This is not a post about Topps' decision a decade ago to drop managers from card sets. But what a fateful decision that was. I know I would be able to identify current managers -- heck even know their names better -- if they were still featured on baseball cards.
This is about a different time when managers went missing, and it was only a couple of them. And I sure did notice.
I started collecting in 1975. So I didn't know stand-alone manager cards, which were commonplace in the years prior. I knew managers as showing up as little head shot insets on the team card. That's where they appeared in the 1975 Topps set. Every team card came with a manager head shot in the lower corner.
This means that the manager in most cases showed up twice on the team card because he's also seated with his players and coaches in the team photo. But I didn't know that at the time. It was too tough for my little mind to figure out who was who in the mass of people. But I did note the manager head shot.
Then 1976 arrived and the team cards returned with the manager head shot in the corner again. This time he was inside a diamond instead of a circle.
This was the case for all but two of the team cards in the set. I saw the Oakland A's one first.
What the heck was this? Where was the manager?
Of course, the manager is still there -- in the photo -- it's Alvin Dark in the second row between his two coaches on either side. But I was looking for the inset photo and there was nothing there.
That was because Dark had been fired as the A's manager in October 1975. He was replaced by Chuck Tanner in late December 1975 but apparently Topps couldn't get a shot of Tanner in time?
I didn't know any of this as a young collector. Heck, the 1976 set arrived before I was even watching games regularly on TV. It would be months before I started checking the sports section in the newspaper, so I didn't know the comings and goings in baseball. It had to show up on my baseball cards for me to know!!
The San Francisco Giants team card came without a manager, too, as far as I was concerned.
Wes Westrum, who was fired as the Giants manager in November 1975, is seated in the first row between the two bat boys. Bill Rigney would be hired in March 1976, much too late for him to be included in the '76 Topps set. So with no inset manager head shot to consult, I was left to assume that this team, and the A's, played without a manager.
Maybe some teams don't need a manager, I thought.
These were the mysteries we encountered as kids and collectors and fans in the 1970s. There was no phone to consult, no internet. TV focused on the Yankees and Mets. Word of mouth wouldn't even help. The A's and Giants were almost 3,000 miles away.
In the years that followed, managers continued to show up as insets on Topps' team cards -- in 1977, 1979, 1980 and 1981. The 1978 set was the exception as Topps created its famous manager cards with an accompanying photo of the manager as a player. These were/are fantastic.
In 1979, the managers returned to small inset photos and for virtually every card, between 1977 and 1981, there was a manager's face on every team card. There is just one other exception.
The 1980 Royals team card mentions the manager, but does not offer a picture. And the manager isn't in the team picture either.
Jim Frey was hired as the Royals' manager on October 24, 1979, three weeks after Whitey Herzog was dismissed as manager. This seems like enough time to grab a photo of Jim Frey, who was a coach with the Orioles before becoming the Royals' manager.
But in another twist, the photo above shows Whitey Herzog in the standard manager spot. You can see his blond hair in the first row as he's positioned between the bat boys. This is the Royals' 1979 team photo. And wouldn't you know it, the Royals would make it all the way to the World Series in 1980.
All of this would have blown my mind at the time. By 1980, I was very up on the baseball manager comings and goings and the mention of Frey without a picture on the team card certainly caught my eye. But even then I didn't notice that the fired Herzog was in the photo.
Obviously this kind of stuff was going on with baseball cards long before I started collecting, but I just wanted to relay how mysterious I found my baseball cards as a young collector. Those 1976 A's and Giants team cards are just two examples.
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