#40 Rick Reichardt and the mountain of hopes.

Up next is another 'star' card or card of interest based on it's placement in the set. Topps cards with numbers like 10, 25, 40, 115, all have prominent players on them and Rick Reichardt at that time in his career was on that short list.

Reichardt was a highly touted college athlete who the Angels paid a fortune for. I imagine the media saw him as the second coming of Harry Agganis. A major college athlete who chose baseball over football. He fell well short of expectations for the Angels.

Reichardt was one of the young up and coming stars that Topps was confident would succeed. They made a slew of cards for Reichardt while they made cards of players like Lou Piniella sporadically. Topps weren't fortune tellers, they didn't predict where Piniella ended up and they overrated Reichardt out of the gate.

This is not to say Reichardt wasn't a solid player who had a fairly successful career in the Majors. Reichardt was a righthanded left fielder with power. He had double digit home run seasons and early on in his career. In '68 he had 21 homers and 73 RBIs. He also struck out like a power hitter usually does.

He went on to play for four teams in ten seasons. He arguably had his best season in 1971 for the White Sox. The Sox were rebuilding from the solid teams they had throughout the 60's and Reichardt saw considerable work. He played in 138 games in '71, had 19 home runs, 62 RBI and got his strike out total down.

This is not a good looking card but I don't like how any of the Angel cards look. I did see alot of the Reichardt card growing up because I had a double of it. I didn't think too much of it because the player wasn't someone a kid, new to following the game would know about. Card has a good shot of the player with the original Yankee stadium stands and scoreboard, blurred in the background.