Mets Card of the Week: 1967 Tommy Davis

1967 TOPPS TOMMY DAVIS

Many years, Topps included players’ full names on the back of their cards. It’s how many kids learned that Bud Harrelson was Derrel McKinley Harrelson or Jon Matlack was Jonathan Trumpbour Matlack or that Nolan Ryan was Lynn Nolan Ryan. Unfortunately, 1967 was not one of those year. And since this was the only Topps card with Tommy Davis as a Met, I was today years old before realizing that his full name was Herman Thomas Davis. Yeah, I’d go by Tommy, too.

Davis got off to a great start in his MLB career, winning back-to-back batting titles for the Dodgers in 1962-63 at the ages of 23-24. And it wasn’t just an empty AVG, as he had some considerable sock – for the time – and posted OPS+ numbers of 148 and 142. But Davis had a down year in 1964 and then suffered a broken ankle in 1965 and never approached those early numbers again.

The writing was on the wall with Davis and the Dodgers when he only played two games in the 1966 World Series. And in November, he was sent to the Mets in a four-player swap that sent Jim Hickman and Ron Hunt to Los Angeles. It was early enough in the offseason that Topps was able to get him on the Mets for this 1967 card. And since Topps had this photo of a capless Davis with a blue sweatsuit collar, they didn’t need to do much airbrushing for this card.

The Mets acquiring Davis happened during the manic period when Bing Devine was reshaping the team with numerous trades. And Davis had a nice rebound season with the Mets, posting a 125 OPS+ in his only year in New York, the highest mark of his career outside of his early two seasons mentioned above.

Yet Davis’ tenure was destined to be short. In his memoir, Devine said he made 54 trades in 1967 alone. There’s conflicting information out there whether Devine was responsible for the second Davis trade but conventional wisdom is that he at least developed the framework of the deal sending Davis to the White Sox. Devine returned to the Cardinals before the trade was completed. Or announced, depending on which source you believe. Either way, it’s the deal that got the Mets World Series stars Tommie Agee and Al Weis.

And that was the beginning of Davis’ unusual-for-the-time trek around the league. He went from the Dodgers to the Mets to the White Sox to the Pilots to the Astros to the A’s to the Cubs back to the A’s back to the Cubs to the Orioles to the Yankees to the Angels and finally to the Royals.

His 1968 Topps card appeared to come from the same photo shoot as the one used for his ’67 card. It was a capless shot with the blue collar, not airbrushed to match the color of his new team. And Davis is scowling in this one, not nearly the joyful pose of his card on the Mets. Topps re-used the Mets photo for his 1969 card – not an unusual thing for this time period where the MLBPA was encouraging players to avoid posing for pictures with Topps, in an attempt to get better compensation.

It was a new photo in 1970 but again a non-smiling pose, where he’s wearing a blue hat with the logo blurred. For an Astros card. Davis’ 1971 card for the Cubs shows him in the right uniform but still sort of scowling. He had two cards in 1972, the regular and the in-action shot, both showing him in an A’s uniform. And Davis doesn’t smile in either.

There was no Davis card in the 1973 set, which was the first year where Topps had fewer cards than the year before since 1968. In 1974, it was another non-smiling action card. Finally, we get to see a happy-looking Davis on his 1975 card, complete with a decent-sized afro.

It’s impossible to say if all of the non-smiling shots of Davis after he left the Mets were due to his unhappiness with all of the different homes for his baseball career or if the photographers kept calling him Herman.