it's beginning to look a lot like 1977

i've really stopped being a slave to leaf products with their false scarcity print runs, but i do pick up one of their cards now and again. they have some crazy designs and themes, and then they have some that hit the old nostalgia bell pretty hard.

my most recent leaf purchase comes from 2025 leaf lumber, and it's a four-player bat relic card featuring george foster, jim rice, steve garvey, and gary carter. i have the purple version that is numbered to five

i bought it for two reasons. one, the price was low, and two, it hearkens back to the summer of '77 when i was following baseball for the first time. my memories of that season are more tied to the world series and then the 1978 topps baseball card release when i saw numbers like foster's 52 home runs on cards for the first time.  here's the back:

now, these four sluggers did not have the four highest home run totals of 1977. foster and rice led their respective leagues, as shown on the 1978 topps home run leaders card

but turning the card over, we see that jeff burroughs had the second highest total of the season. 

carter was tied for twelfth, but i don't begrudge leaf for including him (or garvey) on the card. i also have to point out he four dodgers there on the back of the league leaders card, each with at least 30 homers. that had never happened before.

some of you may recall that i was given my first pack of baseball cards in 1977. my uncle handed me a pack while i was sitting in the back seat of our station wagon. i didn't find cards of any of these four (the only two i really remember were mike schmidt and bill travers), but i feel a connection to the set regardless. 2026 topps heritage is here, and i bought a box from topps to whet my appetite for the main course that will be 2027 topps heritage. 

i'll have a post up soon.

as for the leaf card, whatever reason leaf had to skip over all of those other guys on the back of the topps card and include garvey and carter instead, i am glad they did so. if only they had made one of these with the four dodgers on it!

one other item somewhat relative to this post - this is a 2025 leaf vivid pre-production proof i bought in the latter part of last year

i decided to buy it for the same reasons i bought the bat card up top - a low price and the nostalgia factor. i watched a lot of baseball in the late 1970's and early 1980's on a tv that looked just like that.