Joe Rudi Watercolor

Just a quick one-card post today.  This is the Joe Rudi card from the 2021 Topps Spotlight 70 set featuring a bunch of fan favorite-type players.  The cards were watercolor representations of older cards.  I did not get nearly enough of these cards yet, which is disappointing because there was a surprising amount of Red Sox representation in the set.  For one, there is this card.  Now, most people do not associate Joe Rudi with the Red Sox.  And for good reason.  Rudi was actually originally acquired by Boston in 1976 along with Rollie Fingers in the famous deal voided by Bowie Kuhn.  He was later acquired in the deal along with Frank Tanana in the trade that sent icon Fred Lynn to the Angels.  Rudi did not play well for Boston, hitting just .180/.239/.352 with six home runs in 49 games.  He played just just one more season in the big leagues, returning to Oakland, the team for whom he had his most success.  So yeah, pretty shocking this card was chosen.  It is also not the most interesting-looking Topps card.  The 1982 set had a decent design, but this was just a profile shot.  He has great looking cards in 1971, 1973 and 1974.

As I said, this set had some decent Red Sox representation.  In the 70 card Series One set, there were five Red Sox.  Including Rudi, there were also cards of Jim Rice, Rich Gedman, Luis Tiant and Mo Vaughn.  Series Two featured five more with Dustin Pedroia, Tim Wakefield and then short-lived Red Sox tenured Hall of Famers Tom Seaver, Juan Marichal and Fergie Jenkins.  I need to track down some more cards.