Your 1976 Phoenix Giants

For most of my life, the path for a minor leaguer toiling in the San Francisco Giants organization to get the call to the bigs ran through Phoenix, Arizona. From 1966 to 1997, Phoenix was the AAA franchise for San Francisco, and whether they called them the "Giants" (1966-1985) or the "Firebirds" (1986-1997), if you were one step away from that final promotion, you were plying your trade in the Valley of the Sun.

It has long been reflexive of me to speak of the guys "down in Phoenix", even once our AAA team had moved to Fresno and then later (and currently), Sacramento. When I re-entered this card accumulation racket this past year, I got a hankering to see if there might actually be minor league cards for my childhood hero, Mr. Jack Clark, pictured to your left. Well, turns out there was an entire set for the 1976 Phoenix Giants, and I bought it on eBay. I'm gonna show you a few of them here.

Each of these 4 fellas comes from a set of 22 cards. Well, they're not exactly cards. They're more like photos, with superimposed autographs, a Valley National Bank logo and the little Giants logo you see in the lower left. There's nothing on the back. They're floppy, like photos. Hey. let's call them photos. The four gentlemen I've scanned from the set each made it to bigs - with Greg Minton having had an exceptionally distinguished career, along with Clark. Johnnie LeMaster was a bit of a Giants punchline during the time he started at shortstop, but it seemed like he anchored that position for at least four or five years. Most of the others in the set did not make it to the big club.

Skip James got scanned because he shares a name with my all-time favorite bluesman: Skip James. (Yes, even better than Patton, Johnson, Hurt and all them). He made it to the parent club in 1977 and 1978 for a total of 36 at-bats and a career average of .167 before playing out his career in Japan. Do you call that a "cup of coffee" in the bigs, or is 36 at-bats more like a couple of mugs? I'm not sure, but I actually remember him being on the team as a pinch-hitter. I was all of 9 years old. but I remember.

Anyway, take a gander at these 1976 Phoenix Giants and let me know if you ever saw these heroes play some AAA ball back in the day.