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

Because the hobby was already great.

But 1988 Score was going to …

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

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

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

Some of the best cards include:

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

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

Card #180, of Bo Jackson.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Choosing the best baseball card from 1988 is like picking your favorite sip of water.

I mean, there are millions of each to consider and they’re all about as exciting as — well, as a sip of water.

Consider the base sets …

There was Donruss, who followed up what we thought was a fairly scarce 1987 issue (it wasn’t) by trying to take their product world-wide. Rumor has it that they produced one set for every resident of China but then just issued the cards stateside when they found out how much shipping costs would run.

The gyrating red-blue-black-white borders, blurry photos, and thin card stock may have seemed like selling points in the planning room but somehow failed to connect with most hobbyists.

Then there was Fleer, whose red, white, and blue slanted design looked like something you might pull out of a box of Little Debbies. The Fleer cards were interesting, sort of, because of that fade-in thing at the top of each card where the player’s head jutted into the clouds and gave the whole thing a vague 3-D effect.

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But there was just too much busy white space and not enough meat — player photo real estate in this case.

Score debuted with a lot of fanfare because they were premiumer than the other base sets …

• Score had photos on card fronts and card backs, and the photos were pretty darn good.
• Score cards were also very colorful, with card borders coming in a variety of hues and card backs featuring lots of different colored sections and type
• And, they were the first normal card (Sportflics didn’t count) to not be sold in wax packs, opting for little plastic pouches instead.
• For a few montths, Score also had the hottest rookie card of the hottest rookie on the planet, Gregg Jefferies.

But somehow, Score fell flat.

After awhile, all the colors seemed like a gimmick, and they took up too much room on card fronts, just like the white borders of Fleer. And it didn’t take us too long to figure out that Score had made billions and trillions of their debut cards, just like all the other manufacturers.

Then there was Sportflics … no.

And finally, there was good old Topps.

Boring. Classic.

Now, Topps has been accused of being unimaginative for decades, and I’ve heard that complaint specifically about the 1988 set many times. But if you look at the design objectively, you can see it harkens back to some of the classic issues of the past.

Namely, Topps picked up some of the best elements of their 1957, 1966, and 1967 sets and plopped them onto the front of their 1988 issue.

Unimaginative? Maybe, but you have to use everything at your disposal to win in business, and no company has a deeper, um, Heritage than Topps.

And they do know how to make a timeless, attractive baseball card.

The 1988s are no exception, and given the general dreck issued that year, there’s really no place else to look for the best card of the pasteboard season.

But which one takes the crown?

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You Know … Don’t You?

Well, there are 792 cards from which to choose, plus another 132 with the same design in the 1988 Topps Traded set, but a few stand out.

Pittsburgh Pirates cards, with their black and gold color scheme, look good, so the second-year Barry Bonds is a candidate.

Nolan Ryan makes a solid mid-stride appearance, complete with dirt on his knee.

And the Al Leiter error-corrected combo makes for an interesting story.

But there was no more compelling athlete on the planet in 1988 than Oakland Raiders running back and Kansas City Royals outfielder Bo Jackson.

Topps did a masterful job of turning his #750 in their baseball set into a miniature power-swing poster swimming in Royal and powder blue.

Would Bo choose baseball or football? Or both? Or neither?

In the end, a hip injury chose for him and limited Jackson to the diamond, and even that career was too short to satisfy any fan.

But in 1988, Bo had the world by the tail and could do anything he wanted.

And that included appearing on the best baseball card of the year.

Bo knows it’s true, and so do you.

(Read all about this 30-day challenge — and jump in on the fun — right here.)

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

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Heading into 1986, there were two things that baseball card collectors knew for sure …

Rookie cards would set us free … AND …

Jose Canseco was going to be the greatest rookie — and maybe the greatest player — ever.

The evidence was all around us after three years of monster rookie campaigns and/or rookie cards got us frothing at the mouth. Consider …

• Darryl Strawberry was one of the most exciting rookies ever in 1983 and might become the greatest player ever if Canseco didn’t beat him to it.
• Fellow New York Met Dwight Gooden was an even more exciting rookie in 1984 and and even more exciting Dr. K than that in 1985.
• Don Mattingly rookie cards — especially that 1984 Donruss card — were going up, up, up and pulling the whole hobby with them.
• We were awash in more rookie-card talent than we knew what to do with — Eric Davis, Mark McGwire, Oddibe McDowell, Roger Clemens, Cory Snyder, Fred McGriff, Kal Daniels, Ty Gainey, for goodness sake!

