Baseball: 1963 Rookies
For those of you who know me well, I tend to have serial obsessions. My current obsession is rebuilding my baseball card collection from the 1960s-70s. I’m also rediscovering my love of the game, and my heroes of the era: Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, Nolan Ryan and Pete Rose. Of the four, Pete Rose is an enigma. He is truly one of baseball’s all-time greats – and the Hall of Fame remains an empty shell without him in it. However, he has refused to admit his mistakes – that first step of recovery and to redemption. I believe that he will someday, and until he does, I am going to obsess about his cards.
Rose first appeared in the Topps 1963 set in a card shown below:
This card sells for several hundred dollars in good condition – thousands in excellent or better. He appears on the card with Al Weis, Ken McMullin and Pedro Gonzalez. If you don’t recognize those names, you shouldn’t. They may appear on the same card as Pete Rose, but they never matched his skills or longevity.
Pete Rose started his career in the majors in 1963 and finished 24 seasons later with a career average of .303.
Al Weis played for 10 seasons beginning in Sept 1962 and finished with a career batting average of .219.
Pedro Gonzalez played only 5 seasons in the majors and finished with a .244. I wonder why he quit. Injury?
Ken McMullin was the most successful of Pete’s “card-mates”, playing for 16 seasons and ending his career in 1977 with a respectable .248 career average.
The above statistics come from the best baseball reference I have found on the web: The Baseball Almanac.
