Here … let me help you out …

The perfect Rickey card would have to include …

• A crouch, if he’s at-bat
• That other crouch, if he’s on the basepaths
• A steely stare
• The vibrant Green & Gold of the Oakland A’s
• The staid navy blue pinstripes of the New York Yankees if you prefer mid-1980s vintage
• A clean, classic card design
• His gaudy numbers on full display on the card back

And … well, this should go without saying, but … the card should spell Henderson’s name correctly. Both of his names.

The good news is that there are plenty of cards that check all those boxes.

His 1980 Topps rookie card is a pretty good example:

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His 1984 Topps card fits the bill, too:

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And this 1983 Topps Record Breaker …

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And his 1985 Fleer card …

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And even his 1989 Topps card …

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But you know which Rickey Henderson card wasn’t quite so perfect? That would be his very first card …

Humble Beginnings

Henderson spent the 1977 season as an 18-year-old prospect with the Single-A Modesto A’s. He did just OK … he hit .345, stole 95 bases, and scored 120 runs.

Pretty pedestrian stuff.

Anyway, a group named Chong Enterprises produced a team set for Modesto that season, and they included a card of Rickey.

And boy, was it a doozy!

Consider …

• The photo was in black-and-white.
• The photo was about half bat.
• The photo was grainy enough that you can’t really see his eyes very well. Maybe he’s glaring?
• The back is blank.
• The card number appears prominently on the card front, in the upper left-hand corner, like so:  “5)”
• There is no card design to speak of.

And, oh my — Rickey’s name is spelled wrong.

So Rickey Henderson’s first-ever baseball card is actually a “Ricky” Henderson baseball card, and it could be a Dave Henderson baseball card for all we can tell from the photo.

Looking at pictures of the card, you also get the feeling it might actually just be an old newspaper clipping.

The thing is, though, looking at pictures of the card may be just about as close as you’re ever going to get to one of these things. You see, the Chong cards are about as rare as a game without Rickey on base.

According to Matthew Glidden, an estimated 500 of the team sets were issued in 1977, at a time before everyone thought every baseball card would be worth a fortune someday. You can be sure that not all of those sets made it through the last 40 years, in other words.

So far, in fact, PSA has graded 29 of the Henderson cards, with none scoring a perfect 10 and only one rating a flat out 9 with no qualifiers.

Click WHERE to Buy One?

As you might imagine, sales of this first Rickey (Ricky) card are pretty unusual, too. According to a PSA post from nearly a decade ago, an off-centered PSA 9 Rickey sold for $1300+ way back in 2007.

The card comes up for auction occasionally these days, but it’s not one you’re likely to find on an eBay whim or at your local card shop or show, and it’s hard telling how much you’d have to pay for an actual copy at the moment. Huggins & Scott auctioned a PSA 7 Henderson for $1400 (11 bids) in October 2014, so today’s price undoubtedly would be north of that.

As Glidden notes in the piece above, Chong reprinted the card, with some modifications, as part of their 1989 Modesto A’s alumni issue. And, considering the *ahem* quality of the originals, it wouldn’t be all that surprising to find counterfeit versions of the 1977 card running around out there (though I haven’t explicitly heard of any).

All told, if you want to own Rickey Henderson’s first baseball card, his 1977 Modesto A’s issue is the only game in town.

You’ll need lots of persistence and good luck to catch one, though — just like Rickey himself.

(Check out the rest of our player-focused posts here.)

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“When life sucks, pull a chair up on the porch, put the ballgame on the radio, and kick back with a cold glass of lemonade.”

Pretty sure that’s how it goes.

Just be aware that the sun won’t always cooperate with your cool-shade plans and might peek at you from under the eave of your porch. Especially during those late afternoon games, or the first half of a twinight doubleheader.

You’ll be sitting there sipping your cool beverage, feet up on the cat, listening to Don Baylor trying to coax Ron Guidry into hitting him in the rump when *bam* … you’re squinting.

That’s why you need to have a pair of sunglasses with you there as part of your setup, just in case. And if you need some fashion tips on shades, you might want to check out the Major League players in Spring Training.

Those dudes have winter-soft eyes and need protection at every turn, so they’re always flipping dark lenses, changing glasses, shading their eyes.

