If you know your baseball history, then you’ll remember that Koufax retired at the age of the 30 after the 1966 season, which might prompt you to answer, “1967 Topps.”

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And that’s correct, sort of.

Had Koufax played today, his elbow woes likely wouldn’t have ended his career so early. But if he did somehow end up on the shelf after a half-decade of dominance, you can bet that card makers would scramble to pay tribute to the man who went 129-47 with a 2.19 ERA and 1713 strikeouts in 1632 innings over a six year span.

He probably would land on Topps’ #1 card and might even warrant his own set (see Nolan Ryan for a modern example).

And that’s exactly what happened in 1967 … again, “sort of.”

Back in those days, Topps strove to present the group of players that collectors would be watching everyday in the upcoming season. So, unless a retiree waited until Spring Training to make his announcement, chances are he would be shut out of the set issued the year after his final game.

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For more seasoned vets who were riding out the string, that meant collectors might not even get a whiff of their cardboard heroes the next year, except for maybe a team card.

Koufax did get that treatment, courtesy of card #503 of the Dodgers.

But Koufax had been darn near unhittable in 1966, turning in perhaps his finest season en route to a third Cy Young award in four seasons. As a consequence, he appeared on 1967 Topps League Leaders cards as the top NL man for wins (27), strikeouts (317), and ERA (1.73) — the pitcher’s Triple Crown!

So cards 234, 236, and 238 were a Koufax tribute in a sense, but even his historic final campaign and his utter mastery on the mound during the 1960s weren’t enough for the Old Gum Company to flout their own unwritten rules.

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Sandy did appear in cartoon form — complete with Groucho Marx getup — within a separate goofy Topps set called “Who Am I” that year.

But there was no dedicated 1967 Topps Sandy Koufax card.

Or was there?

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El Zurdo Fabuloso

Perhaps recognizing the burgeoning baseball talent in Latin America, Topps ventured into the Venezuelan market from 1959-68 to produce parallels to its base American sets.

In 1967, that effort included three separate issues: a Venezuelan League series, showcasing Winter League players; a Retirado series, featuring retired stars; and a third series that included active Major Leaguers.

That middle series contained 50 cards of retired Latin standouts and some of the biggest stars from the game’s past, including Babe Ruth, Jimmy Foxx, Ted Williams … and Sandy Koufax.

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The basic design of the Koufax card — and the others — is similar in its simplicity to Topps’ 1967 base set: player name in small black letters at the top and “RETIRADO” in large pink block letters at the bottom, where you might have expected to find “DODGERS” had Koufax been included in the American Topps set.

Photos in the Retirado set are distinctive, though, and impart a different feel  than other cards in the set. Sepia images set off by a bold blue background give the pasteboards the feel of a modern art project built on the shoulders of vintage newspapers. Unusual camera angles add to the effect, as can be seen on Koufax’s card, where Sandy’s serious visage looms in the background as he gives us a closeup look at his grip on the baseball.

Card backs are printed horizontally with black Spanish text on a gray/beige background, all set off by thick green borders.

The cards are numbered sequentially throughout the the three Venezuelan series, and Koufax’s #162 is one of the more popular among collectors, having been submitted for grading to PSA more than any other card except Lou Gehrig (#141) and Mickey Mantle (#192). Even so, only 16 of the Koufax cards have been slabbed and none have graded out better than NM.

If you’re putting together a complete run of Koufax cards, that scarcity will add to your challenge, as the ’67 Venezuelan appears in the lefty’s “master set” listing in the PSA Card Set Registry. According to the company’s “Card Facts” page, a NM specimen would set you back around $4500, but the truth is that it comes to market so infrequently — in any condition — that there
are no true parameters for judging the cards’ value.

What we do know for sure is that if you want a single, dedicated 1967 Sandy Koufax baseball card, the Topps Venezuelan Retirado is really the only game in town.

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One of the reasons that baseball cards held such appeal for boys in earlier days of the hobby was that they gave us an insight into the game we loved that we couldn’t get anywhere else.

In the 1980s and before, after all, we were lucky to see one or two games a week on television during the season. If we were fortunate enough to have access to newspapers, we’d get box scores and maybe a few articles a week about specific games, but finding wide swaths of baseball-related information was nearly impossible.

Thanks to baseball cards, though, we could sprawl out on our bedroom floors on a Saturday afternoon and spend a few hours learning about what Gaylord Perry had been up to in 1964 or why Barry Foote was once considered a top-notch catching prospect.

