See …

Several years back, when I chose the best baseball card from each year, the 1986 Topps Don Mattingly came out on top for, you know, 1986.

Awhile later, I posted a link to that article on Twitter, and one of my followers, @MSUBeastLansing, reminded me there were other great cards from 1986, even from that same Topps set:

pic.twitter.com/Q5dYma53VO

— GreenIsGood.BeGood (@MSUBeastLansing) June 9, 2018

Faced with this evidence, I was forced to reconsider (yes, again) my self-imposed restrictions for this series — limit the number of catchers, limit the number of Cincinnati Reds chief among them.

But this is a card I somehow hadn’t seen often in my life until the point of that Twitter exchange, and it’s quite striking.

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Diaz has thrown off his mask and is knee-deep in a home-plate dustup as Tom Herr of the St. Louis Cardinals slides in feet-first. The bright red Cards and Reds helmets look almost identical to each other, since we can only see the backs, and you might think the two combatants toiled for the same team if not for Diaz’s slightly grayer uniform.

One of the great things about looking through old baseball cards in this electronic age of ours is that it usually takes only a few keystrokes to find out a whole lot more about what’s going on in the pictures that were such mysteries to us as children.

Now, if you’re the type who doesn’t want to see behind-the-scenes snippets from Star Wars because it will spoil the illusion, you should probably stop reading here.

But if you’re interested in the context of this Diaz-Herr play, I can provide some likely insight …

On September 4, 1985, the Reds were in St. Louis to take on the Cards at Busch Stadium in the last of a three-game set.

The Card were in first place in the NL East, and the Reds were fighting to stay in the NL West race. Their 69-61 record entering the game was a minor miracle compared to the mess they had been since 1982, but they needed help to catch the Dodgers.

They wouldn’t find that help in St. Louis.

After the Reds managed only a Max Venable single against Kurt Kepshire in the top of the first, the Cards loaded the bases with two out in the bottom half of the frame.

Herr had provided a large helping of the early heroics, singling against Andy McGaffigan and then stealing second. Terry Pendleton singled to left to score Vince Coleman from third, and Herr decided it was worth the gamble to try and make it 2-0.

It didn’t pan out, because Venable’s throw found Diaz waiting right where he should be, and that’s where we come in with our 1986 Topps card.

Herr was out.

In the end, though, that one-run margin held up as the Cards won 3-2 on a Mike Jorgensen single to score Pendleton in the bottom of the ninth.

St. Louis, of course, went on to lose a controversial World Series to the Kansas City Royals, while the Reds made a late push but came up 5 1/2 games short in the division.

You couldn’t lay too much of the blame on Bo Diaz, though, as the veteran catcher hit .261 with three homers and 15 RBI after coming over from the Philadelphia Phillies on August 8.

Over the next few seasons, Diaz became one of my favorite Reds (which admittedly is a bit like “favorite cookie”), and it was sort of sad when they didn’t re-sign him after the 1989 season.

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Even sadder was that ugly day in 1990, just over a month after the Reds completed their World Series sweep of the mighty Oakland A’s, when I saw the news in the sports section.

On November 23, Diaz had been adjusting a large satellite dish on his roof at home in Venezuela when something went wrong — the apparatus slipped or shifted or just fell, and it crushed Diaz’s neck and skull, killing him instantly.

Knowing and remembering these dark details is one of the hardest parts of being a baseball fan, but that’s what happens when you are immersed in a team and in its players.

And it also makes the bright points so much sweeter and more poignant.

Bright points like the 1986 Topps Bo Diaz card, with a cameo by Tommy Herr — it really may be the best the set has to offer.

(This is the 19th in our series of posts about the best baseball cards from the 1980s. Check out the rest of those posts here.)

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It has been well documented that the 1988 Score baseball cards set has no soul. That’s especially disappointing when you consider that the issue was supposed to save the hobby, from being great, I suppose.

Because the hobby was already great.

