He was also the subject of two rookie cards — 1982 Topps Atlanta Braves Future Stars and his own 1982 Donruss solo card.

Over the next couple of decades, Butler crafted a solid career that left many wondering if he might have a shot at the Hall of Fame. Along the way, that 1982 Donruss rookie of his danced in and out of the limelight as Butler’s own fortunes waxed and waned.

As fate would have it, Wax Pack Gods and that classic Donruss Butler card both ended up on a make-believe episode of the old Dick Cavett Show in the fall of 2018 to discuss the upstart Atlanta Braves and their impact on Junk Wax baseball cards.

We caught up with the Brett Butler Baseball Card backstage, in the famed “white room.” He agreed to speak with us and was his usual reflective self.

Enjoy the memories.

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Wax Pack Gods (WPG): When you were issued, the Braves had only been in Atlanta for 16 years and had posted seven straight losing seasons. What was it like to be born into such a bleak culture?

Brett Butler Baseball Card (BBBC): I was just happy to be there, honestly.

Wax Pack Gods: And how did that opportunity arise?

Brett Butler Baseball Card: Well … Brett Butler was a rookie in 1981 and then Donruss made baseball cards in 1982. So, really, it was the luck of timing. I just as easily could have been a Dark Crystal card.

Wax Pack Gods:Dodged a bullet there!

Brett Butler Baseball Card: Yep. *looks off to the side*

Wax Pack Gods: You’re thinking about what it would have been like to be a Topps card, or even a Fleer card, aren’t you?

(Here, cardboard Butler’s eyes teared up, and he bit his lip.)

Brett Butler Baseball Card: I don’t want to talk about that.

Wax Pack Gods: Fair enough. So, you mentioned Brett Butler’s rookie year — that came in 1981, during the strike-shortened season. He only played 40 games but slashed .254/.352/.315. Were you proud to wear those stats on your back?

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Brett Butler Baseball Card: “Slashed?”

Wax Pack Gods: Oh, right. Sorry. Butler hit .254 with nine stolen bases and one caught-stealing.

Brett Butler Baseball Card: What’s a “caught-stealing”?

Wax Pack Gods: OK. He played 40 games and hit .254.

Brett Butler Baseball Card: Yeah, solid.

Brett Butler Baseball Card: So what happened in 1982?

Wax Pack Gods: That’s the year the Braves got good.

Brett Butler Baseball Card: Right, but what happened with Brett? He played in 89 games, but his average fell to .217

Wax Pack Gods: With 21 stolen bases, though.

Brett Butler Baseball Card: That’s true, but then in the National League Championship Series against the St. Louis Cardinals …

Brett Butler Baseball Card: Um …

Brett Butler Baseball Card: I mean …

Wax Pack Gods: Anyway, Brett had some pretty good years later in his career.

Brett Butler Baseball Card: Yeah. Those were some good times.

Wax Pack Gods: Right. As one of Brett’s two rookie cards, you were pretty popular for awhile in the 1990s.

Brett Butler Baseball Card: For a time there, I thought …

Wax Pack Gods: It looked like Butler might make the Hall of Fame, right?

Wax Pack Gods: I mean, almost 2400 hits and more than 500 stolen bases are nothing to sneeze at.

Brett Butler Baseball Card: Tell that to collectors. All they want are home runs. Home runs or strikeouts. Plush, studio-quality photos. It’s not fair, or realistic, really.

Wax Pack Gods: Seems like I’ve touched a nerve here. Let’s move on.

Wax Pack Gods: How do you spend your time these days?

Brett Butler Baseball Card: In the commons bin, mostly.

Wax Pack Gods: Oh, man. That’s rough. Sorry to hear that. You ever see any of your old pals from the glory years?

Brett Butler Baseball Card: A few. 1984 Donruss Mike Stenhouse and I are pretty close. Those 1982 Topps Chicago Cubs Future Stars — Jay Howell, Carlos Lezcano, Ty Waller — they’re regulars, too. Every once in awhile, 1980 Topps Rick Sutcliffe or even 1981 Fleer Joe Charboneau shows up. It’s great to see them, but it’s tough. People don’t have any sense of history, I’ll tell you.