It’s a rite of spring, which is why I’m looking at dudes on cardboard here on Day 37 of my 2019 Spring Training Baseball Card Challenge.

Luckily, there is no paucity of guys who are willing to flash their fly eyes under dark cover on the cards that have graced our collections forever. Plenty of choices … tough choices … so I just had to pick one and go with it.

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Since I’m a child of the 70s, I’m going with Henry Cruz on his 1976 SSPC card.

Because … dude was fly, what with those curling sideburns, thick mustache, and stylin’ sunglasses.

OK, technically, they’re just glasses since he needed them to see and didn’t like contacts. But they’re dark and have big, black plastic rims. They’re awesome.

And ten years later, I’d have a pair almost just like them, but by that point they weren’t considered awesome anymore. They were “dorky” or some such nonsense. I still have them in a drawer somewhere, and I’ll slip them on every once in awhile in a pinch. My wife calls them my Birth Control Glasses.

For Henry Cruz in the middle 1970s, though, those were the glasses he used to play real live Major League Baseball with the freaking Los Angeles Dodgers. And later on, with the just slightly less freaking Chicago White Sox.

All told, Cruz played in the Majors for four years — two for each of the two teams — and saw action in 171 games. His batting line included eight home runs, 34 RBI, and a .229 lifetime average. Not the stuff of legend, to be sure, but still better than you or I ever did in baseball.

And you know what was the stuff of legend?

That dark-eyed, dark rimmed, pure fly guy look he sported on that SSPC pure card.

And if, for some reason you’re not enamored of that particular pasteboard, you can find Cruz on the small as one of four rookies on card #551 in 1976 Topps, right beside Chet Lemon, and right above Ellis Valentine.

Or if you’re a ChiSox sort of person, that 1978 Topps Cruz card is unbeatable.

So grab a Henry Cruz, a Country Time, and the cat, and get ready for some front porch baseball.

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

As a kid, Spring Break brings the obvious advantage of being out of school for a week. When you were still too young for a Florida trip or whatever, that likely meant more time to play, more time to goof off, more time to fiddle with your baseball cards.

Indeed, all through my childhood, Spring Break fell in the second or third week of March, and that was plenty late most years for me to get my mitts on at least a few packs of new baseball cards for the year. Most years, that was also late enough to knock off the deep chill of our Indiana winters and give us at least a hint of sunshine a few days during that week off.

And by the time we got to Easter, the cards were flowing freely, and you could rightly expect some sweet Spring-y weather on a more or less regular basis. And, the Easter Bunny — or E.B., as I called him — always left some packs in my basket.

So it’s not surprising at all that any hint of Spring elicits a huge, mixed-up hairball of memories from my addled brain that is roughly equal parts blue sky, baseball cards, Easter candy, and goof-off.

Oh, and Spring Training.Because nothing ties it all together like Spring Training, when everything is possible.

I knew, then, that I’d have to include a baseball card that showcases a beautiful blue baseball sky when I was laying out my 2019 Spring Training Baseball Card Challenge, so I’m here to do that on Day 36.

Now, there are hundreds and hundreds — probably more like thousands and thousands — of great baseball cards that have featured blue sky over the many decades that baseball cards have blessed this earth.

How to choose just one?

Well, I fell back on the theme of this whole series — Spring Training, with an emphasis on Spring.

And an extended emphasis on Spring Break.

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One of my earliest memories that combines my growing love of baseball with Spring Break came in 1983. I was riding around with my parents — Dad took the week off to spend with me — and we had to take our old blue bomb of a Dodge pickup truck to the shop for some reason. First, though, we stopped at a grocery store, where I plucked one of those “Who’s Who”-type preview magazines from the newsstand.

While we waited for the truck to get well, I read every word and every stat, and I came away with the impression that the two greatest players in the game in the upcoming season would be Andre Dawson and Pedro Guerrero.

I was enamored of both players, and The Hawk turned out to be a Hall of Famer, but somehow Guerrero struck my fancy to a greater degree. I remained an admirer throughout his career, even though it seemed like he was always pounding Reds pitching.

Given that Guerrero played in Los Angeles, with the Dodgers, it’s natural that I associate him with sunshine, and I’d bet — without checking — that plenty of his cards feature our coveted blue sky.