But 1988 Score was going to …

• Bring revolutionary, tamper-proof packs — though Topps did that in 1983.
• Wow us with full-color photos on card backs — though Sportflics did that in 1986.
• Include Magic Motion technology — though Kellogg’s and Sportflics already did that, in the 1970s and in 1986.
• Tantalize our senses with borders colored by the rainbow —  though Topps did that in 1975.

It seems there was nothing new under wax, or plastic, as it were. That didn’t stop Score from cranking out 74.12 million of each card, though.

Now, taken on a case-by-case basis, there actually are come nice looking cards in the 1988 Score set, and the photos are generally solid.

Some of the best cards include:

• Nolan Ryan bringing his Texas heat for the Houston Astros.
• Jose Canseco going all Paul Bunyan in the batter’s box.
• Eddie Murray powering through the strike zone.
• Vince Coleman scorching the basepath.
• Gregg Jefferies being an iconic rookie card as he throws to first base.

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But for this series of posts, where I’m picking the best card for each base set in the 1980s, there can really be only one choice …

Card #180, of Bo Jackson.

Awhile back, when I picked the best baseball card from each year, the 1988 Topps Bo Jackson took the Olympic-year gold.

But that card was off-limits for this series because I’d already written about it, so Shawn Hillegas took 1988 Topps honors.

And that leads us back here, where we can make ourselves whole again with the 1988 Score Bo Jackson.

It’s not quite the stunner that the 1988 Topps Bo is, but it’s not far off.

Bo is in his home white Kansas City Royals uniform, his powerful arms fully extended, his soon-to-be-troublesome hips ready to snap into the swing. Bo’s head is down and his eyes are locked on the ball, maybe a curve just dropping into the zone.

Will Bo make contact? Smack a home run? Generate a gale-force whiff?

The next split second would tell us, if we could only unpause the frame. But then … the moment would be gone, and we’d have to rely on our memory to recall it.

As it is, this card will live forever in its bath of Royals blue, on the borders and on Jackson‘s uniform.

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On this card, Bo will always be young and healthy and like no one else we’ve ever seen in Major League spikes.

And he’ll always have the best card from the 1988 Score set, no matter how much hope you still hold for a Gregg Jefferies comeback.

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(This is the 25th in our series of posts about the best baseball cards from the 1980s. Check out the rest of those posts here.)

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Look, we all know that the Ken Griffey, Jr., rookie card is the greatest card in the 1989 Upper Deck set.

I admitted as much when I anointed it as the best card in all of 1989 last year as part of a similar (but different) series of posts on the best card from each year from 1960-89.

Heck, the Junior rookie is one of the greatest baseball cards of all time when you consider everything. It’s the first card in the first set of cards from a company (Upper Deck) that changed the hobby forever, and it pictures a once-in-a-generation player in Griffey.

It looks pretty darn good, too.

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But I’ve already written about that card, so it can’t be my choice for best 1989 Upper Deck card here and now (unless it somehow morphs into a catcher card — then we can talk). Them’s just the rules.

So that frees us up to thumb through the other bazillion 1989 Upper Deck cards in search of The Best 1989 Upper Deck Card, Senior Division (as opposed to Junior, get it?).

There are plenty of strong candidates, too:

• Ramon Martinez banking into a turn as he prepares to land a pitch on his rookie card (#18)
• John Smoltz looking in for the sign from his rookie card (#17)
• Gary Sheffield actually *smiling* in the dugout on his rookie card (#13)
• Bo Jackson on the hot corner  talking with Royals third base coach Adrian Garrett about how easy it will be to score on card #221
• A young and lean(ish) Kirby Puckett leading off first base with Mark McGwire lurking and hulking behind (#376)

They’re all great, and they’re not alone. Love it or hate it, you have to admit that 1989 Upper Deck is jammed full of some of the best photography the hobby had ever seen.

So which is the best card among the non-Junior crowd?

As with so many of my selections in this series, it comes down to personal choice, guided by aesthetics and a sense of history.

