but, as you can tell, mota is not listed as a giant on his 1963 topps card. that's because after the season ended, mota was traded to the houston colt .45's for joey amalfitano. he still appears in a giants uniform, though. mota never played for houston, as they flipped him to the pirates in april of 1963 for someone named howie goss.
about a year after mota debuted, the second of our eventual 1978 topps dodgers (and another pinch hitter extraordinaire) made his first appearance in the big leagues. vic davalillo suited up for the cleveland indians on april 9, 1963 as their starting center fielder. he hit in the leadoff spot and went 0 for 4 against jim 'mudcat' grant. topps featured him in their 1963 set along with 3 other rookie hopefuls. luckily for me, none of the other guys did much, and i was able to get this card on the cheap (i will not have the same success tracking down ken mcmullen's 1963 topps rookie card).
davalillo made 2 pinch hitting appearances in 1963, and was successful both times. he singled off of bill monbouquette on august 25 while pinch hitting for willie tasby, and hit a run scoring single off of ron kline while hitting for gary bell on september 2. for the season, davalillo hit .292 in 90 games.
we'll pick up a few more future 1978 topps dodgers in 1964, but until then, here's the tally of players by year so far...
1963 - 2/27
appearances:
davalillo - 1
lasorda - 1 (1954)
mota - 1
No comments:
Post a Comment