It might be shock. See …

For Milwaukee Brewers fans, the 1987 season was a bittersweet mix of unexpected winning, shallow contention, intriguing position changes, and, ultimately…goodbyes.

After a 77-84 sixth-place finish in 1986, the Brew Crew blazed to a 13-0 start to the 1987 campaign, matching the 1982 Braves’ mark for season-opening fire.

Not surprisingly, that surge gave them a lead in the old American League East, and even when they came back to earth, the Brewers were able to stay in first place through May 13.

Alas, by the end of the day on the 14th, they were in second and would never regain the top run.

And, though Milwaukee finished a healthy 91-71 on the year, that was good enough for just third in the East, behind the Tigers and Blue Jays.

Besides the joy of outright winning that summer brought, the almost two million fans who pushed through the County Stadium turnstiles witnessed …

• The continued emergence of Teddy Higuera as one of the best pitchers in the game.
• Another excellent performance (.312, 21 home runs, 103 RBI) from Robin Yount in his second season as the centerfielder.
• An experiment to shift fragile Paul Molitor to designated hitter, where he logged 58 of his 118 appearances and responded with a .353 batting average and AL-leading 41 doubles.

The Brewers also got big(ish) power from Dale Sveum and Rob Deer, and a solid rookie season from catcher B.J. Surhoff.

Cecil Cooper’s Silent Swan Song

And then, there were was the big wind-down — after ten mostly stellar seasons with the Brewers and 16 big league campaigns, 37-year-old Cecil Cooper struggled through the first half of the season at DH and didn’t play a game after the All-Star break.

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That’s when Molitor stepped in.

It was a sort of quiet end to an understated, underrated career that left Cooper as one of the greatest Brewers ever.

But before Cooper could ride off into the sunset, Canada’s Stuart Bakery issued a set of baseball cards, grouped in panels of four and organized by team.

Each panel featured three player cards and a sweepstakes entry card.

Now, can you guess who the Brewers’ three gents were?

Yeah, the Milwaukee lineup was … Cooper, Molitor, Yount.

The panel was just like the season itself, with Cooper yielding to Molitor, and all of it backed up by the bedrock Yount.

Bittersweet, indeed.

Hobby Wow!

Cecil Cooper began his MLB career with the Boston Red Sox in the 1970s, wearing shirts that looked just like this one on eBay …

It’s a game-used rookie jersey from 1972. And, though the listing doesn’t mention a COA, it’s still fun to look at. Just be sure to do your homework before you pull the trigger on any game-used items.

See the full listing here.

It’s true.

But first, in case you forgot …

Boxed sets were the little groups of (usually) cheap, low-quality baseball cards Topps and Fleer made for several years, branded for and sold at places like Kmart, Walgreens, Kay-Bee Toys, Dad’s Pump-n-Dump, Carrie’s Discount Nails (“Nine for the price of eight!”), and so forth.

Only some of those locations are outright fabrications.

At any rate, the sets had names like Game Winners and Baseball’s Best and Hottest Stars and Madonna’s Diamond Conquests and Needle Boys.

Again, not all of those are made up.

One of the boxed sets that was definitely real and that definitely had its crystal ball perking was the 1987 Fleer Baseball’s Exciting Stars issue sold at Cumberland Farms convenience stores.

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Among the tantalizing talents who just made your heart jump and your nerves jangle ever time you heard their names were Don Aase, Von Hayes, and, er, Terry Harper.

And … Sid Bream.

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Now, at the time this set came out, Bream had just become a regular for the Pittsburgh Pirates (in 1986) after struggling to stick with the Dodgers through the mid-1980s.

He would turn 27 in 1987 — not young for a prospect — but the 1986 returns were good for the big first baseman … 16 home runs, 77 RBI, 13 stolen bases.

At least a little exciting.

Cumberland saw even more potential for spark, though, and *insisted* he be included in their set (so I like to imagine it).

And they were right, too, because Bream was a solid contributor to that 1990 Pirates team that won a division title.

