Tuesday, February 14, 2012
A baseball card mystery: Where’s Dave Collins?
Posted by Bruce MarkusenLast week, I was watching Hawaii Five-O when someone mentioned the name of the victim on the airplane as being “Dave Collins.” That’s a name that means something to baseball fans, particularly me.
He also seemed to be a rarity: a white player who could run fast. As a young baseball fan, I’d been led to believe that black players were faster than white players. For the most part, or so it seemed, white guys couldn’t run—they had “white man’s disease”—but Collins was the exception.
Collins was not a star, but at his peak, he was a good player. In 1979, he batted .318, compiled a .364 on-base percentage, covered tons of ground in left field, and even received a vote for National League MVP. In 1980, he again reached base 36 per cent of the time, batted .303 and stole a career high 79 bases.
A few years back, I decided to try to put together a page of Dave Collins baseball cards. One of the cards, from the 1977 Topps set, didn’t look right. I compared it to the other photographs of Collins. I said to myself, “That’s not Collins. It doesn’t look anything like him.”
While Collins did wear glasses, he didn’t have curly blond hair. So unless he had decided to try some kind of weird experimental perm in 1976, this just can’t be him. It has to be another player. Topps has made these mistakes from time to time, so it’s certainly not unprecedented for the wrong player to be identified on a card.
Complicating matters is the fact that the player on this card is wearing an airbrushed cap and windbreaker. The Mariners did not yet exist when Topps took this photograph. Collins played for the California Angels in 1976, so it must be someone else from the ‘76 Angels.
So that’s our mystery for the week. Who is this curly-haired player impersonating Collins on his 1977 card?
Bruce Markusen is the author of seven books on baseball, including the award-winning A Baseball Dynasty: Charlie Finley’s Swingin’ A’s, the recipient of the Seymour Medal from the Society for American Baseball Research. He has also written The Team That Changed Baseball: Roberto Clemente and the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates, Tales From The Mets Dugout, and The Orlando Cepeda Story.
I think it is him. It does look like his face, and those are the huge, goofy glasses I remember.
My guess is that the hair is also airbrushed in. Look at it. It doesn’t look quite right, especially around the ear, though it’s hard to say since the quality of the photo is so poor.