Card of the Week: 1981 Donruss #71 Bobby Bonds
Posted by Andy on September 1, 2010
In 1975, Fleer sued Topps and the MLB Players Association over an alleged monopoly on the production of baseball cards, particularly when packaged with gum. It took years, but eventually the courts upheld Fleer's claim, opening the door for other companies to sell baseball cards. Unfortunately, this decision came down not too long before the 1981 baseball season, forcing Fleer and newcomer Donruss to produce a set of cards very quickly.
As a result, both companies used some questionable photographs (out of focus, etc) because they didn't have time to get something better. Also, there were many errors present on the cards in both sets.
This 1981 Donruss Bobby Bonds card is an example of both. The picture isn't terrible but certainly isn't great. Check out the back, though. Did you know that Bobby Bonds is the all-time HR leader with 986 dingers?
The mistake is an odd one. For starters, Hank Aaron had retired fairly recently at that point with his then-record 755 homers. This number, 755, was known to every single baseball fan from 1976 until recently, when I suspect some younger fans don't know it. Many fewer fans know the number associated with career leaders for, say, doubles, triples, or RBI. But the idea to me that anyone could look at this card, check the stats, and not have 986 as career HR stick out as totally wrong---that boggles my mind.
I also wonder where that particular erroneous number came from. After the 1980 season, Bonds had 326 career homers. Looking down at my keyboard, I see that it's possible somebody using a keypad might accidentally hit 9-8 when they meant to hit 3-2. I don't know if keyboards were like this in 1981, though.
How about the fact that Bobby Bonds has a card that incorrectly identifies him as the MLB leader in homers, but now his son hold that record?
September 1st, 2010 at 8:19 am
He also apparently was excellent at stretching a double into a triple (making him the career leader in triples while holding his doubles numbers down) and has more homers than RBIs. It's been a long time since I've seen proofreading like this.
September 1st, 2010 at 8:36 am
@1 - LD
You took the words out of my mouth (or off my keyboard)...with the 2B and 3B stats suspect at best plus more HR than RBI. 🙂
The stats are horrendous, but surprisingly, the Career highlights are not bad...all the things Bobby was known for are in there...Numerous trades, 30-30 club, Single Season strikeout king (at the time).
But I love the inclusion of the middle name for "Buddy Jay Solomon". I never heard that one before.
Overall, the Donruss and Fleer cards from 1981 are not bad considering the circumstances (errors and all).
September 1st, 2010 at 8:40 am
Like a lot of people, I have a soft spot for 1981 Fleer and Donruss because they contain so many bad errors and photographs. Topps was, by 1981, so content and lazy in their approach. These newcomers, full of energy and excitement, made a lot of mistakes but really pushed the hobby to cool new places.
It turned out that Topps' sales went UP in 1981 and thereafter. It appears that having more sets available attracted more interest from kids and actually really did increase the money being spent on the hobby dramatically.
September 1st, 2010 at 9:00 am
On the 3-2 vs 9-8 keyboard point, keyboards have been deisgned this way for a very long time...remember typewriters? I had a Smith-Corona electric model that I used in college (1978-82), and the keyboard layout was identical to the laptop on which I'm typing this...
September 1st, 2010 at 9:01 am
Good sleuthing on the 9-8 vs 3-2 theory. I know that today, phones put 1-2-3 on the top row while computer keyboard numpads put 1-2-3 on the bottom row. Maybe 1980 was early enough that data entry personnel could still occasionally get the conventions confused in their heads?
September 1st, 2010 at 9:07 am
Andy,
Great post (as usual) and some great periphery info.
I think the cards from that era are great for tons of reasons, some you mentioned, but others are;
The guys who I thought were giants, were actually sticks compared to todays players. And I'm not even talking Steroids. I'm sure no one lifted the way they do today.
I also love the antiquated uniforms, haircuts, and best of all, the horrendous facial hair.
I had a Cal Ripken Sr MANAGER card, I think for '82 Donruss, I'm not 100%, but he was tossing a baseball up and catching it while being photographed.
The pic catches the ball only inches from Sr's face. The picture obviously doesn't show the ball's direction.
For years I thought the camera mistakenly caught a ball off a bat, that was about to smack Ripken, unbeknownst to him, in the face. I thought it was the coolest card.
AHH, to be 7 again.
BTW, does anybody remember the WHO's WHO in BASEBALL books. The little orange ones. I have them from the early sixties till present. They are inferior (stat wise) in everyway to this sight, but there is something so nostalgic about them for me.
Does anyone else remember them.