They let him walk in 1991, though, and the lowly Braves signed him as a free agent.

Less exciting.

Bream only got into 91 games as Atlanta surprisingly won the National League West title, but he was back to full-time(ish) duty at first base in 1992.

The Braves won the West again, then squared off against those same Pirates in the NLCS.

That one came down to the bottom of the ninth in Game 7, where the Braves trailed the Bucs, 2-0, at home.

Bream drew a walk as the third batter, helping set up a one-out run on Ron Gant’s lineout.

A Damon Berryhill walk and a popfly out from Brian Hunter left the Braves with two outs and the bases loaded as Francisco Cabrera came to the plate to try and save the season.

Bream stood on second.

Cabrera slapped a hit to left field.

David Justice scored to tie the game.

Bream fired up his lumbering body and became the most exciting player in the game.

Cumberland knew all along.

That was 1951.

His ERA was 18.00.

Yet, somehow, the righty got another look in 1952.

He lowered his ERA to 9.00 in five appearances.

And then, in 1959, Bambi got one more shot, posting a 7.56 ERA for the Baltimore Orioles in three games after a long, long stint in the minor leagues.

He would head back to the minors for the rest of his career, which wrapped up in 1963, but Bamberger had already made the connections that would later return him to the Major League limelight.

See, Orioles general manager Harry Dalton helped Bamberger get started on his coaching career and even hired him as the O’s pitching coach in 1967.

Then, when Dalton moved on to the Milwaukee Brewers in the winter of 1977-78, one of his first moves was to bring in George Bamberger as his manager.

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That decision paid off, as Bamberger guided his young charges — including Hall-of-Famers-to-be Paul Molitor and Robin Yount — to a 26-game turnaround and a third place finish in the old American League east.

Bambi remained skipper through the 1980 season, when heart troubles and a so-so record after a return from heart surgery prompted him to retire.

But the wheels for something big were already in motion, and the Brew Crew made the playoffs after the strike-shortened 1981 season under Buck Rodgers and then became an all-time favorite band of characters with a cult following by winning the East under Harvey Kuenn in 1982.

After a year away, in 1981, Bamberger found he wasn’t quite ready to leave baseball behind, so he stepped into the abyss to manage the 1982 Mets, watching his former charges rise to glory from across the chasm of league boundaries.

Alas, even the Bambi magic couldn’t save the Amazin’s, and he resigned after the 1983 season.

Meanwhile, the Brewers slid from their glory of 1982 in 1983 and then tumbled all the way to the cellar of the division in 1984.

Dalton called up his old friend that offseason, convinced him that maybe together they could bring the Brewers back to life, pronto.

They couldn’t.

In his two-year return engagement, Bamberger led Milwaukee to two sixth-place finishes (there were seven teams in the AL East) before retiring with nine games left in the 1986 season.

Not a storybook ending.

But …

The reunion did give Brewers fans something they missed out on the first time around — a Bamberger baseball card showing skip in a Milwaukee uniform.

Actually, Bambi made a few appearances in cardboard for those mid-80s Brewers teams, including 1986 and 1987 Topps cards.

But the first, and maybe the oddballiest, was the 1985 Gardner’s Bakery card.

After a standard orientation in 1983 and 1984, Gardner’s showed up in 1985 with a colorful horizontal design, somewhat reminiscent of the 1955 Bowman set, sans the wood grain.

Produced by Topps, these cards were distributed by — surprise! — Gardner’s, a Wisconsin bakery.

And, who do you think leads off the 1985 set, grabbing card #1.

Yep, it’s the skipper.

And just like that, George Bamberger had his first solo Brewers card.

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In this hobby, as in life, timing is a key determinant of how you see the world around you.

For instance, Bert Campaneris never existed before 1984.

Or, at least that’s the way it felt to me when I started pulling his purple-tinged 1984 Topps card from packs that spring.

And it was confusing.