Wax Pack Gods: Right. Speaking of history, do you still follow the Braves?

Brett Butler Baseball Card: Sort of. I mean, it’s tough to get baseball news where I am. We don’t really have internet.

Wax Pack Gods: But you know they were in the playoffs in 2018?

Brett Butler Baseball Card: I heard about it from 1983 Fleer Bob Horner.

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Wax Pack Gods: Oh, wow. That one’s still around? It’s had a rough go of it.

Brett Butler Baseball Card: Yeah, it’s still out there. Makes me realize how lucky I am. I mean, there but for the grace of the Wax Pack Gods goes me.

Wax Pack Gods: Amen. So, about these Braves …

Brett Butler Baseball Card: Look, they made it to the playoffs, right? They weren’t supposed to be there yet, so seems like a win to me.

Wax Pack Gods: True. But those bats had some troubles against the Dodgers. What do you think went wrong?

Brett Butler Baseball Card: I don’t know. Orel Hershiser‘s pretty good. And Fernando Valenzuela … always tough to hit.

Wax Pack Gods: No, no. The braves lost to Hyun-Jin Ryu, Clayton Kershaw, and Ryan Madson.

Brett Butler Baseball Card: And Tom Niedenfuer can put it together every once in awhile.

Wax Pack Gods: I don’t think you’re following me here. Do you think you could have hit better than Ender Inciarte in the NLDS?

Brett Butler Baseball Card: Who?

Wax Pack Gods: Well, hmmm. Let’s talk about the pitching staff. What went wrong with Mike Foltynewicz in Game 1?

Brett Butler Baseball Card: Who?

Wax Pack Gods: OK. It’s been great talking with you. Any last words for collectors?

Brett Butler Baseball Card: The commons bin is real. And it’s a terrible place to spend eternity. There are plenty of us there who would love a new home, and you loved us once. Big names — 1990 Fleer Kevin Maas, 1984 Topps Ron Kittle, 1978 Topps Mitchell Page, 1983 Topps David Green. 1985 Topps Benny Distefano. Isn’t there still a nine-pocket page or top-loader in your heart for us?

Wax Pack Gods: Well, that got weird, but it was great talking to you, Brett Butler Baseball Card.

(Check out the rest of our 2018 playoffs posts here.)

I mean, Bucky doesn’t look too impressive standing in a cold batting cage with his long black sleeves protecting his slender arms. It’s sort of a dank image with only the cage netting as background, and the “SS” designation lets you know not to expect too much firepower from Dent’s bat.

Heck, Bucky doesn’t even get the benefit of the fabled Yankees pinstripes, saddled instead with drab road grays.

But, really, it’s all perfect.

And to see why, we need to roll back the clock to the summer of 1978.

At the end of play on Sunday, July 9, just at the beginning of the All-Star Break, the Boston Red Sox sat in first place in the old American League East, nine games up on the Milwaukee Brewers. The Yanks sat in third, 11.5 back.

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Though the BoSox lead softened a bit after the break, the Yanks’ situation actually got worse, as they slid to 14 games back by July 17, a deficit that remained unchanged through July 19.

The next day, though, Ron Guidry beat Darrell Jackson and the Minnesota Twins.

Then Sparky Lyle beat Rich Hinton and the Chicago White Sox.

Then, a 6-4 run to end the month coincided with a 3-7 Boston slide to bring the Yanks to within 7.5 games of the lead. Trouble was, Milwaukee had climbed to within 5.5, and even the Baltimore Orioles got into the mix, matching New York’s 58-46 record.

Maybe even more challenging was the resignation of beleaguered manager Billy Martin on July 24. Dick Howser took the reins for one game before Bob Lemon took over for good.

So August began with mixed overtones for the Yankees, and the shine of their mini-charge wore off. An up-and-down month, though, left them 6.5 out with September to play. Even better, they held second place all to themselves, with only a limping Boston team sitting in front of them.

As it turned out, that stretch in late July was mere foreshadowing …

With blood in the water, the Yanks charged hard and took sole possession of first place on September 13 thanks to a 10-3 run coupled with a 3-10 BoSox splat.