But one of my goals for this series was to dig into some of the issues I haven’t thought about for awhile, and that some newer collectors may not remember at all. Topps and Fleer and Donruss base sets were (and are) great, but there’s a whole lot more to appreciate in the big, wide cardboard world than just the same old same old.

Luckily, I wasn’t the only one who appreciated Guerrero’s power-speed combination, as he was a regular inhabitant of All-Star and MVP-candidate rosters for several years there in the 1980s. That meant he also found his way into many of the oddball sets that kept the hobby interesting while rookie cards and speculators started to drive base-card prices skyward.

For example, Ralston Purina teamed with Topps in 1984 to issue a 33-card set in packages of Cookie Crisp and Donkey Kong cereal, and guess who was included?

Yes, Bill Madlock and Ted Simmons, of course … but also Pedro Guerrero, on card number 30.

Now, these cards were not the most beautiful ever produced, and they were heavily branded for Ralston Purina, including a couple of prominent displays of their famed red-and-white checked logo.

What was beautiful, though, was the perfect blue sky and wispy white clouds above deep green trees, with a smiling Guerrero in the foreground. The man was in his prime, happy and healthy in his Dodger Blue, and he came at you from a pile of sugary goodness that only 80s cereals could supply.

It’s an eternal reminder of Spring and hope … and baseball.

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

You ever notice how, no matter what you were doing as a kid, there was always that one kid who had already done everything, already knew everything, and made you feel like a baby even though he was your age or younger?

Yeah, that kid.

Well, when it came to collecting baseball cards in my rural Indiana “town” (really the outer-outer-outskirts of a 50-person village), that kid was a guy a couple of grades behind me but who was really my age.

For the purposes of this story, let’s call him Sally.

Sally was big and loud, but I liked him OK, and he played all the sports. Played them well.

Sally also collected baseball cards and had been at it for a few years when I took up the hobby for real in 1983. He knew everything there was to know about baseball cards, too, thanks to his dad.

See, Sally’s parents were divorced, which was sort of exotic for our community at the time. There were folks who you knew were unhappy, but almost all of them chose to stay unhappy together.

But Sally’s dad lived way over in another state, and I’ve never seen the man, even to this day. I heard plenty about him, though, and especially about his baseball cards.

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Dude had real, live cards from the 1970s and the 1960s, maybe even the 1950s. Sally would get to hold them, touch them, every time he visited his dad, and he would, on occasion, bring a few home to keep.

Now, before long, Sally and I became trade partners, and he’d come to my house once every couple of weeks so we could do our business. For the most part, Sally’s cards looked about like mine, with plenty of current-year stuff, beat up to a level consistent with his being a preteen boy.

He did have a few “old” cards tossed into the mix — 1980 Topps Keith Hernandez, 1979 Topps Joe Sambito, 1976 Topps Dave Kingman with more fuzz on its corners than either of us had on our faces.

Made sense, considering his head start on collecting.

But none of the knockout cards from his dad’s collection ever made it to our trading room floor. “I’ve got those put away safe,” Sally would say.

Hmmmmm.

Well, somewhere along the line, I came into possession of one of those handheld price guides and took it to school with me so all of us involved in recess trading — and there were quite a few by that point — could feel more confident in the deals we were swinging.

The book was a hit, and we were all having a pretty good time.

Then one night Sally called me up to have me look up some card values for him … he had been sorting through some of the cards from his dad and was just, you know, curious about their prices.

Among his goodies were ….

• 1962 Topps Mickey Mantle
• 1964 Topps Brooks Robinson
• 1966 Topps Frank Robinson
• 1975 Topps Fred Lynn

I was drooling, and I could feel my skin turning green (with envy, not because I’d eaten school lunch). But I told him the ridiculous prices I was seeing in front of me … how could Sally be holding these valuable cards?

Still, I was coping pretty well until Sally dropped the big bomb … “1962 Topps Maury Wills.”

I couldn’t find any mention of a 1962 Topps Wills card in my price guide, but I found a 1963 Fleer listing, which booked in double digits even way back then.

“Are you sure it’s a ’62?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah, says so right on the card,” Sally assured me.

