1973 Pro Baseball Season 50th Anniversary Card Set

It's the 50th anniversary of one of the more memorable seasons in baseball history, and we're turning back the clock to honor it--welcome back to the summer of 1973 with this special commemorative card set for History Maker Baseball Big League Baseball Game!

We designed this set to LOOK the 1970s, as well as play like it! If you're a fan of old baseball trading cards, you'll recognize the inspiration of the 1972 and 1973 Topps baseball card sets. The team and player names reflect team colors, while the background and "badge" are in classic 1970s bold contrasting colors. The fonts also reflect the feel of the '70s. We hope it helps bring back memories of the summer of '73 for those old enough to remember it.

For those who don't remember, the 1973 season was filled with highlights. Most notably, it was the first year of the designated hitter. The twelve American League owners, led by the effervescent (or, insufferable, to many) Charles O. Finley, voted 8-4 for a three-year trial of the DH rule, and, well, the rest is history.

It wasn't quite as eye-opening as the 1969 "Miracle Mets," but New York's '73 pennant run was memorable nonetheless. The Mets won the division with a record just barely over .500 (82-79), surviving an amazingly close and contested divisional race that involved five of the division's six teams. New York then stunned favored Cincinnati (which had won 99 games, most of any team in '73) in the playoffs, and took Oakland to seven games--leading three games to two after a 2-0 win in game five--before dropping the last two games and falling just short of another world championship. For the A's, it was their second consecutive season as champions of baseball.

For stat-nuts, 1973 was the year that a young (age 26) Nolan Ryan broke Sandy Koufax's 1965 record with his 383rd strikeout during the season. It took extra innings in his final start to get the record--Ryan racked up sixteen strikeouts September 27th against Minnesota, pitching eleven innings in a 5-4 California win to best Koufax's record of 382 by ONE strikeout!

We envisioned this 50th Anniversary commemorative set to be used a couple of specific ways...

First, we wanted it to be a card set that would quickly, easily and colorfully capture the excitement of the '73 season. It's ideal for the "express" version of our game, but it's also awesome for one-off games with the full version of History Maker Baseball, or series match-ups between your favorite clubs. You can conduct your own round-robin tournament to get a taste of each club. Each team is represented by 24 players--it's top dozen or so batters and pitchers. We intentionally chose to limit the number of cards in this set to make it more accessible (and affordable), with sufficient depth to capture the essence of each of the 24 pro clubs.

We also see this set as a great card set for a single-team season play-through, in either "express" or full-play HMB. The 24 cards base set will give you the nuts and bolts of any team, and with the HMB how-to guide as a help, you can fill out "your" team's roster with the remaining half-dozen or so role players who might have added to the season's story, while using the other club's base players as your opponents. The card set comes with two dozen blank player cards, which you can use for this purpose.

Also, in the interest of less clutter, we've replaced the batting qualities from the pitcher cards with a numerical batting code and two sets of pitcher batting cards included with your set. If you're not using the DH rule, you'll choose the card that corresponds to your pitcher's batting ability, and insert it in the batting order--easy!

Many thanks to Travis Jansen who collected the data needed to make these cards. We do think you'll enjoy this set. Celebrate the 50th anniversary of New York's improbable pennant run with this colorful new card set for HISTORY MAKER BASEBALL Big League Baseball Game!