conspicuous by their absence

there were three players missing from the topps set in 1977 that had been featured in previous sets and then showed up as dodgers in 1978.  vic davalillo was down in mexico until august of 1977, and ted martinez spent the entire 1976 campaign in the reds' minor league system after being released by the a's in may of that year.  the other was jerry grote.

grote played a full season for the mets in 1976 but was left off of topps' checklist in 77 supposedly because they thought he was going to retire due to back issues.  all he got was a test print, according to keith olbermann.

they didn't even take the time to put a facsimilie auto on there.  here's the link to olbermann's blog, on which he waxes informed about this and other things that never were.  thankfully, we'll see jerry and the rest of the missing dodgers on 1978 cardboard - posts coming soon.