Setting Junior aside, then, the best baseball card in the 1989 Upper Deck set is McGwire’s own pasteboard at #300.

By that point in history, of course, everyone knew that Big Mac was a slugger (if not a hitter) of Ruthian proportions. McGwire had smashed the rookie home run record with 49 in 1987, after all.

He followed that up with 32 home runs and 99 RBI as the Oakland A’s rolled to an American League pennant in 1988.

With 1989 dawning, the young slugger was looking to bounce back to the 50-homer potential he displayed as a rookie, and Upper Deck captured the feeling of giant expectations — and ability — that swirled around McGwire.

Big Mac stands in stark profile against a twilight sky, just a young baseball god and his weapon (a wooden baseball bat). The camera angle helps McGwire dwarf the trees in the background and makes it seem like anything is possible.

There is also a striking desolation, a loneliness, to the shot, and the overall effect is eerily prescient.

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Within 10 years, McGwire would demolish Roger Maris‘s single-season home run record by slamming 70 of his own in 1998, and he’d also separate himself from the pack as a legendary slugger.

But there is sometimes a fine line between standing alone and being alone, and the whispers of steroid use that exploded to shouts in the late 2000s helped to separate McGwire from the game he loves.

There has since been some repair as Big Mac has moved back into the game as a coach, but what once looked like a surefire Hall of Fame resume still has him on the outside looking in at Cooperstown.

No matter what, though, he’ll always have the Best 1989 Upper Deck Baseball Card, Non-Junior Division.

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This is the 30th in our series of posts about the best baseball cards from the 1980s. Check out the rest of those posts here.

You might also enjoy our complete rundown of Mark McGwire rookie cards.

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The 1989 Topps baseball card set offered up a few things to distinguish it from its competitors.

First, as always, Topps “treated” collectors to mushy brown cardstock rather than the upgraded white stuff the other manufacturers were using by that point.

Next, we knew right out of the gate that Topps cards would be common as dirt. With the other sets, there was some hope for scarcity, but we knew where we stood with Topps.

Maybe most significantly, Topps was the only company — except for Score — to not include a rookie card of Ken Griffey, Jr., in their base set. No matter how much advance press Junior got, it seemed, he would have to wait for Topps Traded to make his debut with The Old Gum Company.

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Now, I realize all of those distinctions sound negative for Topps, but they did do some things right.

For one thing, the 1989 Topps design was pretty solid. Nothing earth-shattering, but a clean, simple layout that kind of hinted at 1965 Topps in a whispering sort of way.

The pinkish card backs were distinctive, too, and definitely had that Topps-y feel we all know and love.

And, while they missed out on Griffey, Topps did manage to nab plenty of solid rookies for their 1989 base set.

Among those first-year players who generated excitement, either in 1989 or later on, were Bill Bene, Darryl Hamilton, Monty Fariss, Ramon Martinez, Rob Dibble, Jack Armstrong, Gary Sheffield, Ricky Jordan, Andy Benes, Chris Sabo, Jim Abbott, Willie Ansley, Randy Johnson, Brady Anderson, Dante Bichette, Robin Ventura, and Steve Avery.

That’s a solid bunch of players, regardless of how many of each card Topps produced — some of them shone early in their careers, some late, and some pretty much all the way through.

You might even recognize a couple of award-winners among the group, as well as one oversized Hall of Famer.

To that list, you can also add Gregg Jefferies, who wasn’t a rookie but made his base-set Topps debut with a “Future Star” card.

That’s a really solid pasteboard and something of an icon for a set that never gained a huge collector following, but there is at least one card that’s even better overall.

That would be card #648 of Sandy Alomar, Jr.

Like the Jefferies and Sheffield cards, the Alomar rookie is dubbed a “Future Star.”

And, unlike the Jefferies, the Alomar rookie card is just that — a rookie card.

That is, it’s Alomar’s first base Topps issue, and it’s a really nifty one.

