And I get up and go to work in the AL East, but I will always be in the old NL East, before there was a Central.

Just as I will always be living (baseballically) in the 80s and 90s, and I will never quite move ahead again, like someone has just lifted the stylus off the record. I can see the world keep revolving, but the music is just a memory. RIP Les Expos, Nos Amours…

Of course, he still managed to pitch 34 games and 240 innings in 1976, going 15-16 with a 2.81 ERA.
Boy, I wonder how well he would have done if he hadn’t gotten sick.

Josh, a wonderful site. I’ve been reading it in silence for several months now. Your writing is–as so many others have said–transcendent, and, as a baseball-card-collecting New Englander who lived and died with the Red Sox most intensely between 1976 and 1986, I often have an eerie sense of deja-vu as I read. Having recently moved overseas, Cardboard Gods has become a favorite escape where I can soak in memories of that most indelible of times, and enjoy your brilliant, poignant, and amusing flights of association.

I, too, get my mail in the NL East while thinking constantly of the AL East. Messes up you regional football games, too-when I’d rather check in on the Jets or Dolphins or Bills, I get the Cowboys or Cardinals or Redskins game.

Go Brewers!!!! Been wearing my 1974-1977 Brewers Road cap (just like Travers) steadily this year. Grew up listening to Uecker and Merle Harmon and rooting for Boomer, Pedro Garcia, The Original Italian Stallion -Bob Coluccio, Davey May, Johnny Briggs, Timmy Johnson, the Money man, Jim Colborn and Kurt Bevaqua.

Looking at other ’75 Brewers cards, I see Kevin Kobel in the old Yankee Stadium. Since it was being renovated in ’74, and since he didn’t have the yellow hat panel which was added in ’74, the shot has to be from ’73. He only pitched in two games that year–one in Yankee Stadium.

Before scrutinizing these two cards I never really pictured the Topps guys taking more than one shot of each player during a shoot, but now I’m imagining the photographer snapping several shots while keeping up a yawning, desultory version of the prototypical fashion photographer (or pornographer) patter. Work it, Bill Travers, work it. Yes, yes, yes.

Anyone else think that these Bill Travers cards were two pictures from the same photo shoot? Unlike Bob Bailey’s pictures (same pose, same look, but different background and different uniform), these two pictures look the same in almost every respect, just a slightly different angle.