Thursday, January 6, 2011

New New Developments (Blue Sky Version)

Oh it has been an eventful 2011 already on the Topps front. Not only has Friend o'the Archive Al Richter set us straight on the five cent Magic Photo nickel packs featured in the previous post, but he has also righted the Standard Catalog listing for the 1967 Punch-Outs.

The latest 1967 Punch-Out story revolves around a variation of the Mickey Mantle card. I'll not vulture the scans or main narrative, you can see what's what over at Bob Lemke's blog as Al is a friend O'that blog too but it turns out the Mick either has a view of Yankee Stadium behind his head or a bit of sky instead.

As expected the lineups on each differ as well, so we have to update the huge count of players and different lineups like so, noting that Mantle becoming a three lineup player is not a surprise to me at all as it matches all the other pose variations in count:

LAST FIRST LINEUPS NOTE
AARON HANK 2
ALLEN RICHIE 3
ALLEY GENE 2
ALOU FELIPE 2
ALOU MATTY 3 2 POSES
ALVIS MAX 3
APARICIO LUIS 4
BARBER STEVE 2
BATTEY EARL 3
BOYER CLETE 3
BOYER KEN 3
BROCK LOU 2
BUNNING JIM 1
CALLISON JOHNNY 2
CAMPANERIS BERT DELETED
CARDENAS LEO 3
CARTY RICO 2
CASH NORM 3
CEPEDA ORLANDO 4
CHARLES ED 1
CLEMENTE ROBERTO 3 2 POSES
CLENDENON DONN 2
COLAVITO ROCKY 1
CONIGLIARO TONY 2
DAVIS WILLIE 2
EDWARDS JOHNNY 2
ETCHEBARREN ANDY 2
FLOOD CURT 2
FREEHAN BILL 1
FREGOSI JIM 2
GIBSON BOB DELETED

GREEN DICK 3
GROAT DICK 3
GROTE JERRY DELETED
HALLER TOM 2
HART JIM RAY 2
HERSHBERGER MIKE 4
HOWARD ELSTON 3
HOWARD FRANK 4
HUNT RON 3
JACKSON SONNY 1
JONES CLEON 2
KAAT JIM 2
KALINE AL 2
KILLEBREW HARMON 3
KNOOP BOBBY 3
KOUFAX SANDY 2
KRANEPOOL ED 2
LEFEBVRE JIM 2
LOCK DON 2
LUMPE JERRY 1
MANTLE MICKEY 3
2 POSES
MARICHAL JUAN 2
MAYS WILLIE 3
MAZEROSKI BILL 2
McAULIFFE DICK 1
McCARVER TIM 3
MCCOVEY WILLIE 1
McLAIN DENNY 2
McMILLAN ROY DELETED
MENKE DENIS 2
MORGAN JOE 2
OLIVA TONY 2
PEPITONE JOE 2
PERRY GAYLORD 1
PINSON VADA 2
POWELL BOOG 4
REICHARDT RICK 1
ROBINSON BROOKS DELETED
ROBINSON FLOYD 1
ROBINSON FRANK 3 2 POSES
ROMANO JOHN 4
ROSE PETE 2
ROSEBORO JOHN 1
SALMON CHICO 2
SANTO RON 2
SCOTT GEORGE 3
SIEBERT SONNY 1
SNYDER RUSS 3
STARGELL WILLIE 3
STOTTLEMYRE MEL 2
TORRE JOE 2
TOVAR CESAR 2
TRESH TOM 2
VERSALLES ZOILO 1
WAGNER LEON 2
WHITE BILL 3
WHITFIELD FRED 3
WILLIAMS BILLY 2
WYNN JIM 3
YASTRZEMSKI CARL 3





TOTAL 196

If you are keeping track there are 14 Team Captains known with a single lineup, 40 with two, 26 with three and 6 with four. 86 players and 90 poses in all.

