rich hebner signed with the phillies as a free agent in december of 1976, so o-pee-chee modified the 'p' on his hat and did some coloring to give us a nice team variation in 1977. they also moved his facsimile autograph. here is hebner's 1977 o-pee-chee card:
here's the topps front:
now the o-pee-chee back:
and the topps back:
referring to the text on the back of the cards, hebner didn't homer on opening day in 1977 - his first home run didn't come until may - but he did have a walk-off against the mets and a grand slam later in the season. in two of the years hebner homered on opening day (1973 and 1974), the home runs came at the expense of bob gibson. in fact, hebner hit two off of gibson on opening day 1974.
in his first season with the phillies, hebner made the switch from third base to first (mike schmidt was playing third, so this was a no-brainer) and so o-pee-chee missed the opportunity for a position variation. hebner hit .285 in 118 regular season games, and then hit .357 in the nlcs against the national league champion dodgers.
voici à vous, 1977 rich hebner!
This variation makes me wonder about Reggie Jackson's one year in Baltimore. Topps went out of their way to get Reggie into Yankee once he signed with New York after 1976, but left guys like Hebner untouched, even though he signed with Philly in the same timeframe. Did they love that beehive hat too much to change it?
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite O-Pee-Chee variations!
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