Card fact: This the first and last card of Bruce Ellingsen during his major league baseball career.
What I thought about this card then: Ladies and gentlemen, you are looking at the one card that neither me, nor my brother, nor my friends wanted. We would play games that would resemble Russian Roulette in almost every way except that instead of a firearm, we used a 1975 Topps Bruce Ellingsen card. If you were the person who ended up with the Ellingsen card, "bang," you were dead. Or you were at least doomed to a fate of owning this card and everyone in your childhood sphere KNOWING that you owned that card.
So you would play another game of Ellingsen Roulette until you didn't have it anymore (I have no idea why the other people who did not own the Ellingsen card would agree to another game, but they did).
There were several cards in the 1975 set that we did this for:
Gene Locklear
Joe Lis
Ken Sanders
Mario Mendoza
And a couple others I can't recall. But Ellingsen, far and away, was the least wanted.
What I think about this card now: I have already publicly apologized to Bruce for my childish behavior.
Other stuff: Ellingsen pitched in 16 games for the Indians and that was his entire big league career. He is known mostly for being traded from the Dodgers to the Indians for a 17-year-old named Pedro Guerrero. The trade happened on April 3, 1974, which probably explains why Ellingsen is hatless in this photo. In fact, he may be wearing a Dodger uniform here and his uniform collar was airbrushed in Indians colors. Oh, if I had only known as a kid that Ellingsen was a Dodger!
Back facts: Larry Lintz will appear on card No. 416 in the set. As far as I know, he doesn't look like Sammy Davis Jr., so either he did a mean impersonation or he had a sweet tooth.
Ellingsen's real first name was Harold, not "H."
Other blog stuff: Kenny Rogers -- the singer, not the pitcher -- was born on this date in 1938. I have never forgiven him for singing that "Lady" song.