Things were great and they were only going to get better.

And then … they did get better.

But a funny thing happened while we were all waiting for Canseco to live up to his initials.

Out there in the old American League West, Canseco’s own division, the California Angels bobbled around .500 for awhile, then ended April on an 8-3 run that left them in first place by two games. They were bolstered by a fairly potent if aging offensive attack that included Reggie Jackson, Brian Downing, Doug Decinces, and Ruppert Jones.

But one power source no one foresaw (or, at least no one in my limited circles) was a young first baseman named Wally Joyner.

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Just 23 entering the season, Joyner had spent three years working his way through the Angels’ minor league system after California drafted him in the third round in 1983. He had shown just brushes of power with 12 homers in 1984 and 1985 being his high-water mark, and he had zero Big League appearances.

But as the Angels jockeyed for position heading into May, fans and collectors suddenly realized that Joyner had connected on six bombs in the season’s first month. Canseco had “just” five.

With May came warmer temperatures and, unbelievably, even more heat from Joyner, who joined Canseco in clubbing 10 more home runs.

At that point, all heck broke loose in the hobby because, while Jose appeared on cards in both the 1986 Donruss and 1986 Fleer sets, Joyner was nowhere to be found from a cardboard perspective.

And what’s worse, we knew we’d have to wait until the year-end sets to get our first look at Big League Pasteboard Wally Joyner. Oh, the humanity!

But just as Major League teams jostle for the best possible position in the standings, so too did the card companies slug it out for our hobby dollars. That was especially true of the still upstart Fleer and Donruss, so it wasn’t too shocking when one of them went to their idea well and pulled back a brand spanking new Wally Joyner card.

In that era of cheesy 44- and 33-card box sets that ran the gamut from Kmart to Woolworth to Billy Bob’s Fish ‘n’ Scoot, no company had to be without their own branded set, even if that company was Fleer itself.

So the Philadelphia gum maker fired up the printing presses and cranked out a set of “Baseball’s Best Sluggers vs. Pitchers.”

It was a limited edition.

It was available, like, now.

And it included the first-ever widely available Major League card of Wally Joyner at number 19. It was not a work of art by any means, and it was only “limited” by the number of trees on earth at the time, but we loved it.

I can remember this card selling for a few bucks each before Joyner cooled waaaaaaayyyyyyy down, connecting on just six homers over the final four months of the season to finish with 22.

Meanwhile, Canseco managed 33 and won the Rookie of the Year award.

And, of course, we got Joyner and Jose and Kurt Stillwell and plenty of other rookies in our Topps Traded, Donruss Rookies, and Fleer Update sets that fall.

But for awhile there, at the beginning of summer in 1986, no one meant more to the hobby than Wally Joyner. And if you wanted his baseball card, Fleer — and only Fleer — had you covered.

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

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If you have your sights set on a winter-themed baseball card type set, you’re going to need to buddy up to Matt Winters.

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Here’s why …

More than 19,000 men have played at least one game of Major League Baseball since 1871.

Of those, just four had the last name of Winter or Winters:

• George Winter, who played for the Boston Red Sox and Detroit Tigers from 1901 through 1908 …
• Jesse Winters, who toiled for the San Francisco Giants and Philadelphia Phillies from 1919 through 1923 …
• Clarence Winters, who made four appearances for the Red Sox in 1924 …
• And, Matt Winters, who made 42 improbable appearances for the 1989 Kansas City Royals.

George Winter appeared in a handful of early 20th century baseball card issues, and Jesse Winters made it into the 1924 Diaz Cigarettes set. As far as I can tell Clarence remains a cardless wonder.

All of which is to say that most of us would have never had the chance at a Winter/Winters baseball card were it not for a late-career push by Matt Winters. Before we get into the cards that were born of that improbable 1989 season, let’s step back a few years … all the way back to 1978.

Big Time Beginnings

Matt Winters was something of a hot-shot prospect coming out of Williamsville High School in Williamsville, New York. Hot-shot enough, in fact, for the New York Yankees to make him their first pick (24th overall) in the 1978 June Amateur Draft. Those were the same Yankees who won the World Series in 1977 and would turn the trick again in 1978.

