Someone on social media posed the question the other day regarding Rickey Henderson's domination of the American League stolen base title during the 1980s.
Henderson led the AL in stolen bases every year from 1980 through 1991 except for one.
The question: who led the league in stolen bases the year Henderson did not?
I had no idea.
I was on top of that stuff during the latter half of the 1970s and early 1980s. That's because baseball cards were there for me, specifically league-leader cards. I've mentioned many times how I relied on baseball cards to tell me important facts from the previous year -- league leaders, postseason results, records broken, etc. I went to cards before the newspaper or TV.
That's how those facts entered my head and stayed there. If someone asked me who led the American League and National League in batting average in 1977, all I needed to do was picture the '78 League Leader card with Dave Parker and Rod Carew on it to get my answer.
League Leader cards were there for me for 10 straight years, from 1975 through 1984.
All of the big stars and all of the important categories -- batting average, home runs, RBIs, stolen bases, strikeouts, victories, earned-run average and "leading firemen". I knew all of those leaders -- though you had to give me a few months until the new cards came out.
Topps used this format for league leaders even before 1975, though they varied somewhat (floating heads!) from 1961 through 1974.
Then something happened in 1985. Topps changed it up and no longer dedicated card fronts to league leaders.
Instead, league leaders were found on the back.
There's Dan Quisenberry leading the league in saves in 1984 on the back of his 1985 All-Star card. That's where you found it.
While I believe you could find most of the same league-leader categories on these cards (plus a bunch of other ones), they were presented much more arbitrarily. Here is Damaso Garcia's 1985 All-Star card showing that he finished sixth in stolen bases in 1984. Woo.
George Brett's 1985 All-Star card shows 1984 AL Batting Average leaders, but Brett is nowhere to be found on the list -- because he hit .284 that year. Weird place to put the AL Batting Leaders.
But this was the format Topps used for league leaders through the remainder of the 1980s and into the '90s. You had to hunt for the league leaders instead of Topps presenting them on the front of individual cards for easy reference.
And this probably explains why I didn't know who the player was who led the American League in stolen bases when Rickey Henderson didn't during the 1980s.
The answer to the trivia question is Harold Reynolds. In 1987, Reynolds led the American League in stolen bases with 60. Henderson had only 41 in 1987 as he dealt with injuries that year, appearing in just 95 games.
But here is where Reynolds' 1987 stolen base feat is in the 1988 Topps set:
Yeah, a card of Dave Winfield. What?
There is Reynolds at the top. Winfield is nowhere to be found on the list. He stole five bases in 1987.
So thanks to the late 1980s' league-leader delinquency, that factoid managed to avoid me for multiple decades (well, a bigger part of the reason might be that I was in college during the late '80s).
You had to go to other card places for those league leader cards if you weren't satisfied with hunting for the leaders on the backs of cards. But I was way too old to be buying boxed sets at the time.
Fortunately I am no longer too old. It was long overdue for me to add the 1988 Topps Revco League Leaders boxed set to my collection. I got it a couple of weeks ago.
It's stack of 33 cards of nothing but league leaders. All of the original league leader categories from the 1970s are in there, plus a bunch of others -- slugging percentage, doubles, games played, shutouts, game-winning RBIs, etc. All with a glossy finish and the Revco mortar-and-pestle logo.
There's Harold Reynolds now!
I would have preferred that the category that Reynolds led the league in was on the front of the card, but I appreciate the write-up mentioning the top three. Small victories. The league leader cards of the 1970s and early 1980s gave you a top 10 for each league!
Today, league leader cards are back with a vengeance. Ever since the start of the 21st century, Topps has including league leader cards most years, in the same mind-numbing format of three dudes in action, swinging or throwing. (For a brief period from 2016-21, Topps switched to using individual player cards to recognize league leaders).
The current league leader cards are so dull that I'd rather they disappear from the set if they're not going to make them interesting again. (Obviously with baseball-reference, etc., nobody needs those cards like I did as a youngster).
But I suppose Topps has Heritage for interesting league-leader cards -- until it gets to the 1985 set in 2034.
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