Terrible Card Tuesday: 1966 Bob Watson

The question was asked recently on Facebook’s APBA Baseball group, “Why would APBA have even produced a card for a player who made only a single plate appearance?”  The comment was made about some other player but being in the middle of a 1966 replay (in hiatus at the time), I’m well familiar with these kind of cards.  The 1966 card set is full of them.  My response was that these cards are for those who do full season replays and wish to incorporate every player. 

Houston’s Bob Watson who was no slouch as a player once he was given playing time, is one example.  1966 was his first year in the majors but the Houston Astros didn’t give him much of a chance till the next year.  He pinch hit in one game and never took the field. 

There’s no point in displaying his stats.  One game, one at-bat. To me, the most interesting thing about this is that APBA chose to give him a reasonably decent card (6-7-7-8-8-8-8-9-9, one 14) for a hitter who batted .000.  There are countless of players who have given their blood and sweat for their teams only to receive worse cards.  Just to pick one out of bunch, here’s 1987 Andre Thornton, for example. 

I had a theory that perhaps APBA was going on Watson’s future in big leagues (it was a far-fetched theory).  However, Watson’s 1966 case is similar to Dave Adlesh also from the 1966 set.  Adlesh went 0 for 6 and received hit numbers 6-7-8-8-9-9.  It’s not quite as good as Watson’s but still raises an eyebrow.