Latest From "When Topps Had Balls"

I reached out to Gio of the "When Topps Had Balls" blog a few weeks ago to see if he'd cooked up any new cards of NPB players using old Topps designs.  As it turned out, he had just recently printed up a set called "1980's Career Cappers" for players who finished their careers between 1979 and 1988 who didn't have "career capper" cards in the following year's Topps set.  It's a 21 card set featuring 20 MLB players like Carl Yastrzemski, Lou Brock, Willie McCovey, Wille Stargell, Johnny Bench and Reggie Jackson and one NPB player - Sadaharu Oh.  Oh retired at the end of the 1980 season so Gio has featured him on a card with the 1981 Topps design.

I didn't buy the complete set - just the Oh, Brock and McCovey cards (Brock and McCovey were two of my favorite players when I was a kid).  Gio only charged me $5 for the three cards (including shipping) and they arrived the other day.  Here's the front and back of the Oh card:

I'm drooling over a couple other cards he's done that he hasn't printed up - a 1969 Minoru Murayama, a 1964 Masaichi Kaneda and a 1976 Oh.  Hopefully, those will soon become real cards.

Thanks for the cards, Gio!