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Of course, the problem for a young guy stepping into a storied franchise with a stellar current team was that there wasn’t a lot of light in front of him.

In the Bronx, Reggie Jackson manned right field.

Lou Piniella was in left.

Mickey Rivers was in center.

And, even though no one would have expected Winters to jump right to the Majors, there were other young guns in the New York farm system — Steve Balboni, Bobby Brown, Andre Robertson, Pat Tabler. It would be a tough road for any youngster.

And so it played out for Winters.

He spent 1978 in Low-A ball, then split 1979 between Low-A and plain-old-A. In 1980, he finally found a season-long home with the Single-A Greensboro Hornets and smacked 20 home runs while batting a robust .320.

But the Yanks were busy winning again in the Majors, which meant Winters got another season of A ball in 1981. It wasn’t until partway through the 1982 season that he graduated to the Double-A Nashville Sounds. He continued slugging, though, with a combined 24 home runs, good enough to get him a full season with the Triple-A Columbus Clippers in 1983 — the same year Don Matting started to make a name for himself in the Bigs.

After another 29 home runs and a .292 BA, Winters found himself back in Columbus for 1984 … and 1985.

Right Place, Right Time (Finally!)

Finally, just before Spring Training in 1986, the Yanks traded Winters to the Chicago White Sox, along with Neil Allen and Scott Bradley for catcher Ron Hassey and a couple of minor leaguers.

By that point, Winters was nearly 26 years old and had used up most of his “prospect” status.

After a season split between Double-A and Triple-A, the ChiSox released Winters in October.

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He sat on the shelf until February 13, 1987 — exactly a year after the Yanks traded him — when the Kansas City Royals signed him to a minor league free agent pact. Predictably, they sent Winters right to the minors, and he split his season between the Memphis Chicks (Double-A) and the Omaha Royals (Triple-A).

The next year, 1988, was all Double-A, and then Winters began 1989 in Triple-A.

Then, in May of that year, when he was hitting .224 but with 13 home runs as a 29-year-old farmhand, the unthinkable happened — KC called up Winters, and he made his Big League debut nearly 11 years after the Yanks drafted him.

Maybe even more amazingly … he stuck.

Not stuck like Edgar Martinez or Jamie Moyer did as late bloomers.

But stuck enough to appear in 42 games for a Royals team that wanted to unseat the Oakland A’s in the old American League West division. They fell well short of that target, but they did win 92 games to finish “just” seven games behind Jose Canseco, Dave Stewart, Mark McGwire and the rest of the Bash Brothers.

Along the way, Winters batted a modest .234 and hit two homers with nine runs batted in.

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But he had made it to the Major Leagues.

What’s more than that, his call-up and his stickiness earned Winters four baseball cards — rookie cards! — in the 1990 sets:

• 1990 Fleer (#124)
• 1990 Score Rising Stars (#47)
• 1990 Topps (#147)
• 1990 Upper Deck (#524)

By the time those cards hit store shelves and collectors hands, Winters was gone from MLB for good, but he did parlay his one-year run into a steady gig with the Nippon Ham Fighters in the Japan Pacific League.

Over five seasons in Japan, Winters realized the potential he had flashed all those yeas for the Yanks:  160 home runs with more than 400 RBI.

It was a wonderful coda to a career that looked like it might never get on track at all but swooped in to give us the cold-weather cards we never even knew we needed.

Brrrr!!!

(Check out our other player card posts here.)

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

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

But, really, it’s all perfect.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It wasn’t over, though …

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

So the Red Sox fought back.

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

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

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

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

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

But then …

Number-six hitter Chris Chambliss singled.

Number-seven hitter Roy White did likewise.

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

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

Just a Flyswatter?

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

And yet …

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

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

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

Final: 5-4 Yankees

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whew!

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

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

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

Seemed that way to me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like you could ever forget.

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

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

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

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Look … you could give me any one of about 791 different 1983 Topps baseball cards (sorry Bryan Clark), and I’d take my chances against whatever dreck you could put on the table from another set.

This set — 1983 Topps — is gorgeous, by and large, and it was a quantum leap better than the stuff issued around it. Photos are vibrant, it has two (awesome) images on each card front, and it even nails team colors pretty well.