There is young Sandy in his chocolate San Diego Padres uniform with his catcher’s mitt extended, ball just lodging itself into his palm. Alomar appears to be jawing with whoever threw the horsehide, a slight smile on his face lending a light air to the whole scene.

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Overall, this card is a striking visual of a guy who would win the American League Rookie of the Year award with the Cleveland Indians in 1990 en route to a 20-year Major League career.

Will Sandy Alomar ever pick up a Hall of Fame plaque?

Nah, not as a player, anyway.

But he’s already picked up the honor of appearing on the best 1989 Topps baseball card.

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(This is the 29th in our series of posts about the best baseball cards from the 1980s. Check out the rest of those posts here.)

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If the 1988 Score baseball card set had no soul — a fact we’ve already established — then what can you say about the 1989 Score set?

That it had no face? That it was never born at all?

Maybe.

After all, 1989 Score is kinda like rocks or dirt. You can find it everywhere if you want to, though you hardly ever want to. And no one really knows how it got anywhere in particular.

It’s just always been there.

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And while the brightly colored borders of 1988 Score at least give that set an identity, 1989 Score is about as anonymous as they come.

White borders.

Tiny fanned diamond at the center of card fronts to list player name, position, and team. Score logo in the upper right-hand corner.

The photography is decent in general, though many images came out dark or blurry. They certainly pale in comparison to what Upper Deck gave us in their inaugural set that same year.

And, yes, Score treated to us card-back color photos again, along with plenty of stats and verbiage.

Beyond the “need” to collect one of everything that came out, though, there was little that compelled collectors to stock up on 1989 Score, so we didn’t, for the most part.

When faced with such an uninspiring set, then, how do you go about picking the best card?

Even more than usual, it’s a subjective exercise, though you can apply a few principles …

• Look for a great photo.
• Look for a pleasing color scheme.
• Keep history in mind.
• Give some credence to player selection (i.e., star power is important).

With all that in mind, my choice for the best card from the 1989 Score baseball set is … Nolan Ryan, at #300.

This card offers a strong shot of The Ryan Express right at the end of his drive as he is releasing the ball. Some poor batter stands less than 60 feet away and has a split second to reconsider his career choice as the spheroid of doom rockets toward his body.

The orange diamond used for the Astros designation at the bottom of the card complements Ryan’s rainbow sleeves, and the purple bottom border works well with the crowd in the background.

And, by the time this card was issued, Ryan was gearing up for his first season with the Texas Rangers after having left Houston as a free agent in the off-season.

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In case you have forgotten the early 1990s, Ryan cemented his legend in Arlington and, in the process, pushed the value of all his cards toward the top of the heap for whatever set he appeared in.

So, yeah, this card checks all my boxes and is as good a choice as any for best card in the 1989 Score set.

Damning with faint praise?

Maybe, but the worst baseball card I ever owned was still better than the best bill anyone ever sent me. So, as paper goes, this one is pretty solid.

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(This is the 28th in our series of posts about the best baseball cards from the 1980s. Check out the rest of those posts here.)

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In the summer of 1985, Oil Can Boyd was something of a baseball phenomenon.

He wasn’t a rookie since he had pitched too many innings in both 1983 and 1984 to still meet those first-year qualifications.

And he wasn’t the best pitcher in the American League — that was Bret Saberhagen or Ron Guidry or Dave Stieb or maybe even Charlie Leibrandt.

Heck, Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd hadn’t even been the best pitcher on his own team in 1984 thanks to the presence of Bruce Hurst, Bob Ojeda, and (yes) Al Nipper in the Boston Red Sox rotation

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But even with all that going against him, and even though the Sox weren’t the mighty SAWX they are today, Oil Can stood out.

It was the big, dark prescription glasses on his baseball cards.

It was the little eyes behind those specs and the high cheekbones and gaunt cheeks that all made him look 30 years older than he was.

It was the high leg kick and launchpad angle of his delivery … how did he ever keep the ball from sailing into space?

