I was sorting my newly arrived 1976 Hostess cards when the Don Gullett card jumped out at me, as newly acquired cards tend to do.
I knew I had seen that photo before. Or rather, my brain knew it had seen that photo before. It's always reminding me of random bits of information that are preventing me from remembering what streets I drove down yesterday.
True to form, my brain was right. The photo used for Gullett's 1976 Hostess card is the photo used for 1975 Topps card.
Topps provided the photos for the Hostess cards so this isn't a surprise. There are several examples of this and I probably should make a post out of it when I acquire enough Hostess cards.
Then my brain went off on a tangent and started stewing about how Don Gullett never smiled for his baseball cards.
Although Gullett's promising career was ended early by arm problems, he has enough cards for his inability to smile to be apparent. Take a look at any one of them. Gullett always seems to be on the verge of tears or, at the very least, somewhat concerned.
There is nothing easy-going about his facial expressions. It starts with his '71 Topps rookie card.
Look at that. He seems rather worried. Perhaps that's the face a rookie should wear. Or maybe he's simply concerned about how his first card will turn out.
Things don't seem to be getting any better for Don in 1972. I don't know what they did to him -- maybe that jacket is giving him a rash -- but he seems to be in the middle of a tale of woe.
Maybe there's nothing all that wrong with Gullett in '73, but it's not a smile. Maybe even a trace of exasperation here.
Oh, here we go with the concern again. Yes, Don, you're doing fine with that pose. Everything's fine. Do you think you can smile a little bit?
You can see again that Hostess used a past Topps card photo for the '75 Hostess card. It came from the '74 Topps set.
Perhaps he's just bothered by going through the same pose over and over? Here we are in 1976. His hair is a little longer, but the facial expression is pretty much the same. Kind of concerned or exasperated. Maybe even perturbed.
Here is some promise with his '76 Kellogg's card. Gullett seems to be trying very hard, you could say he's anxious. Or you could be positive and say he's hopeful.
I don't know where '76 SSPC found this photo of Gullett but he looks way young. And quite shocked.
Gullett left the Reds for the Yankees after the 1976 season. It's a new team but he doesn't seem that enthused about it. I'd say he's puzzled on the '77 Topps card and downright glum on the '77 OPC card. (I don't have the '77 Burger King card but it's probably the closest Gullett came to a smile to date. It's pretty much a blank-faced look with a trace of bemusement).
Gullett got the action treatment in 1978, which means you're not going to find any smiles there. Just a lot of focus and grim determination.
Gullett's 1978 and 1980 cards are very similar. It could potentially be from the same photoshoot. Look a that determination in both pictures. Not a smile to be found.
The 1978 SSPC card of Gullett, which I cut out of the 1978 Yankees yearbook that year, gives a closer look at Gullett's tight-lipped concentration.
In 1979, we're back to the poses and Gullett seems to be in the middle of expressing his reservations about the shoot or how this isn't even how he follows through on a pitch, or how long is this going to take?
And that's it. That's the end of Gullett's career and his cards. Who knows? Maybe if he lasted until Donruss and Fleer arrived he'd end up smiling on a card.
But actually, don't let Topps fool you. Gullett really did smile. And he did so on cards. There's an example in the 1992 The Wiz set of 1980s Yankees. If you pick up some early '70s Reds postcards, he's smiling on almost all of them.
But for most of my life, all I knew of Gullett was his Topps cards and they told me he didn't smile. So, when I stumbled across this card recently, I just had to have it:
There we go!!!! That's what I was looking for all these years. It simply took an oddball set, I guess.
This is one of those 1970s Burger Chef discs. This same photo is used on a couple of other discs. Maybe it was in his contract: "I will only smile for round cards."
I probably shouldn't give him such a hard time. I'm exactly the same. It takes a lot of effort for me to work up a smile for a posed photo. Just ask anybody who knows me.
And, actually, I didn't have to work so hard to find an example. All I had to do was turn over his rookie card:
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