There are nearly to six decades of Topps All-Star Rookie Cup awards which means there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 cards in the history of the subset.
This raises the question why among all these cards does Gary Carter get the honor of his own posting on the SABR Baseball Card Blog. Well there are many reasons, but lets start with he is a Hall of Famer and…..well, I enjoy over-analyzing cards.
Over-Analysis Part 1: the Card
1976 Topps #441 Gary Carter
We have a fine photo of young Gary Carter in a classic baseball card pose. The distinctive characteristic of 1976 Topps is the position illustration seen here on the bottom left. It is a nice accent to the sets otherwise minimalist approach. On the cards other lower corner we find the reason we are here, the All-Star Rookie Cup icon. This is the second iteration of the cup, just a cup, no top hat and no batter atop that hat.
As we look a little closer the card there are a few other things I found interesting.
2) Game Dated Card?
Yes I think we have enough info here to give a time & place for this photo.
Fortunately for us the Expos wore their numbers on the front of their uniform in this era. Notice that Carter is not wearing the familiar #8, which he donned for most of his career and was later retired by the Expos/Nationals. According to Baseball-Ref for a brief period as a September call up in 1974 Gary Carter wore #57 – which looks to be the number we have here. Looking at the background on the photo it appears we are at Wrigley Field.
Turning to Carter’s 1974 Game Logs we find that he played three games across two days in Chicago. There first was the latter game of a double header on September 24th which the Expos won 11-2. The following day featured yet another double header which the Expos swept 7-1, 3-2. There is plenty of fascinating things to find in those boxes but for our limited time and space it is most important that we note that our hero went 4 for 11 with a triple and 3 RBIs in the three victories. In the last game Carter made one of his 132 appearances in Right Field (who knew). Across both double headers the 90+ Loss 1974 Cubs would draw less than 5000 fans COMBINED.
I have one dilemma with the game dating. The field is set up for batting practice. I can’t imagine the Expos had BP on the day of a double header. Perhaps these pictures are from Monday September 23 prior to a postponed game that lead to the consecutive double headers. Regardless the evidence points to one of three dates for the Photo September 23, 24 or 25 of 1974.
3) The Trophy
By Trophy I mean the real trophy not the icon on the card
Yep thanks to Heritage Auctions we have an image of a real life Topps All-Star Rookie Cup Trophy. To me this is a big deal outside of Carter’s trophy, I have only seen images of a few others Dick Allen, Tony Oliva, and Tommy Harper. Never seen one in the wild.
The Gary Carter Cup sold in November of 2016 for just under $1,800. According to the Heritage Auction website the owner of the trophy is entertaining offers for the trophy.
3b) But wait there is another Trophy!!
Topps also gives out a AAA version of the award.
And in 1974 Gary Carter won that award as well.
4) Flip
No over-analysis of a card is complete without flipping the card over.
Check the cartoon here which discusses the defense of the 1964 Orioles. Apparently this is a positive superlative. I was to lazy to confirm that the 95 errors was a record for fewest by at team (at the time), However I will note that in 1964 the second best team was the Yankees who committed 109.
This leads us to a brief point about baseball changing. In 2018 the MLB average for errors for a team was 93. That is 2 miscues less than the number that Orioles led the league with in 1964. The league average was 142 in 1964.
5) Gary Carter the collector
Finally one of my favorite fun facts about Gary Carter is he was also a card collector. As fans we learned this from a different card:
Check out the latter cartoon. I am thinking of putting this in the banner to my Twitter Feed.
If you don’t believe Topps we also have this photographic evidence.
Check out all those binders!!
And yes He is holding the card that is the subject of our posting:
Gary Carter will always be the Kid.
Sources and Links
Phungo 1976 Topps All-Star Rookie Cup index
SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee 
Very nice piece. RIP, Kid.
LikeLike
Gary Carter was a Amazing example icon❤️
I remember Gary Carter from the movie,
The Last Home Run❤️
He told me about his Mother’s illness.
God bless their Beautiful souls🙏🏻
We We’re blessed to meet him🌎🙏🏻
Martha
LikeLike
I don’t like the “position illustration” on the 1976 cards (or the 1973 cards for that matter). That piece of real estate on the card could be better utilized with a team logo.
LikeLike
I, er, rejiggered 1976 to do just this at the bottom of this post. https://sabrbaseballcards.blog/2019/02/12/the-revolution-will-not-be-televised/
LikeLiked by 1 person
I generally dislike having team logos on the front of cards, especially recently, for two reasons. First, usually it is duplicative, as it is typically already there (in some form) either on the player’s cap or jersey. Second, I miss the random craziness of the team name color schemes of my youth; in the 1960s through 1980s, there was any number of purple block letters on yellow background saying Phillies or green on yellow saying Yankees, or just red letters saying Athletics. The logo is too standardized. Although I do enjoy seeing it on 1952-55 Topps cards.
LikeLike
Great post. Where did you ever find the photos of Carter and his cards?
LikeLike
The Photos are out on Getty Images. I think I stumbled across them looking for something else and have had the idea stored away for a while.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Love this post. The HOF’s new Shoebox Treasures exhibit on cards has Johnny Bench’s All-Star Rookie trophy on display: https://www.flickr.com/photos/njbaseball/47967843383/in/datetaken-public/
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks, I will need to add that to the All-Star Rookie Cup Trophy Collection.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Great post about a great card (and player). As an Expos collector I always preferred that 76 to his 1975 multi player rookie card. I remember reading an article in Topps Magazine maybe around 1990 or 1991 which had an interview with him specifically about his baseball card collection, I remember being very impressed at the time. He’s got a lot of trophies in the background of that picture of him, too bad his Topps rookie trophy isn’t in there as that would have really brought the whole post together nicely!
LikeLike
The Photos are out on Getty Images. I think I stumbled across them looking for something else and have had the idea stored away for a while.
LikeLike
That was a really cool post! Thank you for your meticulous attention to detail and exhaustive research. I always liked Gary’s cards as a “kid”.
LikeLike
Thanks for your great post. Yes, Carter played outfield in the early days, as Barry Foote was considered the Expos’ catcher of the future at the time of the photo. The ever-enthusiastic Carter injured himself during spring training in 1976 when he slammed into an outfield fence running down a fly ball. Thankfully Dick Williams took over in 1977 and Carter was given an opportunity to compete against Foote for the starting catcher role. Carter become the regular catcher, Foote was traded away, and The Kid never had to worry about running into an outfield fence again.
LikeLike
I still remember how fun it was as a kid to get that 1981 Carter in a pack and learn he was a collector. He was from my neighborhood so even though he played in Montreal I always held out hope of bumping into him in the card section of my 7-Eleven!
LikeLike