In 1966 Clemente set career highs with 29 home runs and 119 runs batted in, batted .317, and won the National League's Most Valuable Player award in a close vote over Sandy Koufax. It was the only MVP he ever won. He was thirty-two, in his twelfth season, and the award said out loud what Pittsburgh had known for years.
Topps marked it the way it marked its biggest names, with a round number. The 1967 set was the largest the company had made, 609 cards in seven series, and the multiples of fifty and a hundred went to the stars: Mantle at 150, Mays at 200, Aaron at 250, Brooks Robinson at 600. Clemente got 400.
Topps marked its biggest names with round numbers: Mantle at 150, Mays at 200, Aaron at 250. Clemente got 400.
The design is about as plain as Topps ever went. A close photograph fills the card. BOB CLEMENTE · OUTFIELD runs across the top in black capitals, the word PIRATES sits across the bottom in large purple letters, and between them is a facsimile signature, which Topps had brought back that year after leaving it off for eight seasons. The back, for the first time in a Topps set, reads vertically.
The season the card was in packs, he won the batting title again, at .357, the highest average of his career. So the card of the MVP year was on the shelves during the best hitting year he ever had.
Number 400 is in the fifth series, printed in ordinary quantity, so the card is not hard to find. A good one is. The sky behind him is a light blue that shows print spots, the white border is narrow, and centering varies widely across the set.
