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C.A.: 1982 Topps Denny Lewallyn

(Welcome to the Winter Olympics. They're a pretty big deal around here what being within a couple hours drive of Lake Placid. I'll be watching. Interested sometimes. Bored other times. Confused even more times. And still waiting for baseball. It's time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 198th in a series):


I've started another project. Yup, I know. I've got a whole bunch of other projects going on and I've already whined about how I can't focus enough to pay attention to them all. But I've made a half-hearted effort to return to some of those projects, so there is hope for this one.

Besides, I think it's cool right now. And that's all that matters.

I've always been interested in players who enjoyed just a brief time in the major leagues, especially when it comes to baseball cards, right? And I've always enjoyed focusing on players who have received just a handful of cards, right? Well, the best thing of all is figuring which players have received just one card.

This is my project.

I've begun going through each set and determining the players in each set that received one -- and only one -- card. I call them the "One and Done Players."

By one card. I mean one card. The player can't have appeared on a previous 3- or 4-player rookie card. The player can't have appeared on another set issued at the same time (for example Fleer or Score). The only exception I'll make is minor league cards. They can have all the minor league cards in the world. I won't count it against them.

I'm starting with Topps, because that's what I know best, but I'll probably do this for other brands, too. As for the years, I'm not starting with 1951 or 1952 and working my way forward. I'm starting with the sets that I know the best, which would be cards from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. After that, I may jump around -- sometimes concentrating on a set in the 1960s and sometimes vaulting all the way to 2011.

I do know already that it will be more difficult to find a player with only one card the closer I get to the present. In fact, it may be impossible to find such an animal in the last 20 years or more.

For example, I've already gone through 1980 Topps. In that set, I found seven players that were featured in 1980 Topps and nowhere else.

But then I checked 1981 Topps.

1981 Topps has just one player issued in that set and no other set. There are eight other players whose only Topps card appeared in '81 Topps, but because of the arrival of Donruss and Fleer, most of them also appeared in those sets, too. So they didn't have just one issued card, they had at least two or three.

And that brings me to Denny Lewallyn, whose card you saw at the top.

He is the only player in 1982 Topps set with a card in that set and a card nowhere else. (There are 10 other players in the set whose only Topps card is in 1982 but appear in other sets).

Most of these "One and Done" players are interesting because when they pop up in a set it's someone completely foreign. Tony Brizzolara? Who the heck is he?

But Lewallyn I had heard of before.

He was a Dodgers prospect for a lot of years before he appeared in the 1982 set. Here, look at the back:


I'm sure I was annoyed that he pitched in seven games for the Dodgers in 1979 and didn't get a card, but he pitched for seven games for the Indians in 1981 and did get a card.

But the reason I was familiar with Lewallyn was because of my habit of ordering away for Dodger yearbooks at the time.

Lewallyn was one of those Dodger prospects in the back of the yearbooks. Here is his write-up from the 1977 Dodger yearbook.


I'll bet that picture makes him want to run and hide.

But when I pulled the Lewallyn card from '82 Topps, I chuckled and said, "finally Lewallyn, you have a card."

Just so you know I'm serious about this project, I'll show you the "One and Doners" for 1980, 1981 and 1982 Topps. But I'll save their actual cards for one of my future posts in the series.

Here they are:

1980 Topps:

#59 - Eddy Putman, Tigers
#72 - Fred Howard, White Sox
#156 - Tony Brizzolara, Braves
#221 - Joe Cannon, Blue Jays
#233 - LaRue Washington, Rangers
#291 - Randy Scarberry, White Sox
#347 - Harry Chappas, White Sox

1981 Topps:

#491 - Gordy Pladson, Astros

1982 Topps:

#356 - Denny Lewallyn, Indians

Lot of White Sox so far.

This is one of those projects where I could easily miss somebody. Or easily miss that someone has more than one card. So if you spot one of those people, let me know. I plan to put up a list somewhere on the blog so people can check out the "One and Doners" for as long as this blog lasts.

Let's just hope I can stay with this thing.

Comments

JediJeff said…
OH yeah - the late 70's and early 80's we had REALLY good scouts.

(groan)
Mark Hoyle said…
Harry Chappas wasn't he like 5'2"
night owl said…
He was listed as 5-3. Probably one of the more famous One-and-Done guys. I'll be getting into specifics about them in future posts.
hiflew said…
Great idea for a series. Lewallyn just came around about 30 years too early. Fast forward 30 years and he is Andy LaRoche. Except I am sure you have seen way more Andy LaRoche cards than you care to admit. Choo Freeman (and several others) has more Rockie cards than Rockies games played.

BTW, I would think that Herb Washington would probably be the most famous "One and Done" guy there ever was.
Jeff said…
Brian Allard has a card in the 1980 set. One of the 3 rookies cards
night owl said…
I have a feeling this is going to trip me up a lot because one of the main sources I use doesn't list the old 3-player, 4-player rookie cards as one of that player's cards.

