Card fact: This is Kevin Kobel's first solo card.
What I thought about this card then: I didn't see it. The first card of Kevin Kobel's that I saw was his 1979 Topps card. For some reason, I pulled that card a lot that year. (It wasn't one of the double-printed cards in the set either).
What I think about this card now: It's a pleasant, sunny day at Yankee Stadium. That Anacin ad appears a lot in the background of baseball cards.
Other stuff: Kobel played parts of six seasons in the major leagues between 1973-80. He was a starter mostly in 1974 and 1977. He spent the other years primarily as a reliever. Kobel received the most decisions of his career in 1974 when he went 6-14 for the Brewers with a 3.99 ERA, pitching a career record 169 innings.
Kobel was purchased by the Mets in 1977. After a solid season as a reliever and periodic starter in 1978, he was made a starter for the '79 season, going 6-8 with a 3.51 ERA in 27 starts. Kobel was traded to the Royals in the middle of the 1980 season, but never played in the majors again.
Back facts: A couple of things. First, I am always interested in any ballplayer who is from Buffalo. You'll note the back reads that Kobel's hometown is Colden. That is a small speck of a village south of Buffalo, in snowbelt land. It's also close to where Kobel went to high school at St. Francis.
The other thing is we have seen this cartoon before. It's the exact same cartoon that appeared with this card. That was just 14 cards ago! I never knew that any of the cartoons were repeated in this set until I posted this card. I must admit I'm a bit disappointed.
Other blog stuff: The No. 1 song in the country on this date in 1975 was "Bad Blood" by Neil Sedaka, which also featured Elton John. I never understood why this song was popular. I mean there was a lot of bad music in the '70s, but this song wasn't even catchy. I didn't get it.
The All-Catholic Baseball Team? Twice? That's cool I guess. I see he spent some time in San Antonio. I wonder how he liked the heat compared with "snowbelt land". I'll bet it was quite a change.
ReplyDeleteThat's lazy of Topps to be using the same cartoons. I may start using the same comments over to save brain energy.
"Bad Blood" was HUGELY catchy if you were 9-14 in 1975, which me and all my friends were. We loved that song....
ReplyDeleteThe Anacin billboard is obvious, but you only barely see the “fer” of the Schaefer Beer billboard to its left. Then there is Kodel, which I think was some kind of synthetic fabric like nylon, marketed by Kodak, and RC Cola, all the way on the left. In a year or so, Schaefer would switch teams and replace Rheingold as the official beer of the Mets, so their billboard would move to Shea Stadium and their commercials would be on channel 9 instead of channel 11. I don’t remember who became theYankees beer. Probably Budweiser. By that time the local breweries were dying off and only the national brands would be left.
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