How could I, a seasoned veteran of one full, dedicated summer of collecting (1983), plus two years’ backlog of tattered and torn cards before that have never heard of or seen an old guy with enough Major League experience to generate Bible-text-size font on his card back?

The only logical answer was that he had just poofed into existence during the offseason, New York Yankees garb intact.

Or, maybe, that he was a coach that somehow landed in Topps’ 792-card lineup.

But then I found him in my 1984 Fleer cards, too. And it wasn’t too long after that that I stumbled on Campaneris in the cards from my hobby dark ages, 1981-1982, but wearing an Angels uniform.

But you know what I didn’t find anywhere?

A single 1983 Campaneris card.

It was a perplexing mystery — how could a guy play in the big leagues for so long, run up an endless string of baseball cards (apparently), and then take a cardboard break before showing up again after a year away?

But it wasn’t that compelling, not in the heat of a 1984 season filled with Detroit Tigers and Tony Gwynns and Chicago Cubs and Dwight Goodens and Don Mattinglys.

Maybe I noticed there were no 1982 stats on the backs of Campaneris’ 1984 cards, and maybe I didn’t.

I definitely sort of forgot about him, though.

And then one day, years later, I pulled out my 1983 Topps Traded set for some reason … maybe I was just dying to see Chris Codiroli in his A’s uniform.

It was there, thumbing through the stack of white-stocked picture-in-picture beauties, on card #18T, that I stumbled on the missing link:

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There really had been a 1983 Bert Campaneris card, after all, and I’d had it with me exactly as long as I’d had Darryl Strawberry’s XRC.

Either that, or the Campy card poofed into existence, too.

Hobby Wow!

Campaneris was a valued, if unsung, member of those amazing mid-1970s Oakland A’s teams, and this eBay lot lets you recapture some of the feels from that era:

That’s a Campaneris game-used bat from the 1973-75 period.

Check out the full listing on eBay right here (affiliate link).

1) He was part of those good-to-great Toronto Blue Jays teams who posted their first winning season in 1983 and remained contenders for the next decade.

That run included five division titles and two World Series championships, in 1992 and 1993 (though Rance wasn’t around for the second of those).

2) He had that unusual name — both parts — the likes of which you might never have heard before.

In fact, he’s the only Mulliniks to ever play Major League Baseball, and he’s just the second (and, so far, last) Rance, joining Rance Pless who appeared in 48 games for the Kansas City A’s in 1956.

3) He had a pretty bookish look on all those baseball cards you pulled of him — slender build, thick mustache, glasses, often with a utility infielder’s position listing — “3B-SS-2B” on the front of his 1985 Topps card, for example.

Mulliniks reminded you of the guy sat in front of you in band, or maybe your typing teacher.

But if you’re a fan of baseball books, you might have read Brad Balukjian’s The Wax Pack, which came out last year (it’s among our 13 must-own baseball card books).

In that case, you know there’s more to Mulliniks, one of the Wax Packers, as Balukjian calls them. And that, although he played in only three games for those 1992 Blue Jays, he was right there on the bottom of the pile when they capped off their first-ever championship in 1992.

Team management would have it no other way, it seemed, recognizing the wiry company man as a key component to their success over the years. Maybe it wasn’t coincidental that the Jays started winning after Rance showed up in 1982?

He was a Blue Jay, through and through.

But if you scroll back through the cardboard years, you’ll find Mulliniks looking a bit different in the early 1980s — in particular, you’ll find him wearing Kansas City Royals blue.

And maybe that will jog a memory, not seem all that strange. Still a blue uniform, still the wiry frame, still the mustache (in some cases).

You might even remember Rance from those 1980-81 days in K.C., before the trade that sent him north.

If you flip the binder back even further, though, something might jump out at you — a 1978 Topps card of Jim Barr, but one that’s labeled “Rance Mulliniks.”

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I mean, is this not the same guy, maybe even the same shot, as the one on Barr’s 1981 Topps card?

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That might be your first impression, as it was mine, but if you look closer … note the intense eyes and slender neck … imagine some specs and a ‘stache … and …

Holy moly! That’s Rance Mulliniks, shortstop for the California Angels.