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Of course, that smattering of baseball facts usually only served to whet our appetites for more, and we’d be on the hunt again before you knew it. For kids of the 1960s through the 1990s, one of the best sources for information about the game’s past was the series of baseball history books that popped up on the shelves of our school libraries from time to time.

Written specifically for a pre-teen and teenage audience, these little gems would delve into one subject and give you enough information to at least have a decent conversation with older folks who had experienced the player or season in real-time.

I clearly remember learning about the quiet dignity of Gil Hodges and the excitement of the 1968 World Series when I checked out The Gil Hodges Story and TK from my grade school library around 1983, for example.

The books were old and tattered by that point, but they were fascinating for a kid who was trying to learn all he could about baseball.

Even all these years later, my pulse ratchets up a notch when I come across one of these vintage gems, and I find them occasionally at flea markets and other similar outlets. Recently, I uncovered a well-loved copy of Greatest World Series Thrillers at a book sale held by my local public library.

As I flipped through the pages and read the stories, the thrill of discovery and my young love for the game came flooding back.

—

Greatest World Series Thrillers was written by Ray Robinson and published in 1965 by Random House. As you might expect given the title of the book, Greatest World Series Thrillers picks out several of the most dramatic Fall Classic moments in history and tells the stories behind the headlines that make them so compelling.

Of course, “history” wasn’t quite as complete as it is now, so many of the World Series moments that modern fans might lump into the “thrilling” category didn’t even exist when this book was published. That 1968 Series mentioned above, for example, is missing, as is Carlton Fisk’s Game 6 homer in the 1975 Classic, the 1985 Game 6 controversy, Joe Carter’s 1993 walk-off homer, and all of the other incredible October memories we’ve witnessed in the last 50+ years.

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So, which Series moments did make the cut? Here is the complete list, using Robinson’s chapter titles as our guide:

• 15 K’s for Koufax (October 2, 1963)
• Three Shutouts for Matty (October 14, 1905)
• The Big Train Finally Wins (October 10, 1924)
• Poosh ‘Em Up Strikes Out (October 10, 1926)
• The Big Inning (October 12, 1929)
• The Wild Horse Goes Crazy (October 2, 1931)
• The Babe Busts One (October 1, 1932)
• Country Goes All the Way (October 15, 1946)
• The Almost No-Hitter (October 3, 1947)
• The Catch (September 29, 1954)
• The Perfect Game (October 8, 1956)
• Maz Fells the Yankees (October 13, 1960)

I was already pretty familiar with some of these, like Willie Mays’ catch against the Cleveland Indians in the 1954 World Series and Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 Fall Classic.

For others, I had heard about them but never read extended accounts: Koufax’s 15 strikeouts in 1963 and Babe’s late-career home run in 1932, for example.

And then there were some thrillers that were completely new to me, including Walter Johnson’s crowning glory in 1924 and Bill Bevens’ gem in 1947.

Now, if you’re going to read a book like this — or any of the others you might have once found in your school library — you have to go into it with the right expectations. These tomes were written for a school-aged audience, after all, so the reading level falls in that sixth-to-ninth-grade range.

These books are not literary masterpieces or works of groundbreaking journalism, in other words.

But if you’re looking for a genuine, vintage look at the game of baseball and a chance to relive some of your initial thrill of diamond discovery, these little treasures are hard to beat.

The best part is, not only can you still find these books by chance on a fairly regular basis like I did with Greatest World Series Thrillers, you can find them anytime you want them — cheap — at Amazon and AbeBooks.

As of this writing, there were 25+ copies available on Amazon, and more than 30 copies available at Abe Books. Most of those listings check in at less than $5 a pop, too.

And if the pulse-quickening prospect of these stories isn’t enough to entice you, there are also several great vintage black-and-white photos sprinkled throughout, like this shot of Tony Lazzeri(“Poosh ’em Up”) being fooled by Grover Cleveland Alexander:

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As great as these old books are, though, they come with one word of warning …

If you thought baseball cards took up a lot of room, just wait until you start pumping your collection full of hardcover baseball books!

Koufax is the ultimate “what-if” pitcher, and it’s that uncertainty that gives even us old-timers an entry into the …

30-Day Baseball Card Challenge

As a general rule, Wax Pack Gods don’t come in Mylar packages or with published odds of pulling them or any of the other esoteric features of modern baseball cards.

