Thursday, November 29, 2012

1998 Kenner Starting Lineup Frank Robinson in the Orioles 1971 - 1972 All Orange Uniform

I don't know how I've overlooked this for so long, but I just found out that Kenner produced a Starting Lineup figure using the short lived all orange Orioles uniform from 1971 - 1972.  The rarely seen uniform was used on their Frank Robinson figure that they released back in 1998:


The figure is a very good representation of the uniform, although based on the one color picture we have of Frank in the uniform, they should have included his first initial, not outlined his name in white, and made his stirrups a bit higher: 

 
Also, the white stripe around the collar was not nearly as wide as shown on the figure based on this photo of Brooks Robinson:





Here is a picture of the figure in the packaging.  It would have been great if they could have found a photo of Frank in the orange uniform to go on the card that came with the figure as well:





For a look at more pictures of the all orange Orioles uniform from 1971 - 1972, click HERE.

Friday, November 2, 2012

New Pictures of the 1971 - 1972 Orioles All Orange Uniforms - Now we have almost the entire lineup!

Thanks to ebay, we've got 4 more pictures from the Sporting News archives to add to the collection of the All Orange Orioles uniform worn at the end of 1971 and the beginning of 1972.

We've now got a picture of Davey Johnson:


As well as three pictures of Merv Rettenmund:





It appears the Sporting News must have had a photographer at the April 22, 1972 game which was played in Cleveland as we now have a picture of almost every Oriole that started that game.

According to the lineup that day, Don Buford was the leadoff hitter



followed by Merv Rettenmumd and then Paul Blair (who we can see on deck)



Batting 4th was Boog Powell




and Brooks Robinson was 5th




Batting 6th was Elrod Hendricks (who can barely be seen behind Brooks), followed by Davey Johnson.



Mark Belanger batted 8th (and can be seen on deck behind Johnson), followed by Jim Palmer


Paul Blair, Elrod Hendricks and Mark Belanger are the only starters from that day for which we don't yet have full pictures (although we can see all of them on deck).  I'm hoping that eventually we'll see these players at bat as well as it seems that every few months a few more pictures surface.