Man … if a ’63 Wills was worth so much, think of what a ’62 must be worth!

I told Sally what limited information I had, and we ended the conversation. I don’t remember what he said, but I do know there was smugness in his voice when he said it. And that I retreated to a corner of my room to gnaw my arm off.

Not too long after that, another of my friends came over to my house. We’ll call him Harry.

Harry had been collecting cards for about a year longer than I had, but he wasn’t really feeling it. Since I was into it, though, he agreed to bring over his collection so we could do some trading.

Harry’s cards were pretty rough because they were just toys to him — something to throw around the bedroom floor or to shuffle through while watching baseball or “Hee-Haw.” But as we started to work through our cards, each of us formulating a deal that would work in our favor, some familiar names popped up …

Mickey Mantle … Brooks Robinson … Frank Robinson … Fred Lynn.

And, yes, Maury Wills.

Harry had all the same cards that Sally had claimed to have, and judging by the nomenclature on the front of the cards, he had somehow acquired them by way of Kmart.

I was dumbfounded.

But I was also determined to land that mythical Maury Willls card.

Now, I’m not positive how it all went down, but I do remember that Harry was quite fond of Barry Foote back in those days. I think it had to do with the praise Topps heaped upon him here …

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So I’m guessing I swapped Barry straight up for Maury.

It took another year or so before I realized that the Wills card was a mock-up created specifically for the 1982 Kmart 25th Anniversary set, but by that point I was hooked … on Maury, on Topps, on the hobby.

And I can thank Harry and Sally — especially Sally — for all of it.

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

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You know … like he had and OLD uniform at some point and then got a NEW one. Preferably accompanied by a new team for this exercise.

Now, if there was one thing that was tough for Topps and Fleer and Donruss and every other company to pull off in the 1990s and before, it was delivering cards of players in their new togs in a timely fashion.

I mean, if you were traded early in the summer, you might make it into the Topps Traded or Fleer Update set that came out in November or so. If you were traded as the pennant races heated up, though, there might not have been enough time to get you into your new uniform before the following spring.

Before 1981 — and the first Topps Traded set — you were definitely waiting until the next season.

And if you were traded in the off-season? Well, you might get an airbrushed job the following spring if you were lucky (but that’s a topic for another piece in this series).

All of that is a long-winded way to say that I wanted a card for this entry that captured a dude in his new uniform at an early stage of his new-team-hood.

And I kind of wanted it to be a base card, as opposed to a Traded or Update.

And I wanted it to be a star(ish) player.

Yep, I’m being picky, but I’m old and feel like I’ve sort of earned that right.

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Fortunately for me, another old dude pretty much fit my bill to a “T” — a Texas Rangers “T”, that is.

All through the 80s, I knew Charlie Hough as the ancient knuckleballer who was able to keep trotting out to the mound in Arlington precisely because he didthrowa knuckleball. Low velocity, easy on the body, hard to hit. You know the drill, right?

But there were a couple of things I didn’t much appreciate about Hough at the time.

First, he wasn’t all that old — younger than my dad, in fact, and Dad didn’t seem old then and doesn’t really seem old now. Probably never will to me.

And second, Hough pitched for the Los Angeles Dodgers for ten years before he found his way to the Rangers. He was a decent minor leaguer for five years before — the story goes — he discovered the knuckleball while working with Tommy Lasorda and Goldie Holt before the 1970 season.

After making the change, Hough got to the Bigs almost right away, appearing in eight games for L.A. in 1970. It took another three years of part-time relief work, but Hough finally splashed down as an integral part of the Dodgers’ bullpen in 1973 at age 25.

Three years after that, he moved into the closer role and helped The Blue to some postseason glory.

By 1980, though, young hotshot Steve Howe was installed at the back of the ‘pen, and Hough became expendable.

On July 11 that summer, Dodgers GM Al Campanis outright sold Hough to the Rangers. Lots of folks probably thought Hough was done that point, especially since he was a ripe old 32 years of age and without a huge track record of success.

Topps was OK with it all, though, and they plopped Hough into their 1981 set at #371. The kicker is, the card showed Hough in his new Rangers uniform, complete with warmup jacket and white towel draped around his neck.