A quick check of Baseball Reference confirms it’s true, that Mulliniks played parts of 1977 through 1979 for the Halos after they drafted him in the third round in 1974.

And before the trade that sent him and Willie Aikens to the Royals in exchange for Al Cowens, Todd Cruz, and Craig Eaton.

The same trade, that, just a couple years later, would turn into Rance Mulliniks-for-Phil Huffman and set Rance — and the Blue Jays — on a path toward their destiny.

Hobby Wow!

Those 1992 Blue Jays were an amazing team that realized the potential that had been brewing all through the 1980s. You can get a feel for at era with this item on eBay:

It’s a signed 16” x 20” photo featuring a slew of those Jays … but no Rance, as it turns out.

Still, a great display piece.

Check out the full listing on eBay (affiliate link).

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Nestled between Chet Lemon and Doyle Alexander in the checklist, this card is just 14 downstream from the set-opening run of Diamond Kings and Rated Rookies that defined — no, screamed — “Donruss!” for decades (sort of still do).

Heck, Bo himself led off the entire set as DK #1.

But, back to that base card …

Here we have the Kansas City Royals and Los Angeles Raiders superstar, kicking up his leg in the afternoon sun, ready to crush whatever offering the unseen pitcher dished up … or try to, at least.

As you can see from the back of Jackson’s card, he had found his full power stroke in 1989, crushing 32 home runs in 135 games, while also building on his strike stroke, whiffing 172 times:

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Bo had made the All-Star Game cut that summer (1989), starting in left field for the American League squad and leading them to a 5-3 win by virtue of a leadoff home run (followed immediately by a Wade Boggs dinger), a stolen base, and two RBI.

That would garner Jackson MVP honors in the Midsummer Classic.

Alas, he would never return to All-Star action, never play as many games, never hit as many home runs … never strike out as often.

In 1990, while this card was still “live,” Bo appeared in just 111 games for the Royals, though he did still manage to hit 28 long balls.

Then, in 1991, he suffered the devastating hip injury in a Raiders playoff game that put an immediate end to his NFL career and instigated a three-year exit from baseball, as well.

In the spring of 1990, though, when Donruss red bled from wax packs across the land, Bo Jackson was riding high on the diamond, and we all had our sights set even higher for him.

Heck, the Donruss set itself was flush with Jackson cards: Diamond King (#1), base (#61), All-Star (#650), MVP insert (BC1) … plus various parallels, tests, and previews.

You might even say it was a (ahem) Royal Flush.

I’m here all week.

And Bo is here forever, firmly plastered all over the one set that, maybe more than any other, embodies the ostentatious gluttony of the early 1990s hobby.

In all their gory glory.

(You might also like our complete rundown of Bo Jackson rookie cards.)

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It happens to the best of us, and some of us even become sort of known for it.

Take Mark McGwire, for example.

From the time he burst onto the Major League scene in the summer of 1987, Big Mac made his mark (ha!) in two areas — he hit tons of monster home runs, and he generated enough breeze with his swing to power a Bay Area wind farm for a year.

And, actually, McGwire’s reputation in those categories preceded him to the bigs, as he’d hit 23 home runs with 112 RBI and a matching 112 strikeouts in two minor league stops in 1986.

That got him a call up to the Oakland A’s in August of ‘86, and he continued to look like the free-swinging slugger he was — three homers, nine RBI … 18 strikeouts.

The Athletics had seen enough of the hulking first baseman, though, and he broke camp with the Major League team in 1987.

The major card companies had seen enough, too, and McGwire rookie cards started popping out of wax packs in the spring of 1987, just as McGwire started popping big league pitchers in the chin, metaphorically.

As Big Mac’s bat heated up, his 1987 Donruss Rated Rookies card scorched right along with him, becoming the hottest new card of the year.

The 1987 Topps woody wasn’t far behind, either, and that 1985 Topps Olympic card of his threatened to become the next 1984 Donruss Don Mattingly. It also made Topps look pretty smart, what with issuing a Big Mac card a full two years before everyone else.

