Saturday, April 19, 2014

#151 John Hiller, Tigers




Card Front: A nice action shot of a lefty at his craft. It seems strange to me that Topps couldn't even fly to Detroit to get a shot in the home whites. I did like these pullovers though. It is strange that they would use this pic though where everything is slightly off center but back then we didn't care as kids and probably just threw this card aside if you weren't a Tigers fan.

Card Back: Now that is a long career, and the kind I like that is all with one team. John would miss that 1971 season after suffering a heart attack but would slowly make his way back in 1972 and would stay on after that through the 1980 season. During the 1979 season, John passed Mickey Lolich in the Tigers record book for most appearances by a lefty.

Six degrees or less to Seattle: During John's first call up in 1965, one of his teammates in Detroit was Jim Northup. As we fast forward to the 1974 season, Jim would find himself in Baltimore as member of the Orioles.  Another of those high flying Birds as Al Bumbry. Al would have a memorable career in Baltimore but would also have some pretty nice years in America's Finest City as a San Diego Padre. One of Al's teammates on the 1985 version was Luis DeLeon. Luis was a one game wonder for the Mariners in 1989, pitching for four innings on May 26th of that year in Milwaukee. Luis would spend the entire rest of the year at AAA Calgary.

Next Card: #152 Rick Cerone, Blue Jays

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

John was the only remaining member of the '68 championship team by this point, It seemed that this was mentioned everytime he pitched