It was … a card of a player in his new uniform.

And, as it turned out, that white towel was not a white flag in any way, as the Rangers inserted Hough into their 1982 rotation. He stayed there through 1990, then wound down with two years each for the Chicago White Sox and the expansion Florida Marlins.

Hough finally retired at age 46 in 1994 with an even 216-216 record, supported by a 3.75 ERA.

And, of course, a place in our Spring Training Challenge.

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

(Check out our rundown of the most valuable 1981 Topps baseball cards.)

Ah, yes … who doesn’t love Valentine’s Day?

And, as it so happens, February 14 is also about the same time that pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training, marking the beginning of another Major League Baseball season. In the old days, it was also when new baseball cards made their way to most corners of the earth for the first time.

Yep, baseball and Valentine’s Day go together in a coincidental sort of way like school lunch and diarrhea. Or something.

To celebrate that pairing (baseball and Valentine’s Day, that is), I thought it would be fun to put together an All-Time All-Valentine’s Baseball Card Team. So I did.

All of the guys here have names that have something to do with our big sweetheart day, and they all have a baseball card or two to rub together.

And speaking of “together,” together these players form a complete lineup, and then some.

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Rick Sweet, C

Rick Sweet made a total of 272 appearances for the San Diego Padres, New York Mets, and Seattle Mariners scattered over three Big League seasons from 1978 through 1983. He hit just .234 with six homers and 57 RBI over 815 plate appearances, but he did manage to pick up a handful of baseball cards along the way. Chief among them was this, ahem, sweet 1983 Topps issue showing Sweet (the man) in the tools of ignorance — the mitt, at least —  with the Mariners.

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Pete Rose, 1B

Right. Pete Rose had all sorts of troubles after he came back to the Cincinnati Reds in the 1980s and became their manager, then their Bettor-in-Chief. He’s terrible and awful and broke baseball’s cardinal rule. Fine. All true.

But he was also one of the great players of the 1960s and 1970s, and it’s impossible to leave him off this team. Though Rose played all over the diamond, we’ll slot him at first base because that’s where he played most and because that fits the rest of our lineup best. And the card?

Rose cards don’t get much better than his second-year issue, 1964 Topps, which also happens to be his first solo card.

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Bobby Rose, 2B

The California Angels drafted Bobby Rose out of San Dimas High School in the fifth round in 1985, and he made his Major League debut four years later. He was young at just 22 and touted in some circles as the Halos’ second baseman of the future, but Rose managed just 73 games over the course of the next four seasons. Still, he makes the cut at the keystone for our team, and he looks awfully good — in a Junk Wax sort of way — on his 1992 Topps card.

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Coco Laboy, 3B

OK, this one may be a stretch, but …

“Coco” is not far from “cocoa,” and you can’t have all those tasty Valentine chocolates without cocoa. Besides, Coco was the third baseman for the original rendition of the Montreal Expos, and he has some cool early 1970s baseball cards. It’s hard to argue against the 1971 and 1972 issues, but I’ll take 1970 for all the dugout-in-the-background-golden-Topps-All-Star-Rookie-red-white-and-blue-first-year-Expos-uniform goodness it imparts.

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Bobby Valentine, SS

Before Bobby Valentine was playing cards and dress-up between innings in the New York Mets dugout, he was forging a 10-year career as an actual Big League player. Like (Pete) Rose, Bobby V. played a lot of positions, though nowhere near as well as Pete did, at least if you consider the bat side of things. Among all those slots, Valentine spent the most time at shortstop, so he gets that hole for us, too.

Valentine had some solid 1970s cardboard, but we’re going with his 1972 Topps issue here because it’s so psychedelic and because Bobby looks like a shortstop in the shot.

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Ellis Valentine, RF

In ten Big League seasons with the Expos  (6+), Mets (1+), Texas Rangers(1), and Angels(1), Ellis Valentine collected an All-Star appearance, some MVP votes, and a Gold Glove, along with 123 home runs and some other statistical goodies.

He also gave collectors a variety of baseball card looks, from scowls to smiles to poses to blank stares.

But if you know anything about baseball cards from the 1980s, you know the only choice for this list is his 1981 Topps issue. You know, the one where he has welded a dinosaur bone onto the front of his batting helmet to protect his grill? Yeah, that one.