September 1st, 2010 at 9:22 am
Looking at his career numbers, I think I know what happened. If you use the Shift-HIghlight feature for his yearly totals through 1979 you get the following interesting totals:
62 3B, 321 HR, 981 RBI, 857 BB. Now his season totals for 1980 are correct: 5 2B, 3 3B, 5 HR, 24 RBI.
Now if you imagine a column being shifted on his data sheet you get the following things:
62 3B + 5 2B = 67 2B
321 HR + 3 3B = 324 3B
981 RBI + 5 HR = 986 HR
857 BB + 24 RBI = 881
This accounts for 2B, 3B, HR and RBI totals all being erroneous.
September 1st, 2010 at 9:23 am
Wow Evan...even before your comment I thought you were one of the smartest guys around here...now I am sure.
September 1st, 2010 at 9:24 am
I left off "RBI" after the 881 above, in case anyone was confused.
September 1st, 2010 at 9:26 am
@3 Andy,
1981 Topps is a lazy disaster...plus they must have been far along in the 1982 set which is pretty bad also (especially the "In Action" cards - but at least they were trying something)...but it probably wasn't until the next year that they turned up the creativity due to the competition (as we have discussed on this board numerous times about the quality of the designs for 1983 and 1984 Topps).
But sadly, perhaps because of what you said about the Topps' sales rising after the new companies came out, they seemed to get complacent again with a not great 1985, a HORRENDOUS 1986, and a bad 1987. During the mid 80's Topps was frankly embarrased by Fleer and Donruss not only with design but with Topps' massive overproduction which has absolutely killed thier secondary market since.
Creatively there was a rebound with a nice 1988 and decent 1989 (perhaps due to the newer companies Score and Upper Deck), but then completely collapsed in 1990 with the worst design in the company's history. But at that point, Upper Deck had revolutionized the card industry (as you outlined in the 1989 Griffey post), as well a the flood gates opening with new companies, therefore Topps needed to redesign their whole thought process (which has sadly led to foil text, bat/uniform sliver cards and $5.00 packs with no gum!).
September 1st, 2010 at 9:33 am
Have we come full circle? Topps has its monopoly back. Are there any lawsuits pending?
September 1st, 2010 at 9:35 am
@6 Joseph T.,
Back in the mid-70's I had a Who's Who in baseball book that had to be from the 50's or 60's (it had Mickey Mantle on the cover I think). I used to flip through that thing all the time. I haven't seen it in thirty years.
It is funny about the Who's Who books...growing up, I never met anyone who had a recent volume - everybody's copy (including the public library) was always 15-20 years old.
September 1st, 2010 at 9:39 am
@9
Clever... . Presumably once the printing run was done to rush the cards to market no corrected sets were issued. Meaning that the cards with errors are not rare and not worth more to collector.
September 1st, 2010 at 10:02 am
I have the full sets of 1981 Fleer and Donruss with the errors and corrections.
@11-I had heard that Panini (I believe a division of Donruss) was going to start producing cards again.
Donruss still has exclusive rights to Willie Mays and Hank Aaron I believe.
September 1st, 2010 at 10:04 am
#13 Neil, actually many of these errors were correct, including the Bonds card.
http://www.checkoutmycards.com/Cards,=1981+bobby+bonds+donruss
The corrected Bonds card is worth a little more.
September 1st, 2010 at 10:05 am
Perhaps Donruss could produce sets of all Mays and Aaron cards, showing them in all facets of his life..."Mays cleans his dentures" and "Aaron changes his diaper", etc. Just like the Fleer Ted Williams set.
September 1st, 2010 at 10:07 am
Another error from this set came on John Tudor's card:
http://www.checkoutmycards.com/Cards/Baseball/1981/Donruss/457A/John_Tudor_P1_ERR_Lifetime_W-L_97
where he has a career record of "9.7"
September 1st, 2010 at 10:13 am
@16-It is funny you say that Andy. Donruss still has a ton of Mays and Aaron jersey and bat cards. They did a Celebrity Cuts set with these guys dressed in regular street clothes. They had a picture of Gehrig with a game worn jersey swatch smoking a pipe.
September 1st, 2010 at 10:20 am
@9 and @17
Where's Evan when we need him? (bows to Evan) A decimal of a win. Hmmm....
September 1st, 2010 at 10:50 am
Nice "Career Highlight" section, too. Hit by a pitch and "never fully recovered from it"..."traded 6 times"..."set a record for Ks in a season". This guy was a pretty good player and that's the best they could come up with?! How about "sired the future HR king"?
