The Mysterious Strangers

As I mentioned previously, 1967 was my first year of collecting baseball cards. Other than Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and Harmon Killebrew, I had no idea of any MLB players, so those 1967 cards were my introduction. Since the 1967 high-number cards were not sold in my area, players in that 7th series remained unknown to me until I bought their 1968 cards.

Below are the 12 players and 2 managers whose final cards were in that 1967 7th series. As such, (except for John Sullivan, who played for the Phillies in 1968) I had no idea who they were until years later. To me, they existed only as mysterious names on the 7th-series checklist (issued as part of the 6th series) until I acquired their cards in the 1980s.


I have already posted all of these cards individually on this blog. You can follow their labels below to each post.

Click here to see all the players whose final card was in the 1967 set.

Final Card: Bob Duliba

This is the last card for Bob Duliba (#599). It's also the same exact photo that Topps used for his 1966 card. Apparently, the Topps photographer was too busy running around photographing all the George Korinces in the league to have any time to give the veteran Duliba a proper send-off.

Bob began pitching in the low minors in 1952. In 1953, he became the property of the Cardinals, and pitched for their farm teams for the next 3 seasons. He missed 3 seasons (1956-58) due to military service. Duliba is the first player I've seen (while posting my 1966-68 cards) who missed more than 2 seasons to the military.

In 1959, he returned to pitch for the Cardinals' triple-A Omaha team, and also played 11 games with St. Louis. He was in the Cardinals' bullpen for all of 1960, and spent the 1961-62 seasons bouncing between the Cardinals and triple-A ball.



At the start of the 1963 season, he was traded to the Los Angeles Angels. Bob played most of 1963 with triple-A Hawaii, and all of 1964 with the Angels. In 1965, it was on to the Red Sox, where he split his season between Boston and triple-A Toronto.

In May 1966, he was traded to the Athletics in a deal involving all minor-leaguers, and spent the entire season in the minors. (Hey, I'm starting to not feel so bad for the Topps photographer!)

Bob surfaced in the majors for one last time in early 1967, playing 7 games for the Athletics in April and early May, before returning to triple-A for the Athletics (1967-69) and the Braves (1970-71).