Ron Reed ....#787...now with pictures

#787 Ron Reed:  The last card of the massive 1972 set, but the first card for this blog.

1971:  A comeback year for Ron who reestablished himself as a starter.    His career started strong with 1968 all star appearance and an 18 game win season in 1969.

The picture:  Definitely  spring training with what appears to be a Yankee in the background.  It appears to be an auxiliary field so I don’t if was a shared facility.  But then again spring training in 1971 was not the cottage industry it is today.

Liner Notes:  I admire Ron Reed for he was able to be one those veteran journeymen coming out of 1960’s who were able to pitch well into the 80’s.  In Reed’s case, he goes from starter to a relieving roles as closer, setup man, or middle relief.  

Playing memory:  I remember him starting the second game of the first NL division series.   He lost and Braves were swept.

What interesting about him:  Dual sport player… He also was a two year NBA basketball player with the Detroit Pistons.  Which in those days wasn’t so uncommon.   Near the same time there were two other basketball baseball combo player.   One player with a similar resume at the same time was Twin call up/ABAer Cotton Nash.  But by in large the most famous of all was Dave DeBusschere  who was Reed’s  player/coach at age  24 the youngest NB A coach ever!  Needless to say major league sports will never see the likes of this scenario ever.   I wonder how many baseball talks they had and if Dave swung him to take up baseball instead.   It worked well for both.   DeBusschere is in basketball’s hall of fame.  Ron Reed appeared 20 major league seasons.  The only funny thing was that the Pistons were terrible during Reed’s tenure.

 

Note  I have 3 1964 White Sox cards of DeBusschere and it took me two decades to figure that this basketball player and baseball player were the same guy.   Just didn’t read the back of the card.   I don’t know why.

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