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...
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