Final Card Friday: 1968 Eddie Mathews

Unless you’re a big Detroit Tigers fan, you might not know that there were two future Baseball Hall of Fame members on the 1968 World Series Championship team. Obviously, Al Kaline is one. The other was Eddie Mathews.

Since it’s finally summer break, I’ve got some time to continue my single team 1968 Detroit Tigers replay. You may have seen some recent posts on the APBA Baseball Facebook page related to it. As many APBA gamers are aware, the 1968 season and set are unique because of the dominance of the pitchers. So, at first glance, the Eddie Mathews card above might look fairly useless. However, I must assure you, it isn’t. In my replay, Mathews is one of my main pinch hitters…after Gates Brown’s Monster Card.

I start each game of my replay with the actual starting lineups. Then I manage the games how I see fit. Currently, I’m in the midst of Al Kaline’s broken arm absence, so he’s not available to pinch hit for me. In researching this post, I learned that Mathews  suffered a back injury in 1968 that required surgery. However, he was able to return before the end of the season and play in two World Series games. With this information, I must now decide how realistic I want my replay to be. Do I not use Mathews as a pinch hitter during his actual injury absence? If I don’t, my pinch hitter options will be next to nothing.

When most baseball fans think of Eddie Mathews, they think of the Braves, whether that be Boston, Milwaukee, or Atlanta. As a matter of fact, he’s the only player to play for the Braves in all three cities. However, Mathews  became expendable to the Braves in 1967 and they traded him to the Houston Astros. Eddie was with the Astros for most of 1967, but was traded to Detroit when Don Wert went down with an injury. Mathews contributed down the stretch of the ‘67 pennant race, but the Tigers came up short.

Though he only played in thirty-one regular season games in 1968, Mathews was a valuable clubhouse leader. Even Al Kaline looked up to Eddie. Mathews worked hard at his craft and was known for having his teammates backs. There are stories of Matthews throwing punches at Don Drysdale and Frank Robinson, among others. After the 1968 Kaline injury, the Tigers were playing the Oakland A’s in late May when Jim Northrup was hit in the head with a Jack Aker pitch. That started a massive brawl, with Eddie Mathews leading the charge from the dugout.  When Eddie reached the mound, he clocked Aker with a punch.  The fight jumpstarted the Tigers, who won sixteen of their next twenty-one games.

The first thing you notice about Eddie Mathews’s final APBA card is that it has single-column 1s at 11 and 66.  In the 1968 set, that feature is valuable when coming off the bench.  Sure, a 31-14 and a 51-9 are rather ugly. However, this card  does have three 14s and an extra 8, which is common to many cards in the 2015 printing of the 1968 set.  With the extra 8, this card could produce a .236 average against a standard crop of pitchers. But 1968 was not a standard crop of pitchers and APBA wisely adjusted the hitting.  In older printings, APBA added 7s to cards.  I think it’s much better to add an 8 to the 1968 cards. This allows a player like Mathews to get a hit off a C-pitcher with nobody on base. A 7 would allow him to get a hit off an A-pitcher, A&C-pitcher, and an A&B-pitcher.  That doesn’t seem right when you only hit .212 for the season. I’ve got no problem with my Tigers’s opponents getting some extra hits off Joe Sparma (C-pitcher), but I’d be a little irritated if they were getting extra hits off Denny McLain (A&B-pitcher).

In my replay, Eddie Mathews is hitting .190 in 44 plate appearances. He has hit three home runs and driven in seven runs. One of his homers was a pinch hit game winner early in the season. Typically, I use him between the sixth and eighth innings when Ray Oyler’s .135 average/card is like a pin in my eye. Oyler’s card is so bad APBA only gave him two 8s…in 1968.

Just like when I roll for the other Hall of Farmers in the 1968 set, I find it special each time I roll for Eddie Mathews’s card. I never had the pleasure of seeing him play, so it’s enjoyable to see how his final season unfolded as a World Champion. Each set of APBA cards are like a novel that tells the story of a season. For those who lived through a particular season, the story is like flipping through a scrapbook. If you didn’t experience the season, the cards are like a time machine.  It’s one of the many beautiful things about APBA.