September 1st, 2010 at 10:55 am
Heh, keep in mind this was written in 1981 when Barry Bonds was 16 years old.
September 1st, 2010 at 11:11 am
Tmckelv
I would ride my bike to a Mom'n'pop stationary store, 12 miles away, across a 'highway' I was forbidden to cross (sorry mom!) every year for like 10 days. The stationary store owner never knew when he would get the 'Who's Who' in exactly, hence the ten days. He would just nod his head at me every day till it came. He would only get three copies, so I made it a point to be the first to grab them. He eventually just put them on the side for me. Ahh, life before the corporate take-over was nice. I think a Wallgreens bought out his store.
It was a shame those books weren't done better. They didn't even include BBs, forget about SLG and OBP, but it helped my long division.
What did make them great though, was they had Minor League stats and all transactions, including DL stints.
The era you are talking about might be valuable. For a few years they were printed in Blue, then they went back to the orange. The reprints were never reissued in Blue, so if you have a Blue one, EBay baby.
@ Andy,
Yeah, amazing. Of all the cards to mess up and all the stats to get wrong, they mess up HRs on the HR King's father's card. I guess Barry was a Freshman in High school in '80?
I also found the Ripken card. As an adult, its pretty obvious it is not a batted ball hurtling towards an unexpectant Rip Sr's face.
September 1st, 2010 at 11:14 am
http://keymancollectibles.com/publications/whoswhoinbaseball.htm
September 1st, 2010 at 11:39 am
I buy the Who's Who In Baseball every year! It fits well in a large pocket and helps during rain delays, or when seeing an unfamiliar team. I admit to never reading it otherwise... but at a game it's great.
September 1st, 2010 at 11:52 am
Who's Who is a fun little paperback, except for getting the ink all over my fingers when it's new. I have several back issues and every one has smeared photos on the cover. The Sporting News Baseball Register is the one I'd like to see come back.
September 1st, 2010 at 12:05 pm
What I liked about the Sporting News Registers was the exhaustive minor league statistics, right down to rookie leagues, I think. My wife made me dump some '80's ones in the recycling bin a few years ago, during a basement "cleanup". Sigh!
Didn't they have different player pictures on the front, depending on the market it was destined for?
Was it the Internet that made publications like that obselete?
September 1st, 2010 at 12:09 pm
@10 Tmckelv, watch your mouth 😉
September 1st, 2010 at 12:10 pm
@23 Joseph T.,
Thanks. Your link is the one that I had (have?) - like I said I haven't seen it in 30 years and I don't know where it came from or where it went.
I was young at the time and I just remember looking at the pictures - I wasn't as interested in stats (then) or some of the other great stuff in there. I was into cards mostly at that point.
I can't believe just how far back they go - that was VERY forward thinking for 1916. Amazing.
September 1st, 2010 at 12:23 pm
I love these articles. Awesome.
September 1st, 2010 at 12:24 pm
Sorry, Devon. I will have to check out your blog - maybe you will change my mind on 1982. 🙂
For me the 3 most remarkable cards from that set are:
1) George Foster - his regular issue is a nice side-burn shot
2) Dave Parker - his All-Star card is the first I ever saw with a reporter's microphone.
3) Carlton Fisk - his In Action card always appeared like it was situated incorrectly - it is a nice landscape photo, but then they put it on the regular portrait display of "In Action"...I always thought the "In Action" should also be sideways.
One big problem I have with the set (personal dislike - not becuse it is bad), is that 1982 is the first set where the "All-Star" designation was not on the regular issue cards (as they had done from 1975 thrugh 1981), instead topps went back the subset format. Like I said, that is just me, but it was/is a huge preference for me that I have been waiting the return of for amost 30 years now (so I guess I am in the minority on that one).
September 1st, 2010 at 12:29 pm
Devon, would you be willing to have one of your posts featured here? Pick a few cards and email me your posts?
September 1st, 2010 at 12:41 pm
First edition of Who's Who in Baseball was issued in 1912. http://www.oldjudge.com/archive/200511/baseball/publications/234/
September 1st, 2010 at 1:16 pm
@ 10
"But sadly, perhaps because of what you said about the Topps' sales rising after the new companies came out, they seemed to get complacent again with a not great 1985, a HORRENDOUS 1986, and a bad 1987."
I love the 1987 set :/
September 1st, 2010 at 1:32 pm
@33 Richard,
I rarely use the word hate when it pertains to cards, but the wood panel borders is something I really hate. I mentioned it during Andy's previous post for 1955 Bowman. It bothers me for every set it comes in (55 Bowman, 1966 topps FB and Hockey, even 1968 Topps to a lesser extent).
