The Vaunted Jeff Reardon-Doc Ock Rookie Card
It's a work of hobby art
Happy Friday! Let’s start our proceedings with a quick question of the day…
Now, on to the main course…
1981 Topps Traded Jeff Reardon (#819) - Card of the Day
It’s always tough to know what to make of closers when they appear on a Hall of Fame ballot…at least unless the closer’s name begins with “Mariano Rivera.”
Even Hall of Famers among relievers often weren’t just closers — Dennis Eckersley, John Smoltz, Hoyt Wilhelm.
And does Bruce Sutter really have that much better of a Cooperstown case than Dan Quisenberry?
The closer role is always changing, and advanced metrics don’t seem to capture the value of the “position” like they do for offense-first roster slots. All of which brings me to Francisco Rodriguez, who holds the single-season saves record and is on the ballot for the third time in 2025.
So far, the voting results have been unencouraging for K-Rod supporters: he received 10.8% of the votes in 2023 and just 7.8% in 2024. As a refresher, a player needs 75% of the vote for induction, and anything under 5% gets him booted from future ballots.
So Rodriguez is in dangerous territory, but his vote totals so far probably seem like the baseball penthouse to one of his closest historical comps. According to Baseball Reference’s Similarity Scores, Rodriguez’s career mound performance was most similar to, in order, Craig Kimbrel, Kenley Jansen, Joe Nathan, Billy Wagner, and Jeff Reardon.
Kimbrel and Jansen are still active, Wagner is on his final writers’ ballot, and Nathan fell off after his first vote (2022). Ditto for Reardon, who picked up 24 votes in 2000, one short of what he needed to live another ballot.
Reardon wasn’t quite the dominant force on the mound that K-Rod was, but the bearded one did lead the National League with 41 saves in 1985 and hit 40 three times overall. He was also a three-time All-Star and one of the faces of some really good Montreal Expos teams in the early-to-mid-80s, behind Tim Raines, Andre Dawson, Gary Carter, Steve Rogers, and Tim Wallach in star appeal, maybe, but always there at the end.
Reardon also won a World Series title with the 1991 Minnesota Twins and saved three games for them that October. And though it’s pretty much lost to history now, Reardon broke the all-time record for saves in 1992, his 342 surpassing Rollie Fingers’ 341. It was a short stay on the mountaintop, as Lee Smith claimed the record in 1993.
Collectors never flocked to Reardon en masse, but there was a time, when his star was at its brightest for the Expos, that his 1981 rookie cards were worthy of plastic sleeves. Sometimes, they even showed up in the corner of a dealer’s showcase.
The thing about those RCs, though, was that Reardon appeared as a Met on all of them. He had signed with New York as an amateur free agent in 1977 and then spent a couple summers working his way to the majors.
In Queens, Reardon spent three-plus seasons as a long reliever before the Mets traded him and Dan Norman to Montreal in May of 1981 for Ellis Valentine.
And that’s where today’s work of art comes in.
With about five months to get their plans together, Topps was able to capture Reardon with his new team that fall in their inaugural Traded boxed set. They even whipped together one of their more credible airbrush jobs, cranking out a masterpiece that’s equal parts Mona Lisa, Alfred Molina, and A.J. Foyt.
It’s a classic, even if hardly anyone remembers it…or has even seen it.
So, while K-Rod may win the battle of the saves, Ks, and Hall of Fame votes, he’ll never be in Reardon’s class when it comes to Junk Wax nostalgia.