Peruse through Google images for 1983 Topps and you’ll see gems like:

• Wade Boggs trying to catch his breath on his rookie card.
• Rickey Henderson following through on what might be a home run in the Oakland sunshine.
• Tim Raines taking a big lead.
• Mike Schmidt hatcheting some poor, unsuspecting baseball.
• A thickening Dave Parker still following through with grace.
• Gaylord Perry sloooowwwllly winding up his ancient body.
• Mike Armstrong keeping an eye out for Russian spies.
• Dennis Eckersley exploding out of the Green Monster.
• Bobby Brown scooping a pitch out of the dirt.
• Willie McGee scampering back to first base on his rookie card.

Man, this thing is loaded!

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So picking a best card from 1983 Topps is sort of like picking a best scoop of ice cream or your favorite western. They’re mostly variations on greatness.

Last year, for example, when I was running through the best cards from each year from 1960-1989 (though not each set), I landed on the 1983 Topps Reggie Jackson card as top of the heap. That one’s tough to beat, what with Reggie — in the sunshine — coming out of his swing and tracking the flight of the ball. And with headshot Reggie cool as an October breeze watching the whole thing in shades.

But we’ve already covered that one, and, truthfully, you can’t really say it’s head and shoulders above the rest of the set. There is just so much to love here.

So how do we pick?

Mostly, it’s a gut call in situations like this, but a few more objective factors come into play. For instance, a “best” card should …

• Show some essence of the player in question.
• Show some essence of the game.
• Give us a little action instead of a pure pose (usually).
• Have some historical significance.
• Nail the color scheme.
• Be generally visually appealing.

A tall order, but again, 1983 Topps is full of cards that hit most or all of these points.

One that excels across the board is card #600 of Kansas City Royals great George Brett.

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In the main shot, Brett is trotting toward the Royals dugout after apparently scoring, maybe on a home run, maybe in a play at the plate judging by the dirt on his pants. Looks like a slide artifact to me.

As he runs by, he and Cesar Geronimo perform some sort of quick congratulatory hand jive. The cameo by Geronimo and his push-broom mustache is part of the extra special something, especially for Cincinnati Reds fans who remember The Chief from his days with The Big Red Machine.

To the lower left, Brett almost smiles in a headshot set against a perfect billowy-cloud sky, part of the ocean-wash of blue that pours forth from this card. Brett looks off to his left (our right), maybe to the Royals 1985 World Series championship … but maybe to something more immediate.

Because, on July 24, 1983, while collectors were still pulling this card from new wax packs, George Brett hit a home run against the New York Yankees.

Then … Yanks manager Billy Martin challenged the home on the basis that Brett had too much pine tar on his bat.

Then … umpire Tim McClelland, after a conference with Joe Brinkman, called Brett out.

Finally … Brett lost his mind.

The Pine Tar Incident has become part of baseball lore, and the image of Brett bursting from the dugout in wild anger is an icon that will linger as long as the game is played.

Somewhere, as Brett was coming unhinged, some young collector was holding that 1983 Topps Brett card, noticing how the two scenes — the one on the card and the one on TV screen — really weren’t that much different.

Each precipitated by some Brett heroic, each revolving around home plate.

Just an inch or two here or there were the difference between ecstasy and meltdown.

In some ways, looking back, that card seems prescient now.

It knew something important would happen surrounding Brett and homeplate.

Or maybe it was a view into what might have been — a happier, calmer ending.

Or maybe … well, maybe it was just a snapshot in time.

Whatever the case, in this snapshot in time, this classic George Brett pasteboard is the best card from the 1983 Topps baseball set.

(This is the tenth 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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You may not know it to look at his 1979 Topps rookie card, but former Major League pitcher Scott Sanderson is a world-beater.

And a world-traveler. Or at least a country traveler.

Expanding His Horizons

Sanderson started his flirtation with the Big Leagues way back in 1974 when the Kansas City Royals selected him in the 11th round of the June draft. He spurned their advances, though, and headed to Vanderbilt University.

Sanderson must have been destined to latch on with a 1969 expansion club because the Montreal Expos drafted him in the third round three years later.