It wasn’t over, though …

As has become so clear with these two teams over the many decades of their rivalry, neither one is likely to just lie down and clear a path to glory for the other.

So the Red Sox fought back.

After the Yanks built their lead to 3.5 on September 16, Boston chipped away and, after 162 games for both teams, their records were identical: 99-63.

And that set up a one-game playoff for AL East supremacy, to be played in Fenway Park on Monday, October 2.

Lemon sent his ace — Guidry — to the hill, while Boston manager Don Zimmer called on Mike Torrez.

The Red Sox scored first when future Hall of Famer Carl Yastrszemski smacked a solo shot off Guidry in the bottom of the second inning. They touched Mr. Cy Young again in the bottom of the 6th when Jim Rice singled to drive in Rick Burleson.

When Graig Nettles began the Yankees’ half of the seventh by flying out, it was starting to look like the Boston season would be salvaged.

But then …

Number-six hitter Chris Chambliss singled.

Number-seven hitter Roy White did likewise.

Then Torrez coaxed Jim Spencer into a flyout from the number-eight hole, and it looked like things might hold for the Sawx.

Especially with little Bucky Dent coming to the plate as the ninth hitter.

Just a Flyswatter?

In his second season with New York after four summers with the Chicago White Sox, the diminutive (5-9, 170) shortstop appeared in 123 games during the regular schedule, batting at a .243 clip with five homers and 40 runs batted in. The chances he’d do much damage in this situation were slim.

And yet …

The little righty (Dent) took the big righty (Torrez) deep to put the Yanks ahead 3-2. Mickey Rivers and Thurman Munson worked together, courtesy of a walk and a double, to bump that up to 4-2 before Lou Piniella flied out to end the inning.

Guidry and Rich Gossage held Boston scoreless in the bottom of the frame, and then Reggie Jackson homered in the eight to make it 5-2.

And, although the Red Sox roughed up Goose for a couple of runs in their half of the eighth and threatened — seriously — in the ninth, they couldn’t tie it up.

Final: 5-4 Yankees

The collapse was complete, after a series of ups and downs, fits and starts, for the ages.

And, for a generation of Red Sox fans, Bucky Dent became Bucky “Fudgin'” Dent, only they didn’t say, “fudge.”

It wasn’t until the Sox finally won a World Series in 2004, and another in 2007 and then again in 2013 that the vitriol between them an their various goats (Bill Buckner) and mortal enemies (Dent) began to soften.

These days, the rivalry between the Yankees and Red Sox is as intense as ever, but the Sox have a new swagger that has helped them shed most of their hard-luck loser appeal.

In 2018, for example, Boston ran off a gaudy 108-54 regular-season record to set up a showdown in the American League Division Series with — who else? — the Yankees.

The Yanks went 100-62 themselves but were decided underdogs in the match-up with their bitter rivals, and the series played out about as the numbers said it might.

The teams split the first two games at Fenway park, but the Sox demoralized the Yanks in Game 3 at Yankee Stadium (III) by a score of 16-1. Game 4 felt mostly like a formality, and the Red Sox took a 4-1 lead into the bottom of the ninth.

New York clawed out a couple of runs in the frame, though, thanks to an Aaron Judge walk, a Didi Gregorius single, a Luke Voit walk, a Neil Walker hit-by-pitch, and a Gary Sanchez sacrifice fly.

Whew!

But that left Boston closer Craig Kimbrel to face Gleyber Torres with two outs, runners on first and second. Any kind of ground ball would end the thing and, well, Torres grounded out to snuff out New York’s season.

It was a familiar tight ending between these two goliaths of the diamond, and you could almost have imagined it going the other way.

I mean, if you squinted and pretended you were young … couldn’t Gleyber Torres have been Bucky F’in Dent, just for that one at-bat?

Seemed that way to me.

But then, squinting and thinking about what might have been hurts a lot sometimes. Especially, in this case, if you’re a Yankees fan.

(Check out the rest of our 2018 playoffs posts here.)