Thanks.
steelehere said…
I'm going to be that you'll have a nice run of one and done in the 1990's before Bowman Chrome was released because the base Bowman set is loaded with minor leaguers (and Bowman's Best isn't that large a set).
Unknown said…
Its sad to say but I remember Kip Young's rookie card from 79. It was one of those 3 player rookie cards. I did not remember the 1980 individual card that he received. I guess by that time I realized he would not be with the tigers that long.
night owl said…
The list is updated with updates from the comments.
Jeff said…
http://www.tradingcarddb.com/
Bo said…
I will go through my spreadsheet which will be pretty good for this. Off the top of my head from interviews:
Jeff DeWillis is in the 1988 Score set, and that is his only professional card of any kind.
Noe Munoz, who played in the majors for the Dodgers, has only one professional card, but it is a minor league card.
Also, one of my first interviews was the guy you never heard of, Tony Brizzolara.
Bo said…
ok, pulling from my spreadsheet. This does not differentiate people on those multi-player cards. These are all players where I only have one card of the guy. There may be other players where I have more than one card, but only one major league and the rest minor league, so this is not necessarily all-inclusive.

79 Topps:
Beall, Bob
Beswick, Jim
Bruno, Tom
Cotes, Eugenio
Gaudet, Jim
Holly, Jeff
McGilberry, Randy
Norrid, Tim
Pisker, Don
Replogle, Andy
Robertson, Bob
Skok, Craig
Slater, Bob
Speed, Horace
Sutton, Johnny
Thompson, Bobby
Umbarger, Jim
Wiltbank, Ben
Wirth, Alan
Bruhert, Mike
Duncan, Taylor
Fry, Jerry
Pirtle, Jerry
Reynolds, Don
Stanfield, Kevin

80 Topps
Baldwin, Reggie
Boitano, Danny
Brizzolara, Tony
Cannon, Joe
Howard, Fred
Jones, Darryl
Mueller, Willie
Putman, Eddy
Scarbery, Randy
Torres, Rusty
Bacsik, Mike
Beamon, Charlie
Boyland, Dorian
Bryant, Derek
Chappas, Harry
Chris, Mike
DeFreites, Art
Edge, Butch
Greene, Al
Greer, Brian
Lois, Alberto
Mahlberg, Greg
Miller, Randy
Murray, Larry
Nastu, Phil
O'Brien, Dan
Paschall, Bill
Patterson, Dave [LA]
Riccelli, Frank
Saferight, Harry
Tolan, Bob
Vasquez, Rafael
Washington, LaRue
Wilborn, Ted
Wilhelm, Jim

81 Fleer
Allen, Kim
Burnside, Sheldon
Gonzalez, Orlando
Twitty, Jeff
Vukovich, John
Weiss, Gary

81 Topps
Dorsey, Jim
MacWhorter, Keith
Pladson, Gordy
Anderson, Rick [SEA]
Bourjos, Chris
Dempsey, Pat
Ireland, Tim
Olmsted, Al
Rowland, Mike
Stablein, George
Steffen, Dave
Stimac, Craig
Weaver, Roger

82 Fleer
Edelen, Joe
Manuel, Jerry
Moreno, Angel
Parsons, Casey

82 Topps
Kuhaulua, Fred
Lewallyn, Denny
Schmidt, Dave [BOS]
Schneider, Jeff
Budaska, Mark
Smith, Billy [HOU]
Tufts, Bob
Wells, Boomer

83 Donruss
Bogener, Terry
Johnson, Anthony
Johnson, Roy
Senteney, Steve

83 Fleer
Smith, Ken
Hammond, Steve

83 Topps
Boris, Paul

83 Topps Traded
Baker, Steve

84 Donruss
Barnes, Richard
Behenna, Rick
Fuentes, Mike
Heimueller, Gorman
Jones, Jeff [CIN]
Smith, Chris [SF]

84 Topps
Bargar, Greg
Bjorkman, George
Cias, Darryl
Gray, Lorenzo
Hagen, Kevin
Morogiello, Dan
Nyman, Chris

85 Donruss
Brewer, Tony
Citarella, Ralph
Loman, Doug
Stephans, Russ

85 Fleer Update
Connally, Fritz
Fallon, Bob
Musselman, Ron

85 Topps
Akins, Sid
Alfaro, Flavio
Cato, Keefe
Cornell, Jeff
Hoover, John

86 Donruss
Abrego, Johnny
Engel, Steve
Ponce, Carlos
Surhoff, Rick
Leeper, Dave
Runnells, Tom

86 Fleer
Ward, Colin

86 Topps
Barkley, Jeff
Brown, Mark
Cook, Glen

87 Topps
Bryden, T.R.

88 Fleer
Lindsey, Bill
Tabor, Greg

88 Score
DeWillis, Jeff

88 Topps
Ciardi, Mark
Keedy, Pat

89 Bowman
DuVall, Brad

89 Donruss
Jordan, Scott

89 Fleer
Pounders, Brad

89 UD
Chance, Tony
Firova, Dan

90 Bowman
Roseboro, Jaime

90 Fleer Update
Manon, Ramon

91 Classic (red border)
Opperman, Dan

91 Score
Wells, Terry
Young, Ray

91 UD
Brutcher, Len
Elvira, Narciso

92 Donruss Rookies
Menendez, Tony

92 Topps Debut
Kiser, Garland

night owl said…
Thanks, Bo. This will help narrow things down along with other items people provided/that I'm using.