The vast majority (okay all) of the cards featured in these series of posts are from my personal collection.

A card collector as kid, the obsession grew with the advent of online auctions. While perusing Mets cards online, I was able to find the following card to bid on and add to my obsession collection:

What we see on the card is obviously a brush-back pitch to the batter Art Shamsky — while the unidentified catcher, wearing number 7, and an unknown umpire also appear on the Topps card — number 445 from the 1971 set.

Who are the two non-Shamsky people on the card?  When was the game played, and did the Mets win?

Who was the pitcher who threw the brushback?  Can you, me, and the Internet team together to solve all of these questions?

To start, let’s get our Sherlock Holmes Deerstalker hat off the wall, refill our pipe and boot up the laptop.

Let’s note that it’s from a day game, played on grass, and Shamsky is wearing the home team uniform.

Therefore, we’ll start our search by looking for day games played at Shea Stadium in 1970 where the opposing team’s catcher wore uniform number seven.

Luckily for us master baseball card detectives, Watson, Baseball Reference provides us a particularly useful search engine which showed the 18 major leaguers who wore number seven in 1970.

Limiting ourselves to National League teams (no inter-league play back in 1970, Watson) we see that two players were catchers — Pat Corrales with the Reds and Johnny Edwards with the Astros.

Let’s start with Corrales, who was a catcher with the Reds in 1970, and was a manager for the Rangers, Phillies, and Indians from the late ’70s to the late 1980s.

He also finished fourth in the 1986 Manager of the year voting for leading the Indians to their first winning record since 1979.

In 1970, the Mets hosted the Reds on June 16 and 17, but both were night games, so these can be eliminated as possible games.

The Reds also visited Shea for four games played from August 21 – 23, but the August 21 and 22 were night games.  August 23 was a twilight double header with the first game starting at 3:20 pm.

The Reds catcher in the first game was Johnny Bench, and the second game started at 6:41 pm, which looking at the shadows on the card, was far too late in the day to be the game shown.

With no other Reds games played at Shea in 1970, Pat Corrales can be safely eliminated as the possible catcher pictured on the card.

Since the catcher must be Johnny Edwards, when did the Astros play day games at Shea in 1970?

A check of baseball reference reveals that the Astros played day games on May 30, a scheduled doubleheader on May 31, and on August 19.

A check of the box scores show that Don Bryant was the catcher for the first game of the doubleheader on May 31, and the second game started at 3:50 pm, far too late for the short shadows shown on the card.

On August 19, Larry Howard was behind the dish for the Astros.  On May 30, Johnny Edwards was the catcher for the Astros, and Art Shamsky was the Mets rightfielder that day.

We can therefore safely conclude that the game pictured was the May 30, 1970 game between the Astros and the Mets at Shea Stadium.

Need some additional circumstantial proof?  Other cards from the 1970 Topps set were also proven to be from the May 30 game, seemingly taken from the same vantage point, including two plays at second:

         

Now that we know the game, and the catcher, who was the umpire?  The home plate umpire that day was “Big Lee” Weyer, who was an umpire from 1961 until his untimely death on July 4, 1988.

In a 1987 Sports Illustrated poll of catchers, Weyer who was 6′ 6” was rated the best at calling balls and strikes.

A closer look at the Morgan and the Shamsky cards reveal that Weyer would have towered over both batters and the catchers in each photo.

Who was the pitcher who threw the pitch high and tight to Shamsky?  Again noting that the sun was high in the sky as evidenced by the very short shadows, the pitcher was almost undoubtedly Larry Dierker.

Further, in the bottom of the first inning, Shamsky was up with Tommie Agee on third.  When they next battled, in the fourth, the bases were empty.

A closer look at the feet of catcher Johnny Edwards show that rather than the primary, or shoulders-square stance, Edwards was set up in the secondary stance catchers use when fast runners are on base.

The stance, coupled with the short shadows, indicate that it was the first inning of the game.

The Mets won the game 4 – 3, with Nolan Ryan pitching 8 innings and striking out 11.  Shamsky went 1 – 3 that day, including a come backer to the pitcher in the bottom of the first.

Let’s put our deerstalker hat back on the wall as we await our next baseball card sleuthing case.

Have a Mets card that you would like analyzed?  Indicate the card in the comments section and we’ll try to get it analyzed for you.

LGM