It was the bristling energy and fist-pumping excitement he brought the mound every time he took the bump.

And, of course, it was his presence in those 1985 baseball card sets, the ones that flooded the market with rookie cards and frothed collectors with visions of the greatness that might lie around the corner. For Boyd, sure, but also for Buddy Biancalana and Eric Davis and Cory Snyder and all the rest of the guys who made their national cardboard debuts that summer.

For a while there, Boyd was great.

He went 15-13, 3.70 with 6.1 WAR in 1985, which should have put him in the running for the American League Cy Young Award but left him with no votes.

In 1986, when Roger Clemens set the world on fire to help the Red Sox get to the World Series, Oil Can improved to 16-10, though his ERA edged up to 3.78. Still, that was good for 3.5 WAR.

We knew even then that our limelight time with this character was limited, though. By the time the New York Mets crushed Beantown hearts that October, Boyd had turned 27. Even though he was still considered to have “potential,” he was a late bloomer in baseball terms.

So, alas …

Injuries (blood clots) and maybe other factors conspired to limit Oil Can to just 30 starts combined in 1987 and 1988, and collectors had largely forgotten his cards by the spring of 1989.

We certainly had no reason to chase his new cardboard as the season dawned in that last year of the decade.

After all, we had Ken Griffey, Jr., and Gary Sheffield rookie cards to look forward to,

And it didn’t take long for the Billy Ripken bat-knob vulgarity to steal every hobby headline and catapult 1989 Fleer to the top of the “phenomenon” list.

But it turns out that old Oil Can Boyd wasn’t quite done with us, the fans and the hobby. Because, just when we’d put him out of our minds, he winked at us from inside a Fleer wax pack.

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There, on card #82 of the 1989 Fleer set, Oil Can bursts from the staid gray and white striped borders to remind us just how exciting baseball can be.

How exciting baseball cards can be.

How exciting Oil Can Boyd once was.

He may never have regained his early form, and it certainly didn’t seem right to see him wind down his career with the Montreal Expos and Texas Rangers, but Boyd did manage to go 13-8 with a 3.28 ERA in 1989 and 1990 combined.

In case you didn’t notice, he kicked off that mini-revival by scoring the best baseball card in the 1989 Fleer set.

You can look it up.

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(This is the 27th in our series of posts about the best baseball cards from the 1980s. Check out the rest of those posts here.)

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Do you realize just how serious Craig Biggio was about playing second base?

I mean, did you know that he used to don a face mask, chest protector, and shin guards just to take his position behind Houston Astros pitchers?

Or that he wore his batting helmet — backwards — in the field?

Or that his mitt was the size of a Charlie Kerfeld, just in case something wild happened?

You say you didn’t know any of that?

Well, take a look at card number 561 in the 1989 Donruss set and you’ll see Biggio in all his tools-of-ignorance-second-base glory.

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Now, sure, the position indicator at the top of the card next to Biggio’s name says “C” but we all know he was a second baseman. A Hall of Fame second baseman, in fact.

And, yes, Biggio’s page at Baseball Reference tells us that he played 428 games behind the plate in the Major Leagues. And that he won a National League Silver Slugger award at catcher the same year (1989) this Donruss rookie card was issued. And that he was an All-Star catcher in 1991.

But Biggio was a second baseman.

A Cooperstown second baseman.

Known for his grit and determination.

And what could be grittier and more determined than standing there at second base, as Biggio does on his 1989 Donruss card, in full battle regalia? Just waiting for a collision or some sort of hazmat situation?

Not much that I can think of.

And besides, we’ve already had a ton of catcher cards in this series of posts about the best baseball card from each base set of the 1980s. My pledge — to myself at least — was to limit the repeats and position overlaps, so I can’t include another catcher here.

Which means that Craig Biggio is a second baseman, as everyone already knows.

Because there is little doubt that the 1989 Donruss Craig Biggio card is the best card in the set.

Not the most iconic — that’s the Ken Griffey, Jr., rookie card.

