1978 Topps Paul Molitor / Alan Trammell RC #707

Centering on this copy is off a bit and maybe the edges on the back show some imperfections, but this card was a scratch the itch add to my PC - maybe the card will look different once in-hand, but maybe the most important consideration is the yellow space above the red bottom border looks fairly clean without smudging.

As a manager, Molitor just got fired by the Minnesota Twins - but I’m trying to find a narrative as far as my recollections of him as an active player.

Seeing a loose junk wax era card of his, I might have thought 'The Ignitor' was a minor star at best, winding down his playing career with the Milwaukee Brewers through the end of the 1980s - he had a 39-game hitting streak in 1987, but there wasn’t as much attachment to him as any kind of ‘real star’ when I first started collecting.

With no particularly feelings attached to any particular player - I look at his numbers, how good he was, how many home runs hit, how high the batting average was and how many runners were driven in.

I thought there might have been a pronounced decline of some sort in his 30s, but Molitor was quite productive - looking at his stats from 1988-1992, he was putting up ‘Paul Molitor numbers’ and played in over 150 games in all but one of those seasons for the Brewers.

I noticed how he might have been a great player after all, because he was a hitting machine for the Toronto Blue Jays in the mid 1990s - the perennially contending Blue Jays finally won a championship in 1992 and in the organization’s defense of a World Series title, Molitor was another quality veteran added for repeat World Series championship run in 1993 [he was named MVP of the 1993 World Series].

After waiting for quite a while, Trammell was finally inducted the Hall of Fame this past year - he played through 1996 but his last hurrah as a star player probably ended through the 1980s.

As is, he was pretty familiar as a junk wax era guy - maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all but he was also pretty accommodating about signing, the times I’ve gotten him as a retired player, so he gets a thumbs up in my book.