Featured cards: Various 1970s Topps cards

These cards are part of a 20-card find of 1970-mid 1980s cards from a 'scrap' common's bin - I didn't pick them up because the cards looked pretty or because the players pictured will get another opportunity to suit up in a Major League game.

Many of the players pictured look a little different the present day [circa 2008] players - I don't think you can argue with the aesthetics [because 'it was the style then'] of the period even if the players' images looked so dated.

You can only make fun of them I suppose - it seems like the 1970s, you had shaggy and gruff looking ballplayers who didn't particularly care what they looked like.

Just like it is today, anyone pictured on a 'gum card' were pretty good at some point [in their baseball lives] - it just seems like once they got to the Major Leagues, their grooming habits were lax.

Doug DeCinces has a nice handle bar mustache going - it almost looks like a rolled up cigar or something. It isn't as fancy as Rollie Fingers' but it sure looks a lot more odd.

There are more accomplished sites that do this retrospective sort of thing - but it is fun actually looking at some of these cards in-person and picking them up.