You know …

One of those guys who blossomed out of the depths of a lowly Cleveland Indians roster to become a big name. Or, to find his stroke once the Indians traded him to a better team.

Some of the tea leaves were there …

He hit six home runs in 1983 and ten in 1984, with nice .291 and .290 batting averages to accompany them. Those numbers had us pausing as we shuffled through stacks of 1982 Donruss cards and wondering — would that Tabler rookie cards, where he dons the Chicago Cubs pinstripes and looks like he just woke up — be worth something someday?

Well, the 1985 season pretty much disabused us of that notion.

The Indians finished at 60-102, deep in last place in the old American League East. Tabler’s playing time dropped to 117 games, his homers to 5, his batting average to .275.  In more modern terms, his OPS+ dropped below the league average, to 91.

And he was already 27 years old.

So, by the time the new 1986 baseball cards hit store shelves the next spring, even the most ardent dreamers among us had given up hope that Tabler would really break out and lift his cards out of the commons bin.

We were done dropping him into our “maybe” piles.

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Imagine my surprise, then, when I pulled my first Tabler card from a pack of 1986 Donruss cards. There he was, kneeling with a bat and smiling — nothing really out of the ordinary other than an Indian of that era finding reason to smile.

Then it hit me … there was something else on this card. Something beyond the 80s-video-game design and Chief Wahoo sneaking in an appearance on the right-hand side of the card. There, almost hidden in the “INDIANS” across Tabler’s chest and the stripes on his sleeves were two words, written in script — “Mr. Clutch.”

What? What the heck did that mean? Had Donruss whipped up a new batch of designations for certain players and peppered them through the set? I shuffled through a handful of the cards and couldn’t find anything similar, other than the usual Rated Rookie tag for rookies that Donruss, um, rated highly for one reason or another.

Nope, this seemed specific to Mr. Tabler.

But again … what did it mean? Tabler wasn’t a star, he hadn’t done anything particularly memorable that I could think of, and the Indians hadn’t won anything during his tenure.

How could he be Mr. Clutch?

Being an inquisitive (and slightly indignant, by that point) lad, I flipped the card over to search for answers. But there were none. Not ostensible ones, anyway.

No mention of “Mr. Clutch.”

No big awards won.

Nothing … until I dug down into the details under CAREER HIGHLIGHTS. There, in the first line, I saw it:

Has phenomenal 22 for 35 (.629) career average in bases-loaded situations with 54 RBI …

Aha! So that’s it! Tabler was clutch with the bases full. Sweet!

It gave me renewed hope, for a little while, that he really would still be a star. A guy who became a Hall of Famer in his 30s, like Edgar Martinez before Edgar Martinez.

Didn’t happen, of course.

But that misleading-not-misleading 1986 Donruss Pat Tabler card did imprint him deep in my collector mind and my collector heart, and so he pops into my cardboard field of vision every now and then.

Like in October 2018, when the Cleveland Indians found themselves in the playoffs for the third season in a row, something that would have been unfathomable in 1985 or 1986 but that is almost expected these days.

Heck, were it not for the storybook Chicago Cubs in 2016, the storybook Cleveland Indians could have even won the World Series!

But in 2018 …

Well, the Indians were a notch or two below the peak they reached two years earlier, and they found themselves locked in a battle for the American League Division Series title with the defending world champion Houston Astros. Only, it wasn’t really much of a battle.

Cleveland dropped the first game, 7-2.

The second was a little better, at 3-1.

And the third was a disaster — an 11-3 loss at home.

Now, I’m a fan of the underdog, and Cleveland almost always fits that bill in my book. So, as I watched this series, I tried to think of ways that the Indians might have won, or at least pushed across a few more runs.

Inevitably, my ponderings turned to Mr. Clutch, Pat Tabler. Would he have helped?

Well, to work his magic, Tabler needed to work with the bases full (apparently).

In Game 1, the Indians left only three men on base for the whole contest, and there were no Tabler situations.

In Game 2, their LOB rose to four, but topped out at one for any particular inning.

And in Game 3, when the Indians actually led until the seventh inning? Another 4/1 LOB game for the Tribe.