I do love one thing about 1987 Topps - the All-Star Rookie Cups returned for the first time since 1978 and have continued uniterupted (I believe) ever since.
September 1st, 2010 at 1:39 pm
@31 Andy, sure! I'm going to recommend the Ron Davis '81 highlight. I just love the photo on that card and how much he dominated over a few game period.
Although, I'd be very interested in thoughts on my Lonnie Smith card post. I actually came to believe the Phillies gave away the NL East by trading Lonnie Smith to the Cardinals before the season, and show some stats to support it. I could be way off, but it sure looks like it to me.
September 1st, 2010 at 1:41 pm
PS. Andy, couldn't find your e-mail address 😛 maybe I'm braindead from lack of lunch
September 1st, 2010 at 1:44 pm
Andy, thank you that is very kind of you to say.
Interesting that the "corrected" Barry Bonds card Andy linked @15 has only the HR statistic corrected on the back, no one bothered to check the other numbers. The Tudor card using a period instead of a dash is a reminder that the cards being discussed here pre-date everything being digital. I'm not sure how baseball cards were produced circa 1980, but we should realize that before almost everything was done on computers professional printers didn't organize characters the same as a standard keyboard.
September 1st, 2010 at 1:48 pm
Devon,
The right-most column of the blog has a section called Contact (a little below the monthly archive list) with links to email Andy, Neil, Raphy ad Steve.
September 1st, 2010 at 2:04 pm
Thanks Evan. I knew I had to be missing something 😛
September 1st, 2010 at 2:05 pm
Devon,
I looked at your blog...I noticed the last card you posted (last week) happened to be the Fisk IA card I mentioned above.
Also, I looked at about 10 or so of your posts (including the Yankees) and I thought to myself at the time that the Ron Davis card would be good for this post - and that is the one you chose. Spooky.
Nice story on the Dennis Werth post.
I think you like 1982 best the same way I like the mid-70's best - because those were the first cards each of us collected.
September 1st, 2010 at 5:33 pm
In 1942 (at age 9), I bought my first and only copy of Who's Who in Baseball at Wrigley Field Chicago.
It was for the 1941 season. I noticed it had a great picture of the Phillies 1st baseman Nick Etten who hit .311 in 1941, despite the fact that Ted Williams hit .406 and Joe DiMaggio had the 56 game hitting streak.
On a daily basis I studied the Batting, Home Run and RBI leaders from 1900 thru 1941, until I had them all memorized for both leagues.
Saved the 1941 book for years and kept referring to it.
At the time I didn't know they published a new updated copy each year.
And @ 12 (Tmckelv) you are correct. ("I never met anyone who had a recent volume"):
That 1941 copy served me well for a couple of years, until I discovered the Sporting News and subscribed.
Getting all the previous weeks box scores not only for MLB but all the higher minors (AAA, AA, AA & B), and news about what was going on in Class "C" and "D".
At the time a baseball junkie's dream. Now we have Baseball-Reference.com, can there be anything better??
September 1st, 2010 at 5:46 pm
After the 1980 season, Bonds had 326 career homers. . . . Now if you imagine a column being shifted on his data sheet you get the following things: . . . 981 RBI + 5 HR = 986 HR
I lean toward the theory that they just gave him all Mays’ homers: 326 + 660 = 986.
(-;þ
September 1st, 2010 at 6:00 pm
I seem to remember a 1984 Fleer of Mike Brown saying he won 106 games or so in 1983. Take that, Jack Chesbro!
September 1st, 2010 at 8:55 pm
If I was a suspicious sort {which, by the way, I am}, I would suspect Topps of having fed at least some of this bogus info to their competitors, hoping to nip their competition in the bud. It was either incredibly careless or intentional. We will probably never know.
September 1st, 2010 at 10:36 pm
You think 1981 Donruss had errors??? Check the 1962 and 1969 Topps sets, and this from the established producer and purveyor of baseball cards. Both sets are chock full of mistakes, most of them later corrected. The white letter variations in 1969 held some pretty good value - I'm not sure where that market is now though. 1962's Babe Ruth memorial cards had a three-card variation - I believe one was the Ruth card, and the other two were a pair of poses from pitcher Hal Reniff. Errors have long been a part of card collecting, and 1981 was just part of that history.
September 2nd, 2010 at 3:21 pm
@6 - joseph taverney
Yes. Yes I do. Loved 'em.