Steve Carlton 1983 and 1984 Topps Gallery of Champions

 

Steve Carlton 1983 and 1984 Topps Gallery of Champions. These are some of my favorite Carlton oddities. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

You'll need a magnifying glass to read the stats on the back, though. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

These cool little bronze cards of Steve Carlton are from the Topps Gallery of Champions. The Gallery of Champions bronze cards were included with cases of Topps Traded cards from 1983-1991. I don’t remember ever seeing them during my childhood, but they’re cool little collectibles. Another oddity that I didn’t know I was missing until I started trying to complete my Steve Carlton collection. I was able to track down the 1983 Carlton bronze pretty easily, but the 1984 eluded me for a while. I thought I had the 1984, but the collector actually sent me the 1983, which I already had. This happened a couple of times, so I ended up with several 1983 cards, but that’s fine with me. The Gallery of Champions bronzes are some of my favorite Carlton oddities, and they’re not too expensive if you want to collect them. Be warned, you’ll need a magnifying glass to read the stats on the back.

Steve Carlton Likes Ukrainian Food

 

2021 Topps X Sports Illustrated card, reproducing Carlton's 1983 SI cover.

The back of the card makes no reference to Carlton's affection for Ukrainian cuisine.

This 2021 Topps X Sports Illustrated Steve Carlton card has an unlikely connection to Ukraine. I’ll explain. The card reproduces the cover of the October 3, 1983 issue of Sports Illustrated, celebrating Carlton’s 300th win.

Steve Carlton won his 300th game against his former team, the St. Louis Cardinals, on September 23, 1983. Carlton pitched 8 innings in the game, threw 137 pitches, gave up just 2 runs, and struck out 12 batters.

Carlton wasn’t speaking to the media in 1983, so Sports Illustrated was being ironic with the caption on the cover, because Lefty wasn’t going to tell them how he won number 300. But his wife Beverly did speak to the media the night he won his 300^th game. She said, “Steve would like to play another 10 years, and as hard as he works, he just might. I wouldn’t mind that at all. Baseball’s been great to us.” Asked if there was anything else she wanted to add about Steve, she said, “Well, he likes Ukrainian food.” Who knew? It’s very curious that Beverly Carlton thought this was an important enough fact about her husband to mention to the press. It’s also curious because “Ukrainian food” isn’t very well known in the United States—it doesn’t conjure up an image the way “Italian food” or “French food” would. But that’s kind of fitting with Steve Carlton’s whole vibe that he likes Ukrainian food. Steve’s not a guy who goes with the crowd, he does his own thing. How many other baseball players have had “wine collecting” listed as a hobby on the back of their baseball card?

The 1975 book Steve Carlton: Star Southpaw, by Martha Eads Ward, also references Carlton’s love of Ukrainian cuisine, but it fills in some details. “His favorite dish is a Ukrainian concoction: dough filled with sharp cheese, potatoes, butter, onions, and sour cream.” Sounds delicious, but not exactly low-calorie. What Ward is describing sounds like varenyky, considered one of the national dishes of Ukraine.

I don’t know enough about Steve Carlton’s family background to know if he’s of Ukrainian heritage, but now I wonder if it was a diet of Ukrainian food that allowed Carlton to pitch for 24 years, win 329 games, capture 4 Cy Young Awards, and rack up 4,136 strikeouts? Someone should ask Lefty.

1,033 Steve Carlton Cards!

 

My 2 boxes containing 1,033 Steve Carlton cards. Sharp-eyed baseball card collectors will be able to tell there's quite a few 1987 Fleer, 1987 Donruss, and 1988 Fleer cards in here. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

I bought a lot of 1,033 Steve Carlton cards on eBay a couple of weeks ago. Now that I’ve gone through and organized the cards, I can report the details to you, faithful readers. About half of the cards were from when Carlton was an active, with the other half dating from the 1990’s to the present. The oldest card was Carlton’s 1976 SSPC card. The 1976 SSPC set was an attempt to compete with Topps’ monopoly on baseball cards. Ultimately, the company ended up being sued by Topps and never produced another comprehensive set. Fun fact: the text of the back of the 1976 SSPC cards was written by Keith Olbermann.

Steve Carlton, 1984 Star card #13.

The lot had a nice variety of 1980’s oddities, including several of Carlton’s Sportflics cards, and various stickers from the 1980’s. There was one card from Star’s 1984 24-card set of Steve Carlton. Star made two sets featuring Carlton, one in 1984 and one in 1987. Card #13 from 1984 shows Carlton on the road, in the Phillies’ phantastic powder blue uniforms. Carlton is in mid-stride, and you get a sense of the power of his pitches, as you see his 6’5” frame about to whip a pitch towards the plate. An intimidating sight. I really like this photo, and I think it’s a much better one than a lot of the other action photos that appeared on Carlton’s Topps cards. Judging from what I can see of Steve’s grip on the ball, I’d say the batter is about to get a slider, the pitch that transformed Carlton into a great pitcher, and added many strikeouts to his lifetime total of 4,136. Carlton threw his slider using the same motion as his fastball, making it all but impossible for batters to guess which pitch was coming. Keith Hernandez wrote about Carlton: “Carlton threw the slider like an automaton: outside corner black, at the knees, every time.” (Pure Baseball by Keith Hernandez and Mike Bryan)

The back of the 1984 Star card shows you Carlton's All-Star Game appearances. It even tell you what city the All-Star Game took place in. 