Conspicuously absent from this homer party, though, where the fade-to-white, blue-sky-and-cloud borders of the 1987 Fleer set.

Both Donruss and Fleer proved pretty tough to come by for collectors that spring and summer, with some regions of the country having packs of one but not the other, and other areas limited to the Topps beauties.

But as McGwire stormed American League fields the summer, eventually setting the rookie record for home runs (49) and copping the AL Rookie of the Year Award, no one had a 1987 Fleer McGwire RC … because it didn’t exist.

So, how did Fleer whiff on the biggest new name of 1987?

Hard to say.

Maybe they were too focused on getting their fade just right, or maybe they wanted to save more room for Jose Canseco — McGwire’s ballyhooed teammate appeared on four cards in the set, after all.

Or … maybe Fleer was clever like a fox, ensuring they’d have a big name to headline their 1987 Fleer Update set:

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That smiling, hacking Big Mac may not be a true rookie card, but it is his first Fleer card (or FFC, as the kids say … nah).

And it did highlight the 1987 Fleer Update card, making #U-76 the most coveted bit of cardboard real estate in the box.

Or … maybe Fleer just whiffed.

Today, the 1987 Fleer Update Mark McGwire sells for $45+ in perfect PSA 10 condition, dropping to around $10 in “9” … downward from there.

Those prices are tick below the base Donruss and Topps McGwire, but that’s to be expected given that it was a latecomer.

No matter what, though, the 1987 Fleer Update Mark McGwire is a reminder that we all strikeout sometimes, but that we can still look good doing it.

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

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Here, take a look …

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Chances are, you’ve seen this card on myriad occasions and down a multitude of avenues — on the cover of Sports Collectors Digest when they were previewing the new 1990 cards … inside of SCD and other hobby rags when dealers offered 1990 Donruss cards for sale … in dealer cases at shows and shops … on your school playground or company breakroom while you and fellow collectors traded your wares.

And, certainly today, the image of that 1990 Donruss Griffey is just a mouse click away at all times and shows up online wherever (un)fine junk wax may be hiding.

Makes sense that this Junior would be all over the place, too, seeing as how it’s a second-year card of a guy who was supposed to be the next Willmickie Joe “Babe” DiMaysioman.

This hype coming, of course on the backs of his baseball pedigree AND his baseball card, which showed the numbers that landed him in third place in the 1989 American League Rookie of the Year balloting:

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Of course, what sets Griffey apart from all the other can’t-miss prospects of his era, all these years later, is that he didn’t miss. Indeed, he came about as close to living up to the lofty expectations heaped upon him as any human baseball player could.

That 1990 Donruss card of his?

Well … it’s pretty much what we thought it was when it first slid out of our wax packs all those years ago — a bloody mess.

Even young Junior seemed to have felt the weight of the gaudy design and avalanche of cards into which he was being poured. While the overwhelming lingering perception of young Griffey from those days is one of a smiling, carefree, baseball god overjoyed to have been released from Mt. Olympus to loose his lightning on the green diamonds of mere mortals, Ken Jr. doesn’t look any too happy to be part of this particular work of art.

Does he know how bad the set will be?

Can he feel the Red Death in his future, both in the form of this card and of his sour-milk return home to Cincinnati ten years down the line?

Or does he just have a stomach ache, or maybe he just caught wind of someone calling him the next Juan Beniquez.

Whatever the case, few player expressions have ever captured the spirit of a card’s design like Junior’s confused, disappointed, crouched-down, belly-cramp visage does here.

As always, dude nailed it.

See?

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Just Mantle in his pinstripes and midnight undershirt, posing with a bat in front of the cage on what must be a coldish day at Yankee Stadium.

With a plain-clothes stodge looking on in the background, just to reinforce the period of the shot, when all men strove to look like 50-year-old school administrators.

This was Mickey Mantle, centerfielder for the New York Yankees, the next Superman.