Not the most valuable — again, that honor belongs to Junior.

But Biggio does well on both counts.

So, when you consider the whole package, no one can touch Biggio.

Consider …

• This is Biggio’s Donruss rookie card.
• A PSA 9 copy will cost you $5-10 on eBay (affiliate link). A perfect PSA 10 runs about $15. Both of those are cheap prices for the rookie card of a Hall of Famer, but it’s also a freaking miracle any card from this set can bring even that much money. This set still flows into the market from the depths of ancient stockpiles like water from an underground stream.
• The card looks great. Great.

Maybe not the design itself, because 1989 Donruss is pretty blah.

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But the Astros logo is in full display on the card front, and the normally ugly fadeaway top border matches almost perfectly.

The bottom border repeats that orange-to-yellow color scheme and makes the rainbow stripes on Biggio’s shoulders stand out even more than they would on their own.

And the picture sets it all off, of course.

There stands the future HOFer, crouched and focused on the action in front of him, waiting for something to come his way. Maybe it will be a runner or a batted ball or a thrown ball.

Whatever it is, you know Biggio will handle it with aplomb, because he has the tools and he’s ready to protect his turf.

Right there at second base.

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(This is the 26th in our series of posts about the best baseball cards from the 1980s. Check out the rest of those posts here.)

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Baseball cards reached something like a local maximum in 1987, when all three major manufacturers issued sets with definable character and at least a hint of scarcity (well, maybe not Topps).

It may not have been Everest, but it looks like a pretty nice peak from the vantage point of the 21st century.

At the time, we all thought baseball cards would only get better and better every year, but that was probably too lofty of an expectation from the beginning. It only took until the 1988 cards hit store shelves that spring to figure out we were in for an adjustment …

Topps looked pretty, but it was everywhere.

Donruss looked pretty awful, and it was everywhere, including places Topps wasn’t.

And Fleer …

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Well, Fleer seemed a bit scarcer. It wasn’t bleeding out onto the streets like Donruss was.

But whereas in 1987 Fleer had taken a step toward what we imagined a premium set might look like, the 1988 cards seemed … gimmicky. Cheap.

The red-white-and-blue-with-sprinkles design always reminded me of a Little Debbie Fourth of July snack cake and combined with the cheesy backs to make the whole thing seem like one of Fleer’s cheapo box sets.

On growth hormone.

Like a big ol’ “Revco Presents Baseball Superstars and Sorta Stars and Commons and Guys You’ve Never Heard Of” box set that you could pick up for $30 with the purchase of any piece of home medical equipment (minimum purchase $100).

Part of the cheese that I suppose was intended to be artsy and sophisticated was the ghosty white fade-in at the top of cards, where each photo jutted over top for a flat 3-D effect.

Now, Fleer had used a similar device in 1987, and I wasn’t crazy about it then, either, but it was something fresh to try.

Once.

When the fade came back in 1988, though, it seemed to eat even more photo real estate. As a result, there are tons of posed shots and up-close action shots that really aren’t action shots and tiny little figurine pictures.

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But one guy who shows up as none of that is Chicago Cubs catcher Jody Davis (#414).

Davis makes no concessions for this card.

He is a catcher in the middle of a play at the plate, and he has a tag to make.

Runner dude looks out to me.

Davis is in full lunge mode, ready to eat dirt if he has to. You can keep your little misty stuff at the top of the card, too, because Davis is having none of it.

He’s more than happy to duck down, not just to nab the runner but also to stay the hell away from your cakey white perfume, Fleer.

He will, however, doff his catcher’s mask because, you know, gotta show off the grill.

So, yeah, I picked another catcher.

And?

It’s Jody Davis. He’s railing against the degradation of our hobby. He’s fighting the Fleer frou-frou and winning.

He’s got the best card of the 1988 Fleer baseball set.

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(This is the 24th in our series of posts about the best baseball cards from the 1980s. Check out the rest of those posts here.)