There are now four pose variations known: Frank Robinson with airbrushed cap or Orioles chapeau, Matty Alou facing left or right, Mickey Mantle with Stadium or Sky in the background and Roberto Clemente with a slice of stadium behind him, or not. These all are three lineup players which is reflected in the lineup counts above. There are also allegedly cropping differences in some of the Team Captain photos, good look analyzing those out there in Punch-Out land!

Cards shown above as DELETED are being pulled from the Standard Catalog checklist as they are seemingly non-issued but interestingly, Brooks Robinson appears in the lineup of the Frank Robinson variation (Orioles cap version) and from what I have seen if you are in the lineup you are in the game (applies in the real world too). Bert Campaneris and Bob Gibson also show up in lineups.

From what I can determine, five players would have been pulled due their circumstances changing after the 1966 season ended, let's call them the 66'ers. One was lost to retirement (Koufax, a NL Captain) and four (Clete Boyer, Don Lock, Floyd Robinson and John Romano, all AL Captains) changed leagues. The fact that there are five deleted players and five 66'ers is quite interesting. Three of them match on positions with the 66'ers, deleted player shown last: Catcher: John Romano/Jerry Grote; Third Base: Clete Boyer/Brooks Robinson and Pitcher: Sandy Koufax/Bob Gibson. Grote is the only one of these three I have not seen in a lineup but I really wonder why he was not in the set since he was a regular, unless a team oriented structure was in effect.

Deleted players Campaneris and McMillan were shortstops though I have only seen Campy in a lineup. Don Lock and Floyd Robinson were outfielders and yes, I am going to do a position and team analysis next time out. So assuming lineup appearance equals Captaincy, Brooks Robinson, Bob Gibson and Bert Campaneris should all have their mugs atop one of these bad boys.

I am thinking though, that whatever the final count of lineups is, it should be divisible by 9. 196 is not but 198 is (22 x 9). Additionally, since a strip of three has three lineups not shared with any other strips of three, the total of all lineups should be divisible by three. Once again, 196 is not but 198 is.

Also, it takes three groups of 66, likely formed in iterations of 22, to make it to 198 and it has bothered me that we were getting 65 with some previous calculations since when you run 65 out to 195 lineups, that figure is not divisible by 9. Finally, it seems there should be an equal division of AL and NL cards, so 66 is better that 65 in that regard and if you add two players to the overall count of 86 known, you get 88, a number that works with iterations of 22.

If you add Campaneris, Gibson and Brooks Robinson as Captains then I think we are still missing one or two Captains (one or both likely a pitcher) and two lineups when all is said an done but I may correct myself by the weekend.

With this staring me in the face and since I'm obsessed with this type of thing, I decided to start counting groupings. The single lineup players in the set did not neatly sort into obvious groups and the four lineup players did not either but then I started counting pitchers and found there are only nine confirmed in the set: Barber, Bunning, Kaat, Koufax, Marichal, McLain, Gaylord Perry, Siebert and Stottlemyre plus a tenth, Gibson, who appears as a pitcher on at least one lineup.

There should be an equal distribution of pitchers across leagues but there are five known from the AL and four from the NL. So one mystery pitcher that comes to mind is Bob Gibson. If we assume he is in the set, we are at 5/5 on pitchers across both leagues but Gibby would replace Koufax in this scenario, leaving us unbalanced. Steve Barber was essentially injured the latter half of 1966 and I wonder if he was added for the second run of the set.

That would however, match my guesstimate that there were originally supposed to be five position players per position per league (15 outfielders per circuit) yielding a planned total of 45 subjects in each league, or 90 Captains. If we assume instead there were only four pitchers per league planned, we get 88 total Captaincy's and we divide by 3, 9 and 22 if you work it out.

I am going to breathe deeply, run the position and team analyses and revert back on this mess. I may have to allow for World Series participation bias to boot. Dang!

Here is an attached strip of three blurry Punch-Outs for your viewing pleasure, which reflects how I feel at this point:



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