It’s a simple card, really, and one that’s sort of an afterthought in the pantheon of great Mantle cards. It’s pretty tough to standout in a lineup with his 1952 Topps, 1953 Bowman and Topps, 1969 Topps, etc., after all.

The back doesn’t stand out a whole heck of a lot, either:

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Lots of stats.

A premium number.

A cool little cartoon with a nod to Mantle’s World Series prowess.

Nothing much to see …

Well, except that cartoon really is pretty interesting in retrospect.

Even with Mantle slipping to a .255 average in 19 home runs, and with New York sliding to sixth place in the American League, you gotta figure most fans expected a bounce back.

Surely, Mantle would be back to his 30-homer form in no time.

And, certainly he’d lift the Yanks to the World Series again before you could say “Carl Yastrzemski Triple Crown.”

Alas, as we all know, the only certain things in life are Def Leppard and Texas.

Mantle and the Yankees were neither of those, though, and they never made it back to the Fall Classic together.

Thus, though the Mick did hit 20+ homers in both 1966 and 1967, he never even took another swing in October, let alone connected on a longball.

The 18 homers stood as his mark.

And, remarkably, through all the changes in the game, and against all the great hitters who have swung through the ages, the mark still stands as the World Series record.

In a way, then, that 1966 Topps Mantle card was a career-capper, calling out one of Mantle’s enduring achievements.

One that would stand up to the ravages of time.

One that no one knew was written in stone by 1966.

But one that Topps had the foresight to write in cardboard.

OK, maybe that’s a little extreme, but …

You know how, every once in awhile, you hear about someone finding or developing or coercing a “license to print money”?

If ever there was a baseball card analogy, it was any card company printing any card of Ryan in the early 1990s.

Back then, after Ryan traded Texas teams (Astros for Rangers), he became the hottest then-current player the hobby had ever seen.

That, thanks to stuff like ….

• Two no-hitters with his new teams
• Becoming the first pitcher with 5000 strikeouts
• Notching his 300th win
• Winning two strikeout titles after the age of 42
• Striking out more than 300 — for the sixth time in his career — at 42
• Beating Robin Ventura to a pulp when the youngster charged the mound

Yes, it all added up to an even bigger legend for The Ryan Express, and his 1968 Topps rookie card exploded into the stratosphere.

It dragged along every other Ryan card, too, and even the most mundane of his issues became must-haves.

Enter that 1992 Donruss card of his (#707):

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If you’ve ever wondered what it might feel like to have the Ryan Express bearing down on you with extreme malice, this might be about as close as you can get.

And, after the train wreck (see?) designs of the 1990 and 1991 Donruss sets, this one sported a crisp (dare I say “exciting”?) new look that makes Ryan look as fresh as a bottle rocket popping out of its cellophane bag in the early evening hours on July 4th.

And, if you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to be caught in Ryan’s disdainful, batter-facing stare, with a dash of extra disdain added by his declination to actually meet your eyes, the card back has you covered:

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Like the card front, this look represents a significant upgrade over past Donruss offerings. Though the truncated five-year-plus-career stats box remains, it’s shrunken down to make room for the aforementioned scorn, some career highlights, and even Ryan’s contract status.

And that card number tops it off, huh?

Ryan was as old-school as they came, and as old as just about any player had ever come, but the airplane of his career was still in full flight … same as his soaring hobby status.

So, yes, “707” feels about right.

Today, we know that this card is pretty much as plentiful as any other Junk Wax entry, and you can generally find it for sale at a buck or so for nice raw copies.

That can stretch up to $20 or more for PSA 9 or 10 graded specimens, but this card transcends all bounds of dollars and age and the space-time continuum.

Next time you stumble across a 1992 Donruss Nolan Ryan in a box full of penny sleeves, or a dealer case, or that shoebox under your cousin Freddie’s bed in his mom’s basement …

Just try and deny that you’re instantly transport back to those summers when Ryan made you feel like anything could happen, at least once every five days or so.