From there, it was a quick ride up the Montreal farm system and a Major League debut just a couple weeks after his 22nd birthday in August of 1978. In 10 appearances late that summer, Sanderson made nine starts and finished 4-2 with a 2.51 ERA.

A solid beginning that inspired Topps almost beyond words. Here, look at the masterpiece that is Sanderson’s 1979 Topps rookie card:

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It’s a pretty Pirtle pasteboard, but Sanderson clearly stands out for a couple of reasons …

He’s the only guy on the card not named “Jerry.”

He’s also closest to the camera. So there’s that.

But beyond an auspicious start to his career and his glamorous Topps debut, there really wasn’t much to indicate just how high Sanderson would rise in the game.

Take a look at his stats, and you’ll see that Sanderson was above league-average in his six seasons with the Expos.

He was a notch below his younger self in six subsequent seasons with the Chicago Cubs.

You Can Do Magic

After a one-year stop with the Oakland A’s, Sanderson landed with the 1991 New York Yankees.

And that’s when the magic happened.

Sanderson went 16-10 with a 3.81 ERA with the Bombers in ’91 and made his first (and only) All-Star team … but that wasn’t the magic.

No, that would have to wait until 1992.

On May 30 that season, Sanderson took the mound for the Yankees against the Milwaukee Brewers in County Stadium and pitched seven innings, giving up a single run.

The Yanks won that game, 8-1, and Sanderson ran his record on the season to 4-2.

But the big news was … *drumroll* … it was the first time Sanderson beat the Brewers.

And, entering that game, the Brewers were the only team whom Sanderson had not vanquished.

That’s the story of how Sanderson became one of just a handful of pitchers to ever defeat every Major League team.

You Say that Now …

Of course, that distinction has a time element to it, right?

I mean, Sanderson didn’t beat the St. Louis Browns because they were defunct by the time he was born.

And … well, he didn’t beat the Colorado Rockies, either.

Or the Tampa Bay Devil Rays (or Tampa Rays *puke*).

Or the Arizona Diamondbacks.

But he did beat the Florida Marlins, in 1993.

In case you don’t remember (though I’m sure you do), none of those teams existed in 1992. Which means that, yes, Scott Sanderson had indeed defeated every Major League team by the end of the night on May 30, 1993.

Now, there have been several dudes since then who have slaughtered all 30 teams, but none of them had black-and-white rookie cards (though Jamie Moyer‘s rookie was a T-206).

And none had the impeccable timing of Scott Sanderson.

(Check out our other player card posts here.)

Did you know that former Major Leaguer Joe Cowley spent his prime pitching years leading a double life? It might sound far-fetched, but I have some (remembered) evidence to back up this assertion, and it would help explain a few things.

Here’s how the story goes …

In the spring of 1986, Joe Cowley was 27 years old and flirting with the front of the Chicago White Sox rotation. It was an unlikely development for a guy whom the Atlanta Braves signed as an amateur free agent in 1976 and then spent six years in the minors before getting a brief shot at the Majors in 1982.

After an uninspiring 17-game run with the Braves that summer, they sent him back to Triple-A Richmond in 1983 and then released him that fall.

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The New York Yankees apparently saw something in the soon-to-be 25-year-old and signed him as a free agent. It must have been an exciting time for Cowley considering that 1) he was getting a new lease on Big League life and 2) he was going to the Yankees, who had won 91 games in 1983.

After half a season with the Triple-A Columbus Clippers, Cowley got the call from New York, and he seized his opportunity. In 17 appearances for the Yanks in 1984, including 11 starts, he went 9-2 with a 3.56 ERA.

That performance earned Cowley a rotation spot for 1985, and he parlayed that status into a 12-6 record, though with a heftier 3.95 ERA.

Cowley had to be feeling pretty good about his future, but the Yanks wanted something different. In particular, they wanted Britt Burns, so they shipped Cowley to the White Sox along with Ron Hassey in exchange for Burns and minor leaguers Glenn Braxton and Mike Soper.

And so Joe Cowley entered his age-27 season — the prime of his prime — in the rotation of a ChiSox team that finished 85-77 in 1985, with hopes of contending in 1986.

By that spring, I considered myself a veteran baseball card collector, and I was also finishing up my eighth-grade year.

Now, our country school was small enough that the junior and senior high schools shared the same building. That made for some uncomfortable moments every fall as fresh-faced seventh graders made their way through Senior Hall, littered with man-sized delinquents, on their way to algebra or typing or whatever class.

