Card of the Moment #43

Card of the Moment #43
August 6th, 2010 by slangon

1962 Topps #206 Washington Senators Team Card

As most folks who are familiar with this blog are aware of I have a certain affinity for team cards. I always seem to have a little difficulty expressing why that is however. Sometimes I think it might be the democracy of them. I mean, you have a team with 25 guys on the roster. Let’s say that all 25 guys have their own baseball card. Obviously some of those guys cards are going to be more prized than other guys cards depending on how good that guy is. That’s just the nature of collecting baseball cards. With team cards though that never happens. The lowliest benchwarmer is on equal footing with the biggest of marquee superstars. Hell, on these older team cards the towel boy is on equal footing with the big guys.

Unfortunately for the Washington Senators, that doesn’t become much of an issue. Pretty much every guy on this team was on equal footing just because they were all pretty bad. Of their starting 8 position players, only 1 guy was hitting over .300 and that was a 38 left fielder who only played in 110 games that year. Even with hitting .313 on the year, Gene Woodling only drove in 57 runs. The next best average was the catcher, Gene Green, who managed a respectable .280. Like the other Gene though, he only played in 110 games. All their other starters were hitting .260 or lower.

Pitching was not much better. Their “ace” was a feller by the name of Bennie Daniels who went 12-10 that year. Considering the team only won 61 games in total, that’s actually pretty good. That’s almost 20% of their wins. Interestingly, he had some good numbers against some pretty good hitters. He seemed to be pretty effective against Luis Aparicio (.091), Harmon Killebrew (,175), Boog Powell (.200), Moose Skowron (.107) and Yogi Berra (.259).

I’m not sure if most people know this, but the particular incarnation of the Washington Senators that are depicted on this card are actually the second go round for the Senators name. The original Washington Senators moved out of D.C. after the 1960 season and became the Minnesota Twins. Being that this card represents the first year or two of an expansion team, I’m not too surprised that they’re lacking in the star player department.