Happy National Tom Hume Day!

Greatness hides behind those iconic specs

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1978 Topps Rookie Pitchers (#701) - Card of the Day

As legends go, Tom Hume is about as understated as they come.

What’s that you say? You don’t consider Tom Hume to be a legend?

Well, let me tell you — your tune would be a lot different had you…

• Adopted the Reds as your team in 1983 thanks to geographic proximity and the general hubris of the few Cardinals fans you knew.

• Learned early in your baseball fandom that Johnny Bench was hanging up his spikes at the end of the year.

• Watched the Reds drop a few games when they showed up on the local independent TV station.

• Listened to Marty and Joe call Hume “Tommy” and reminisce about the halcyon days of the late 1970s when double-digit saves for the Reds were actually a possibility.

• Maintained your allegiance through the entire summer, and even the next, despite a sudden spate of Cubs broadcasts tumbling your way and Cubs wins shaking up the game.

• Been born into a family filled with men who projected Hume’s basic affect and carried many of his features.

• Known you were headed for a set of Hume-esque specs.

Yeah, if all that went down for you, I’m pretty sure you, too, would have prevailed upon your dad to affix a piece of plywood to the side of the shed and paint a bullseye on it.

Then you would have dutifully stepped off 60 feet, six inches, marked the spot, and commenced to hurl the rock. All summer long. All summers long, in fact.

You would have been Tom Hume out there, making your literal pitch as the greatest reliever of all time. No dinner until you hit the mark 100 times in a row.

No bedtime until you did it again.

And of course, every Tom Hume baseball card you pulled would have gone right into the “good” box. And also of course, you would have been bummed to find out that Hume had to share his rookie card with three scrubs.

Steve McCatty? Dude was a cardboard dark cloud.

Larry Landreth? Bruce Taylor? They had a lot of nerve trying to crash Hume’s party.

But hey, even Pete Rose had to share a rookie card. And so did Harry Spilman. Twice.

So even legends aren’t immune from the ravages of humble beginnings. And they’re not immune from the ravages of time, either.

Because, as hard as it is to believe, legendary choirboy Tom Hume turns 71 years old today.

A Dreary Belated Birthday

Topps must have been in an early Spring mood when they put together Hume’s rookie card, as Landreth was born on March 11 and Taylor on April 16.

But it’s McCatty, born on March 20, 1954, who really crowds into Hume’s birthday space. We had a minor celebration on Twitter/X last week for McCatty’s 70th birthday.

McCatty has been part of my collecting life since the very beginning, establishing himself as an every-packer in 1981 with his dreary Topps card. Not surprisingly, I wrote about that card and the kid-trauma it unleashed. You can read that silliness right here.

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I always have reservations about pulling out a hunk of drab like the 1981 Topps Steve McCatty, but it’s OK today.

That’s because 1) it’s Friday and 2) we’re heading into the first weekend of the season.

Ain’t nothin’ gonna break our stride today!

Enjoy the games and the cards, and thanks for reading.

—Adam