That card, plus Valentine’s actual baseball skills, make him our right fielder.

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Fred Valentine, CF

According to Baseball Reference, Fred Valentine’s nickname is, “Squeaky.” I’ll leave it to you to find out why.

For us, Valentine’s nickname is “center fielder,” by virtue of appearing in that slot more than just about anyone else on this list, even though he spent more time in right field. Sometimes, you just have to take one for the team.

You might be interested to know that Valentine picked up some MVP votes with the 1966 Washington Senators, who were a pretty awful team under a just-warming-up Gil Hodges. That nugget is all the more relevant when you realize that his beautiful 1967 Topps card, celebrating that ’66 campaign, is our pasteboard of choice here.

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Candy Maldonado,  LF

Candy Maldonado was one of those guys who hit a decent amount of home runs (18 for the Giants in 1986) fairly early in his career (age 25), flashing promise that made us come back to his cards over and over, waiting for the BIG breakout.

That never came, but Candy did turn in a 15-year career that included three 20-homer seasons and 146 overall. His fielding was nothing to write home about, but he logged enough time in both right and left to make him a solid choice as our left fielder.

He’s also showcasing that powerful swing, while flashing some Los Angeles Dodgers blue, on his 1984 Topps card.

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Jim Ray Hart, DH

Jim Ray Hart was a bona fide star beginning at age 22 for the San Francisco Giants in 1964. You may not know that, though, because he was generally overshadowed by a couple of ho-hum teammates name Willie McCovey and Willie Mays. Nevertheless, Hart finished second (to Dick Allen, tied with Rico Carty) in the ’64 National League Rookie of the Year award voting.

Hart also had five straight seasons with 20+ home runs, including two with more than 30, from 1964-68 before tailing off sharply thereafter.

And, while Hart’s primary position was at third base, his defense was generally considered … um … atrocious. So, left field, here he came!

And then DH, once he made the transition to the New York Yankees, as all aging sluggers must eventually do.

Still, he had some great cardboard, including a rather brutal 1974 Topps rendition where he’s actually listed as a designated hitter. Good enough to make him our DH.

But that’s not our card here … nope, we’re going with his sparkling 1965 Topps card, which reminds one (me) of the awesome ’65 Topps Tony Oliva issue.

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Corky Valentine, Starting Pitcher (RHP)

Corky Valentine was a big (for the time), mean right-hander for the Cincinnati Reds who signed at age 19 and then spent six years working his way through the minor leagues and a stint in the Army before finally landing on the Big League roster in 1954. Sorta like the anti-Joe Nuxhall. Valentine pitched like a mini-workhorse (194 1/3 innings) as a rookie at age 25, but then fell off to less than 30 innings in 1955 … and never appeared in the Big Leagues again.

Corky did, however, garner one more or less perfect baseball card in that short time frame — this 1955 Topps beauty.

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John Candelaria, Starting Pitcher (LHP)

If you don’t know why The Candy Man is on this list, it’s possible you’re on the wrong website. But, just in case you’re not and just haven’t spent much time pouring through this particular corner of baseball history, John Candelaria was a monstrous (6’7″) starting pitcher who toiled in the Majors from 1975 though 1993. In 1977, at age 23, he went 20-5 for an NL-leading .800 winning percentage and with an NL-leading 2.34 ERA for the always competitive Pittsburgh Pirates.

He cooled down considerably after that, but the big lefty still managed 177 career wins against 122 losses on the strength of a solid 3.33 ERA.

Oh, and his nickname was The Candy Man, but you already knew that if you were paying attention above.

Candelaria’s career spanned well into the hobby’s boom years, so there are plenty of cards to pick from, but I’m going with 1976 Topps, where Candy channels Christopher Cross and models his “Ride Like the Wind” hairdo.

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Don Rose, Relief Pitcher (RHP)

Don Rose might have been the most celebrated flower-named dude in the game in the early 1970s were it not for that hustling booger down on the Riverfront. As it was, Rose made his debut for the Mets in 1971 … then pitched for the Angels in 1972 … then spent 1973 in the minors … then pitched in two games for the San Francisco Giants in 1974.

