What bag of cards would be complete without some late 80's goodness? I never had a problem with 1988 Donruss, so seeing these wasn't a big issue for me. Not to mention the names I pulled, while not Hall of Famers, were a who's who of players from the time. I always liked Jamie Moyer and wish he got to pitch another year or two in the majors, but he lasted until 2012, and didn't officially retire until the end of 2013, so he isn't even considered for the hall of fame for another year or two. I don't think he'll get in, but pitching for 25 years in the majors is nothing to scoff at. According to Wikipedia (its later than I though and that's the source I'm using) he's one of 29 players to play in four different decades. Not too shabby.
Also in this bunch is a couple more pitchers who I enjoyed, Jack McDowell (a rated rookie at that), and Todd Stottlemyre. I guess from the looks of it, I was more of a fan of pitchers than batters. It explains why I'm more of a 1-0 game than a 8-7 game (which you would think would be the case since I'm HomeRunPhil on Twitter).
Another good card to grab was the Gregg Jefferies. He was once a Royal, but this predates that era. Overall these were nice cards to look through. I remember one year for Halloween I was given some of these cards at an event, but I forgot what it was. I just remember getting the 88 Donruss cards, but only a couple. I have no idea who they were, and to be honest it didn't have a huge impact on me, but it could be why I show a little bit of affection for these cards.
I was many years later that I first saw Leaf cards. When I did I thought it was odd they had the same design as Donruss, but I was okay with it. It wasn't until I turned the card around and noticed some of it written in French, that it made me like these cards more. I'm not sure why seeing cards written in a foreign language makes me like the card more, but I guess its just like hearing someone speaking French that grabs my attention.
Speaking of grabbing my attention- the Lou Whitaker really caught my eye. It may be a little worse for wear, but finding a Sweet Lou card not in my collection is a nice grab any day. I have an unusual amount of Tigers players in my PC, but I have never liked the team, go figure. Though I would be hard pressed to find a duo I liked more than Whitaker and Alan Trammel. Sure A-Rod and Jeter make a great pair, but something about Lou and Alan that I liked. This card was possibly be showcased in my Whitaker PC, unless I have an older one that is.
So with some older cards out of the way, how about some newer ones? Well don't get too excited, we're only going ahead about 6 years.
When I saw a couple of these, I was really happy. It isn't because I had a lot as a kid, its actually the opposite. These are 1995 cards, and I believe 1994 was my peak year, and by 1995 I was starting to slide out of the game a bit. Partly because I was getting older and busier, but also because by then I didn't have many friends on the playground to trade with (most had given up by then, I still had my share of friends).
Possibly my favorite card of the entire bag is the Jose Valentin card. He's just lounging on a fence. I presume it's more like an infield rake, but at any rate just the laid back attitude of Jose in the photo combined with an outside the box idea for a card equates to a solid card. A close (but not real close) second favorite is the Craig Biggio. I always liked Biggio, but I never was a big fan like a lot of people seemed to be. The photo selection in this set was pretty interesting. I wouldn't mind seeing more like these in future sets. Maybe just make it an insert set since 18,545 inserts doesn't seem enough to card companies.
The Jeff Montgomery card is one I didn't have, at least I don't think I did, so it was nice to get a card for my collection. Being in St. Louis, I really didn't expect any Royals cards. I think the border matches well with the jerseys KC wore at the time.
The hard hittin' Mark Whiten. I always liked him, so it was cool to find a card of his, especially as a Cardinal. I believe I saw Rusty Greer play in his rookie year, so that is another card I was happy to see in this bunch.
You have to love the Doug Drebek card for no other reason than the headband. I have no idea why, but for some reason I've been thinking about getting a headband recently. Maybe I will check some out on ebay. I'm not even sure what kind to get or if I want a plain one. Maybe that's a future blog post.
Bottom row has a nice card of Mark Grace. I don't know why, but I like the Cubs pinstripes more than the Yankees. I even place it higher than the Mets. Closing out this batch is another Cardinal, this time Bob Tewksbury. I remember having a lot of his cards, but I can't remember every seeing him pitch. I always liked getting his cards, so I should add this to my collection.