In the spring, the big kids turned their attention toward proms and graduations and jobs — real adult stuff, it seemed at the time.

And so it happened that, one day in April 1986 as I was walking to class after lunch, I had to pass through a gauntlet of meatheads just looking to pick a fight. My heart dropped as one of them pivoted in front of me and stopped me cold.

It was Joe Cowley.

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Now, I know that sounds ridiculous, but I knew my baseball cards, and I knew the faces on my baseball cards. And this dude standing in front me with a fake smile was Joe Cowley, erstwhile Atlanta Braves prospect.

“Hey, you’re Adam, right?” Cowley cooed at me. His buddies snickered all around me. I was being set up, and I knew it — but what could I do?

“Yes.”

The kid gave me his name, which he claimed was something other than Joe Cowley, but I knew better.

“You collect baseball cards, right?”

Warning alarms threatening to burst my mind — and ticker — I answered in the affirmative again.

Cowley’s smile broadened, and he clapped a meaty hand on my shoulder. The sea of bullies parted, and Joe guided me to his locker.

“My dad used to collect, too, back in the 1950s. Had some really good cards … and he gave them to me.”

That was cool. I was starting to thaw. Maybe this guy — Joe Cowley — was OK, after all. Maybe he really wanted to be friends since we were both collectors.

“Here, look,” Joe said as he pulled a tattered brown paper sack from the bottom of his locker. I was excited. And scared, sorta.

Joe unrolled the top of the bag and reached inside. Pulled out a handful of mushy old cardboard that I recognized immediately: these were indeed 1950s Topps and Bowman cards.

And time had beat the hell out of them.

There were probably 100 cards in the bag, and the undoubted king of the pile was a 1955 Topps Willie Mays.

Now, I’m all for ugly cards. Beat-up cards. Loved cards.

But this Mays card was loved more than most — multiple major creases, corners rounder than John Kruk and fuzzier than Yogi Berra‘s logic, a hunk or two missing, pinholes ready to aid with bulletin-board display.

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I could feel Joe glance at me, grinning, as he thumbed through the cards. My stomach fluttered, because I knew where this was heading.

“I can let you have them for $200,” Cowley told me.

There are three basic reactions people have when they find out you collect baseball cards:

• Their eyes dim as they ratchet down their internal opinion of you.
• Their eyes light up because they’re immature, too.
• They offer to sell you the rare treasures they’ve been sitting on for generations.

I’ll let you guess which one Joe had.

What he may not have realized, and certainly didn’t care about, was that I was just a kid and didn’t have any money. What’s more, I was savvy enough to know that a piece-of-crap Willie Mays card was worth much more to the the person who had “built” it than it was to anyone else in the world.

I’m guessing those cards were worth maybe $10 total, and they probably haven’t appreciated too much in value in the intervening decades.

So … I tried to explain my situation to Joe Cowley as delicately as I could, laying the blame on myself as much as possible.

I didn’t have money.

I didn’t know that much about old cards.

Etc.

But Joe was insistent — he needed money for his post-prom trip, he said, and his offer was fair. He needed me to uphold my end of the “bargain.”

I could feel the flesh walls closing in on me as Cowley and his cohorts stared me down. Only the sweet chime of the class bell and a vigilant math teacher saved me from certain doom.

In the end, I scampered down the hall to English class while Joe burned holes in me with his eyes.

I slinked through the rest of my day and week trying to avoid his notice, but Joe always seemed to be there, standing against a bank of lockers, seething. Ready to pounce again should I get close enough.

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The prom came and went, and I suppose Joe worked something out — those kinds of guys always do — but his disgust for me was palpable, and I never really felt comfortable until summer break swooped in to save the day (year?).

Just a few days into vacation, while I was sorting through cards and pounding chips and grape soda,  Joe returned to his second life as a Major League pitcher. He went 7 1/3 innings as the White Sox beat the Kansas City Royals, 4-1, at Royals stadium.

Then, on May 28, he drew the starting assignment against the Texas Rangers in Arlington Stadium. Whatever anger still seethed in his blood over my temerity in refusing his cardboard overtures boiled over on that hot night, and Cowley did something astounding …

He struck out the first seven Rangers he faced: Oddibe McDowell, Scott Fletcher, Pete O’Brien, Pete Incaviglia, Gary Ward, George Wright, Steve Buechele.

