Wednesday, June 16, 2010

1977 bob bailor

bob bailor appeared in a total of 14 games for the orioles in 1975 and 1976 before being selected by the blue jays as the second pick in the 1976 expansion draft. here is his 1977 o-pee-chee card:
here's the topps front:
now the o-pee-chee back:
and the topps back:
i am considering this a photo variation, but not a checklist variation. the reason being, bob bailor appeared in both sets so he didn't really displace a card from the set. it's just his picture that got larger. kind of like the 1974 hank aaron cards that feature two photos instead of 4 like topps.

at any rate, bailor had one of his best seasons with the expansion blue jays in 1977. he hit more than 1 home run (5) for the only time in his career. he also hit .310 which was his career best if you ignore his .333 average achieved in 1976 when he only had 6 at bats. after playing short and second for the orioles, bailor split his time in 1977 pretty evenly between the infield (53 games) and outfield (63). his first home run at exposition stadium was a 13th inning walk off job against jim crawford and the tigers.

voici à vous, 1977 bob bailor!

3 comments:

  1. That's cool, didn't realize OPC remade the card with this much larger image of Bailor. Did that mean the other three fellows were bumped from the set?

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  2. This is really cool...had no idea that O-Pee-Chee ever made different cards from the Topps set....I may have to expand my ultimate set back a few years and include all of the Burger King, O-pee-chee, and any other miscellaneous sets. Maybe if I ever need to break up the monotony of going in order from year to year, I may go back to an earlier year before 1981.

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  3. @matthew - yeah, the other guys were omitted from the opc set. there are some other jays that appeared on a 4-in-1 topps rookie card (like doug ault) that get the o-pee-chee solo treatment at the expense of the other 3 guys. i'll get to them all, eventually.

    @ kevin - 1977 is a bit of an anomaly in the sheer number of cards that are different from the topps versions (like this one) or were just flat out not included in the topps set (like tom bruno). 1992 also has a fair number of o-pee-chee exclusives.

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