In the end, then, it appears the Tabler’s clutchness was an interesting footnote on a quintessential 1980s baseball card issue but had little bearing on titles or big moments in the game. And, it seems unlikely that he would have made much of a difference for the 2018 Cleveland Indians.

No matter how much 14-year-old me wants to think that’s possible.

And, really, how big of a clutch performance could we expect from a 60-year-old 1B/3B/LF type, anyway?

(Check out the rest of our 2018 playoffs posts here.)

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Shiny and new was handled by hot shot draftees like David Nied and stars-in-waiting (or in-transition) like Andres Galarraga, Vinny Castilla, and Dante Bichette.

And purple uniforms that no one had ever seen before.

And a Major League team in Colorado.

And, believe it or not, real baseball cards featuring real images of real Rockies players in their real Rockies uniforms before the season was even over.

Like 1993 Topps card #591, featuring speedster Alex Cole.

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Now, by 1993, Cole wasn’t new in any sort of way since he’d been in the Majors since 1990 and would turn 28 in August. He was sorta shiny, though. I mean, just look at those shades on his Topps card — dude’s face is half high-shellac polymer.

And he was kinda flashy, too, as evidenced by his 40 stolen bases as a rookie with the Cleveland Indians.

But how would all that work in the mix with his new teammates? And how about the Rockies as a team — how would their concoction of newness and shininess and purpleness and thin air shape their fortunes?

Would they hit? Would they pitch? Would they field? Would they run? Would they win?

Well, yes, they’d do all of that, though not much of the winning. Their 67-95 record did leave them six games ahead of the non-expansion San Diego Padres, though, so the Rox didn’t finish last in the National League West.

Score!

And, well, they scored. And scored and scored. They’re still scoring.

We know now that offense plays well in the thin air. Pitching not so much.

Not all offense, though.

Not 1993 Alex Cole offense, for example.

On a team that finished fourth in the NL in runs scored and third in batting average, Cole hit a soft .256 and scored just 50 runs in 126 games.  His OPS+ was 64, not much to write home about as a starting center fielder for a new, exciting team.

(He did steal 30 bases, and that must have been exciting.)

It was good enough for a -0.5 WAR and a ticket out of town, as Cole signed with the Minnesota Twins for 1994.

As it turns out, Alex Cole could have probably played for the 2018 Colorado Rockies, too. At least at the end.

We didn’t really know what to expect from this year’s Rox, just like 25 years ago.

Sure, Colorado won 87 games in 2017 and appeared to be on the upswing, but they still play in the NL West. That’s where the mighty Los Angeles Dodgers roam, where the Arizona Diamondbacks are trying to build something, where the San Francisco Giants still think they’re entitled to a World Series title in even-numbered years.

These Rockies were plucky, though, and they pushed their win total to 91, good enough for a one-game playoff with LA for the division title. Colorado lost that one but still landed a Wild Card berth and a showdown with the upstart Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Division Series.

It promised to be a grab-your-popcorn-and-sit-back-to-watch-the-fireworks series.

And it was, for the Brewers. After a 3-2, 10-inning nail-biter in Game 1, Milwaukee completed the sweep with 4-0 and 6-0 victories, that last coming in Colorado.

On the series, Colorado slashed .146/.210/.188 as a team.

So … how does that shiny 1993 Topps Alex Cole card look now?

(Check out the rest of our 2018 playoffs posts here.)

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They finished last in the old American League West with a 54-108 record, and they also finished last in the AL in batting (80 OPS+), pitching (85 ERA+), and fielding (.678 Defensive Efficiency and .972 fielding percentage).

Tough to win much at all when you tank all three phases of the game, and the 1979 A’s bore that out.

That’s not to say those A’s didn’t show some glimmers of hope.

For one thing, rookie Rickey Henderson appeared in 89 games and stole 33 bases.

Youngster Dwayne Murphy hit 11 home runs and posted a solid 116 OPS+.

Catcher Jeff Newman cranked up the power to smack 22 home runs in 143 games.

There were some young arms with potential, too, even if they posted ugly-ish numbers in 1979 …

Rick Langford, Mike Norris, Matt Keough, Steve McCatty, Brian Kingman, and John Henry Johnson all looked like they might be decent or better Big League starters … someday.

