50 Years (for me) of Topps -- 1981 Topps

One small thing I thought would be fun to do since I'll be turning the big 50 later this year would be to do a small binder that organizes one card from each team from each year that I've been alive.

In this mini collection, I'm trying to find a card of each team that shows the uniforms of that year to give picture of how they have changed over time.  One thing noticeable in this year was the amount of baby blue / light blue uniforms. Interestingly this year, with USA Prime (my older son's travel team) their new unforms are also reminiscent of the Phillies Baby Blues. 

I thought this would be a fun project to work on that really utilizes most of the cards I've already collected over the years. It also should be relatively inexpensive since I'm not looking for superstars, but just looking for nice representations of uniforms over time.

I'll plan to organize the teams based on their regular season record finish as well.

Decided to start with 1981 because I had recently bought a large box of commons from What Not last year. There was a show where the seller was filling large flat rate boxes with cards. This is the one time on What Not where I've been a little more aggressive in buying and it was portrayed that this was nearly a full set, however once they arrived it was really tons of common players from #1 to #250, so was missing lots of the major stars (Gibson, Valenzuela, etc.). Oh well lesson learned on that one!

I was only 4 years old during the 1981 Season so don't remember much of this one at all. I recall a little bit of talk of the strike but was still pretty young to remember much of it. Was interested to learn because of the strike, MLB modified the playoffs to have first half and second half division winners make the playoffs:

Division Winners

American League

• First Half:
  • New York Yankees
  • Oakland Athletics
• Second Half:
  • Milwaukee Brewers
  • Kansas City Royals

National League

• First Half:
  • Philadelphia Phillies
  • Los Angeles Dodgers
• Second Half:
  • Montreal Expos
  • Houston Astros

The Dodgers and the Yankees wound up facing off in the World Series, with the Dodgers winning 4 straight after dropping the first two games. Ron Cey, Pedro Guerrero, and Steve Yeager shared World Series MVP Honors. 

1981 also marked where Fernando V made huge impression in the baseball world. I always knew him as they guy who rolled his eyes up before he pitched, so was interesting to learn about the impacts he made that season:

Started 8-0 with five shutouts

Won both:

• NL Rookie of the Year
• Cy Young Award

Helped dramatically grow MLB’s popularity among Mexican-American fans

Some other things that took place:

Nolan Ryan threw his fifth career no-hitter in 1981 while with the Houston Astros.

Mike Schmidt won the NL MVP award.

Rollie Fingers won both:

• AL MVP
• AL Cy Young Award