Mets Card of the Week: 2013 R.A. Dickey

2013 TOPPS HERITAGE NL PITCHING LEADERS

I wasn’t planning to write about the 2013 Topps Heritage set quite yet.

I only bought one pack of the stuff on a trip to Target to pick up a roll of packing tape, so I didn’t feel qualified to expound in detail on how it does/doesn’t modernize the spirit of the 1964 issue. There’s a full box in my near future, which will give me the opportunity to take a deeper dive.

But then I opened that one pack, and the very first card just smacked me in the face with its bittersweetness: a National League pitching leaders card featuring former Met R.A. Dickey in the number two slot.

Following the logic of the pre-sabermetric 1964 original, “pitching leaders” is here defined as the moundsmen with the most 2012 wins. Flip the card over and you find a list that runs from Gio Gonzalez and his 21 down to a host of pitchers with 7.

But the lineup on this current version can’t hold a candle to the 1964 edition, which featured Sandy Koufax, Juan Marichal, Warren Spahn, and Jim Maloney. That’s 8,887 strikeouts, 905 wins, 8 no hitters, and 3 Hall of Famers right there on one piece of cardboard…