Here is some more cards from this blue bordered set, with some good names. Lee Smith, Dennis Martinez, Will Clark, all names from my childhood. More too like Steve Avery, Robin Ventura, Kenny Loften, and Ken Caminiti. It's weird thinking back at how they were STARS at the time, but now it seems most of today's fan's wouldn't know most of them. I think about that sometimes and think about current guys and how they'll be thought of 20 years from now. I was just thinking about Matt Kemp and how he was such a big name, and not even 5 years later he more or less fell off the map. Hopefully in 20 years, players on the Royals like Moose, Hosmer, Cain, and Salvy are remembered, but at times I'm curious if fans outside of Royals fans know who they are. Thankfully most made the all star team the last couple years so that allowed their name to get out there.
Last scan of the day features a Royal! David Cone is severely misrepresented in my collection and hopefully in the next year or two I correct that. I have a good feeling I didn't have this card, so it will be easy to add to what I have now. That reminds me I need to update my lists soon. I haven't added a lot lately, but I don't want to fall too far behind.
More names from the 90's including John Franco, Trevor Hoffman, and Pedro Martinez (who will forever look out of place to me in any uniform other than the Red Sox, though I do remember him as an Expo). Just imagine if the Expos kept Randy Johnson and also had Pedro? The Expos could have been a serious threat. Many thought they could have won the World Series in 1994. It's a shame we never got to find out, and a bigger shame if they could have as it might have been enough for them to stay in Canada years later.
The last two cards brought back a lot of memories. I'm not a big Deion Sanders fan, I admit. However it always seemed like when I'd mention baseball (or football) cards to my friends who weren't avid collectors (they kind that just have a few in a shoebox or something), they always had a Deion Sanders card. One friend even had a rookie card of his he seemed proud of. He wasn't even a big sports fan, but Deion being a multisport player did seem to transcend sports at the time so almost everyone knew him. Seeing this card did bring back memories to that as well as thoughts of as a kid thinking "how could he be on a team like Dallas in football, but stuck on a team like the Reds in baseball?" After he retired and became a commentator, I liked him a little more, but I still won't say I'm a huge fan of his.
The last card reminds me of another time talking baseball cards with a friend. It is quite possible this is the same card (not the exact card, but the same year/brand) that I had as a kid that involves one of the worst decisions I ever made pertaining to cards.
I was hanging out with a friend and I had some cards. I remember two of them in particular. One was Alex Gonzalez, the other was Alex Rodriguez. At the time I thought I knew a lot about every player in the majors, when in reality, I only knew what ESPN fed me and an occasional newspaper. Anyways, I had two cards both of guys named Alex. Being a nice guy, I decided I would give one of the cards to my friend and I would keep one. I of course would keep the guy who would become a big star, and the other one which my friend got would probably make it to the majors and fizzle out within a couple years, but still, I'm the nice guy because I gave a card away.
Well, it turns out that I kept the guy who I remember telling my friend at the time has a lot of potential and will be the bigger star, but your guy I think will do okay too. Yes, you know where this goes. I kept the Alex Gonzalez and gave my friend a nice Alex Rodriguez card which I believe was a rookie card. Looking back, I don't even get mad at what I did, I just laugh at my poor judgement. By the time I sold my collection in the early 2000's, I had both cards, but it isn't until now that I got one of them back. How fitting it was that the Alex Gonzalez would be the first one back in my hands. Now I should look for the A-Rod. I started a PC of him, I hear he's pretty good, but sometimes gets in trouble for taking medicine that isn't allowed, lol.
So that wraps it up for today. I am finishing this up on Thursday, but a funny thing happened on Wednesday that prevented this from being posted as I originally planned. I FELL ASLEEP! That's right, I fell asleep in the middle of writing this post and when I woke up 6 hours later, it was still open on my laptop. I could have finished it then, but I held off. I really wanted to post it last night, but I'm not mad I got my best night's sleep in a long time. I spent yesterday looking around the Midway Antique Mall, and should have a post or two on that next week and when I got home I was tired and hot, so I guess I just conked out. At any rate, I'm better rested now, and hope to have posts each day for the rest of the month. Thanks for reading, and OH, I also got a really cool card yesterday, which I will also show next week too. I already posted it on twitter, but I'll talk about it next week. Anyways, thanks for reading and have a great night.
For a while Leaf was Donruss' version of O-Pee-Chee.
ReplyDeleteYeah I always liked Leaf. I liked OPC too, but Leaf seemed somewhat easier to find.
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