Forty years ago, Willie Mays appeared on a baseball card for the last time. The legend at age 42 was just a shell of his former self, hitting .211 with 6 and 25 RBIs for the ’73 Mets. Unfortunately, Mays, like many great ones before him, hung around too long.

Perhaps because of his unusual name, Horace Clarke became a symbol for the leaner years of the Yankees in the late 60s and early 70s. Clarke, though, wasn’t a bad player. In fact, in 1969, he hit .285 with 33 stolen bases.

Clarke just had the unfortunate timing that his career didn’t occur a few years earlier or later. Here’s to you, Horace.

Man, even in a baseball card, Frank Howard looks massive. For the record, he was 6-7, 255 pounds. He hit 382 career homers, including some of the longest bombs in baseball history.

One of my all-time favorite guys and a six-time All-Star with the Angels. I covered Fregosi when he managed the White Sox from 1986-88. Always entertaining.

Besides how could I not like a guy who called me, “Baseball Ed”?

In honor of the two Original 6 series, here are some of the players who helped lay the foundation.

In honor of the HBO documentary, Namath, winning a Sports Emmy this week, here’s a vintage look at “Broadway Joe.”

You’d be smiling too if you played third base like Brooks.

Don’t mess with Hawk.

Steve Wulf recently wrote a wonderful piece about TOPPS and baseball cards in ESPN Magazine.

He captured the essence of what the cards mean to one-time collectors like myself.

Long before fantasy baseball, cards were fantasy baseball. Radio was the only regular medium for the game in the ’50s, so the “cardboard gods” provided the visuals. Bill Szczepanek, who maintains the Golden Age of Baseball Cards website, says: “The fronts of cards allowed us to see who these guys really were, and the backs gave us their bios and statistics. I grew up a Cubs fan, so one of my favorites is the 1956 Ernie Banks. Those were the horizontal cards with two photos, a close-up with an action shot in the background. I can still see Ernie crossing the plate. Just beautiful.”

That 1956 Topps set is almost universally considered the best ever, but there’s a real battle for second: Topps ’53, Donruss ’84, Topps ’87, Upper Deck ’89 … To each his own, and it often depends on the height of passion. (Which is why this writer and former Phillies fan is still partial to the 1964 set, a fairly plain year for Topps.) And it’s not just collectors who have their favorites. Brian Cronin, who writes about cards and works at Squiggy’s Dugout in New Rochelle, N.Y., says, “Andre Dawson liked his 1993 Topps Finest card so much that he offered people $5 if they would send it to him.”

I love the look of the old cards. So in tribute to a bygone era, and to reconnect with my childhood obsession with baseball cards, I’m going to post random baseball cards on weekends.

Can’t think of a better first entry.