But there was no sugar-coating the abyss of that 1979 season in Oakland, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a better embodiment of those woes than second baseman Mike Edwards.

Edwards came to the A’s in a trade with the Pittsburgh Pirates at the outset of the 1978 season and proceeded to hit .273 with 27 stolen bases. The peripherals weren’t great, but it was as solid start.

e also tied the record for most unassisted double plays in a game (2) — see 1979 Topps number 201 for proof.

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But, man, 1979 was rough.

A slash line of .233/.263/.280 was “good” for a 51 OPS+ and -1.5 WAR. It wasn’t just batting struggles that killed Edwards, either, as a healthy portion  of that latter bit can be attributed to defensive misadventures.

So a year after he was honored with that Record Breaker card, Edwards celebrated his breakout (breakin?) 1979 season with a 1980 Topps card that pretty much sums up those A’s.

There is Edwards, one foot planted on second, both hands up in front of his shaded face, apparently waiting for a ball no one can see. Might just be one of those rare cases of a ground ball getting lost in the sun.

And, if we’re being honest here, it looks like there is at least as good a chance that Edwards will land on his can in the next frame as that he will find the magic ball.

Same as his A’s … they discovered the magic ball just 54 times and ended up on their cans 108 times.

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I thought of this card the other night when the 2018 A’s found themselves readying for battle against the New York Yankees in the AL Wild Card round. It seems like a low-rent district for the big-dollar Yanks, but fits Oakland pretty well.

Over the last couple of decades, the A’s have become legendary for exploiting little aspects of the game that others haven’t noticed yet and building that breach into a playoff spot every few years.

They’ve been at the forefront of the Sabermetrics movement thanks to General Manager Billy Beane, and they scrap for every bit of glory they can get.

These A’s — the 2018 version, that is — weren’t good enough to challenge the Houston Astros in the new AL West, but they were good enough to win 97 games and snag that Wild Card slot. Nothing to sneeze at.

So, playing with that house money, how did the A’s propose to take down New York?

Why, by deploying only relievers to face one of the greatest lineups in the sport. The Wild Card is a one-game, winner-take-all proposition, after all, and each reliever should be able to shut down any set of hitters for an inning or two.

It’s what they do for a living.

That plan held together about as long as Mike Edwards’ balance (in at least one imagined scenario) on that 1980 Topps card of his.

To be fair, Liam Hendriks did make eight starts this season. But, he also had 17 relief appearances and was used exclusively as a reliever from 2015-17.

He drew the Wild Card start, though, and gave up a two-run dinger to Aaron Judge in the bottom of the first. He’d make it through the frame without further damage, but his night was done.

Lou Trivino came on in the second and held the Yanks scoreless through the fourth, and Shawn Kelley did the same in the fifth. Then the wheels came off in the sixth, with New York roughing up Fernando Rodney and Blake Treinen for four more runs.

It was pretty much over by that point, and the Yanks rolled to a 7-2 victory.

The A’s fell hard, just like that imagined next frame for 1980 Topps Mike Edwards.

(Check out the rest of our 2018 playoffs posts here.)

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Consider the case of the 1981 Donruss Mick Kelleher baseball card and the 2018 Chicago Cubs …

Dynasty Delayed

The 2018 Chicago Cubs were a somewhat star-crossed club who suffered through injuries, sub-par performances, and off-field issues from big names like Yu Darvish , Kris Bryant, and Addison Russell, yet also get clutch production from guys like Javier Baez, Kyle Schwarber, and Cole Hamels.

The result?

After struggling to find their mojo in the first half of the season, the Cubs seized first place in the National League Central on Friday, July 13, and never let go.

Well, almost …

After building their lead to a season-high five games on September 2, Chicago played at a mediocre 14-12 clip the rest of the way. Probably good enough most seasons to hold serve, but the Milwaukee Brewers were busy going 18-6.

The teams were tied after 162 games, in other words.

That set up a one-game playoff for the Central title, to be played at Wrigley Field on October 1 — the Brewers won, 3-1.

