1982 Coca-Cola Brigham’s Dwight Evans Stood Out

Sometimes, baseball cards mimic their subjects.

Take the 1982 Topps Coca-Cola Brigham’s Red Sox Dwight Evans, for example.

Aside from being a real mouthful, this issue has a lot going for it.

First, there’s Evans himself.

In case you don’t remember, Dewey is the Hall of Fame rightfielder nobody talks about. In fact, they don’t talk about him so much that he hasn’t actually made it to Cooperstown (yet) despite being a top-20 RF man in a field that currently includes 27 enshrinees.

Part of that owes to the fact that Evans is also the Red Sox superstar no one talks about.

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It’s understandable why, too, when you consider the fiery dudes who ran around Fenway Park during Evans’ 19-year tenure with the club.

I mean, it’s tough to get much limelight when Jim Rice is crushing baseballs to the moon … when Roger Clemens is burning holes through bats … when Carlton Fisk is waving history fair … when Oil Can Boyd is oil canning … when Wade Boggs is hitting .350 for a hundred years in a row.

For his part, all Evans managed to do was win eight Gold Gloves, make three All-Star teams, nab two Sliver Slugger honors, collect 2400+ hits, slam 385 home runs, drive in 1384 runners, and score 1470 times himself.

Heck, he even acquitted himself well in two World Series with the BoSox, making a spectacular catch in Game 6 of the 1975 Fall Classic and going deep twice in the 1986 brawl with the New York Mets.

By 1982, Dewey was about halfway through his career and coming off a third-place finish in the 1981 American League MVP voting.

So, yeah, he appeared in just about every set there was, and certainly in the Coca-Cola set that also featured 21 of his Red Sox teammates.

Ah, but that 1982 Boston issue wasn’t just a Coca-Cola issue. Nosiree!

In 1981, Coke had partnered with Topps to issue 12-card sets of 12 different teams, the Red Sox included.

The Topps-Coke team was back in action in 1982, but in a more limited fashion.

First, you had the 22-card Cincinnati Reds set.

And then you had the Red Sox set. The one that also looped in local ice cream maker Brigham’s to give us not only the breathless, tongue-twisting set name, but also a third logo on card fronts.

In fact, Brigham’s takes first billing, right there in the upper left-hand corner.

And, so, the 1982 Coca-Cola Red Sox cards, with their red, white, and blue Brigham’s swag, look different from every other set of Coca-Cola cards — and that’s a good thing in a cardboard universe of sameness (that would be the Topps-Coke universe).

Even if those differences are lost to the ages of “Coke Card” perceptions.

And even if no one talks about them.