japes Era - Catchers Part 1

Catchers of the japes Era part 1

I chose Carlton Fisk as the first card to be revealed since he was my favorite catcher growing up.  Growing up a White Sox fan I remember the day Fisk went to Chicago.  I knew he wasn't the mythical Fisk that could single handedly force a Homerun to stay fair, but I was still excited.

Fisk had lots of seasons I could have chosen.  I could have picked his best season in Chicago just for selfish reasons, but I wanted my son to understand how good he was. So I stuck with his younger days in Boston.  By Showdown pricing 1975 would have been his best season.  However I decided to recreate his Rookie of the Year season for this project.  I hope you enjoy as much as we do.

My son would not let me get away without putting Posey in the set.  Posey had lots of seasons to choose.  He had Golden Glove seasons, Silver Slugger seasons, and a Rookie of the Year season.  I chose his 2012 MVP season in the end.  And it's a great all around card.

 So I'm cheating a bit here.  Johnny Bench did play during my lifetime.  But it was the end of his career and he was only a shade of what he once was, But he did make a few All-Star teams in that span and more importantly, he was the favorite catcher of my Mother.  So I grew up with stories of the Big Red Machine most of my life.  So he gets in.

Bench had many seasons to choose from.  Rookie of the Year, many Gold Gloves, 13 consecutive years as an All-Star, Four times he was in the top 4 for MVP votes winning it twice.

I chose his 1970 card.  Not only did he win the MVP, but he also lead Major League Baseball in Home Runs that year....as a Catcher.  Sure he played some outfield that year as well but in 139 of those 158 games he suited up in the gear and still managed to hit 45 Home Runs.  Beating out names like Hank Aaron, Frank Howard, Yastrzemski, McCovey, and even teammate Tony Perez.

 While there may be an argument on his abilities as a Catcher at the MLB level, there is certainly no argument as to his abilities as a hitter.  For his generation he was clearly the best hitting catcher in the game.  From his Rookie of the Year season in 1993 all the way to his final season in Oakland in 2007 Piazza managed to have only have ONE seasons of sub 100 OPS+ and that was the final season in which he only played in 83 games. Twice hitting 40 HR and 6 times hitting at least 35.

I chose his 1997 MVP runner-up Silver Slugger seasons.  His last full season with the Dodgers.  He already has solid cards in the official sets of MLB Showdown so I chose veer away from those as well since I hope to someday have the full 2001 set.  So this gives me variety.

So once we eliminated Campanella and Berra to artificially set a frame for our set we had to add in a few more.  I ended up adding in three cards even though I only removed 2.  So here we are, the first position, and I already can't stick to 10 players.  Your gain since that means today I'm adding in two other legendary Yankee Backstops.  Full disclosure Yankees are one of my three least favorite franchises in all of sports.  But you can't really argue with the historical relevance of these two catchers.