Shoebox Memories: 1973 Topps Tommie Agee

• The card is from 1973 but Agee had yet to play with the Astros when this card was being made in the Spring of 1973.  Agee was traded in the off-season to the Astros for Rich Chiles and Buddy Harris after battling chronic knee injuries for two seasons and batting .227 in 1972.
• The picture is from a Mets game in 1972 and shows three Mets, all airbrushed to appear as Astros players.  The right fielder is Rusty Staub, who came up with Houston, was playing with the Mets in 1972.
• Rusty Staub does not have a regular card in either the 1972 or 1973 Topps sets.  Similar to Ted Williams and Stan Musial of a previous generation, Staub refused to sign with Topps as he was unhappy with what was being offered.  To help satisfy young fans of “Le Grand Orange”, (and perhaps show Staub he would appear on cards and receive no compensation at all) Topps stuck a picture of Rusty on other cards such as this one.
• The challenge from JJ johnson was to see if we can put out Sherlock Holmes hat on and determine when and where the game was played, who the second baseman was, who the batter was, and who the umpire was?

Mission accepted.  Let’s get the Sherlock Holmes hat off the wall and fire up the computer because we’ve been presented with our biggest challenge yet here at Shoebox Memories.

1. The wall in the background shows 371 feet as the distance to right center field.
2. The field being played on is grass.  This is important to note as historians will sadly note the early 1970s as a time of rampant use of artificial turf in places such as Cincinnati, Montreal, St. Louis, and Pittsburgh.
3. An exhaustive list of the grass fields in use at the time shows that the only field with a dimension of 371 feet to right center field was our beloved Shea Stadium.
4. Now that we know that it’s Shea Stadium, and we know the identity of the center fielder and right fielder, let’s do a search and see if we can determine who the second baseman is.  The Met’s employed Ken Boswell, backed up by Ted Martinez.  Lute Barnes, as well as Wayne Garrett, also manned the keystone in 1972 for the Metropolitans.  The player pictured is clearly not Ted Martinez, who is a very dark skinned man.  Lute Barnes never manned second for the Mets at the same time Staub played right, so it cannot be Barnes.  In addition, while Wayne Garrett played a few games at second that season, a careful check of the lineups show that he did not appear in any day games, at home at second while both Rusty Staub played right field and Tommie Agee manned center. Therefore, the second baseman pictured is Ken Boswell.
5. Now that we know the identities of the three ballplayers, their position and the venue, we can narrow our search down to day games, at Shea, where Boswell played second, Agee roamed center and Staub played right field.
6. A couple of historical facts help shorten our search:
   1. 1972 was the first strike in the history of major league baseball.  The strike, which lasted from April 1 to 13 resulted in hundreds of games being canceled (none were made up as the owners refused to pay the players) and no team played 162 games that season. The Mets played 156 games that season, finishing in third with a record of 83-73.
   2. On June 3, 1972, Rusty Staub was hit on the wrist by a pitch thrown by former Met George Stone.  He played for a few more weeks, but surgery was required, and Staub was limited to only 66 games in 1972.
7. Exporting from baseballreference.com the Mets’ lineups for each day of the 1972 season into excel and sorting for when Staub played any of 65 games in right (he pinch hit one game), Agee played any of his 91 games in center, and Boswell played his 94 games at second, one comes up with 30 games that the three players played those respective positions in the same game.
8. Of these 30, 15 can be eliminated as they occurred in a road game.
9. Of the remaining list of 15 games played at Shea where the three players in question played the respective positions, six can be eliminated from consideration as they were night games.
10. The remaining nine games are April 15, 16, 21, 22, 23; May 6, 13, 15, and June 10.
11. I once had an argument with a friend who attended the University of Buffalo and was there when a blizzard was followed by several weeks of sub-zero temperatures that I had suffered cold more acutely attending Opening Day at Shea Stadium with seats in the upper deck.  While he had spent several thousand dollars on tuition room and board, I had spent at least that much on cups of hot chocolate.  That argument aside, I would point out that the three ballplayers all have short sleeves on, as does the umpire in this picture.  To me, it is highly unlikely that any of the five April games could be the game we’re looking for.  Those unswayed by my remembrances of cold Opening Days the equivalent of Buffalo winters may lookup online, as I did, the weather in the NY Times for each of those days and note that none of them had a day high temperature above 51 degrees.
12. A review of the box score of the May 6 game against the Padres yields a few possibilities: Ollie Brown hit a flyball to center leading off the second, and Mike Caldwell hit a flyball to center leading off the ninth inning.  While we can’t be certain, suspect these were more routine flyballs and not the pop-up type shown on the card.
13. A review of the May 13 game against the Giants also yields a single possibility: Garry Maddox finished off the second with a flyball to center off of Buzz Capra, but that was the only put out by the Met’s centerfielder in that game.
14. The Monday afternoon game on May 15, 1972, against the Expos, did not yield a single out by the Mets centerfielder, so this game can be safely eliminated.
15. The last possibility is the Saturday, June 10th game against the Astros.  In that box score, we see that the only putout by Agee was when Bob Watson was retired on a flyball to center for the last out in the bottom of the sixth inning off of Jerry Koosman.  The Mets were winning the game 5 – 2 at the time and went on to win 5 – 3.  It does appear that Rusty has the non-hurried trot of a can of corn about to be caught for the last out of the inning as he begins to trot off the field.  Also, Boswell appears to cover second in case the pop up is dropped.  The second base umpire, who actually takes up more of the card than any of the three ballplayers, that day was a young Don McSherry.