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The 1988 Donruss baseball cards set is pretty much a mess, and it’s one of the biggest disappointments of the hobby’s boom decade.

After several years of innovations and trying to improve their cards, Donruss slid back to their 1981 roots in the span of one off-season.

For 1988 that meant thin cardstock, iffy photography and photo coloring, splotchy techno borders that miss the mark, and even Diamond Kings that suffered from half a decade of watering down. Ivan Calderon, Kal Daniels, Billy Hatcher, Shane Rawley, and Scott Fletcher were fine players, but it’s hard to justify their DK status beyond the fact Donruss didn’t like to repeat picks from the same team year over year.

And don’t try to lay my aversion to this set at the feet of the couple cases of bubble rack packs I bought in the early 1990s on the cheap and their even further subsequent drop in value. Or the reality that I still have some of these taking up room at the back of a closet.

Just a coincidence.

Really.

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Because these cards are pretty bad.

Now, there were a couple of sorta iconic cards among the dreck, the cards that tended to get used in advertisements when 1988 Donruss was still new.

One was Mark Grace, a Rated Rookie at #40, who most of us thought would be a pretty good hitter for the Chicago Cubs. Turns out the crowed was right in this case.

Even more iconic was the Gregg Jefferies rookie card at #657. Everyone knew Jefferies was going to be not just a good hitter for the New York Mets, but a true superstar. Probably a Hall of Famer.

We don’t look quite so smart on that one, though Jefferies did craft a fine 14-year Major League career.

Other solid rookie cards have emerged from 1988 Donruss over the years, including Roberto Alomar, Tom Glavine, Sam Horn(!), Jose Mesa, and Al Leiter, but none of them are awesome.

So, for me, 1988 Donruss mostly amounts to a pile of blue mush with red, black, and white accents. When it comes to picking the best card from the set, then, I’ll just grab a photo I like of a player I love and call it a day.

With that windy background, the best baseball card from the 1988 Donruss set is …

Fernando Valenzuela, card #53.

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By the time this card came out, Fernando had been in the league like, forever, but he was still just 26 years old as pictured. Freaking amazing.

And, sure, he slipped from 21-11 with a 3.14 ERA in 1986 to 14-4, 3.98 in 1987, but he still threw 12 complete games, tops in the National League.

More importantly, this card is not your typical Fernando fare.

On most of his other cards, El Toro is dealing from the mound. In a goodly portion of them, he’s looking to the sky during his legendary windup. That’s all good stuff, but we’d seen it countless times before by 1988.

Instead, Donruss gives us Fernando bunting in his Los Angeles Dodgers home white uniform during game action. And, even though this is a departure from most shots of Valenzuela, it displays two aspects of Fernando’s game we’d come to expect: concentration and determination.

He was going to hit that damn ball or lose a couple hunks of skin trying!

No, this isn’t a perfect baseball card — it’s 1988 Donruss, remember — but it’s an awesome shot of Fernando Valenzuela, and his Dodger blue actually looks good with the Donruss borders.

Considering that Valenzuela laid down eight sacrifice bunts in 1987 and 93 over his 17-year career, isn’t it fitting that he’d sacrifice his one appearance on this list for the 1988 Donruss set?

Unwittingly or not.

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(This is the 23rd in our series of posts about the best baseball cards from the 1980s. Check out the rest of those posts here.)

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The history books may tell you that Jose Canseco won the 1986 American League Rookie of the Year award and that Mark McGwire set the rookie home run record in 1987, but that’s not the way it went down.

Anyone who lived through those two summers will tell you the same thing … Wally Joyner is the man who made rookie-watching and power-hitting fun again.

<Insert A Demographic Here> may love the longball, but everyone loved Wally World, and his escapades added fuel to an already smoldering baseball cards market.

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Part of that smoke came from Canseco himself, who had the world talking about his power potential, and who hit five home runs in just 29 games with A’s late in 1985.

