In my ongoing quest to get as many of the Red Sox Fan Favorites cards, I came across this Rico Petrocelli, which I originally bypassed because I already had a couple of Petrocelli autographs. I have it now.
Petrocelli definitely qualifies as a Fan Favorite. He spent 13 seasons in the Majors, all of them with the Red Sox. He was a member of the Impossible Dream Red Sox of 1967 and was a two-time All Star. For his career, he hit .251/.332/.420 with 210 home runs and 773 RBIs. The question is whether the 1971 Topps design he appears on is appropriate. He was with the team that season and had one of his better years, hitting .251/.354/.461 with 28 home runs and 89 RBIs. He was coming off of a season in which he hit .261/.334/.473 with 29 home runs and 103 RBIs. But neither of those were his best season. In 1969, Petrocelli hit .297/.403/.589 with a then-A.L. shortstop record of 40 home runs. The 1969 design would have been better, but the 1971 design is fine.
There's a game called "Time's Up" where you have to get people to identify celebrities, kind of like Pyramid or Heads Up, but the twist is that later in the game you have to get people to name the same names but with fewer words. Anyway, most of the celebrities in the game are pretty big names, but Rico is on the list. Someone there must be a big Sox fan. It's nice to have him there...until you realize the person you're playing with has never heard of him!
ReplyDelete