The back of the 1984 Star card highlights Carlton’s 10 All-Star selections. Carlton started the 1969 and 1979 All-Star games, and was the winning pitcher in the 1969 game. As you can see from the back of the card, Carlton threw 3 innings in 1969—not something that would happen now in an All-Star game.

Sorry Upper Deck, Steve Carlton didn't actually win 3,000 games.

One of the more humorous errors on these cards is the one on the Upper Deck Baseball Heroes card. It’s meant to commemorate Carlton’s 300^th win, on September 23, 1983. Ironically enough, the Phillies were facing Carlton’s former team, the St. Louis Cardinals in Saint Louis. Carlton gave up only two runs and struck out 12 Cardinals to nail down his milestone victory. (Carlton also beat the Cardinals 5 days earlier for his 299^th win.) However, the Upper Deck card tells us that Carlton achieved his 3,000^th victory in 1983, an utterly amazing feat!

3 Steve Carlton cards from the 2000's.

Pictured above are three cards from the 2000’s that I think look pretty cool. Something that I like about cards from the 2000’s of players who played in the 1970’s and 1980’s is that you get to see photos of them you’ve never seen before. Back in the days before the internet, the main way you were able to see photos of your favorite players was on their baseball cards. It’s fun to see photos you’ve never seen before. On the Panini card in the middle, you may wonder why the Baseball Hall of Fame logo is in the middle of the card, blocking the Phillies logo on Carlton’s hat. Well, that’s because Panini isn’t an officially licensed set, so they can’t reproduce the logos of MLB teams on their cards.

2004 Playoff Steve Carlton, with my hand and my iPhone visible in the reflection.

The back of the 2004 Playoff card, featuring Carlton's unimpressive stat line for 1988.

The 2004 Playoff card is cool one, as it has a shiny, silvery surface on it. (That means that it’s impossible to get a good photo of the card, however.) But I’m more interested in the back of the Donruss card. It gives us Carlton’s career stats, and his stats from his last major league season, when he appeared in 4 games for the Twins in 1988 before being released. Carlton appeared in 3 games in relief, and his last appearance was his 709^th major league start, on April 23, 1988. Carlton pitched 5 innings against the Indians, giving up 9 hits and 9 runs. (That actually lowered his ERA for the season.) Carlton struck out 4 batters that day, including Pat Tabler in the top of the 5^th inning for his 4,136^th strikeout. The last batter Carlton faced in the majors was Andy Allanson, who hit a double off of him, scoring Mel Hall. It’s so weird to just see that stat line, because, as you can see, Carlton wasn’t very effective in 1988. So why put that stat line on the back of this card? It’s an odd choice. For all the retired players in that set, they have their stats from their last major league season. It’s rather sobering to see how many great players left the game on a not-so-great note.

Goodwin Champions, by Upper Deck, featuring Steve Carlton not in a baseball uniform.

Three of the stranger cards are the Goodwin Champions by Upper Deck from 2011, 2012, and 2013. They all feature Carlton out of uniform, a result of MLB essentially giving Topps back their monopoly on baseball cards. Upper Deck can produce cards featuring player’s likenesses, but they can’t use team logos. So, we get a drawing of an older, post-retirement Steve Carlton wearing a blank hat, a drawing of young Steve Carlton talking on the phone, and a drawing based on a 1994 photo of Steve Carlton at his Hall of Fame press conference.

1999 Upper Deck commemorating Steve Carlton's selection as the 30th best baseball player of all-time.

The back of the 1999 Upper Deck card, which shows us Carlton's complete major league stats, from 1965 to 1988. That is a very long time to play major league baseball.

I really like post-retirement cards that have all of Steve Carlton’s career stats on the back, like this 1999 Upper Deck Century Legends card. Steve Carlton only had one 1988 baseball card, made by Fleer. For whatever reason, Topps, Donruss, and Score chose not to include Carlton in their 1988 sets. Although Topps was going to include Carlton at one point, since there are checklists that list Carlton as card #455. Carlton was replaced as card #455 by Shawn Hillegas. I’m hoping that somewhere deep in the Topps vault is a proof of a 1988 Topps Steve Carlton card. That would be an awesome piece of memorabilia to have! But I digress. Because Carlton was released so early in the 1988 season, he didn’t any 1989 cards, so there weren’t any cards with his complete stats on the back until his post-retirement cards. This wasn’t that uncommon, even for big stars. Topps was surprisingly unsentimental about giving retired players one final baseball card with all of their career stats on the back. From a marketing standpoint, I would think that Topps would have wanted to include some of those players just as an additional selling point. “Sure, we know Stan Musial isn’t going to play in 1964, but let’s give him one final card.” Nope, didn’t happen. How about a 1974 Willie Mays card? Nope. 1977 Hank Aaron? Nope. Oh well, I guess I’m more sentimental than Topps executives.

The 1999 Upper Deck Century Legends card commemorates The Sporting News’ 1998 list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players. Carlton was ranked number 30, just below Sandy Koufax and just ahead of Bob Gibson and Tom Seaver. You can read the list of 100 players here.

This concludes my look at my whopping lot of 1,033 Steve Carlton cards. I’ve now written about all the Steve Carlton lots I’ve bought lately, so it might be a while before the next post about Steve Carlton baseball cards.