AL Pitching Leaders (#68, #70, #72)

Here are the AL ERA, Wins, and Strikeout leaders for the 1969 season.

ELEVEN starting pitchers had an ERA under 3.00! What gets ignored on the card front are the relievers, but the back shows that Angels' reliever Ken Tatum had an ERA of 1.36, and two others were lower than Dick Bosman's "league leading" mark.

All six 20-game winners are shown on the middle card, with Denny McLain in his final year of glory.

Sam McDowell leads the league for the last time (and 4th time in the past 5 years!) Mickey Lolich is right behind him, but Andy Messersmith finished a distant third, 60 strikeouts behind Lolich.

The Orioles are well-represented with Mike Cuellar (twice), Jim Palmer (in his comeback season), and Dave McNally. We also have two Twins (Dave Boswell and Jim Perry, but surprisingly not Jim Kaat) and two Tigers (McLain and Lolich). 

AL Batting Leaders (#62, #64, #66)

Here are the AL Batting Average, RBI, and Home Run leaders for the 1969 season.

On their way to the inaugural AL West title, the Twins also snared the Triple Crown, though it took two players to do it. For good measure, teammate Tony Oliva finished 3rd in the batting race.

Boog Powell and Frank Howard made frequent appearances on these cards in the late-60s/early-70s. 

In his 2nd full season, Reggie Jackson finished 3rd in RBI and home runs.

The other Reggie (Smith) was not one of the usual players you would think of for the batting title.

NL PItching Leaders (#67, #69, #71)

The days of one pitcher (Sandy Koufax) dominating every category are long gone.  Juan Marichal, Bob Gibson, and Fergie Jenkins each appear twice among the leaders.

It's surprising to see Gibby not in the lead in any category, but he missed the strikeout crown by only 4 K's. (Bill Singer was in 3rd place, 22 strikeouts behind Gibson.)

At the end of the ERA list is a section for relievers (pitching at least 75 innings).  Tug McGraw led that bunch.

In the middle card, 5 other guys were tied with 20 wins, rounding out the nine pitchers with 20 or more.

Re-cap:
Cardinals - 3
Cubs - 2
Giants - 2
Mets - 1
Braves - 1
Dodgers - 1

NL Batting Leaders (#61, #63, #65)

These are the 1969 NL leaders in batting average, RBI, and home runs. Willie McCovey gets 2/3 of a triple crown, and was 5th in batting average, 28 points behind Pete Rose.

I was surprised to see Lee May among the home run leaders. He finished ahead of Ron Santo and Jimmy Wynn, who are usually among the leaders (along with automatics McCovey and Hank Aaron). May's 38 were one less than his career-high in 1971. He's also 5th in RBI with a career-high 110.