This week’s APBA Card of the Week is 1953 Al Kaline (reprint). This was Kaline’s rookie year playing for the Detroit Tigers and even judging by his card you can tell it made from a small sample size.
Year Tm G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG +---------+---+----+----+----+---+--+---+----+---+--+---+---+-----+-----+---- 1953 DET 30 28 9 7 0 0 1 2 1 0 1 5 .250 .300 .357
Like the current year, the 12 landed on 41. His 42 is based on one hit by pitch in 30 plate appearances.
Interestingly, other than the noticeably missing 6s, it’s a pretty representative card for Kaline for much of his career. Maybe a tad high on the steals side and low on the 14s.
No related posts.
I dunno – I think the card is heavy by a 10. That card will hit way better than .250. (The AL ERA that year was 3.99 – not too far off from the current era, especially in the NL.) Note that the one 42 is insufficient to represent his HBP rate, thus he’s given the 15 on 53.
As far as I can tell, this card is also atypical for low PA cards. I have a theory concerning how the game company does them these days, and this card runs counter to that. When was the 1953R set produced?
Hello
Just saw this link while checking out Al Kaline. Interesting Kaline card. Found this place when I was searching for any possible walk-off hit in 1953 for him. Been comparing Kaline with Clemente on that end. For their careers, Kaline had 16 walk-offs — 6 HR … and Clemente had 20 — 3 HR … one was a grand slam.
Anyways, I hadn’t thought about APBA in a very long time. I used to collect the sets pretty regularly … back in the 1970′s. I used to get the cards autographed. Have a small collection of HOF’ers.
For the owner of this site … drop me a line. You have my e-mail.
Dave V.
Shoot … one more thing about Kaline in 1953. He was a really skinny kid when he made his debut. In 1953 he weighed in the 135-140 pound range. In 1954 he filled out a little to about 150-155 pounds. Year after that … when he started slugging a bit … he was at the 175 pound range.
Have a good one APBA fans ….
Dave V.