All told, Rose made 19 Big League appearances, including four starts, and saved zero games in his 15 relief appearances.

Even with just 45 2/3 innings of total work, Rose still appeared in the 1973 Topps set on a pasteboard that may hold the record for the most total white space of all time

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Vance Lovelace, Relief Pitcher (LHP)

Sure, phonetically Vance Lovelace is the opposite of what you’d want for a Valentine’s day pitcher, but his last name is quite, um, lovely if you break it down — Love + Lace.  How delightful.

Which is not to say that Lovelace himself was so delightful on Big League diamonds, because his 0-0 record with 0 saves and a 5.79 ERA in 4 2/3 innings pitched for the Angels and Mariners is not the stuff of dreams. Except it is the stuff of dreams, because he played in the Major Leagues.

Did you?

The dream was only enhanced by the fact that Lovelace made his way onto a 1989 Fleer Major League Prospects card, right alongside Terry Taylor.

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Candy Harris, Pinch Runner

The Baltimore Orioles selected Candy Harris in the third round of the 1966 January draft, and then lost him to the Houston Astros in the Rule 5 draft that November.

As per the rules of Rule 5, the ‘Stros put Candy right onto their roster and kept him there through 1967. During that summer, he made one plate appearance over six games.

Huh? That math doesn’t work, does it?

Well, it does if you’re a pinch runner, Skippy!

And so, seven years before Charlie O. Finley made waves by signing Herb Washington to be a PR for the Oakland A’s (for PR), Candy Harris filled the role for Houston. Never mind that he struck out in his only at-bat, attempted zero stolen bases, and scored zero runs.

Dude was a pinch runner in the Major Leagues.

And, appeared on a 1968 Topps Rookie Stars card as “Alonzo” Harris, right alongside Tom Dukes.

And then was done in the Majors. Which is beside the point entirely.

(Check out our other player card posts here.)

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Baseball’s offseason is a time when fans of just about every team can get excited …

What moves will your club make? Will any big names land in your town? Will your team finally win something other than your heart?

And it’s all fueled by the trades and free agent signings that either happen or are whispered about from from November through early March.

For collectors, of course, any time a player changes teams, there are hobby implications — from chasing updated pics of all the big names in their new uniforms to adding new names to your master team set.

Now, if you’ve spent much time on this site or picking through our Twitter account (@WaxPackGods), you know that we don’t do much with new cards — they’re confusing, they’re slick, they’re overwhelming. We’re all about old stuff and nostalgia … or at least mostly about old stuff and nostalgia.

Rookie Card Grudge Match

But we’re also baseball fans, which means we follow all of the stuff that’s happening on the field and in the news now. And, there are at least some new cards that look great, even if we don’t understand them.

We also love that baseball is a game that spans the eras, and that it’s easy to see there are strong ties from one generation to the next, from your dad’s era to your era to today’s era, and on and on.

With that in mind, I thought it might be fun to compare the rookie cards of some of the guys who are making headlines this offseason (2018-19) with those of similar guys from years gone by. And by “similar,” I mean the guys who score high on the Similarity Score chart as presented for each player by Baseball Reference.

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Here’s how this will work …

• I’ll pick my favorite rookie card for each guy.
• “Rookie card” will be loosely defined and malleable to fit my druthers at the moment.
• I don’t know much about modern cards, so I’ll be picking them based almost entirely on aesthetics.
• I have a deep history with older cards, so I’ll pick them based on aesthetics and the general “feels” they give me.
• I’ll pit the cards against each other in three categories: front, back, feels.
• I reserve the right to use value considerations as a tiebreaker, but it doesn’t really matter much most of the time.

Them’s the rules …

So, where to start?

Well, as of this writing, there is a lot of buzz around Cleveland Indians first baseman Yonder Alonso. And who is the most comparable player to Alonso?

That would be none other than NLCS legend Sid Bream.

For Bream, the choice comes down to two 1985 cards — Topps and Donruss.

While I loved the 1985 Donruss set as a kid (and still do) because it was so Donruss-y, I’m going with the Topps card. It’s  shot against a blue spring sky, and Bream looks great in his Dodger Blues.

