Card Spotlight: 9-10-10

1966 Topps #199 - ChiSox Clubbers (Bill Skowron, Johnny Romano, Floyd Robinson)

I"m glad that a card like this exists. It's not often that you see multiple players from the same team on one vintage card, unless that team was originally New York based.

On this card you have the top three home run hitters on the White Sox from the previous season. Skowron and Romano had 18 each and Robinson had 14. I imagine Danny Cater (who also had 14 home runs in 1965) was unavailable for the photo op. Those 1965 White Sox won 95 games, seven behind the first place Twins. If there had been divisional play that year, I'm sure that more of those players would be household names.

One could make a justifiable argument that many of the White Sox players of the sixties would have rocketed to stardom, if divisional play had started earlier. The 1963 White Sox won 94 games and finshed second. The 1964 White Sox won 98 games and finished one behind the Yankees. In 1967, the White Sox finished three back in the middle of a cluster of teams. The season wasn't decided until the final week.

If you've ever had the pleasure of listening to Moose Skowron speak about his playing days, you can really get the feel for how close the mid-sixties White Sox teams really were. He'll talk about his days with the Yankees, but he seems to really get excited talking White Sox baseball. He has an endless supply of anecdotes from his playing days. It's nice to see that some of those memories are captured on cardboard.