1971 TOPPS DEAN CHANCE
Wait, no one told me that Dean Chance had died.
It happened back on October 11 apparently, and granted, we’ve all been pretty busy around here, what with the playoffs and World Series and heartbreak and stuff.
But Chance deserves a moment of recognition, and not just for the fact that his name makes him sound like the leader of a particularly existential offshoot of the X-Men: Professor X, meet Dean Chance…
Chance was both a workhorse and a budding star for the expansion Angels, finishing third in the 1962 AL Rookie-of-the-Year balloting, and then winning the Cy Young at age 23 with a spectacular 1964 campaign: 20-9 with a 1.65 ERA and 11 shutouts in 278 innings pitched. The sabermetricians of the day would have been even more impressed by his league-leading ERA+ of 200 and 2.39 FIP.
His Mets footprint was relatively small, amounting to three spent-arm late-September appearances and two total innings pitched in 1970.
This was enough, though, to earn him an appearance as a Mets hurler on a first-series card in the 1971 Topps set. He was traded to the Tigers along with Bill Denehy on March 31 of that year for pitcher Jerry Robertson, who appeared on a Mets card himself in the final 1971 Topps series. The circle of life, and all that…
Regarding Chance’s Cy Young award in 1964, it’s worth bearing in mind that to win it he had to surpass pitchers named Whitey Ford, Jim Bouton, Mickey Lolich, Gary Peters and Joel Horlen, but also: Sandy Koufax, Juan Marichal, Bob Gibson, Jim Bunning and Don Drysdale. They only gave out one Cy Young for all of major league ball back then.
Great point about the single Cy Young Award! The interesting thing is that only three players received votes in ’64: Chance, Larry Jackson, and Koufax.
Koufax’ “crime” that year appears to be the fact that he won only 19 games and pitched only 223 innings. Pretty sure he’d move up to second place if the award were voted on today, but Chance deserved to win.
Undoubtedly because he wasn’t on the team, my copy of this card had some enhancements/alterations around the mouth area. It’s always causes me to do a double-take when I see a clean version of this card.
Back in the early ’80s, I used to record all my vinyl albums to cassette on my best friend’s stereo, so I could listen to them in the car. I was a big New Order fan, so when Power, Corruption & Lies came out, I headed straight to his house to tape it.
The needle on the turntable hadn’t been cleaned in some time, so there was dust build-up that led to a couple of loud skips/scratches during the otherwise contemplative “Your Silent Face.” I listened to the album with those imperfections from 1983 straight through until the early ’90s, and that song still doesn’t sound right to me in its pristine form…
He hung around long enough to get his picture taken.