Those were some pretty decent hitters, but Cowley got them all.

Then … well, reality caught up to him.

Maybe it was the reality that he was just a high school student whose coercion skills needed brushing up.

Maybe it was the reality that he wasn’t really a strikeout pitcher — at least not that kind of strikeout pitcher.

Or maybe it was just the reality that he had thrown a big gob of pitches in less than three innings.

Whatever the case, the reality of an Orlando Mercado flyout broke the rhythm.

Then, Curt Wilkerson collected the Rangers’ first hit, a single to right field.

After catcher Carlton Fisk muffed a foul ball, Cowley coaxed McDowell into a groundout to end the inning.

But in the bottom of the fourth, with his arm tiring and the strikeout streak long gone, Cowley gave up two runs on two hits, an error of his own, and a wild pitch. The next inning, he got hammered for four more runs and left with two outs, relieved by Gene Nelson.

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Cowley took the loss that day, dropping his record to 1-2, and he’d scuffled to stay above .500 the rest of the way, though he did throw a no-hitter against the California Angels in a 7-1 victory on September 19. After his last start on October 5, a loss to the Minnesota Twins in the Homer Dome, Cowley’s record landed at 11-11, though he had an OK 3.88 ERA and struck out more than seven batters per nine innings pitched.

The next spring, Chicago traded him to the Philadelphia Phillies for outfielder Gary Redus, but Cowley struggled to crack the rotation for a mediocre Phils team.

After four starts in five appearances for Philly in 1987, Cowley was 0-4 … and then he was released.

I don’t really remember seeing Joe around school that fall of 1986 (or after), and I always just kind of assumed he graduated. I mean, he was 28 by the time he retired from the Phillies, so that seems like a good enough time to leave high school, too, right?

If there was one consolation for Joe Cowley in all his mixed-up, messed-up travels and travails between rural Indiana and the Big Leagues, it’s that he crafted his own space in baseball card collections across the land.

His cardboard may never be loved enough to end up fuzzy and creased and pinholed, but he did log face time on 10 or so real Big League cards — including a spotlight card for his no-hitter in the 1986 Donruss Highlights set and mention of the same on the back of his 1987 Donruss card.

He also has the distinction of logging a no-hitter as his last Major League victory.

So, was it the strain of the seven straight strikeouts in May if 1986 and the no-no on September that eventually led Cowley out of the game?

Maybe.

Or was it the mental hangover from not being able to sell his dad’s baseball cards?

Nah …

After all, Joe Cowley wasn’t really the cardboard bully from my high school.

I think.

(Check out our other player card posts here.)

If you grew up in the 1990s, you might be under the impression that Robin Yount and George Brett matched each other blow-for-blow during their 20-year careers.

And you wouldn’t be wrong, exactly.

After all, both men were rookies during the 1974 season, though Brett also got a cup of coffee in 1973.

Both suited up for only one Major League team — Milwaukee Brewers for Yount and Kansas City Royals for Brett.

Each man was considered the best player in his league at least once — Brett won the American League Most Valuable Player award in 1980, and Yount copped AL MVPs in both 1982 and 1989.

And, of course, both future Hall of Famers crashed the 3000-hit plateau in 1992 — Yount on September 9, and Brett three weeks later, on September 30.

Finally, both landed in Cooperstown in 1999.

By that time, these dudes were in lock-step, and so were their 1975 Topps rookie cards. The Yount (#223) and Brett (#228) were separated by just five slots on the checklist and by virtually nothing in the monthly Beckett. Up, up, up the duo climbed, past $50, then $100, then $200.

The sky was the limit.

The two superstars had been nearly the same guy, doing the same things for decades, and it might never end.

Except … everything ends, eventually.

And …

Yount and Brett weren’t really as similar as they might have seemed on the surface as they rounded third and headed for home.

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In fact, most fans would have laughed you out of the ballpark if you had suggested that Yount was even in the same league as Brett before the early 1980s.

And, again, that wasn’t completely wrong thinking.

Consider …

Brett entered the 1982 season with 1366 hits and a .318 batting average. Yount stood at 1153 (surprisingly good!) and .274 (meh).

