsfield).  only harry warner would continue on into the bobby mattick era, lasting just one season. 

typically, the team card would be the only non-player card issued in the topps set, but because there was no team photo for the blue jays, topps issued a card with the manager and his coaches, similar to what they did for all teams in 1973 and 1974:

as you can see, each of the coaches has a different pose than the ones found on the o-pee-chee card.  and, since roy hartsfield also has a card in the o-pee-chee set, i consider (perhaps wrongly) the o-pee-chee coaches card to be a checklist variation.

here's the bright back of the o-pee-chee card, number 58 in the set:

i am guessing that 'o.b.' means 'organized ball'.  what else could it be? 

and now here's the dull back of the topps version, if you will (number 113 in the set):

nice that the coaches are listed on the team checklist.  notice how there are some repeating uniform numbers - topps lets us know that the numbering is based on players' 1976 numbers, when they weren't with the blue jays.  thanks topps.

voici à vous, 1977 blue jays coaches!