And that set up the Cubs to play the Colorado Rockies in the NL Wild Card game, again at Wrigley Field. On October 2, the Rox beat the Cubs 2-1 in 13 innings.

If you include the Cubs last loss of the 162-game schedule, a 2-1 clinker at the hands of the St. Louis Cardinals on Saturday, September 29, Chicago dropped three of four home games at home to seal their fate.

And in each of those losses, they managed just one run. Yuck.

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You might feel sorry for these Cubs if they were the Cubbies of old, the ones who scrapped together a decent team once every 15 years or so only to implode when things got real. It’s tough, though, to find real sympathy for what is now a huge payroll team that was — and still may be — expected by many to run off a string of championships when they copped the World Series title in 2016.

But just because the lovable losers are now the bombastic bombs, that doesn’t mean we can’t look back at the gory glory of Chicago’s painful past.

And what better way to do that than with some hideous cardboard.

Crappy Cubbies

If we step back through Cubs’ records over the years, we see that the losingest Chicago teams took the field in 1962, 1966, and 2012. Those first two teams were immortalized on 1963 and 1967 Topps cards, respectively, and those are two stellar sets.

That 2012 team was a “Suck for Luck” special that was designed to tank in order to build the supposed juggernaut we see today.

So I’m going a bit deeper in the stack, to the 1980 Chicago Cubs, who finished at 64-98 and in last place in the old NL East.

Not only that, but the Cubs finished last in the National League in OPS+ (83) and fielding (.974), while somehow hitting the league average for ERA+ (101).

Given all that, if you were looking for a poster boy to represent those light-hitting 1980 Cubs, you couldn’t do much better (worse?) than second baseman Mick Kelleher.

Now, Kelleher wasn’t the Cubbies full-time second-sacker in 1980. That honor belonged to Mike Tyson, who started 104 games and batted a robust .238 in 363 plate appearances, good for an OPS+ of 65.

Kelleher made 15 starts at second and five at shortstop, amassing 107 plate appearances in 105 total game appearances.

He slashed .146/.217/.177 with no home runs, one double, one triple, four runs batted in, 12 runs scored, one stolen base, and three times caught stealing. It was an amazing display that netted him a 9 OPS+ and a whopping -1.1 WAR.

That 1980 season was Kelleher’s ninth Major League campaign, and while he had never done much with the bat before, he had established himself as a veteran.

That status, and the need to fill in their Cubs’ cardboard rosters, enticed Topps and Donruss to include Kelleher in their 1981 sets. Fleer somehow abstained, and you have to give them props for that.

The 1981 Topps Mick Kelleher card is pretty decent, stats on the back notwithstanding. It features Mick in a posed throwing shot, showing the Cubs pinstripes and Cubbie logo to good effect in front of a gorgeous blue sky.

You want to be there, on that day, even if the Cubs stink.

Inauspicious Debut

The 1981 Donruss Kelleher?

It’s an embodiment of his — and the Cubs’ — 1980 season.

A smiling Kelleher kneels in the on-deck circle at one of the cookie-cutter 1970s sports bowls — Fulton County, Veteran’s Stadium, Riverfront Stadium? — in his powder blue road pajamas.

And he’s leaning on a bat that looks too big for any man to swing, let alone one with a .215 lifetime batting average.

That would all be enough to make the card front mostly preposterous, but add in the typical blurry, grainy lens work thatamrred most 1981 Donruss pasteboard, and you have a classically terrible baseball card.

At least the back is relatively uncluttered by 1981 Donruss standards, thanks to Mick’s limited career highlights …

1979 – Hit .571 against San Francisco pitching.

The irony of all this is that 1980 Mick Kelleher couldn’t have sniffed the 2018 Chicago Cubs starting lineup if he’d had Ernie Lombardi‘s nose, yet they essentially fielded a one-to-nine of Kellehers to round out their season.

And it only cost them a couple hundred million dollars to do it.

No wonder Kelleher is smiling at us from that awful, and suddenly wonderful, 1981 Donruss card of his.

(Check out the rest of our 2018 playoffs posts here.)

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