Brett was a threat to hit .400 some year and actually did hit .390 in 1980. Yount’s career-high BA to that point was .293.

Brett won the 1980 MVP and had two other top-3 finishes. Yount finished 17th in voting in 1980 and 1981.

Brett was a key part of the Kansas City Royals teams that seemed to find the postseason every year and might win the World Series someday. Yount’s Brewers didn’t post a winning record until 1978 and had never made the playoffs.

Brett had six All-Star appearances under his belt. Yount had but one — in 1980.

Brett was a super-duper star and Yount was merely … solid.

All of that would start to change in 1982, though, when the 26-year-old Yount helped the Harvey’s Wallbangers Brewers all the way to the World Series, where they lost a seven-game Classic against the St. Louis Cardinals.

Brett, who finished 20th in the MVP balloting, turned 29 in May and, though he hit .301, his already fragile body — judging by games played — was starting to age. From there until the end of his career, which spanned another 11 seasons, Brett appeared in 150 games just three times and topped 140 twice more.

Yount, more than two years younger, logged six more 150-game seasons and two more 140-gamers.

Those extra games may not sound like much, but they let Yount start piling up the stats that would eventually pull him closer to even with Brett before the two legends retired.

They also highlight just how much of a prodigy Yount really was.

Brett was a young 21 when he snared the Royals’ starting third base job in 1974, but Yount was a downright juvenile 18 when he took over at shortstop for the Brewers that same summer.

Those must have been sweet times for two guys not far removed from high school diamonds, one of whom — Yount — debuted in the Majors less than a year after his graduation.

And, while most of the world was ready to hop on the Brett train (departing Kansas City for diamonds all across the land), there was at least one national powerhouse who gave the early nod to Yount.

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See, in 1975, baseball card collectors received a great gift, a reason to indulge in the sweeter things in life, all in the name of our hobby.

That year, Hostess printed their first set of baseball cards, a 150-piece monster issued in three-card panels on family-sized snack cakes box bottoms. And, they issued 60 of those same cards as singles in packages of Twinkies, with distribution reportedly limited to the West Coast.

Whether your poison of choice was Cupcakes or Twinkies, though, for the first time in memory, your baseball cards had an even sweeter accompanist than Topps bubble gum.

That expansive checklist also mean the Hostess set(s) featured most of the game’s biggest stars with room left over to take a stab at a few more speculative names.

They didn’t come much more speculative than an 18-year-old shortstop for a perennial cellar-flirting team like the Milwaukee Brewers, but Hostess was all in on young Robin. Yount.

Not only did Hostess include Yount in their “base” set, they also slid him into the Twinkies parallel.

It’s a pretty good looking card, too, as these things go. While the design of the set is reminiscent of some cheap kids toy television set, the photo of Yount features a smiling future legend posed in a SS crouch, waiting for the ball with his golden locks flowing from beneath his block-letter “M” cap.

And, while some contend that Yount is among the handful of short prints in the main Hostess set, you can still buy his singles for well under $10 on  eBay (affiliate link) or graded specimens for $25+ on Amazon (affiliate link). Nice uncut, ungraded panels often run $20 or less.

Twinkies cards come up for sale less often but still won’t break the bank when you find them. (By the way, you can differentiate the Twinkies version by the lack of a dotted line — for cutting — around the card front and by the presence of a heavy black stripe on the card back. And, as cynicalbuddha over at The Yount Collector points out, really pristine Twinkie cardboard does command a premium since the cards were used as backing for the golden treats and tended to pick up *sigh* grease stains.)

But as great as it is to have an extra Robin Yount rookie card (or two) to pursue, maybe the most glaring aspect of the 1975 Hostess checklist more than 40 years on is the lack of a George Brett card.

So does that mean that Robin Yount has a sweeter disposition than George Brett?

Hmmm … um … well …

I do recall a lot of smiling Yount cards.

And no Preparation-H grimacing.

And no Pine Tar Incident.

So, maybe …

But no matter what the 1975 Hostess Robin Yount card says about his relative charms, there can be no doubt that he has the sweetest baseball cards among all Hall of Famers with 1975 Topps rookie cards who reached the 3000-hit plateau in 1992 and retired in 1993 and won at least one MVP award.

You can look it up.

(Check out our other player card posts here.)

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