Comments on: Herb Washington

By: jamesguitarshields

jamesguitarshields — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:49:48 +0000

I also love how he’s concentrating on “leading off” from first, yet behind him it’s painfully obvious that there’s nobody at the ballpark (because it’s 11 in the morning or whatever)

By: Champ Summers

Champ Summers — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:01:46 +0000

3. I was always in so much awe of this card. I payed special attention to this set, as there were the "minis" as well as the regular sized cards to collect. Is it just me, or does Washington appear to be in the "leadoff" position roughly 2 feet away from the first base line? Washington, to me, is a great icon of the Finley era, complete with mustache, the batting glove removed from the wrapper minutes before the photo was taken, wrinkle-free and untainted of pine tar.

By: Zernialophile

Zernialophile — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 18:43:05 +0000

2. As a budding baseball card collector in the mid 80s, my parents gave me a large retrospective published by Topps, celebrating 35 years of baseball card sets. The book simply showed every single card made over those 35 years and I scoured it so thoroughly that I ruined the binding. As I became less interested in collecting the current cards, that book fostered my absurdly consuming interest in baseball history. Moreover, as I stopped collecting the current sets, I began hunting through the commons boxes at card stores for things like the ’75 Herb Washington card, which remains one of my favorites to this day. It has a place of honor right next to the John Odom card where the facsimile autograph is signed as “Blue Moon Odom”.

Two other great things about this card…

First, unlike so many other posed cards from this time, we can clearly the white adidas shoes that are so essential to the classic Finley-era A’s uniforms.

Second, check out that glove that Herb’s wearing. It doesn’t look like a batting glove but, rather, something a policeman would have worn while directing traffic a generation or two earlier. And why only one glove? Perhaps Herb might be an inspiration for the Thriller-era Michael Jackson.

By: Josh Wilker

Josh Wilker — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 22:54:53 +0000

1. 2 comments from old CG site:

peter said…
As a child, I can recall being puzzled, and somewhat fascinated by this card.

And what did it all mean?

Oh… those wacky American Leaguers;
first the designated hitter, now a designated runner? And those uniforms? (the Astros would soon push the envelope on our side of the column.)

But really, I mean what sport was this they were playing over there for crying out loud?

Well, by now of course the entire major leagues are a farce, but I’d like to think, deep in my heart somewhere, that I still in some way consider American League baseball to be a curiosity residing enigmatically in the popular imagination someplace between indoor soccer and professional wrestling..

12:18 PM

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8:56 PM