Major League Baseball, 1978
I began following baseball in 1978. Living in central Connecticut, I was situated along the fault line between Red Sox Nation and the Evil Empire (though neither were known by those names then). Most of my friends in school were Yankee fans, and the Yankees had just won the World Series, so I naturally jumped on the bandwagon as a fan of the Bronx Bombers. My parents, however, were Red Sox fans. As the season wore on, and as the end of summer approached, the Red Sox were looking like world beaters. Away from the support of the Yankee fans at school, I crumbled under the pressure. I casually tossed several months of loyalty to the winds, and became an ardant fan of the unstoppable juggernaut that was the 1978 Boston Red Sox. But then...
Anyway, things didn't work out well that fall for the Sox, and it was a very long winter. The good news was that 1978 was also the year I discovered baseball cards. I collected the heck out of the 1978 Topps set, buying wax, cello and rack packs wherever and whenever I could find them (actually, my first cards came as one of those panels in Dynamite magazine - Darrell Porter, Cecil Cooper, Tony Perez and Al Oliver). I had tons - but still couldn't complete a set (curse you, Gary Ross...you didn't even play in 1978, and you stood in my way of a complete set!). I finally convinced my mother to let me spend $14.24 to buy a complete set from Renata Gallasso (remember her, collectors? Saw her add in the 1978 Yankee Scorebook/Magazine). Well, I got Gary Ross:
Over the years, I became more and more interested in the 1978 season, beyond just the story of the Red Sox/Yankee thing. After a while my interest in the 1978 season and the 1978 Topps set merged, and I began to wonder what the 1978 Topps set might have looked like had it really reflected all those players who appeared for every team that year. Hence, this virtual set of 1978 Topps baseball cards.
A few ground rules:
1) All team photo images come from the 1979 Topps set as those cards actually show the 1978 teams.
2) I have added 1978 Topps All Star shields to reflect all members of the 1978 AL and NL squads, starters and reserves.
3) I have updated the cards to accurately reflect members of the 1978 Topps Rookie All Star Team.
4) All team logos come from Creamers Sports Logos.
5) I have replaced all Topps' paint jobs from the 1978 set with actual images and have, for the Indians, Cubs, Padres and Brewers, who changed uniform styles from 1977 to 1978, attempted to find images from the 1978 versions.
Information on player statistics, roster movements and similar data have been obtained from the miracles that are the Baseball Reference and Retrosheet websites, as well as from 1978 issues of The Sporting News, the 1978 Street and Smith's Baseball Preview, the 1979 Who's Who in Baseball annual, and a variety of newspapers.
Where an image is not the original used in 1978 by Topps, I have scoured the open net, grabbing shots from wherever I could. So, as the saying goes, if you steal from me, you've stolen twice. To the wonderful people (and their attorneys) who posted the images online in the first place, I claim no ownership or rights to any of them. Some commons sources include:
Many images were plucked from e-Bay, from many different vendors (items have long since sold), but key stores which continue to be great sources of player images are:
So, click on the buttons below to be taken to each team's unique page. I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoyed making them.
(for 1978, the National League allowed its teams to carry only 24 players on their active rosters through July 1, at which time they would carry the standard 25)
In the minor league section towards the end of each team's page, the category "Future Star" has, admittedly, been applied liberally. In some cases, it can be translated as "guy on the roster who actually appeared in a major league game at some point".
For you obsessives out there (like me), these two pages highlight players who were in the 1978 set, yet didn't play in 1978. The first, Down But Not Out, features those guys who might not have played in 1978 but would surface again in the majors in a later year. The latter, Orphans of 1978, shows those fellows who never appeared in a game again even after Topps decided to include them in the 1978 set.
Umpires
No discussion of any major league season would be complete with out due respect being paid to the men in blue. Even if we at first think we don't remember them, a short recitation of names brings them back to us - Luciano, Harvey, Tata, Springstead, Haller, and so forth. Here they are, in all their glory. Anyone who goes toe-to-toe with a spittle-spewing Earl Weaver or Sparky Anderson deserves nothing less.
In the interest of obsessive completeness, I thought I'd throw in some obligatory references to the leading MLB executives of 1978.
Bowie Kuhn
Commissioner of Major League Baseball
Lee MacPhail
President
American League of
Professional Baseball Clubs
Chub Feeney
President
National League of
Professional Baseball Clubs
