Tom Timmermann (#554)

Here is Tom Timmermann’s rookie card. As I have mentioned previously, I didn’t collect 1970 or 1971 cards back in the day, so I first heard of Tom when I got his 1972 card.

As with Paul Doyle’s card (2 posts ago),  I probably would not have blogged about Timmermann had he not appeared on my “Oldest living players not blogged yet” list.

Timmermann was signed by the Tigers in 1960, and it took him 9 ½ long years to work his way up to the Tigers, debuting in mid-June 1969.

Tom pitched for the Tigers from 1969-73, mostly as a reliever. He led the team with 27 saves in 1970, but also started 25 games in 1972 and 16 in 1973.

In mid-June 1973 he was dealt to the Indians for pitcher Ed Farmer. Tom started 15 of his 29 games with the Tribe over the remainder of the season.

1974 was Timmermann’s final season. He appeared in 4 games for Cleveland (the last on April 26th), then spent the rest of the season in the minors before retiring.

Hey! I found the perfect battery-mate for Timmermann:

Dissecting the 1970 Set

Today I'm wrapping up a 5-part series where I look at the players who had multiple positions listed on their cards. We have already seen the 1966, 1967, 1968, and 1969 sets, now here is the 1970 set.

The 1970 Topps set had 720 cards. Team cards (24) returned after a 1-year absence. There are also 24 manager cards, 40 rookie stars cards, 12 league leader cards, a whopping 14 post-season cards (now that we have two LCS series), 20 All-Star cards, and 7 checklists. With all the additional post-season and team cards, there are no multi-player cards in the set. This leaves 579 cards of individual players.

Here is the position breakdown of the 579 player cards.
234 cards for Pitcher
57 cards for Catcher
22 cards for 1st Base
26 cards for 2nd Base
38 cards for Shortstop (38!)
29 cards for 3rd Base
18 cards for Infield
123 cards for Outfield

That's a total of 547 cards. The remaining 32 cards featured players at more than 1 position. Unlike the previous 4 sets, there are hardly any cards with opposite position combinations (for example, we have many 1B-OF, but no OF-1B). Below is a sample of each position:

The 1B-OF combination appears the most (like it always does), but this time there are ELEVEN players: Willie Stargell, Frank Howard, Ken Harrelson, Ron Fairly and Bob Bailey (both on the Expos), Joe Pepitone, Tito Francona, Curt Blefary and Pete Ward (both on the Yankees), Andy Kosco, and Greg Goossen. Jim Stewart is the only player with the INF-OF position.

Joe Torre and John Boccabella are the C-1B players, while only Orlando "Marty" Martinez checks in with C-INF.

Carl Taylor and the Yankees' Frank Fernandez have C-OF on their cards. Mickey Stanley is the only SS-OF (despite not playing very much at shortstop over the 2nd half of 1969).

This is the only position combo that is featured both ways. Dalton Jones and the Pirates' Bob Robertson have the 1B-3B position, and Harmon Killebrew is the lone player with 3B-1B.

Angel Hermoso, Ron Hansen, and Steve Huntz all show 2B-SS, although for some reason Topps is abbreviating "Shortstop" as "S.S." on Hermoso's card. There are 5 players with a 2B-3B combination: Tony Taylor, Jim Lefebvre, Dave Campbell, Wayne Garrett, and the White Sox' Rich Morales.

Rick Renick and Jose Pagan are the 2 players having the 3B-SS position. Graig Nettles is the only 3B-OF player in the set.


Weird stuff 'bout the 1970 set: 

In addition to Angel Hermoso above, Topps also decided they needed periods to abbreviate these two players' positions.

There are only 2 outfielders for the Pirates and 3 for the Cardinals, but the Cubs and Giants each have EIGHT outfielders. (I thought that extravagance was reserved for the Angels!)

With all those outfielders, there was only room for 6 Cubs' pitchers. The White Sox have 7 pitchers, while most teams have 10 or 11.

The Red Sox have FOUR catcher cards!

I also noticed that Topps misspelled Gil Garrido's name as Gill Garrido (on the front only - the back is correct), and was now calling Clay Dalrymple "Clayton".