So, under normal circumstances, you won’t read about any quasi-cardboard rectangles issued after about the mid-1990s in this space.

But today …

Well, today is Day 1 of our take on the 30-Day Baseball Card Challenge, a brilliant idea originally offered up to the collecting community by Tony Lehman at Off Hiatus Baseball.

(See all our posts in this series here.)

And Day 1 means we have to select … a card from the current year with a photo we like.

We’re just lucky that Topps is as sappy about their heritage as we are, because that means we can wax poetic about beauties like ….

2017 Topps Archive Sandy Koufax (#175)

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This may not be the greatest photo available among 2017 baseball cards in an artistic sense, or even in a technical sense, but it’s hard to beat for those of us who appreciate the past and pondering what might have been. A 1982 Topps Sandy Koufax card?

Yes please!

In case you hadn’t heard, Sandy Koufax retired after the 1966 season due to elbow troubles that had plagued him for years.

His announcement shocked the baseball world and put an end to an astounding career that seemed to be getting only better when Koufax was just 30 years old. What he lacked in longevity, Koufax made up for in jaw-drops, and he set a record for “most incredible final season” that may never be broken.

That year (1966), Koufax posted a 27-9 record with 317 strikeouts in 323 innings while sporting a 1.73 ERA. If you’re a SABR-rattler, then you probably already know that his 0.985 WHIP, 2.07 FIP, and 10.3 WAR were all out of this world, too.

For his efforts, Koufax nabbed his third Cy Young award in four years and finished second to Roberto Clemente in the race for NL MVP.

Koufax lost his only World Series start that fall even though he gave up only one run in six innings, but his Los Angeles Dodgers were overpowered by the Baltimore Orioles. The Frank Robinson-led O’s swept LA in four games, and then Sandy rode into the sunset.

The loss of a prime-time Koufax was a baseball tragedy, but he had to say goodbye to the game he loved if he wanted preserve what health remained in his precious left arm.

He had no choice.

Or did he?

My Left Arm for a Time Machine

Fast forward to the summer of 1974 when another lefty was leading LA toward a pennant. With a record of 13-3 in mid-July, Dodgers ace Tommy John had to shut down his season due to what was commonly called “dead arm syndrome” at the time. Tests concluded that John had severely injured the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) in his pitching arm, which was more or less a death knell for his career in the 1970s.

But team physician Dr. Frank Jobe wasn’t quite ready to give up on John and set to work on an idea that would help revolutionize orthopedic treatment for sports injuries: UCL replacement surgery.

On September 25, 1974, Jobe replaced John’s left UCL with a ligament from somewhere else in the hurler’s body, and the wait began.

Though Jobe himself gave John just single-digit odds of ever returning to the mound, the 31-year-old entered into a prolonged period of intense rehab. Finally, after more than 18 months away, John toed the rubber once more on April 16, 1976, when the Dodgers visited the Atlanta Braves early in the Bicentennial season. Though John pitched only five innings and lost 3-1, he came back five days later.

And five days after that.

And pretty much every five days all season long, totaling 31 starts.

He returned the next season, too, and the next and the next.

In fact, John pitched another 14 seasons and racked up three 20-win campaigns after his surgery — he didn’t have even one before the surgery.

So what does all this have to do with Sandy Koufax?

Nothing, really, other than …

• Both Koufax and John were left-handers who starred for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
• Both sustained significant damage to their left (pitching) elbows.
• Both were at the top of their games when they got hurt.
• Both were in their very early 30s when they went down.

Granted, John was a soft thrower — he never reached 140 Ks in a season even before his elbow fell apart — and Koufax was a flamethrower.

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Sandy Koufax in Sideburns?

Still, imagine what might have happened had it been Koufax who was the guinea pig for Jobe’s new surgery rather than John. It’s not that far-fetched when you consider that Jobe started working for the Dodgers in 1964 and that he thought the two pitchers had essentially the same injury. Jobe lamented the fact that he wasn’t “smart enough to do this 10 years before.”

[bctt tweet=”It could have been called ‘Sandy Koufax surgery’. — Dr. Frank Jobe” username=”WaxPackGods”]

So, if Koufax had undergone “Sandy Koufax surgery,” would he have tacked on 14 years to his career?

The idea seems almost preposterous considering how much of a freight train he was, but pitchers have been known to change their style after injury and craft successful second acts — hello, Frank Tanana.

If Koufax had followed the Tommy John schedule, he’d have gone under the knife before 1967 dawned and maybe been on the mound by the middle of 1968. If he had pitched until he was 46, like John did, Sandy would have finally hung up the spikes after the 1982 season.

