Card of the Moment #73
July 28th, 2011 by slangon

I’m am officially on vacation, so for the next week or so, you guys get treated to a bunch of pre-written posts that will be popping up thanks to the magic of post scheduling.

Today’s Card of the Moment comes to us from the letter A. And triangles.

1965 Topps #46 Bob Lee

Bob “Moose” Lee was was pitcher in the Majors for 5 seasons. He played for the Angels, Dodgers and Reds, mostly pitching in relief. The majority of his success came while throwing for the Halos. Arguably his best season was the year this card came out, 1965, when he was names to the American League All-Star team. He pitched 131.1 innings that year without starting a game, saving 23. Back then, that was good for 4th in the League. He also struck out 89 and had an outstanding 1.92 ERA.

I’m sticking with ’65 as his best season just because he made the All-Star team, but his rookie year in 1964 might’ve been a little better numbers wise. He only had 19 saves that year (good for 5th in the League) but had an even more impressive 1.51 ERA and fanned 111 men. ALso that year, he had a 27.2 inning scoreless streak going from July 15 to August 9. 1966 was his final year with the Angels and he saved 16 games, but his strikeouts dropped to only 46.

All in all, his 3 years as an Angel were pretty good. He had a 20-16 record, 58 saves, a 1.99 ERA and 246 K’s. What’s pretty impressive is despite only being an Angel for 3 seasons, he’s still 7th place in the franchise history for Saves.

After the 1966 season, he was shipped off briefly to the Dodgers. His tenure as a Trolley Dodger was not a very good one, however. He only made 4 appearances, giving up 2 dingers and 8 runs. Luckily for him, only 4 of those were earned, so his Dodger ERA is “only” 5.40.

I guess 4 games was enough for the Dodgers because they quickly sold him to the Reds, where he didn’t fare much better. During parts of 2 seasons, he made 71 appearances, saving 5 games. His ERA was a fat 4.84 and he only fanned 67 men while walking 62.

As you can see, saves was not a statistic that Topps showed back in 1965, but in the bio section, they do make mention that “Bob set a new club record with 17 saves in relief in 1964.” The 19 saves for 1964 that I mentioned up yonder came directly from Baseball-Reference, so I’m not sure where those other 2 saves came from. I’d be a little more inclined to go with Baseball-Reference as being more accurate, but it makes me wonder whether Topps flat out screwed up or do you just chalk it up to records not being so accurate back in the day. Considering some of the other statistical errors I’ve seen on cards throughout Topps run, I wouldn’t be surprised by either reason.

After Bob retired from baseball in 1968, he opened up a barber shop not far from Anaheim Stadium. I wonder of any of his ex-teammates ever came in for a trim.

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