And part of the burn came from guys like Ruben Sierra, Cory Snyder, Will Clark, Barry Bonds, and other young rookies who had been hyped on their way up through the minor leagues in preceding years.

This rookie class was coming to rescue us from the drudgery of 1985, when we had to act like we were happy to celebrate the small-ball skills of Ozzie Guillen and Vince Coleman. I mean, it was fun to watch Coleman run, but neither of these guys could measure up to the big rookies who came before them — Cal Ripken (Jr.), Fernando Valenzuela, Darryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden.

Could these new guys pull us back from the brink? We were so confident they could that we happily chased their rookie cards on the basis of some minor league stats and a whole bunch of hype.

One guy who wasn’t hyped anywhere except maybe his mom’s house and in the California Angels‘ clubhouse was Wally Joyner.

Three years after the Angels took Joyner in the third round of the 1983 draft out of Brigham Young University, the 23-year-old first baseman had shown enough on-base ability in three minor league stops for California manager Gene Mauch to keep him on the Big League roster when camp broke in 1986.

On April 8, Joyner got his first start, against the Seattle Mariners in the Kingdome, and collected one hit in five at-bats.

The next day, he managed three more safeties, including his first Major League home run, and Joyner was off to the races.

By the end of April, he was hitting .333 with six homers and 16 RBI, and the baseball world started to take notice. It didn’t hurt that his heroics had helped the Angels to a 13-8 record, which amounted to a two game lead in the old American League West division.

Joyner hit another ten home runs in May, and he started to take on the gleam of legend. He was a baby-faced slugger who came out of nowhere to capture the imagination of an entire nation, even though many of us had never even seen a picture of him. We heard the descriptions and read the stats, and that was enough, for the moment.

The hobby, meanwhile, lost its mind — how could we not have known about this guy? And, more importantly, how could we not have any cards of him??

When Donruss announced that it would be producing a new set at the end of 1986 called “The Rookies,” we all knew who the driving force was. Our suspicions were confirmed when the checklist was released with Wally Joyner sitting at #1.

By the time that boxed set came out, though, Joyner had cooled down — way down.

His final numbers for 1986 included 22 home runs, 100 RBI, and a .290 average.

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Canseco, meanwhile, had pretty much kept pace with Joyner early on, finishing May with 15 home runs and 46 RBI while batting a solid .272. Canseco never really let up on the power numbers, though his average slid. His final tallies: 33 home runs, 117 RBI, and a .240 BA.

That performance secured the AL Rookie of the Year award for Canseco, with Joyner second. Both men made the All-Star team, though, and Joyner’s Angels came within an out of reaching the World Series.

“The Rookies” sold like hotcakes that fall, driven by Canseco, Joyner, Sierra, and others and then, finally, in early 1987, we got true rookie cards of the man who ignited the early weeks of the 1986 season.

Fleer gave us a smiling Joyner, posed for the camera.

Donruss also gave us a smiling Joyner, from about belly and up, apparently standing on base.

But Topps — well, Topps gave us a masterpiece worthy of the phenomenon of Wally Joyner.

In the shot on the front of the card, Joyner has just connected on something and is finishing his fine left-handed follow-through. He has just released the bat, and it levitates in the air behind him as he breaks from the box, exertion puffing his cheeks. His eyes are lasered in on the unseen ball as it traces its flight path, maybe down the first base line, maybe into the outfield, maybe over the wall.

The Angels logo in the upper left-hand corner is like a halo reinforcing how good the card is, and the Topps All-Star Rookie trophy in the lower right-hand corner reminds you how good Joyner is.

Like you could ever forget.

It’s all wrapped in the warm wood-grained borders that make 1987 Topps a legend in the hobby.

The overall effect — the legend of Wally World, the visuals, the 1986 ROY race, the 1986 Angels’ rise and ultimate demise — all converge on Wally Joyner’s rookie card, the best card from the 1987 Topps set.

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(This is the 22nd in our series of posts about the best baseball cards from the 1980s. Check out the rest of those posts here.)

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