Cardboard Tigers: Trucks, Veryzer, L. Walker

Sixteenth in an occasional series. Collect ’em all! I’m working through a stack of Tigers baseball cards from the late 1960s and early 1970s, with occasional newer cards.

Virgil Trucks
Virgil Trucks – 1994 Upper Deck #39

This is a special historical card produced by Upper Deck during the 1994 season, which was major league baseball’s 125th anniversary. My son was briefly interested in baseball cards around 2001 or so and traded with a friend for this one because it was a Detroit player. His interest soon faded and I ended up with his small collection, so here ya go.

Virgil Trucks was a very good pitcher for the Tigers from 1941 to 1952, and then again in 1956. He won 114 and lost 96 for Detroit, had a 3.50 ERA, and struck out 1046 batters over 1800 2/3 innings of work. He was an American League All-Star in 1949 and finished in the top 30 for MVP voting twice.

He was known, for obvious reasons, as “Fire,” and at the time this card was printed in 1994, was one of only four pitchers to throw two no-hitters in the same season. His came in 1952, no-hitting the Washington Senators on May 15 and then the Yankees on August 25. He came close to a third, one-hitting the Senators on July 22. Interestingly, Trucks only won five games total that season, finishing 5-19 on a Tigers squad that went 50-104.

The other pitchers who had two no-hitters in the same season are Johnny Vander Meer of the Reds in 1938 (and his were in consecutive games), Allie Reynolds of the Yankees in 1951, and Nolan Ryan of the Angels in 1973 (his second one came at the expense of the Tigers on July 15). In 2010, Roy Halladay of the Phillies threw a perfect game against the Marlins on May 29, then he no-hit the Reds in Game 1 of the National League Division Series. So technically, he threw two no-hitters in the same year, but not in the same regular season, but that’s quibbling. You go throw a no-hitter, then you can split hairs over records.

Halladay died in 2017 at the age of 40 after a plane crash in the Gulf of Mexico, and was posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2019. His lifetime stats certainly were worthy of the Hall: 203-105 record, 3.38 ERA, 2117 strikeouts. But here are Virgil Trucks’ career stats: 177-135, 3.39 ERA, 1534 strikeouts. Somewhat comparable, but Trucks only got two percent of the votes in his only appearance on the Hall of Fame ballot in 1964. His “Hall Rating” on hallofstats.com is 82, which is short of the benchmark of 100 the site uses to determine whether someone is Hall-worthy. Halladay’s Hall Rating is 138, so his election was obviously more than just sentimentality after his untimely death.

Trucks was traded to the St. Louis Browns before the 1953 season, and then the Brownies traded him to the White Sox that June. After the 1955 season, they traded him back to the Tigers along with some guys for some other guys. From there, Detroit traded him to the Kansas City A’s before the 1957 season, and the A’s dealt him to the Yankees in June 1958. The Yankees released him during spring training the following year.

He missed the entire 1944 season and only appeared in one game in 1945 due to military service in World War II. He did, however, get to pitch in the 1945 World Series as the Tigers beat the Cubs, four game to three, to win their second championship.

Trucks’ nephew, Butch Trucks, was a drummer and a founding member of The Allman Brothers Band. Two great-nephews are also musicians: Duane Trucks, drummer for Widespread Panic; and Derek Trucks, who performs with his wife Susan Tedeschi as the Tedeschi-Trucks Band.

Virgil Trucks died in March 2013 in Calera, Alabama, at the age of 95.

Tom Veryzer
Tom Veryzer – 1976 Topps #432

Tom Veryzer was a slick-fielding, light-hitting shortstop with Detroit from 1973 to 1977. Billy Martin, who was the manager of the Tigers in 1973, called him “the best looking young shortstop I’ve ever seen.” Others compared him to Hall of Fame shortstop Honus Wagner and predicted he would be one of the five best shortstops in major league history.

And at least in the field, they came close to being right. His career Range Factor at shortstop of 4.84 is 25th best ever. Unfortunately, his batting prowess never matched his skill with the glove. When he was called up in 1973, he mostly rode the bench behind starting shortstop Ed Brinkman. In 1974, he again spent most of the year in the minors, only appearing in 22 games with the big club. The Tigers traded Brinkman before the 1975 season and the job was Veryzer’s. He had a solid season at the plate, hitting .252 with five home runs and 48 RBI in 404 at-bats. Injuries limited him to only 97 games in 1976, then a terrible start to the 1977 season, in which he his .197 overall, found him splitting playing time with Mark Wagner and Chuck Scrivener. And when you’re losing playing time to Mark Wagner and Chuck Scrivener, the writing is on the wall.

Detroit traded him to Cleveland during the off-season, which opened the shortstop spot to a youngster named Alan Trammell. In Cleveland, Veryzer had his two best seasons, in 1978 and 1980, hitting .271 both years and playing outstanding shortstop. He finished his career with the Mets in 1982 and the Cubs in 1983-84; if the Cubs had beaten the Padres in the NLCS that year, he might have played against his old team in the World Series.

For his career, Veryzer hit .241 with 14 homers and 231 RBI. He died in July 2014 in Islip, New York, at the age of 61 after suffering a stroke.

Luke Walker
Luke Walker TRADED – 1974 Topps #612T

Luke Walker pitched for eight seasons with the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1965 to 1974, mostly as a reliever with occasional spot starts. His best season was 1970, when he went 15-6 with a 3.04 ERA and finished tenth in the NL Cy Young Award voting. In 1971, he took a no-hitter deep into a game against the Dodgers, but Joe Ferguson hit a home run (the first of his career) leading off the ninth. The Pirates won the World Series that year, and Walker started Game 4, which was the first World Series game played at night. It didn’t go well for him, as he gave up three hits, walked two (one intentionally), and was charged with three earned runs in only two-thirds of an inning, giving him a career ERA in the World Series of 40.50.

Walker was a solid pitcher, but was terrible at the plate. He had only eleven hits in 188 at-bats in his career for an impressive .059 batting average. One day at Three Rivers Stadium, Walker actually got a hit and the home crowd cheered. Hank Aaron, who was near the end of his career in the National League, thought the cheering might be for him and he tipped his cap to the crowd. Walker said, “Put your hat back on, Hank, they’re cheering for me.”

Despite the “TRADED” label on this card (not to mention the snappy airbrushing on his cap and neck piping), the Pirates actually sold Walker’s contract to Detroit before the 1974 season. He went 5-5 with a 4.99 ERA in 28 appearances, nine of them starts. The Tigers released him at the end of spring training in 1975.