• It’s Spring Training, which means we’re seeing guys with their new teams for the first time. In the olden days, when Topps wanted to show a guy in his new uniform but didn’t have the requisite picture, they could airbrush the new togs in place (see 1988 Topps Traded Buddy Bell), they could airbrush away all identifying marks, or they could take a close up of the guy with no cap at all.
• It’s Spring Training, and guys who come south from winter climes might be working up their first good sweat in months, so stuff starts to come off.
• It’s Spring Training, and warm breezes blow — gotta let that hair flap.

OK, if I’m being honest here, I thought the first bullet point would hold sway when I started looking through cards to decide which hatless wonder I wanted to feature here in Day 20.

And there were some good choices, too, including just about all of the expansion team players from the 1969 Topps set, and that 1966 Topps Frank Robinson where he’s sporting a Cincinnati Reds jersey even though he would win the Triple Crown for the Baltimore Orioles that summer. When I first saw that card in miniature form in the 1982 Topps KMart set, I thought F. Robby was a basketball player — that Reds vest thing reminded me of the shoulder straps on a hoops jersey.

I digress, but only slightly, because Robinson spent that 1966 season, and a good handful more, toiling alongside a young pitcher by the name of Jim Palmer. Eventually, they’d both land in the Hall of Fame.

But before Cooperstown came calling, the O’s had some serious winning to do, thanks in no small part Palmer, who reeled off eight 20-win seasons from 1970-78, taking a breather-stumble in 1974 just to remind us how great he had been, and would be.

Palmer wasn’t just a great pitcher, though — he was (and is, I suppose) a real looker. And if you weren’t sure about that, you could ask him.

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But you didn’t really have to ask him, because Palmer showed up everywhere, including those famous/infamous Jockey underwear ads. You just knew he’d have a TV career when all was said and done, and he did/does, though I’m not sure how a prime time sitcom slot has eluded him all these years.

What didn’t elude Palmer was a head of the most luscious hair you’ll ever find on a dude, even if it eventually froze into a Shaun Cassidy 70s feathered sculpture of flow and stayed there. You could see Palmer’s hairdo coming from a baseball field away, and even today, you’d be hard-pressed to find a handful of players 50 years younger than him with better locks.

All of which is to say that it’s no surprise Palmer turned up on his 1980 Topps baseball card sans baseball cap. The Orioles were hot items, having narrowly lost the 1979 World Series to the “We Are Family” rendition of the Pittsburgh Pirates. And, even though Palmer slid to 10-6, he was still a superstar.

And still gorgeous.

So, yeah, his Topps card features him talking into a microphone in front of mostly empty stands, and his hair is a perfectly feathered capper to the whole thing.

But you know what’s even better than that hirsute card of Palmer?

His 1980 Topps Burger King card.

I mean, it has the same basic design as the base card, but it also has the BK hamburger logo in the upper left-hand corner, forty years before every website would have its own little hamburger thing. And the picture … well, it very well could have been taken on the same day as the one used for the base card.

But the BK picture comes later, after Palmer has worked up a sweat that imbues his tanned skin with a sun-kissed sheen. And his hair, though not quite as perfect in the “interview” card, has motion to it.

Like it’s fluttering in the Memorial Stadium breeze.  No hat could hold it.

And if this card doesn’t make you want to head out to the ballpark or to a local diamond to smack some on your own, well, sir or madame, I’m afraid I can’t help you.

Check out the entire series of 2019 Spring Training Challenge posts here.

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• Cartoons on Saturday morning
• A different sugary breakfast cereal for every one of those cartoons
• Video games, first in the arcade, then at home
• Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books in the school library
• Multiplayer rookie cards in our Topps baseball card sets

That last one — multiplayer rookies — was a gosh darn birthright for Little Leaguers and card collectors of all sort.

And, even if we sometimes would have rather had single cards of the players in question (I’m looking at you, Bill Denehy), the mashed-up rookies gave us something interesting to break up the monotony of the simply wonderful cards around them.

With all that said, we couldn’t really do a proper Spring Training Baseball Card Challenge without including a multiplayer rookie card, now could we? Nah.

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So that’s why I’m here on Day 13, getting ready to talk about the card that started it all — 1962 Topps Rookie Parade Pitchers (#591).

Not only is this a multiplayer rookie card, it’s the first multiplayer rookie card. Before 1962, Topps had given special treatment to their rookies in 1960 with Rookie Star (Carl Yastrzemski) and Rookie All-Star (Willie McCovey) designations, and in 1961 with the first appearance of the Topps All-Star Rookie trophy on “regular” cards (Ron Santo).

But those were all single cards.

In 1962, though, Topps decided to sardine as much talent as they could into their wood-bordered 598-card set, and one way to do that was to showcase more up-and-comers. Sort of like an early version of the modern Bowman concept.

And Topps unveiled their master plan for the first time there on care #591 with five pitchers making up a Rookie Parade of arms that held the hopes and dreams of four franchises in their pitching grips:

• Sam McDowell, Cleveland Indians
• Ron Taylor, Cleveland Indians
• Dick Radatz, Boston Red Sox
• Art Quirk, Baltimore Orioles
• Ron Nischwitz, Detroit Tigers

Of those, McDowell had by far the longest and most distinguished career. Over 15 Major League seasons, Sudden Sam crafted a 141-134 record on the strength of a 3.17 ERA and 2400+ strikeouts, nearly a K per inning.

Taylor and Radatz also had solid, extended stays in the Bigs, while Quirk and Nischwitz saw limited action over a handful of seasons.

But none of that is what’s important. Not really. Not for us. Not today.

More important is to realize that card #591 was just the lead-in to a whole subset in 1962 Topps …

• 591 Rookie Parade Pitchers
• 592 Rookie Parade Pitchers (different pitchers!)
• 593 Rookie Parade Pitchers (different still!)
• 594 Rookie Parade Catchers
• 595 Rookie Parade Infielders
• 596 Rookie Parade Infielders (different #1)
• 597 Rookie Parade Infielders (different #2)
• 598 Rookie Parade Outfielders

And the really important thing to realize is that this subset led to all the rookie subsets to come — the two-player cards, the three-player cards, four-player, Rookie Stars, Future Stars, Prospects, and on and on and on.

So, yeah, maybe Topps would have unleashed this concept on us sooner or later, no matter what happened in 1962. But as far as I can tell based on the evidence, 1962 Topps Rookie Parade Sam McDowell spawned the whole dang rookie card craze.

And even if he didn’t, this is still a pretty cool card to celebrate Spring Training with.

Check out the entire series of 2019 Spring Training Challenge posts here.

The temperature plummets, and the wind whips around you like a playful puppy, except instead of licking you and nipping at your heals, it steals the warmth right from your very soul?

You know, that kind of cold. The kind where you bundle up and turn the heat up and then crank up a space heater right in front of you for good measure … and yet you’re still shivering?

Yeah, it’s an awful affliction. But I have the cure.

Well, maybe not the cure, exactly, but at least a way to trick your mind into thinking warmer thoughts.

Here’s the secret …

Look at your baseball cards.

Big revelation, I know, given that you’re reading these words on a baseball card blog, but hear me out.

First off, I acknowledge that baseball stretches through most of the calendar year and that plenty of baseball games are played in the cold. Heck, I wrote a whole post on that subject yesterday.

But like I also said in that piece, baseball is a summer game at heart. I mean, would you be so interested in all the diamond happenings if we went right from Spring Training to the World Series each year, without six months of rising-then-falling temperatures, and hopes.

I sure wouldn’t.

From the early sunshine of Florida (and Arizona) to boiling All-Star Games to a Nolan Ryan fastball to blistering pennant races, baseball has always thrived on heat.

And baseball cards do a pretty good job of showing us that fire, which is why Day 6 of this 2019 Spring Training Baseball Card Challenge prevails upon us to consider a card that looks hot.

Now, there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of pasteboards that could have gotten the call here, so I pretty much just worked through some stacks until a card screamed out of the flames to me.

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And the one that did is … the 1983 Fleer Don Baylor card (#77).

I’ve always been a from-afar admirer of Don Baylor, ever since I saw his 1979 Topps card in the 1982 Topps Kmart 25th Anniversary set (yes, that set again). That’s the issue, in case you’ve forgotten, that depicts miniature versions of Topps cards from 1962 through 1981, each one showing an MVP from the given year.

So I knew early on that Baylor was the 1979 AL MVP when he played for the California Angels.

By the time I held that 1983 Fleer card in my hands for the first time, I could also see (from the stats on the back), that 1979 had been his career year — it’s tough for a mere mortal to top .296, 36 home runs, 139 RBI, and 22 stolen bases. Especially given that Baylor was moving into his mid-30s by the time I “discovered” him.

Still, he was a slugger who could do plenty of other things on the field, especially with a bat, and he looked like a nice dude, to boot. Somewhere along that time, I learned, too, that Baylor had a penchant for taking a baseball to the arm or rump to get on base and help his team out.

Gotta love that.

But my admiration remained of the “afar” variety because it was the 1980s and Baylor played not just for another team, but for American League teams. Which meant I hardly ever got to see him play.

What I knew of him, though, I loved … right down to his cardboard. And that 1983 Fleer card was no small part of the Don Baylor ethos in my mind.

Here you had a guy who had reached the pinnacle of his sport yet was there in the batting cage, batting gloves on both hands, bat tucked under his arm, either ready to or having just put in even more time honing his craft.

I’m not sure where or when this photo was taken, other than to say it was before 1983 and it was someplace hot — likely on the road, given that Baylor is wearing his dark navy blue Angels road uniform.

You know it’s a hot day because 1) the sun glares in the reflection off Baylor’s batting helmet, 2) Baylor is wearing short sleeves, and 3) dude is covered in sweat from the combination of his day’s work and the heat of the sun and/or locale.

And yet … he’s smiling

Hot, sweaty, working hard, and happy to be doing it all.

What more could you want in a baseball player or in a baseball card?

Check out the entire series of 2019 Spring Training Challenge posts here.

Have you ever heard of Bruce Look?

Chances are you haven’t unless you were a diehard fan of the Minnesota Twins in the 1960s or collected the 1969 Topps set like it was going out of style. You know, with enough doubles of every player to field his own team.

I hadn’t heard of Look, either, until I was poking around the cardboard web looking for some interesting things to pin recently.

That’s when I stumbled across this friendly looking guy:

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This card is pretty interesting (to me) for a few reasons …

First off, I don’t ever recall seeing it before.

Now, that’s not a complete surprise seeing as how it was issued a few years before I was even born. But I’ve been around this (card) game for a lot of years, and this is a base card from the mid-series of a non-scarce issue. If you gave me those criteria for any particular card, I’d guess that I’m at least familiar with it.

Not in this case, which is pretty sweet. I mean, how often can you say that you “discovered” a new pasteboard from a nearly 50-year-old baseball card set?

Beyond soothing eyes fatigued by yet another sighting of the 1982 Topps Tom Veryzer card, though, the Look Rookie Card is fun because it presents something of a mystery.

Flip it over, and you see …

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Not only had Bruce Look been “a football star for Michigan State,” but he was “the best hitting rookie on the Minnesota roster” in 1968.

If you look at his page on Baseball Reference, though, you’ll see that 1968 was his only season in the Major Leagues.

So what happened?

Well, that college career probably had something to do with it.

Look wasn’t signed by the Milwaukee Braves until 1964, when he was 21 years old. He would spend the rest of the summer with the Single-A Binghamton Triplets of the New York-Penn League.

That November, the Los Angeles Dodgers selected him in the first-year draft and kept him at the Single-A level in 1965 … and 1966. In 1967, he made the jump to the Triple-A Spokane Indians, which prompted the Twins to pick him in the Rule 5 draft.

In case you didn’t know, teams are required to keep their Rule 5 selections on their 25-man rosters the entire following season, so this move punched Look’s ticket to the Major Leagues.

As Topps mentioned, Look did OK at the highest level, hitting .246 in 139 plate appearances over 59 games. He also added 20 walks to raise his on-base percentage to a healthy .353.

Alas, he was a 25-year-old rookie for a middling team (79-83 record) who didn’t wow his employers over a full season. When new manager Billy Martin arrived, the Twins were ready to win now (then), and Look evidently didn’t fit those plans.

He was shipped to the Triple-A Denver Bears in 1969 and moved right along with them when the Twins Triple-A affiliate became the Evansville Triplets in 1970.

Before the 1971 season began, the Twins traded Look to the New York Yankees, and he started that tear with the Syracuse Chiefs

In July, the Yanks swapped him the Milwaukee Brewers, who also dispatched him to Triple-A … which just happened to mean a return to the Evansville Triplets.

And that was the end of the road for Bruce Look as a professional baseball player, who made only a brief splash in MLB but managed to wrangle a pretty decent looking Topps card out of the deal.

But there is an interesting postscript — or prescript — to Look’s story …

His older brother is Dean Look, who was a quarterback at Michigan State before playing one game for the New York Titans of the American Football League (AFL) in 1962. The elder Look also pitched in three games for the 1961 Chicago White Sox.

But Dean Look achieved greater fame as an NFL official for nearly four decades, including a moment that most fans from 1980s have etched in our minds — he called the touchdown that resulted from “The Catch” when Joe Montana and Dwight Clark somehow hooked up to beat the Dallas Cowboys in the 1982 NFC Championship game.

No matter how you “look” at it, Bruce Look, his older brother Dean, and Bruce’s 1969 Topps baseball card all deserve another … or a first … well, Look.

(Check out our other player card posts here.)

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Picking out the best Vladimir Guerrero rookie card — or even identifying all available Vladdy rookies — is a challenging task.

See, Guerrero came along just as the hobby was climbing out of the Junk Wax Era and trying to recover from the baseball strike of 1994 (and 1995).

That meant lower production runs in general but also a proliferation of shiny, (super) premium, expensive cards that sort of ended the long-standing collector dreams of owning one of everything.

And Guerrero himself was an unusual sort — a free-swinging bad-ball hitter who raked for both average and power, didn’t draw all that many walks, and had good speed.

He also had a cannon of an arm in right field.

In an era (now) that emphasizes plate discipline, launch angle, exit velocity, and all the rest of the modern metrics, Guerrero looks like an anachronism.

Really, he and his cards were just caught in between epochs, forced to create their own timeless footprints on the game and hobby.

Here is a quick rundown of those Vladdy rookie cards, all of them issued just as the strike-induced fog was starting to lift.

1995 Best Top 100 Albany Polecats (#80)

Vladimir Guerrero running right at you as a member of the Albany Polecats. What could be more old-school and hard-nosed than that?

And all for $10 or less most of the time!

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1995 Bowman (#90)

This is arguably Guerrero’s “real” rookie card, as it’s the first widely available base set to show Vlad in a Major League uniform.

Over the years, this image of a young Guerrero in his batting pose has become a classic. You can find these for $10 or less in raw form, up to around $100 for PSA 10 copies.

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1995 Bowman’s Best (#2)

Here’s where we start to get into some of the glitz and glamour of the post-strike hobby.

Bowman’s Best is all shiny and foily, and you can find fancy parallels like refractors and “blue” versions, with prices ranging from less than $20 to well into three figures.

Check the Amazon and eBay links below to explore the various versions currently available on the market.

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1995 Classic 5 Sport (#115)

Having moved on from their days as a board game manufacturer, with baseball cards thrown into the deal, Classic was casting a wide net by 1995.

Part of that net included this 5-sport offering of athletes from MLB, the NFL, NBA, NHL, and auto racing.

Guerrero shows up in a nondescript uniform and on parallels including a printer’s proof, red version, silver version, die-cut version, autographed version, and probably combinations thereof.

It’s all pretty confusing, but gives you lots of opportunities to snag another Vladdy rookie, generally for less than 20 bucks.

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1995 SP Top 10 Prospects (#7)

This card features Guerrero in a cameo shot surrounded by a picture frame sorta deal. It’s hokey and irregular — and comes in a couple varieties — but, again, how can you pass up a smiling Polecats Vladdy?

Prices range from under $10 to $100 or so depending on version and grade.

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1995 SP Top Prospects (#90)

Not to be confused with SP Top 10 Prospects, this SP Top Prospects card shows Guerrero sitting and smiling in his Polecats uniform, and without the burgundy picture frame.

Huge difference.

Trust me.

This one also exists in autographed and promo form.

Sticker prices run up towards $300 for PSA 10 copies.

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1995 SP Top Prospects Destination The Show

Another Albany Polecats card, this one takes the prize for Vladimir Guerrero Rookie Card with the Longest Name.

It also seems to be relatively scarce, at least judging by the copies available for sale on eBay and at other online outlets.

The lack of available specimens is reflected in the price tag — folks are asking $200 or so for PSA 9 and around $100 for raw copies.

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1995 Upper Deck Minor League (#127)

The first Upper Deck card of Guerrero is a “Minor League” issue but shows him sliding in his Expos uniform.

Good looking card that you can generally find with and without the “Future Stock” designation for under $5 raw and less than $10 in PSA 9.

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(Check out the rest of our posts on the 2018 Hall of Fame class here.)

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The 1985 Topps Alfredo Griffin baseball card is one of those rare swaths of cardboard that drips with artistic irony.

If you were a baseball fan back then, you might have noticed that Griffin made the American League roster at the 1984 All-Star game, played in San Francisco’s Candlestick Park.

By the time his ’85 cards came out, you might have even still remembered that Griffin played three innings in that Midsummer Classic as a sixth-inning replacement for Cal Ripken, Jr.

And then, when you came across #361 in the 1985 Topps set, you might have assumed that Griffin made his All-Star appearance at least partly on the strength of his bat. I mean, defensive metrics were pretty much nonexistent in 1984.

Unless you were Ozzie Smith, you just didn’t make the All-Star team on glove wizardry alone.

And besides, Griffin was holding a bat on his 1985 Topps card, in a picture presumably snapped during that 1984 season. So, yeah, it all made sense.

Griffin. Bat. All-Star. Good numbers coming your way when you turned the card over.

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But …

Alfredo Griffin started life in the Big Leagues with a bang, winning the 1979 American League Rookie of the Year Award as a shortstop with the Toronto Blue Jays. OK, he tied for the award with John Castino of the Minnesota Twins, and Ross Baumgarten of the Chicago White Sox probably should have taken the hardware home.

Still …

Griffin was an up-and-comer with a bright future, with a .287 batting average and .697 OPS. Not world-beating, but decent for a 21-year-old shortstop.

There was time, and Griffin would improve.

But he didn’t.

The next few seasons saw his batting average drop below .250 and his OPS+ tumble from a nervous 89 to an awful 48 … in 1984.

So, yes, the year that Griffin made the All-Star team for the first time — for the only time — he was a putrid offensive “force” who produced at a .241/.248/.298 clip with modern defensive numbers that suggest he was subpar even in the field.

The very weapon that Topps chose to showcase on Griffin’s card the next spring, then, is the same weapon that should have precluded him from All-Star honors.

Just how in the heck did Alfredo find himself on a windy Bayside diamond that night in 1984, then?

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Well, as the story goes, Major League Baseball in those days paid for every All-Star to travel to the game with a guest (does MLB still do this?). As luck would have it, Blue Jays second baseman Damaso Garcia made the team fair and square and decided it would be swell to have his double-play partner onhand for the festivities.

Griffin was Garcia’s plus one, in other words.

Then, as bad luck would have it, Detroit Tigers shortstop Alan Trammell hurt his arm in the days before the game and couldn’t suit up.

American League manager Joe Altobelli needed a replacement shortstop to backup Ripken, and, wouldn’t you know it? Alfredo Griffin just happened to be on hand!

As author John Feinstein explained it:

Making the All-Star team the hard way: Major league baseball pays the expenses for each player here and for one guest. In most cases, players bring wives or girlfriends. Damaso Garcia, the Toronto Blue Jays’ second baseman, brought his shortstop, Alfredo Griffin. When the Tigers’ Alan Trammell hurt his arm and could not play tonight, Manager Joe Altobelli named Griffin to the team, partly because he’s a fine player, but mostly because he was here.

And so, when Trammell heads to Cooperstown later this month, we’ll have even more to thank the new Hall of Famer for.

After all, if it weren’t for the 1984 World Series MVP, we couldn’t giggle every time we see Alfredo Griffin — and his prop bat — on a 1985 Topps baseball card (eBay listing).

(Check out our other player card posts here.)

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 1985 Donruss Eric Davis rookie card can teach us a thing or two about timing and success.

See …

Being at the right place at the right time gets a lot of lip service, but this sentiment misses a key point (or several) about achieving success.

While it’s true that opportunity is often unpredictable in terms of timing and exact manifestation, it’s also true that you have to have the goods if you want to be able to make the most of those opportunities.

In 1985 (or thereabouts), Donruss and Eric Davis were ready for the challenge.

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Donruss had staked their claim, finally, to collectors’ hearts in 1984 with a reduced print run, improved design, and a legendary Don Mattingly rookie card (also a product of timing to a large degree).

They parlayed that Olympics-year breakthrough into gigantic hobby interest entering 1985, and they continued to intrigue with a black-bordered design that evoked strong reactions on both sides.

With richer photography and stark red accents, though, 1985 Donruss won over most of us, and we clamored to fill our collections with rookies like Dwight Gooden, Kirby Puckett, Bret Saberhagen, and Roger Clemens.

Eric Davis, meanwhile, was busy tuning up the legs and bat that had drawn comparisons to everyone from Willie Mays and Hank Aaron to Cesar Cedeno and Pedro Guerrero.

Davis teased with 10 home runs and 10 stolen bases in just 57 games with the Cincinnati Reds in 1984, but he didn’t progress quite as expected in 1985. In 56 games, he swiped 16 bases but connected for “just” eight home runs.

Opportunity would have to wait, but Davis was clearly part of the Reds’ plans as they prepared for future pennant runs under player-manager Pete Rose.

The pause gave Davis’s cards a chance to soften a bit in the glare of the other hot rookies, but by the time camp broke in 1986, both Davis and his cards were ready to break out.

And they did.

On the strength of 27 home runs, 80 stolen bases, and 97 runs, Davis helped the Reds to a second straight 2nd-place finish and even received some MVP consideration.

His power-speed predictably sent collectors back to our stacks of 1985 cards to pull his now-hot rookies.

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Arguably the most striking of the lot was his 1985 Donruss pasteboard, an action shot of ED at-bat in front of a blurry crowd, accented perfectly by the red stripes on the card’s borders.

And those divisive black borders lend a richness to the image that traditional white boundaries couldn’t have touched.

It’s an awesome card that became truly special because the player and company involved brought their talents together at just the right time.

That’s how you create the best card in a set, and Eric Davis did just that with his 1985 Donruss gem.

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(This is the 14th 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 summer of 1983 was marked by two important diamond-related developments:

• The three major baseball card manufacturers all stepped up their games considerably and issued base sets that, collectively, blew away everything they pushed out in the previous two years of post-Topps-monopoly cardboard.
• At the same time, baseball stepped full-bore into rookie mania, and particularly into power-hitting rookie mania.

For collectors, this was a perfect marriage because of course we love great-looking cards and of course we love rookies who can smack the snot out of the ball. Line up those 1983 rookie cards!

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But there was a problem …

Darryl Strawberry, who was lighting up the Gotham night with his towering home runs for the New York Mets was one of the most gifted hitters to come along in years, maybe decades. The baseball cognoscenti knew he was coming, but that didn’t matter much in the world of baseball cards back then.

Because Strawberry didn’t make his Major League debut until May 6 (at 21), none of the manufacturers deigned to include him in their 1983 sets. For the most part, you had to have logged some time in the Bigs in order to warrant a baseball card in the early 1980s.

So as Straw went about establishing himself as the most exciting young player in the game, we were left to dream about his 1983 Topps Traded card and make mental dates with that still-nonexistent set for November.

But even before Strawberry made his first appearance in New York pinstripes, an even more unknown slugger was starting to shrug his massive shoulders in the City of Big Shoulders.

On April 10, Ron Kittle hit his first home run of the season for the Chicago White Sox, and, by the end of that first month, he had swatted five big flies.

By the end of May, that tally was at 11, landing Kittle among the lead leaders and offering a rare bright spot for a ChiSox team that stood at 20-25 and in fifth place in the AL West.

That first home run of 1983 wasn’t Kittle’s first MLB home run, though, and that would make all the difference for collectors as the Sox heated up along with the summer.

See, Kittle was served the proverbial cup of coffee at the end of 1982, appearing in 20 games, and picking up 32 plate appearances. One of those ended in his first dinger.

At that point, he was within a few months of his 25th birthday and had just wrapped up his sixth full minor league season since the Los Angeles Dodgers signed him as an amateur free agent in 1977. No one was excited.

Well … almost no one was excited.

Because, while Donruss and Topps took a pass on the 6-4, 200-pound outfielder, Fleer took a flyer and slipped him in on card #241 in their 1983 set.

As Kittle’s homer total climbed the next spring, it didn’t take collectors long to connect that 1983 Fleer card to the Sox bopper, and the chase was on.

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By August 1, Kittle had 23 home runs under his belt, and the White Sox had turned things around, up four games in the division thanks in no small part to their out-of-nowhere superstar.

And, as the baseball card boom started to, well, boom, we had our first rookie sensation with big power whose card we could pull from packs we bought fresh at the local drug store.

Kittle didn’t exactly make us forget about Darryl Strawberry, but he sure helped us figure out how to collect a phenom, in the moment.

That’s a “skill” we have collectors honed to perfection in the years since, but there is no denying Kittle jumped rookie cards forward a country mile with 35 swings of his bat during that magical summer.

The 1983 Ron Kittle rookie card is not just the best card from that set, it’s also one of the most important cards from the hobby’s history that no one seems to remember.

But we do.

(This is the ninth 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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Ken Landreaux once lived the baseball dream …

He was good enough in high school for the Houston Astros to select him in the eighth round of the 1973 draft, but he wanted more. So he headed to Arizona State, became a standout there, and raised his status enough for the California Angels to select him with their first-round pick (sixth overall) in 1977.

That put Landreaux just down the road from his hometown of Los Angeles (Compton) and kept him in the warm weather he’d always thrived in.

It was a good fit, and Landreaux found himself in the Major Leagues by that fall. In 116 games through the end of 1978, he struggled to put up big numbers (.229 batting averages, five home runs, 28 RBI) but showed enough speed and glovework to catch the eye of other teams.

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One of those clubs was the Minnesota Twins, who liked Landreaux enough to insist he be included (along with Dave Engel, Paul Hartzell, and Brad Havens) in the deal that brought Rod Carew to the west coast in February of 1979.

Though the move north might have been tough to swallow at first, Landreaux adjusted quickly and established himself as a budding star with the Twins in 1979, hitting .305 with 15 homers and 83 RBI.

He wasn’t the only reason to be excited in Minneapolis, either, as Minnesota crafted an 82-80 record that summer thanks to a young core of players and the guidance of manager Gene Mauch.

The Twins were inconsistent early in 1980, though, and they entered their April 23rd home game against Landreax’s old team, the California Angels, with a 6-7 record.

In that game at Metropolitan Stadium, things got much worse, as the Angels thumped the Twins, 17-0.

While Angels hitters were teeing off against Minnesota pitching, California starter Bruce Kison was nearly untouchable, allowing just four walks and a solitary hit.

That base knock came with one out in the bottom of the ninth at the hands of Kison’s former teammate … Ken Landreaux.

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Kison retired Rick Sofield and Butch Wynegar after Landreaux’s double, but the no-hitter was gone.

While Landreax’s heroics did nothing to help the Twins that spring afternoon, it did serve notice that he was a man with tenacity, who never gave up. As it turned out, those traits would show up again and again over the next several weeks.

Game after game, Mauch wrote Landreaux’s name in the lineup, and game after game, Landreaux did what he was supposed to do — hit.

In fact, by the time the Baltimore Orioles rolled into Minnesota on May 31, 1980, Landreaux had hit safely in 31 straight games, a Twins record that stands to this day.

During that streak, Landreaux batted .392 to raise his season average to a hefty .356.

But against Scott McGregor on that final day of May, the hits finally ran dry. That in itself is nothing to lament too intensely, as McGregor was in the midst of a 20-win season and was a legitimate Cy Young contender.

Landreaux’s streak had been a rare bright spot in a dismal run for the Twins, though, and without it, there was little joy for a team that stood at 18-29 entering June.

Things didn’t get much better from there.

By the time Mauch was fired after an August 24 loss to the Detroit Tigers, the Twins were 54-71, and Landreaux’s average had fallen all the way to .272.  Minnesota finished strong (23-13) under Johnny Goryl, and Landreaux recovered to hit .281 on the season, but things were never quite the same.

On March 30 of 1981, just before the eventual strike-shortened season began, the Twins traded Landreaux to the Los Angeles Dodgers in exchange for Mathew Reeves, Kelly Snider, and Mickey Hatcher.

And so, after two years and heroics that most Little Leaguers can only dream about, Ken Landreaux was back home.

The marriage worked well, as Landreaux anchored center field and hit .297 with 18 stolen bases to help the Dodgers all the way to the World Series, where they beat the New York Yankees, four games to two.

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Over the next few seasons, Landreaux continued to develop his wheels, reaching the 30-steals plateau twice and helping the Dodgers content most years.

By 1987, his playing time and numbers had slipped significantly, and LA released him after the season. Landreaux played a couple more years in the minors (for Baltimore and the Dodgers) and then retired.

On his career, Ken Landreaux batted .268 on the back of 1099 hits, collecting 91 home runs and 145 stolen bases along the way.

Any of those accomplishments would fulfill most boyhood baseball dreams beyond all realistic expectations, but Landreaux went even further beyond.

For one glorious stretch in the spring of 1980, he was Joe DiMaggio and Pete Rose.

Anything was possible.

(Check out our other player card posts here.)