Orioles Victory Card Number 6: Tim Nordbrook and Bobby Gritch Entwined in Free Agency

Orioles Victory Number 6: 9-5 over the Boston Red Sox

1976 Topps Tim Nordbrook


Today's card comes courtesy of a trade. Now that I'm settled back in and have access to the complete collection, the trading has picked back up. Two trades in ten days is pretty good for me. In exchange for a bunch 2019 Topps duplicates, Trading Card Database member madams30 sent this card and thirty-nine other cards I needed from Texas.

While the five 1976 Topps he included were the hook, the nine 1988 Topps may have been the most important. Why? Because they completed my 30 year quest to complete that set. I quest that, if I'm not mistaken started with a box of cards purchased from Price Club (for you young kids, that's what Costco was before it was Costco). It was the first time I purchased an entire box of cards and if I'm not mistaken I did consume all of the gum that came in the backs.

That box had 540 cards (36 packs of 15 cards each) and most likely included just a few duplicates. That means it took me 30 years to knock the remaining 250 or so cards left on the checklist.  Speaking of the checklist, I'm sure more than a few of them have cards marked off on them.

Pretty sure Tony Armas completes the collection. Could be wrong though.

That's enough about 1988 Topps, let's get back to Nordbrook. He was born in Baltimore in 1949 and drafted by his hometown club in the ninth round of the 1970 draft (18 spots after Rich "Goose" Gossage).

He made his way through the minors in four years, highlighted by a .287/.364/.685 slash line for the Rochester Red Wings in 1974. That earned him a quick six game call-up in 1974 and another 40 games in 1975 as a back-up infielder. He was a solid defender but he wasn't going to unseat Bobby Grich and Mark Belanger.

He appeared in 27 more games for the Orioles in 1976 before being sold to the California Angels in September of that year. He ended his Baltimore career with a slash line of .183/.301/.498. He bounced around for another three seasons, seeing time with the Angels, White Sox and Blue Jays before playing his last game in 1979.

Oddly enough, Nordbrook and Grich would intersect again post-Baltimore as they were both part of the inaugural MLB free agency class in 1976. Part of the reason the Angels bought Nordbrook from the Angels in 1976 was because he was set to be a free agent. Back in those days, teams were limited to signing only two free agents. The exception was that they could replace the number of players they lost in free agency. The first two signees for California were Don Baylor and Joe Rudi. With Nordbrook choosing free agency, that opened up a third slot for the Angels.

That slot went to California-native Gritch. As part of the first free-agent class Gritch could be considered the first free agent to spurn the New York Yankees. They wanted him, and supposedly offered him a $2.2 million contract. He turned it down to play in front of his parents in California. The Yankees didn't sulk for long, they used that money to sign Reggie Jackson. That turned out ok.

Also of note. While this card shows Nordbrook wearing the number 43, he changed it late in 1975. The new number - 8. He and Dave Skaggs would be the last players to wear it before a certain lanky infielder from Havre de Grace, Maryland would make it famous.

Orioles Victory Card Number 38

Orioles Victory Number 38: 7-0 over the Toronto Blue Jays

1976 Topps Mark Belanger

Whew. That win was a long time coming. After losing their previous 8 games (in which they gave up 5 or more runs in all of them) the Orioles beat their AL East counterparts 7-0 on the back of 6 strong innings from rookie David Hess and a 5 RBI night from Trey Mancini. They postpone their 95th loss of the season (and 9600th in franchise history) to another day.

I didn't watch most of the game, preferring a night out with The Duchess instead of the drudgery of a mid-August contest between two teams that had nothing to play for this season. Toronto is 29 games out of first place and focused on the future with young prospects Danny Jansen and Billy McKinney playing and phenom Vlad Guerrero Jr. set to make his debut sometime over the next month or so.

The Orioles are already starting to filter in some of their young players that may be around for the next competitive team as well. Cedric Mullins has made his debut and performed well in his first 16 games. He's taken over centerfield and made a few highlight reel catches already and held his own at the plate with a .305/.379/.402 slash line. He's riding a bit of a high BAbip right now (.348) so I expect his average to come down a little bit before the season is over, but he hasn't been overwhelmed by major league pitching (only 16% strike out rate) and it looks like he can be penciled in as next year's starting centerfielder.

Another young player that has kind of come out of nowhere is Renato Nunez. He's been handed the thirdbase job since the Manny Machado deal and has performed with the best stretch of hitting in his major league career. Over the month of August he's slashing .284/.370/.420 which way more production then the team was getting out of Danny Valencia and Tim Beckham. While his defense isn't going to remind anyone of Brooks Robinson anytime soon, his glovework is about even with Valencia and miles ahead of Beckham.  

Nunez is a nice find in a lost season. Had the Orioles been better he might not have received any playing time. But since they aren't, he was given a chance and has performed well enough to earn a contract for next season. He could be a nice, cheap stop-gap player until Ryan Mountcastle is ready for the big leagues. The Orioles control Nunez through 2024 and he could stick around as a utility infielder even after Mountcastle takes over the hot corner.

It's sometimes easy to forget that Trey Mancini is only in his second full season as a major leaguer. He played so well as a rookie last season that it just seems like he's an established veteran. Yet, he still has a lot of room for improvement. Other than Chris Davis' first half, Mancini's was the most disappointing.  There were times it seemed like he was lost at the plate and scuffling just to make contact. Some of that could be tied to the knee injury he suffered early in the season, but it also looked like he was trying too hard to pick up the slack left by the rest of the struggling offense.

His second half improvement is showing that last season was not a fluke. In the first half of the season he struggled to a .216/.292/.363 line with 12 home runs in 328 at-bats. In the second half he's upped his line to .292/.329/.496 with 7 home runs in only 137 at-bats.

The Orioles are going to be a mess for quite awhile while they try and find the pieces for their next contending team. The next year and a half is going to be spent plugging in players to see if they fit. It looks like, based on a small sample size, that they at least have 2/3 of their outfield taken care of with Mullins and Mancini. Hopefully, as the months wear on, they find a couple of more pieces.

So why a Mark Belanger 1976 Topps? Well, after completing a couple of sets this year (1983 and 2017) I felt it was time to start chasing another one before 2019 drops in January. This set just happens to coincide with the year I was born and it a relatively cheap set to put together as there aren't any major rookie cards that will seriously dent my wallet. The two key rookie cards are Dennis Eckersley and Willie Randolph while Robin Yount and George Brett have second-year cards.  So, it's doable.

One of the main challenges I'm facing is that I don't have a large collection of duplicates to trade from. Having only chased sets from recent years, I've been able to swing a lot of deals with dupes. With the 76 set I started with exactly four duplicates and have already traded them out. That means I'm going to have to hope collectors and traders are willing to part with their dupes in exchange for newer cards.

Also, I'm starting with the fewest cards I've ever started with (89) so I have a long way to go to finish it off. Still, it just takes one card at a time and that first card came in a trade just last week: 

If you have a stash of 1976 you're looking to get rid of, feel free to hit me up in the comments or check out my trading card database profile (Lightningfan7609). Hopefully, it won't take another 40 years to complete this one.