National League Batting Leaders (#215, 217, 219)

Hall of Famers abound!!!

Here are the National League batting leaders for the prior season. Willie Mays appears 3 times, (unfortunately only in the 1st position for home runs).


I just got this card a few weeks ago, enabling this 3-card post to complete the 1966 league leaders set. Roberto Clemente hit .329, well ahead of the pack at .310 to .318.  Hank Aaron has his Milwaukee cap on, but the caption has been switched to "Atlanta" already. (Meanwhile, Frank Robinson's caption on the RBI card was not updated to "Baltimore Orioles".)

(Did they really need to fill up the card back? Batting .245 is hardly among the league leaders!)


Mays led the league with FIFTY-TWO homers! Teammate Willie McCovey was 2nd, but a distant 13 dingers behind. Billy Williams hit 34 homers, one more than his teammate Ron Santo.

Hey look!  Dick Stuart led the league in grand slams, but was so bad defensively that the Phillies sent him packing after just one season.


Deron Johnson is the only one of these 7 players not in the Hall of Fame. He had 17 more RBI than teammate Frank Robinson.  Also amazing is that Robby was in the top 4 in HR and RBI while batting .296, yet still was traded to the Orioles that off-season.

Willie Mays (#1)

Here's the Say Hey Kid, occupying the #1 card in Topps' set. I received this card from DeansCards.com. This is the 2nd Willie Mays card I got from Deans Cards, having purchased a replacement for my lost 1969 card a few years ago. Coincidently, Topps used the same photo on both the 1966 and 1969 Mays' cards. That was no surprise, since Topps had also used the same photo from 1965 on the 1968 card. Willie seems much happier here than on his 65/68 cards.


[I wonder why Topps decided to abbreviate San Francisco on the last stat line on the back of this card, after spelling it out completely the first 7 times?]

I'm not going to rehash Mays' career here, having done it elsewhere. I'll just say that I recently watched various "Prime 9" shows on the MLB network ("Top 9 centerfielders", "Top 9 defensive plays", etc), and Mays was just an awesome player! I saw him play briefly from 1967-73 on TV, but I was too young then to appreciate what I was seeing.