1965 San Francisco Giants - Mgr: Bill Keller - 17 Cards

At 95-67 the Jints finished 2 games behind the Dodgers, who won like 14 of their last 15 games to overtake San Fran down the stretch.  Usually in the Giant-Dodger rivalry the result goes the opposite way.  Of course during most of the rivalry the Dodgers didn't have a God-like figure named Koufax going every 4th day like they did in '65.  The Giants were literally carried by a 34 year old Willie Mays, who hit .317 with 52 homers and 112 RBI's.  Look at that RBI tally and what does it tell you ?  It tells me that close to half of his RBI's were runs that he scored on the homers.  When you read that and dig deeper you realize just what this team lacked:  tablesetters.  The keystone combo of Hal Lanier and Dick Schofield hit .226 and .203 respectively. This truly outlines how the Giants lived and died by the long ball.  After Mays' incredible 52 homers, Willie McCovey hit 39, Jim Ray Hart had 23 and catcher Tom Haller had 16.  The bench was nothing to write home about.  A fading Jim Davenport hit just .251 with only 4 homers.  The rest of the guys on the bench barely hit their weight.  Absent from the lineup was future HOF'er Orlando Cepeda, who played in only 33 games thanks to a season ending injury.  If he was healthy you could have penciled him in for 30 homers and a .280 average.  If he was healthy he surely had to be worth the 3 games it would have taken to win the pennant.  High kicking Juan Marichal was the ace logging 295 innings and posting a 22-13 (2.13) record.  In most years that would have locked up the Cy Young award, but once again the Giants were foiled by that Koufax guy.  Bob Shaw was the #2 guy going 16-9 (2.64).  The rest of the rotation was under .500.  The bullpen, however, was stellar.  Closer Frank Linzy was 9-3 (1.43) with 21 legitimate saves.  Ron Herbel and Bobby Bolin were long relievers / spot starters.  Both won in double digits with Bolin posting an impressive 14-6 (2.76) record.  A 44 year old Warren Spahn, who was cut by the Mets, was a hard luck starter for the Jints going 3-4 with a 3.39 ERA in 11 starts.  Apparently he was unable to get any run support as he hoped for one last shot at the fall classic.

In total 17 cards were needed to round out the set.  My artistic friend Jeff created 13 of the cards posted here.  I will take credit for just 4 of them (Burda, Hundley, Hands & Spahn).  Jeff did create a card for Burda and Spahn, but I had already created them before I realized that he had already done the heavy lifting.  If you haven't seen Jeff's work, you must download his 1960's card collection where he's covered every season.  The link to his download site is:  http://www.gamefront.com/files/user/okcochise