1982 Cardinals - Whitey wins the big one !!!

St. Louis saw their first pennant in 15 years !  This team was built around speed and pitching.  Willie McGee and Ozzie made them go !  Mex's Gold Glove at 1B saved a lot of balls in the dirt.

Here are the players that I added to the set.  I originally did this for ARAIG, but it doesn't hurt to use them here as well :)

1975 and 1976 Big Red Machine

Arguably the best two year run of any franchise, but it could have all been for naught if the Red Sox held on to win game 7 in the '75 Fall Classic.  Up until that point they were labeled "the team that couldn't win the big one".  They lost the 70 and 72 fall classics and got upset by the Mets in the '73 NLCS.  Time was starting to run out on their date with destiny by 1975.  Fresh off their win over Boston they swept the Yankees in '76 to put a punctuation mark on their mini-dynasty !

Both rosters were amazingly the same for those two years, so I decided to use the 1975 SSPC set as the standard rather than mix and match the '75 and '76 Topps sets.

Here are the players I had to create:

1974 Dodgers - Traded Players Included !!!

The '74 Dodgers looked like World beaters until they ran into the dynasty A's in the World Series.  Beating out the Big Red machine to capture the NL West was no small feat.  This was Walt Alston's last pennant winner.  The nucleus was young and they would contend for close to a decade.

I added cards here for some key players that were missing from the original set.  I also decided to use the "TRADED" template for Jimmy Wynn and Mike Marshall, just like their original release...but I updated their photos to get rid of the Airbrush look.  For good measure I did airbrush Gail Hopkins' card !

1998 Yankees - Greatest Team Ever ???

Some folks think the 114-48 New York Yankees from 1998 were the greatest team ever.  The stampeded the AL during the regular season and went 11-2 in the post season.  The only trying time they had was in the ALCS vs the Tribe.  Down 2 games to 1 the Bombers found their mojo and won 3 straight to clinch the pennant.  The World Series turned out to be a clean sweep of the Padres.  In total they finished the season an incredible 125-50.  That's a winning percentage of .714 !

I decided to create a full set of UD Retro's from 1998 for the team.  I tried to use WS photos where I could.  Here are some of the key contributors in the set: