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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There Eckersley was, posed on the front of his second-year pasteboard in cold-weather gear that included a long-sleeve “sweat” suit underneath a Cleveland Indians red home jersey. Of course, you might have been forgiven for thinking the top was actually pink and not red given Topps color scheme for the team that year.

And it was fitting, right?

The Indians were perennial doormats who couldn’t possibly hang with the big boys in the old AL East, so a nice, gentle color seemed appropriate.

‘Hidden’ Potential

Now, it’s true that Frank Robinson — the first black manager in the history of the Major Leagues — had guided The Tribe to an 81-78 record and fourth place finish in 1976, but no one really expected Cleveland to jump up and knock off the New York Yankees — right?

And who was Dennis Eckersley?

Fans outside of Cleveland may have known him as the young guy with a lively fastball, but he was no household name. Most would have simply thumbed past the card in a stack of gum-chalk-covered 1977s, but a few would have turned the card over.

For those who took the time to study Eckersley’s stats, card #525 was likely a revelation …

In 1975, he had won 13 games and lost only seven for a Cleveland team that finished 79-80, showing some glimmers of promise. Along the way, Eckersley struck out 152 batters in 187 innings and sported a cool 2.60 ERA.

In 1976, the ERA ballooned to 3.44 and his record fell to 13-12, but Eckersley racked up 200 Ks in 199 innings. Back in those days, you just didn’t strike out a batter an inning unless your name was ‘Nolan Ryan‘, so … maybe Eckersley was worth a second look after all.

Really curious collectors my have, at that point, glanced up at the bio section of this 1977 card and done a quick calculation — as the ’77 season got rolling, Eckersley was just 22 years old.

This was getting interesting for anyone who made it this far, and Eckersley definitely warranted further scrutiny.

Flipping the card back to the front — and armed with the knowledge that a few minutes of a statistical deep-dive can impart — you probably would have noticed it immediately.

It was the glare of an intense competitor. The humorless expression of a young athlete who had no time for doubters. And the slightly unkempt hair that hinted Eckersley might be a little … wild.

If you weren’t excited by this kid by that point, well, it would still be hard to blame you.

Not Good but Dominant

After all, he still pitched for the Cleveland Indians, and they were going nowhere fast. Despite the improvements they’d shown under Robinson since he took over at the start of 1975, they stumbled to an 18-22 record that left them in fifth place through May 29 of 1977, a day on which they beat the struggling Oakland A’s on a Duane Kuiper walk-off single (how many times have you heard that one?!).

Even with that victory and the good things F. Robby had done for Cleveland, his managerial seat was already plenty warm by Memorial Day, May 30.

That night, the Indians hosted the California Angels and their own young ace Frank Tanana. On the mound for Cleveland would be that same, still clean-shaven fireballer that collectors may or may not have noticed in their first trips through 1977 Topps wax packs: Dennis Eckersley.

Tanana entered the game 8-1 and turned in another amazing performance that included six strikeouts over nine full innings, allowing just five hits and a single walk. The only run he surrendered came on a bunt groundout by Jim Norris in the bottom of the first inning to score — yes — Duane Kuiper.

Unfortunately for Tanana, Eckersley was utterly dominant, striking out 12 and walking just one batter in a nine-inning shutout. And, oh, by the way — he didn’t give up any hits at all.

Take a look at that savage sidearm delivery in the grainy footage below as Eckersley Gil Flores for the final out of his stunning no-hitter, and you get a small hint as to what Angels batters faced that day.

Now, look back to that glowering young man on the front of his 1977 Topps baseball card.

Doesn’t he look just a tad more vicious? Don’t those stats on the back make more sense?

Of course, none of that really mattered for the Cleveland Indians that season, who would finish at 71-90 and in fifth place. For his troubles, Robinson would be canned less than a month after Eckersley’s gem.

And Eckersley himself finished a pedestrian 14-13, though he did make his first All-Star game. He’d be gone before the 1978 season began, though, traded to the Boston Red Sox, where he’d record his greatest season as a starter.

From there, “Dennis” went through a series of up-and-down seasons and battled a myriad of personal issues before he emerged a decade after his no-hitter with the Oakland A’s as The Eck to become one of the most dominant relief pitchers in baseball history.

Could we have seen all the twists and turns of his storied career just by reading our cardboard crystal balls?

Hardly, but there were plenty of clues in Dennis Eckersley’s 1977 Topps baseball card that the young man was something special on the mound.

Way back then, we were eager to get our hands on any cardboard we could find, and we were all convinced of three things:

• We had to collect every card issued each year.
• Ever card issued each year would go up in value, forever.
• The quality of baseball cards needed to improve.

Thirty years on, those first two things have proven impossible, but our youthful fervor help to ensure the third came to pass.

Yes, we bought everything, but we also clamored for better photography, better design, better card stock. As it turned out we were willing to pay for those improvements, as evidenced by the success of Upper Deck in 1989.

But before that, Score was the testing ground — the proof-of-concept.

Here was a set with beautiful action photos, color pics on card backs, even “tamper-proof” packaging. We ate them up to an extent that proved to UD they were on the right track.

Underneath Score’s shiny surface, though, troubles were already brewing.

We didn’t know at the time that the set was just as overproduced — or more so — as the other cards that year.

We didn’t know they wouldn’t hold their value.

But if you were a longtime hardcore collector in 1988, there was something that felt just … off … about the cards.

They were too shiny, too solid, too uninteresting.

To be dramatic about it, they had no soul.

And even if you didn’t recognize that fact right away, there were indicators even at those early stages that all was not well.

Here are five of those Soulless Warning signs that 1988 Score baseball cards screamed from every pack.

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Plastic Wrappers

By 1988, we were all comfortable with the wonders of cellophane baseball card packages — we’d been searching through cello and rack packs for years looking for our favorite stars. And, while they didn’t impart the tactile experiences of ripping (or carefully unfolding, as the case may have been) wax wrappers, they were still part of the hobby fabric.

When Score pushed out their shiny new boxes, though, one of the first things we noticed was that those “wax” boxes were longer than their Topps, Fleer, and Donruss counterparts. One look inside told us why …

The cards were wrapped in colorful plastic, with extra space at the top and bottom for crimping. The result was an extra-long pack that required more room than the tight wax packs of the other companies.

Hence, the longer boxes.

But the problems with these packs went way beyond long boxes.

For starters, the excess room in each pack let the cards slosh around, and the floppy pack tops and bottoms made for a messy, crinkly box interior.

And, while the colored plastic would ostensibly make it harder to search packs, it didn’t take long for folks to realize you could still partially see the cards underneath. And, if  you moved things around just right, you could really get at a pack’s content.

How many old Score packs have you seen with thumb-nail gouges left by would-be hackers trying to get a peek inside? Why, 1988 Score is a plastic-and-cardboard archaeological dig!

But those plastic packs did something even worse …

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The Smell

Collecting baseball cards is an immersive experience if you do it right. All of your senses are involved:

Sight

The cards themselves are visual sensations, and veteran collectors can often identify specific cards based on just a glimpse of a corner or a hunk of card-back text.

Sound 

Each type of card makes a particular sound as it glides across one of its brethren. Old, mushy Topps cards, for example, sound like Q-tips sliding against a block of cheese. Thick, crisp Upper Deck cards sound like polished nails tapping on a glass desktop. Everything else is somewhere in between. Often, there are other sounds in the background — a baseball game played over a transistor radio is always a good choice.

Touch .

Likewise, every collecting experience has a certain physical feel to it. Old Topps cards are rough and fuzzy. Upper Deck cards are slick and hard. Wax packs are thick and sticky. Cello and racks are smooth and crinkly. And 1988 Score packs? Sorta crinkly, sorta papery, sorta puffy. In itself, not a soul-killer for Score.

Taste

Baseball card taste had already taken a real hit by 1988. After the courts came down on Fleer and Donruss for issuing their inaugural cards with gum in 1981, Topps was the only game in town when it came to pulling confections from your wax packs. So for most of us oldies, the taste of baseball cards is the taste of Topps bubble gum. You can offset the deficiency of the other companies in this area by popping open a box of Bazooka right along side your Score (and other) card packs.

Smell

Hand-in-hand with taste is smell, and this is where Score’s cardboard soul really starts to slide.

Topps baseball cards smell like gum

Fleer baseball cards basically don’t smell at all — maybe a vague wax scent.

Donruss baseball cards are a bit stronger in the aroma department — a peculiar mix of cardboard and ink, with that same essence of wax, that always lets you know you’re popping open a Big D pack even if your eyes are closed. It’s not altogether unpleasant, even if it’s not Topps.

Score baseball cards … man, these things stink. Literally. From the moment you pull open the box top, your olfactory system is attacked by an industrial bouquet that builds as you open more packs.

Plastic and more plastic (Magic Motion style) and ink (or other photo-related chemicals) and space-age cardboard — it’s a cocktail that can make even the stoutest among us dizzy and takes your mind anywhere but to baseball cards.

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Magic Motion Trivia

Every baseball card pack needs some sort of insert, and gum, stickers, and puzzle pieces were already taken when Score came along. So they opted instead for a set of  “Great Moments in Baseball” trivia cards that use the same Magic Motion “technology” that made Sportflics so … um … popular in the years immediately preceding.

Aside from being just about unreadable and only mildly interesting, the trivia cards had a few other problems:

• They were thick and bulky and just didn’t fit in with the rest of the Score issue.
• They were tiny compared to every other baseball card out there, making them difficult to store or display.
• They multiplied when you turned the lights off at night.

As a result, “Great Moments in Baseball” are the cockroaches of the hobby — they’re everywhere, but nobody wants them or knows how to get rid of them.

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Great Photography

In 1988, Score was heralded for its awesome photography, and for good reason.

Clear, crisp action photos dominated that inaugural set (and the ones that followed) and stood in stark contrast to the goofy, grainy, airbrushed monstrosities that sometimes infiltrated the other brands at the time.

It was great.

Too great.

See …

There was an old episode of The Twilight Zone where a man died and then found himself in a personalized Heaven. In the protagonists’s version of nirvana, everything was perfect — perfect food, perfect apartment, perfect bevy of women swarming around him ever day. In life, the guy was a pool hustler, and his Heaven of course featured a pool table.

And when the dude took up his cue?

He couldn’t miss.

After a few days of perfection, the guy started complaining to his caretaker — God or Gabriel or the like, we’re left to presume — that he wanted some variety.

A mole on the cheek of one of the girls.

A ham sandwich that was too hot or too cold.

The possibility of missing a shot.

After all, the dead guy reasoned, it was his Heaven. Why shouldn’t he be able to be happy — whatever form that may take?

To which “God” laughed. A full-on belly guffaw that sent shivers up the audience’s spine even though we already knew something bad was brewing.

“What gave you the idea this was Heaven?” the gatekeeper asked finally, or something to that effect.

Dark …

But you know what?

It turns out 1988 Score was kind of like that (Upper Deck would be even more so, eventually).

After 10 or 20 slinky packs of perfect photography, the soulful collector started to wonder — where are the posed shots? Where are the hatless wonders? The airbrushing? Claude Raymond with his fly unzipped?

Where, oh where, was the character?

I’ll tell you where … it was in your good ol’ local wax pack.

And Score couldn’t score on that front.

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Terry Franconia

As “perfect” as the 1988 Score baseball cards were, they had flaws beyond just too much perfection.

I mean, check out the list of errors and variations at The Trading Card Database. Pretty massive but maybe not unexpected for a first-time issue. And, after all, the other manufacturers sill had some gaffes going each year, too.

But here’s the thing …

Score was supposed to be better than that.

And even worse, several of these errors involved misspellings of player names. Not just on card backs, either.

Right there on the front of card #126, Dave Valle became Dale Valle.

Bob Brenly and Lee Mazzilli saw their last names spelled wrong on both the fronts and backs of their cards.

But the one that really rubs your spine the wrong way is card #297, Terry Francona.

Now, back then Francona was a light-hitting utility man who was nearing the end of his uninspiring Big League career. He had played for the Cincinnati Reds in 1987 and would spend 1988 with the Cleveland Indians before wrapping up with the Milwaukee Brewers in 1989 and 1990.

Francona was well-known and respected around the game, though, and his father Tito Francona had been a legitimate star for the Indians in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

All of which is to say that issuing a baseball card of Terry Franconia was unacceptable in 1988.

More than 30 years later, with Tito (Junior? The II?) looking like a Hall of Fame manager, the flub seems even more egregious.

It’s like when your grandmother talks to you about FaceSpace.

Or when your mother or wife, knowing you’re in IT, regularly asks you how your “little programs” are coming along.  (Projecting for a friend.)

Soulless.

The Upside

Of course, the upside to having a great-looking, mass-produced, soulless 30-year-old set on our hands is that you can get them for cheap. (There’s also the pretty amazing 1988 Score Bo Jackson single.)

And by cheap, I mean you can find boxes and sets and singles for single-digits most of the time on eBay and on Amazon (affiliate links).

Any way you cut it, that’s pretty cool …

… as long as you’re OK with unsoulful baseball cards.

(Check out our other related card posts here.)

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If your first exposure to Phil Niekro came through his baseball cards in the 1980s, then you probably think of him as an old man.

Heck, you may have even thought — upon first laying eyes on his cardboard — that the card companies had taken to making pasteboards of pitching coaches.

I mean, that can’t be an active player on Niekro’s 1987 Topps card, right?

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If not a coach card, then maybe a Senior League issue? Maybe MLB finally go tired of the Cleveland Indians‘ losing ways (back then) and traded them to the SBL? Maybe, except the Seniors didn’t start play until 1989.

Truth be told, even if you knew of Niekro earlier in his career, you probably still thought of him as an old man when he was throwing his knuckler off Major League mounds during a 24-year run that netted 318 victories and a plaque in Cooperstown.

Because for as long as most collectors can remember, Niekro was old-looking on his baseball cards.

But it wasn’t always that way.

Niekro signed as an amateur free agent with the Milwaukee Braves way back in 1958 when he was just 19 years old. And, although it took him six years to make the Majors and another three to really stick, Niekro looked fit, vital, and more or less young when his cards started rolling off Topps’ presses.

Here, take a look at his 1967 Topps card, which ostensibly shows him as he looked in 1966, his age-27 season:

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Not a kid, but definitely not a geezer.

So if Niekro was not born an old man, exactly when did the transformation happen?

When did Phil Niekro stop looking like a veteran MLB pitcher and start looking like a grandfather tossing Wiffle balls to his grandkids in the backyard?

It all depends on what your vision of a grandfather is, of course, but we can step through the cardboard ages to make a pretty decent determination.

Now, we know that Niekro was young(ish) on his 1967 card and really old on this 1987 Topps card. So, let’s use the bisection method to figure this out, starting with his 1977 Topps card:

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This is a tough call. Niekro’s body looks fairly fit here, but his face is much older.

I’ve definitely known grandfathers who look this old or younger. At the very least, Niekro is the dad of high-schoolers or your friendly Uncle Phil in this shot.

And since Topps was known to reach into the past for their pictures in the old days, it’s hard to tell when the photo was really snapped.

We need to go back and see what Niekro was up to a bit earlier.

Using bisection again, we find this 1972 gem:

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Pretty much primetime, not grandfatherly at all.

How about 1974?

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To my eyes, this is Dad, not Granddad.

And he looks pretty much the same in 1975 and 1976.

So … how about we go the other way?

Halfway between 1977 and 1987 is 1982. Here is what Niekro’s Topps, Fleer, and Donruss cards look like from that year:

Niekro is old here. Not ancient, maybe, but old. Heck, he can’t even get out of the dugout on his Donruss card, and I’ve known plenty of grandfathers who look better than Phil in these shots.

So, consider the shark jumped by 1982.

How about 1980?

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This is a really gray area (hardy-har-har) …

I mean, Niekro is pitching off a Major League mound, and the picture is far enough away and grainy enough that you can’t really see any wrinkles.

But he looks pretty stiff, and that body looks avuncular at least. To my eyes, it looks grandfatherly.

I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt here, though, but not on the strength of his 1980 Topps card alone.

And not because of 1981 Topps or 1981 Donruss, either —

No, the saving grace for Niekro in the early 1980s was his 1981 Fleer card:

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Now, Niekro doesn’t look young here, exactly.

You can tell he has plenty of miles on his chassis. And it’s really not a very good photo.

Still, his eyes are bright … his skin is tanned and mostly taught … his hair is bushy in an Incredible Hulk sort of way and could at least pass for blonde.

And that gold chain around his neck doesn’t look completely out of place.

If not for the “PITCHER” designation on his card, Niekro might well be a coach. But he might be an active player, too. Maybe.

Once again, it’s a gray area.

But Phil Niekro does not look like a grandfather on his 1981 Fleer baseball card, and that’s the last time he would ever be able to make that claim.

(Check out our other player card posts here.)

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They’re one of the prime drivers for the friendships we form, the social tribes — in the vernacular of today’s whippersnappers — we build.

I mean, have you ever had friends you met at work? Unless your name is “Albert Belle,” chances are pretty good. And somewhere among that group, I’ll bet there are at least a few folks who would have never come into your circle were it not for things you did together in the job place.

And if you’ve ever lost a job or a loved one or a pair of glasses, you know it’s the people around you going through the same emotions, or who have gone through the same emotions, who help you survive the grieving process.

But it’s not just negative or tough situations that help bring people together … nope, good stuff can do it, too.

Like baseball cards.

I mean, here we are, two people who don’t know each other (probably) sharing some digital space for a few minutes and having the same sorts of nostalgic thoughts — about baseball, about collecting, about fathers and sons or other relationships, about the good times we’ve had in the hobby, and the good times we hope lie ahead.

We have a shared past, shared hopes and dreams, whether or not we ever meet each other.

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And I’ll bet that most of us who partake of the cardboard arts have other shared experiences, too, from similar memories of our school days to anticipation of the new baseball season.

And cartoons.

I mean, if you’re reading this, chances are you grew up at least partially in the 1970s or 1980s … or at least the 1960s or 1990s. And in any of those cases, you likely know a thing or two about Saturday morning cartoons, Sunday funnies, maybe even comic books.

It’s one of the reasons, I think, why those little cartoons on the backs of some old baseball cards appealed to us so much as kids, and why they continue to pull at us today.

It’s also why I knew I had to include a card based specifically on the merits of its cartoon quality here on Day 44 of my 2019 Spring Training Baseball Card Challenge. Toons are one of the basic building blocks of a classic card collection, after all.

But which card, among the hundreds or thousands of possibilities, would make the cut here?

It was a tough call, let me tell you. But in the end, I came back to our true north for the day — shared experiences.

Page through (or thumb through if you’re going the stacks route) just about any Topps issue from 1954 through 1982, and you’ll see the dilemma — but not if you linger in 1973. Because there, on card #551, Topps presents us with a cartoon that stops the whole search train on the spot.

The front of the card features Mike Kilkenny, then of the Cleveland Indians and formerly of the Detroit Tigers, Oakland A’s, and San Diego Padres. Kilkenny is gazing into (or at a spot near) the camera, not looking too amused from his set-position pose, but looking very 70s chic with his brake-shoe sideburns. A sparsely populated Indians dugout peeps in behind him, and a few fans mill around in the blue stadium seats looming into the darkness above that.

It’s a fine card of a journeyman pitcher (23-18, 4.43 RA, 4 saves over five Major League season).

But flip the thing over and, holy cow!

Right at the very top of the vertical card back is a drawing of a young player in a baseball uniform, a large sack slung over one shoulder, and a trio of baseball-card-shaped golden *things* in his other hand. The caption confirms what you suspected at first glance:

Mike carries his baseball cards in his duffle bag.

Forget holy cow … holy crap!

This guy was one of us … a collector who couldn’t stand to be away from his precious cardboard for even as long as it took to do his business at the stadium. Nope, they went along with him. How could you not love him for that?

How could you not love this card for telling us about it?

You couldn’t not love either one, that’s how.

We have shared experiences, Mike and me, and you, too. And here’s one more for you …

Mike Kilkenny passed away on June 28, 2018, at the age of 73. I somehow missed the news, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that. And it’s all the sadder to learn about now, because Mike Kilkenny wasn’t “just” a baseball player … he was part of the vast cardboard brotherhood that ties us all together.

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

No one is immune to those ravages, but some of us are more susceptible and impressionable than others.

Like children, for instance.

And baseball fans.

Both groups are often searching for information about things they don’t yet know well, and both are often looking for sunny forecasts. Tell them (us) what they (we) want to hear, and you probably have a receptive ear.

And when you have young baseball fans, the effects can be compounded. That reality played out on a personal level for me in the summer of 1983, just as my friends and I were starting to get into baseball cards.

One day, one of those guys and I arranged a “play date” — we lived in the country, so getting back and forth between each other’s houses was sometimes an ordeal, and required planning. After a few hours running around in his yard, looking for and finding plenty of adventures, his mom called us in for lunch.

While we downed our bologna sandwiches, potato chips, and grape pop, the afternoon rains set in. Soon thereafter, so did the sleepiness, and we decided it would be much more fun to find something to do inside for the afternoon.

Luckily, he had accumulated a few baseball cards that spring, and so had I — and I just so happened to have brought some along with me. (Truth be told, we were all always looking for an opportunity for a pop-up trading session).

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I probably had a couple hundred cards in a small box I lugged along that day, and I’m guessing he had maybe 500-600 in his collection. Our options were limited, in other words, but we didn’t really know that at the time. We were too busy devouring every glimpse of a “new” card or unknown player, and every morsel of information on card backs.

By that point, I had already spent many hours reading through all my card backs, inadvertently memorizing stats and facts. I knew my buddy had done much the same because, in an earlier get-together, he had recited some glowing bit of Topps text about Barry Foote that I had only recently come across myself. My friend made out like it was his own original thought, and I let him have it — but I knew the truth.

On this day, my trade partner was looking through my box of cards to see if there was anything of interest to him when his eyes went wide and his body tensed. I knew he’d found some cardboard gold.

“Not much here,” he said, poker face stiff and flushed. “I might be able to give you something for this Dave Laroche … I guess.”

He pushed the card forward just a smidge from the rest of the stack, and I could see it was a 1983 Topps Super Veteran card. I had opened enough packs that spring to know that the Super Veterans included guys I knew pretty well, like Pete Rose, Reggie Jackson, and Steve Carlton, but also a few players who were mysterious to me as recently as January of that year– Kent Tekulve, Jim Kaat, Ted Simmons.

And Dave LaRoche.

I still didn’t know much about LaRoche as the days grew hot, but I did know — thanks to that Topps card — that he had been around since 1970, which was basically forever. And, from the card back, I knew he was 10th on the all-time saves list, with 125. And that he had some All-Star and postseason credentials to his name.

Oh, and he sort of looked like my friend.

LaRoche, then, was a star. At least in our eyes. No wonder my bud wanted that card!

But that was just fine with me, because I had spied the perfect return as I thumbed through my friend’s cards — a 1983 Donruss Storm Davis.

I didn’t know it was Davis’ rookie card, and I only vaguely knew what a rookie card was, anyway.

I didn’t know Davis was a pretty good prospect for a good Baltimore Orioles team.

Nope, what I knew was that he looked like a real ballplayer on the front of that card … and that his name was, “Storm.”

That was plenty, and the deal was swung.

Looking back, neither one of us really got the better end of that trade, but both of us won because we got to spend time with new cardboard, we got to learn about new (to us) players, and we were able to strengthen out friendship.

What more could you ask from a rainy summer afternoon?

(This look at “a card I traded away” checks in at Day 43 in my 2019 Spring Training Baseball Card Challenge.)

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

See, today I’m supposed to write about a single card that I bought, but …

As I sit here and rack my brain trying to come up with a suitable swath of cardboard, I’m realizing something about myself as a collector. Namely, I haven’t been much of a “singles” buyer over the years.

Now, don’t get me wrong here — I’ve had a few collecting projects over the years. I made good stabs at Pete Rose and Mike Schmidt base-card runs. I’ve chipped in a couple of cards in singles-fashion to complete a set here or there.

And like just about everyone in every walk of life, I’ve had my dalliances with impulse buys, too.

But there are problems with most of those.

I’ve already written extensively about Pete and Schmitty here on the old blog over the years.

And I honestly don’t remember which individual cards I slid in to finish specific sets.

And I sure don’t remember all my impulse buys.

Luckily, though, I do remember some of those spur-of-the-moment purchases. And as I sit here on a cold and snowy night in March of 2019 after a long day of work, I’m longing for the heat and freedom of a childhood summer.

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Which makes me think particularly about the summer of 1984, and all the times my parents and I spent tooling around in our old blue Dodge pickup, traipsing from antique store to antique store, flea market to flea market.

And it was on one of those sweaty trips that we found ourselves at the monthly flea market held at the Indiana State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis. It was a monstrous show, swallowing up three whole buildings, including the Agriculture and Horticulture building.

That place is a huge, cavernous three-lobed beast that feels like an old basketball field house when you’re in it, and you can practically taste the history dripping down the walls (along with the summer humidity).

On this particular day, we had finished winding our way through one side of the show and had just entered the wedge-shaped center section when I spied a guy with a pretty sparse booth near the women’s restroom. Basically, the set-up was just a few tables and maybe a bookshelf, but I could see even from a distance that he had the gold I was seeking — baseball cards!

So I high-tailed it across the floor, Mom and Dad chasing after me, and started picking my way through his wares. Mostly, it was mundane newer stuff — unopened 1984 Topps wax packs, some 1983 Fleer singles, maybe a team set or two.

But there in the center of one of the tables was a ginormous 1984 Topps Keith Hernandez card — the one with all the pale blue “METS” and accents, the Mets pinstripes … and Hernandez’s rump in center frame.

I’d seen that card plenty in the scores of packs I had already opened that spring and summer, but this version was freaking enormous.

“Those are the new Super cards,” the guy said. “Not many of them made. Going to be real collector’s items.”

“Wow!” I said. My poker face always has been stellar.

“And Keith Hernandez is a Hall of Famer, I’ll tell you that. He’s going to lead the Mets to the World Series.” The guy had a live one.

“How much?” I blurted.

“Well,” the dealer said, rubbing a scraggly chin. “I could let it go for 40 cents.”

“I’ll take it!”

And I did.

Still got it, too, so I suppose it wasn’t too bad of a buy even if most of what that dealer said to sell me on old Keith never rally panned out.

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

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But beneath all that sparkling newness, there is always a swirling undercurrent of finality trying to sweep men away into that vast darkness of a post-playing-career world. It’s here that stories of struggle and frailty and determination and grit and, ultimately for everyone, acceptance grow.

Because Spring Training is for the rookies and the young, yes, but it’s also for the game’s old men trying to put together one last run, break camp and head north with the Big Team one last time.

Today, on Day 41 of my 2019 Spring Training Baseball Card Challenge, I’m celebrating those guys who are fighting one last time against the pulls of time … in cardboard.

And, while he may not have gone to Spring Training in my lifetime (though he may have … not sure) no one was better at looking old on baseball cards — on some of my baseball cards — than Minnie Minoso.

Sure, Phil Niekro and Gaylord Perry looked like grandpas on the mound forever, and Harmon Killebrew was famously white-haired on his 1975 Topps issue, but none of them brought the weight of time to their baseball cards like Minoso did on his 1977 Topps Record Breaker card.

Those lines on his brow speak of a lifetime’s worth of stress, not surprising considering he was 50 years old when the photo was snapped, and 51 when the card came out.

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Those heavy eyes, gazing off into the distance at a world that’s maybe better than ours, tell of the struggles he has seen in his life and career. As a black man who came to the Major Leagues with the Cleveland Indians just two years after Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby broke the color barrier, his path had to have been a rough one.

The hunched shoulders speak of a physical burden born of years on the road, chasing his baseball dreams, and catching most of them … and of the years he’s been away from the game, settling into an uneasy retirement as best he could.

And, yes, I realize that this card exists only because of a publicity stunt perpetrated by the Chicago White Sox and Minoso himself. He would play in four different decades, and then five, the first man to do it!

And he would do it as a member of the Southsiders, by golly.

Retirement couldn’t stop him, either.

See, Minoso hung up his spikes in 1964 at the age of 38, but Bill Veeck brought him back for three games in 1976 at 50 to make him a four-decade guy.

Four years later, as the 1980s dawned, Minnie was back for yet another go — two games, two at-bats, two outs.

Ten years after that, Minoso was scheduled to make a minor league appearance with the Miami Miracle to become a six-decade professional, but Major League Baseball kiboshed the idea, robbing us of the chance to see a 64-year-old man on a baseball card as an active player.

It was an opportunity lost for all of us, because Minnie Minoso carried the torch for all us old men who thought — think — that if things break just right, maybe … just maybe … there’s still a chance.

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

If you’re anything like me, the list includes …

Palm trees and blue skies.

Warm-up jackets and warming temperatures.

Your favorite team trying to knock the rust off a long winter.

Old players in new places.

Old players in old places, trying to comeback.

Superstars trying to hold onto their perch.

All of these and plenty more are likely to flood your brain every time talk turns to the spring camps. But maybe more than anything, the overarching theme of spring in general and Spring Training in particular is renewal and new beginnings.

And nothing says “new beginnings” more than all the young guys around MLB trying to make their marks and crack a Big League roster. Card collectors are luckier than most in this regard because we’ve often had an early preview, courtesy of our cardboard, of the young dudes who might someday be diamond kings (or Diamond Kings) but who today are just a few strands of peach fuzz removed from home cooking.

With that thought percolating in my mind I knew I had to include a card of one of these young-looking players when I set out my 2019 Spring Training Baseball Card Challenge, so I’m here on Day 40 to discuss just such a pasteboard.

To figure out which specific card I wanted to profile, I went all the way back to the beginning … of my own hobby days, which means roughly 1983. In the spring of that year, I was just starting to eye the dusty stacks of 1981 and 1982 baseball cards I had stashed in a dark corner of my room, thinking they might be something worth thumbing through after all. By that fall, I’d be all-in, but not before a summer of discovery.

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At about the same time I was debating my cardboard future, one of those would-be Major Leaguers was trying his darnedest to crack the vaunted Los Angeles Dodgers rotation. Even though L.A. had finished second in the old National League West to Dale Murphy and his Atlanta Braves in 1982, they were still the Dodgers, after all. And they still had Fernando Valenzuela, Jerry Reuss, Bob Welch, and Burt Hooton for the rotation, joined by 24-year-old Alejandro Pena.

So it wasn’t too surprising that another 24-year-old, Orel Hershiser, found the going tough that spring and eventually found himself back in Triple-A with the Albuquerque Dukes. It was his second go-round in the mountains after climbing the Dodgers farm system one rung a year from 1979 through 1982.

Within a couple of seasons, of course, everyone would know about the “late-blooming” Hershiser, who led the Dodgers into the National League Championship Series with an incredible 19-3 record and 2.03 ERA in 1985.

The folks who were really paying attention before that, though — and most Dodgers fans — already knew Orel was on his way, finally. After an eight-game stint in the L.A. bullpen at the end of 1983, he went 11-8, 2.66 in ’84 to land third in NL Rookie of the Year voting (behind Dwight Gooden and Juan Samuel).

And, though, he didn’t garner an MLB card until his breakout summer of 1985, Hershiser did land a couple of minor league issues on his way up.

In 1982, he was card number 4 in the TCMA Albuquerque Dukes set. It’s a card any Hershiser collector would love to own, but the shot is far enough away, and grainy enough, that it’s hard to get a good look at the Bulldog.

In 1983, though, his return engagement in the same set gives us our first cardboard look at the choirboy who carved up Major League hitters for the better part of two decades — despite his late start.

There on card number 3, Hershiser kneels in the grass with a minor league outfield wall behind him. He has his mitted left hand on his knee, his right hand gripping a ball and hanging over his thigh. And young Orel peers out from under his read and yellow Dukes hat with the Richie Cunningham mug that he would carry into his forties and on to a 204-150 record.

Exactly how old does Hershiser look on his 1983 TCMA card?

You’ll have to make that determination for yourself, but younger than 24 in my eyes.

And much younger than I’ve felt in a long time.

But no matter how old he looks, he also looks … timeless.

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

Everybody wants to make a good first impression, and when you’re young you really have to prove yourself.

Same goes for when you start a new job or find yourself in a new community.

No matter how much we want to knock it out of the park early on, though, sometimes that’s darn near impossible. That goes double if you’re carrying a lot of baggage or inheriting a lot of baggage in your new gig.

That’s the situation the Texas Rangers found themselves in as the 1972 season dawned. They weren’t a new team, exactly, as they winked into existence as part of the 1961 expansion class. But back then, they were the Washington Senators, v. 2. After 11 lackluster seasons in the capital, though, and with only one winning campaign under their belts, owner Bob Short moved the team to Arlington for the 1972 season and changed their name.

Voila! The Texas Rangers were born.

Except … the Senators went 63-96 in 1971, and the Rangers didn’t do much in the offseason to polish up the product for their new digs. Indeed, they finished 54-100 in that first season down south and correspondingly drew a paltry 663,000 fans.

After another slow start in 1973 and with attendance still looking bleak, Short needed something to boost his team’s profile.

As it so happened, there was a young Texas high-schooler named David Clyde wrapping up his prep career that spring, and the lefty flamethrower was drawing rave reviews from several franchises. There were even whispers along the line of “the next Sandy Koufax.” Wouldn’t it be great if Short could snag the youngster and keep him in the state?

Well, by virtue of their putrid record the year before, the Rangers held their Clyde destiny in their own hands, and they drafted him with the first overall pick that June. He signed on with the caveat that he’d make his first two professional starts in the Majors before heading to the minors for some good, old-fashioned seasoning.

And so, on June 27, 1973, David Clyde made his Big League debut just 66 days after his 18th birthday. He won, defeating the Minnesota Twins, 4-3.

(Card image courtesy of COMC.com.)

1993 Keebler Texas Rangers – [Base] #106 – David Clyde

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On July 2, he lost to the Chicago White Sox and should have been done with the Bigs for awhile, but he pitched well enough to turn all that on its ear. Instead of an express trip to the bushes, Clyde was inserted into the Rangers’ rotation on a permanent basis, and ended up logging 18 starts. The fact that he went 4-8 with a 5.01 ERA left Texas management undeterred, and they brought him back for another go.

By the next Opening Day, Topps had latched onto the young phenom, too, granting him a solo rookie card in their 1974 set. Heady days.

But heady days tend to run into reality, and, after a 3-0 start to the new season, reality struck Clyde hard. In particular, a colossal argument erupted between new Rangers manager Billy Martin and general manager Bobby Brown about how to handle the youngster.

In the end, Brown resigned and Clyde sat for a month before splitting time between the rotation and bullpen to finish 3-9, 4.28.

He started 1975 still in the Rangers rotation, but he blew out his shoulder after one start. A trip to the minors didn’t fix things, and he underwent surgery in 1976.

Two more seasons on the farm left Clyde as an outsider in Texas, and they traded him along with Willie Horton to the Cleveland Indians in exchange for John Lowenstein and Tom Buskey in February of 1978. Though Clyde did land a spot in the Cleveland rotation, his results weren’t much better — 11-15, 4.66 ERA in two seasons by the lake.

And then … he was done, at the age of 24.

Clyde did make a comeback attempt in 1981 with the Houston Astros, but he couldn’t advance beyond Triple-A and decided to hang up the spikes for good. That might have been the last we heard from him, but snack-maker Keebler stepped into the breach in 1993.

That year, the Elfin folks produced a massive set of 446 Texas Rangers cards featuring black-and-white images of a huge chunk of the dudes who had dawned the red, white, and blue over the team’s two decades of existence.

David Clyde made the cut, and we got one last look — and one last reminder — of the guy who became the poster child for how not to handle a hot young pitching phenom.

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