Rich Zawadzki has a calling. We all know that. He has a calling to find me monster cards that I haven’t featured yet on this blog. It’s a chore because I’ve posted the best of the best.
But Pastor Rich always comes through for me. This time, he found a card that belongs to an underrated player who played for an underrated team. It’s Cecil Cooper of the 1980 Milwaukee Brewers. Cooper played alongside stars like Robin Yount, Paul Molitor, Gorman Thomas and Jim Gantner and somehow the Brewers still landed in third place.
As for Cooper, he batted a nifty .352 in 1980. While teammate Gorman Thomas hit 38 homers compared to Cooper’s 25, it was Coop who led the league with 122 ribbies. He also led the AL with 335 total bases.
In case you forgot, 1980 was the year that George Brett made his run for .400 and ended up hitting .390. If it weren’t for him, Cooper would have been the league’s batting champ.
| Split | G | PA | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | SB | BB | SO | BA | OBP | SLG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1980 Totals | 153 | 678 | 622 | 96 | 219 | 33 | 4 | 25 | 122 | 17 | 39 | 42 | .352 | .388 | .539 |
I’ll skip right to the hit numbers because some of you may have clicked on the link above and you are comparing Brett’s .390 card and Coop’s 1980 card. So Cooper hit .352 and gets a 51-7 but Brett’s .390 card doesn’t?
What the heck?
There are two reasons in my opinion. First, Cooper received a 15-10 and a 25-10 which are great but not quite equal to the hit value of a 7.
Second (and more importantly), Brett’s 1980 card received four 14s while Cooper’s 1980 card received only two. This makes the .352 more believable. Using my “Quick and Dirty” method of determining what a card will hit, Cooper’s 1980 card should hit .3529 so it is pretty spot on.
Also, keep in mind, Cooper only has two 8s instead of the usual three (two is becoming more common recently though).
Cooper in his Bosox days
Other notes on Cooper’s 1980 card
Cooper has a 1B-5 fielding rating, the highest rating a first baseman can receive.
In the 1980 APBA baseball card set, APBA placed the result number 12 on 65 and moved the 35 to 63. Therefore, any player with two or more 31s had them in strange spots. Cooper has a 24-31 along with his 34-31. I honestly double checked to see if had three because he would have been a good candidate. He doesn’t.
He still is a great candidate to hit and run with with his two 24s, two 10s and no 5s that would prevent homeruns. Cooper also only has two 13s.
Cooper hit four triples in 1980. With power numbers 1-6-6, it will be hard pressed to recreate his actual triple numbers unless he bats with the bases loaded a LOT.
Thanks again, Rich!
Photo credit: Boston Red Sox via tradingcarddb.com, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
