Tommie Aaron (#46)

I was looking at the "Labels" section in this blog's sidebar tonight, and realized that there were no Giants or Braves posted yet. When I went to my 1952-64 binder, I found out why: I have no Giants, and only 1 Braves card. Here is that Brave - 1/2 of the greatest brothers' home run tandem! 

I already posted Tommie Aaron's 1968 card, but didn't really elaborate on his career then.

Tommie joined the Milwaukee Braves in April 1962, after batting .295 and .299 in his previous 2 minor-league seasons. He played in 141 games as a rookie, mostly as a defensive replacement at 1st base for veteran Joe Adcock, although he did start 39 games there and another 35 starts in the outfield. However, his .231 batting average looks to have punched his ticket back to the minors for 1963.

In 1963 he played sporadically, only getting 135 at-bats in 72 games from April to July, and again in September. Aaron was in the minors for all of 1964-67, except for 8 games in the first 5 weeks of the 1965 season. Somehow, he managed to get Topps cards in the '64, '65, and '68 sets despite all that inactivity.

Tommie resurfaced with the Braves for all of 1968-70, and part of 1971. Although he played quite a bit in 1968 (probably because Rico Carty missed the entire season with tuberculosis), Aaron got less than 70 at-bats in each of his final 3 seasons.

He played for the Braves' AAA team from 1972-73 before retiring. After his playing career, he was a minor league manager (1973–78) and major league coach (1979–84) for the Braves.

Aaron passed away in 1984 at age 45.

Stan Williams (#42)

Some years ago, I posted Stan Williams' 1968 card. Here is his 1963 card. What's this? The card says "Yankees", but he's wearing a Dodgers' cap. I'm so confused! Topps, please hire some airbrushers so that we, the card-buying public can better understand what we are looking at!

On second thought, never mind. We are intelligent enough to figure out that if the photo and team name don't match, it's because the player was traded!

Good photos (no matter what the uniform) are preferred over 1st-grade art projects!