Mike Marshall: a Name So Nice, the Dodgers Bought Twice
PLUS -- hobby trendsetter in a brick box
Today’s Lineup…
😋 Card of the Day - Gotta have their M & M
📐 Breaking and making a hobby mold
Dodgers’ Very Specific Backfill Strategy - Card of the Day
In the long history of Major League Baseball, there have been two men named “Mike Marshall” who have taken to the diamond as players in The Show.
The first Mike Marshall was a 5’10”, 180-pound reliever who won the National League Cy Young Award in 1974 and helped the Dodgers to a pennant. Topps also rewarded him with a radioactive blue head blob.
Less than two years later, in June of 1976, the Los Angeles traded Marshall to the Atlanta Braves in exchange for Lee Lacy and Elias Sosa.
The Dodgers just may have felt empty without their former reliever.
Because, almost exactly two years after that trade, they drafted the second Mike Marshall, a strapping 6’5” first baseman out of Buffalo Grove High School in Illinois.
That Mike Marshall would land in Chavez Ravine briefly in 1981, then for good in 1982. Over the course of an 11-year career (9 with the Dodgers), Marshall hit .270 with 148 home runs, and 530 RBI.
That production eventually added a nice hobby boost to what was once just the Steve Sax rookie card (1982 Topps, #681).
As a Reds fan, I always dreaded seeing big Mike come to town — it seemed like he was always tagging some poor unsuspecting Cincinnati pitcher.
And, indeed, when I look at his splits over on Baseball Reference, I see the Reds were Marshall’s favorite long-ball victims. Overall, he hit .294 with 22 home runs and 63 RBI in 405 plate appearances against Cincy.
That’s OK — it was a long time ago, and the Reds have lost plenty of games by hands other than Marshall’s in the years since.
And besides, Marshall has a fun personal side note. After all, how many other hulking former Dodgers outfielders can say they dated Belinda Carlisle between her runs with Bill Bateman and Morgan Mason?
I’m having trouble coming up with even one more.
So, happy 64th birthday to big Mike Marshall.
1982 Topps Traded - Avant-garde?
Since we’re talking about Steve Sax rookie cards, at least tangentially, it seems appropriate to nod our hobby heads toward the 1982 Topps Traded Set. Everybody remembers this one today because it’s the home of the most valuable Cal Ripken Jr. rookie card (even though it’s not a “true” RC).
But 1982 Topps Traded was also sort of a trendsetter, a trailblazer, if you will.
It’s not the first Topps Traded set, of course — that honor belongs to 1981 or 1974 or 1972 or maybe even some of the earlier airbrushed or hatless wonders, depending on your perspective.
And it’s not the first dedicated Traded box set either. That title belongs to 1981.
But the 1982 Topps Traded set is the first Traded box set to use its own numbering scheme rather than continue on from where the base set left off (as 1981 TT did) or just add a “T” to the player’s number from the base set (à la 1974 and 1976).
The new scheme stuck, and a whole generation of collectors know immediately that “132T” means “checklist card” — move along, nothing to see here, and all that jazz.
Beyond the numbering, 1982 Topps Traded was the one that made the concept stick. With the game rebounding from The Strike, the hobby priming itself for a post-monopoly boom, and exciting young stars itching to burst out of their “Future Stars” card confines, this set hit all the right notes.
And, hey, it also gave us our first look at Ozzie Smith in his Hall-of-Fame getup (#109T).
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Alright, that’s about all I have on the “Mike Marshall and Hockey Sticks” front for today. Maybe somewhere there’s a post to be written about Sebastian Aho and baseball bats.
The (cardboard) world is what we make of it, after all, at least here in Silly Land.
Thanks for reading.
—Adam
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