My good hobby friend Beau Spencer Thompson is best known for his quest, which did succeed, to accumulate one million Chicago Cubs cards. No, they were not all different because that would be a record or something. But he also hosts a daily you tube video and each Friday he completes the work week by having a name that player game. Personally, I'm good on those vintage cards but I get lost on modern cards. Well, a couple of weeks ago one of the cards he used was a Don Landrum "Rookie"
I put Rookie in parentheses as he was still technically a rookie when that card was printed but similar to our friend Pancho Herrera, he gets a regular card in the 1958 set before getting the "rookie notation"
Don was one of those seemingly interchangeable outfielders of the 1960s. Tell me the difference between Don Landrum, Charlie James, Doug Clemens, Carl Warwick, Gary Kolb, Billy Gene Smith and a few others. Yep, they were all part of the early 1960's Cardinals to start the decade, But Landrum has a bit more interesting card history then tee other people mentioned.
Landrum gets to the Cubs for the 1963 season and Topps issues a card of him but there is one small detail they missed. Speaking of players who looked alike, there is a small problem with the Landrum card, the main photo is not Landrum but it is Ron Santo.
But wait, there's more as they used to say in the infomercials. According to TCDB, the photo on the 1963 Post/Jello Don Landrum card is not Landrum but it's actually Bob Will. Poor Mr. Landrum had quite the year in 1963
And that's not even the worst Topps Cubs faux pas of the 1960's. No, that would occur 3 years later when the Dick Ellsworth card featured Ken Hubbs instead of Mr. Ellsworth. Small detail here as sadly Ken Hubbs had died in a plane crash in February, 1964.
Topps actually noted the passing of Hubbs in the 1964 hi number set.
So, Topps knows Hubbs had passed on but as noted he makes an appearance in the 1966 Topps set instead of Ellsworth.
So we mention the 1966 set here but to go back to Mr. Landrum who started this discussion, he has his own 1966 Topps issues.
This one is his fly open on the card
This one the is airbrushed
And this one the fly is not visible at all
A real joy figuring this out if you are looking at 1966 commons. Later the higher number also has another even more famous fly open card. Claude Raymond gets to show his fly open. And, Topps did not fix that so the 1967 card shows the same problem with Mr. Raymond
These are different photos no less. How do you miss the 2 straight years, fool me once, fool me twice I say, I say.
Fast forward more than 50 years later and Topps actually put a player with his shirt open on purpose. Shows how things change but you got to admit, this was one of the coolest cards Topps has done in the past decade or so. It was a very popular card of a beloved long-term major leaguer. So we'll end this sojourn with the open-shirted Andrew McCutchen card from 2020 Topps.
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