It’s far-fetched.

It’s impossible, maybe.

But what if? I mean, what IF?

Had Frank Jobe been eight years quicker on the draw, these 1982 Topps Sandy Koufax cards might be buy-backs instead of Archives.

Koufax would have been a true Wax Pack God to a second generation of Little Leaguers and card collectors.

And wouldn’t that have been sweet?

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Jeff Katz – Mayor of Cooperstown

After all, it’s home to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and still holds the mythical title of the “Birthplace of Baseball,” accurate or not.

But Cooperstown is also the hometown of James Fenimore Cooper, the first major American novelist, making it a bucket-list favorite of the literary set, as well.

It’s little wonder, then, that when author and long-time baseball card collector Jeff Katz made his way east from Chicago, he eventually landed in Cooperstown.

Unlike many fans who make a pilgrimage to the picturesque village on Otsego Lake, though, Jeff never left. In fact, he dug in and became the Mayor!

“Village of Cooperstown” by drumminhands is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Recently, Mayor Katz took some time to reflect on his decades in the hobby, and he’s been gracious enough to share those memories with us.

Sit back and enjoy the ride …

—

How long have you been collecting?
Since I was around 2 or 3, but seriously since 1971.

How did you get started collecting?
Beatles cards! But also baseball cards. Relatives would buy me packs. I got serious when I saw ads for card dealers in the back of The Sporting News in 1971, the year I first subscribed.

What is the first card you can remember owning or buying?
I can’t answer that. I have no idea.

Which sports do you collect?
Baseball, continuously. I always collected football, basketball, and hockey when I was a kid, from the late 60’s through the late 70’s.

What other memorabilia, beside s cards, do you collect?
Autographs, yearbooks, books, though more as an accumulator than a collector. I’m a big record collector, though I know that’s not memorabilia, per se.

What is the focus of your collection?
I’m a card collector, so my collection includes baseball, the other sports and non-sports. On a day to day basis, my focus is on the sets I’m currently working on.

Who are your favorite players?  
Tom Seaver, Sandy Koufax (old), Francisco Lindor (new), though I haven’t made a point of getting Lindor cards outside his Topps base cards.

Which is your favorite team?
None really. I like baseball. I was a huge Met fan until they traded Seaver in 1977 and I realized I liked Seaver more than I liked the Mets. That trade liberated me from team-based rooting.

Do you have a favorite card or set?
1967 Topps is my fave set. Two of my fave cards are the 1957 and 1961 Topps Wes Covington cards. That dude had some great cards!

Do you have a collecting project or goals you’re working on now?
1949 Remar Bread, 1952 Parkhurst, 1960 Topps, and 1971 Kellogg’s.

How much time do you spend on the hobby these days?
I really got re-energized about 1 1/2 years ago. I don’t’ spend too much time on the hobby each day, maybe 30 minutes or so checking websites for sales.

What’s your main source of hobby information?
I’ll read Sports Collectors Daily online. I follow a bunch of card people on Twitter, so that leads to news.

Where do you buy most of your cards?
eBay, Sportlots.com, various other sites.

Which card or set have you always wanted to own but has always eluded you?
I would love to get the 1960 Leaf high series, but it’s too pricey.

What’s your favorite hobby memory?
First big card show, at a church in Manhattan, 1973. It was pre-hobby explosion and every dealer was a hobby lover.

Do you have any other funny or memorable hobby moments to share?
I’m going to send you to this post I wrote for the SABR Baseball Cards blog:

Anything else you want other collectors to know about you or the hobby?
I’m Mayor of Cooperstown and an author of two baseball books (Split Season:1981 was my most recent). As a long time card collector, I can’t imagine a better world!

—

Beyond his exploits in chasing down awesome vintage cardboard and running the show in Cooperstown, Jeff knows a thing or two about interpersonal relationships, and especially about finding the right woman. If you’ve ever had to come clean about your hobby to a significant other, you’ll love the story he penned recently for the SABR Baseball Cards blog.

And if you want to get in touch with “Your Worship!” — Jeff says that’s what they call mayors in Canada  — you can follow him on Twitter (@SplitSeason1981), visit his website, or drop him an email at splitseason1981@gmail.com.

And, of course, you can always visit his hometown, but beware — you may never want to leave!

(Read all of our collector stories here. Want to share your own story? Let me know!)