For Alonzo, there seem to be several 2011 cards from which to choose. It’s probably not a surprise, though, that I’m going with the 2011 Topps Heritage, an homage to the 1962 Topps set.

So that’s our battle: 1985 Topps Sid Bream v. 2011 Topps Heritage Yonder Alonso.

On to the tale of the tape …

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Card Fronts

As mentioned above, the Bream rookie makes me long for Spring and, while the 1985 Topps design was nothing groundbreaking, it’s a solid offering that’s very 1980s in its presentation. And the red and blue colors make the card stand out in a crowd.

The Alonso card, meanwhile, features those classic 1962 Topps woodgrain borders, along with a “2011 Rookie” star in the upper lefthand corner. Both big pluses.

But it’s also cluttered with two more logos, and the pic of Alonso is pretty boring.

Winner: 1985 Topps Sid Bream

Card Backs

The 1985 Topps card backs were a snore for the most part, thought the burnt-red and green color combo does lend a Christmas-y feel. Still, generic trivia questions and a lack of “extra” player info leaves the whole thing flat.

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Topps card backs in the 1960s and 1970s were a lot of fun, generally speaking, and the 1962s were great. With just two lines of traditional stats encompassing the previous year and lifetime totals, these cards don’t have a lot to offer hardcore Sabermetrics geeks. But they more than make up for it with narrative about each player and the little cartoons that no one did or does like Topps.

In Yonder’s case, we learn that he ranked 2nd on his Louisville squad with 31 doubles in 2010 and that the Reds were considering him in left field since Joey Votto had first base locked down for Cincinnati in 2010-11. Fun stuff.

And good enough to make this a clear-cut choice.

Winner: 2011 Topps Heritage Yonder Alonso

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Feels

Full disclosure — I don’t own the 2011 Topps Heritage Yonder Alonso card.

I own, or at least have owned, probably dozens of 1985 Topps Bream cards over the years. It was issued in my collecting heyday, and I was all in for every card I could lay my chubby little mitts on. I know how these cards feel in my hands, I know what they look like, I know what they sound like as they slide across each other.

And I also know what it felt like to watch Bream lumber home from second base on Francisco Cabrera‘s two-out single in the bottom of the ninth of Game 7 of the 1992 National League Championship Series to send the Atlanta Braves to the World Series.

Even though it unfolded at the pace of War and Peace, it was the most excited I had ever been watching a baseball game on TV.

All of that and more comes rushing back when I hold the gray mush of a 1985 Topps Sid Bream rookie card, even today.

Winner: 1985 Topps Sid Bream

Overall Winner

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While Yonder Alonso scores bonus points for having once been a member of the Cincinnati Reds, and while his 2011 Topps Heritage rookie card is niftily retro, it can’t overcome Bream’s history and the nostalgia of actual old Topps cardboard.

Both contenders turned in a strong fight, but in the end, the 1985 Topps Sid Bream rookie card is our champion of the day.

(Check out our other player card posts here.)

There are certain formative experiences that just seem to stick with us, to mold us, for the rest of our lives.

Maybe those first sweet days of Kindergarten, filled with snacks and naps and a doting teacher, inspired you with a love for education you just can’t shake.

Or maybe you tagged along to see The Empire Strikes Back with your older brother even though you’d never heard of Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader … and you’ve been steeped in geekdom ever since.

And, if you’re a baseball card collector (and you are, obviously), there is no breaking free from the grasp of the first cards you pulled from fresh packs.

That’s part of the reason we still have cases and cases of 1990 Fleer and 1988 Donruss and 1982 Topps Kmart boxed sets just sitting out there taking up space, waiting. Deep in our hearts, plenty of us still love these things because they’re part of our past.

So it is, too, for Santa Barbara collector Rocco Constantino.

Rocco came to the hobby just as the hobby was becoming The Hobby. That would be 1981, in case you’re wondering. You know, the year Fleer and Donruss crashed Topps’ monopoly party and issued a couple of the most, um, interesting sets of the last 50 years.

Which is to say, Rocco loves the 1981 sets. All of them.

But more than that,those early influences of baseball and baseball cards stick with him today — from his work as an athletic director to the baseball books he writes to the cards he collects, still.

Here is Rocco’s collecting story …

How did you get started collecting?

My uncle owned a corner store and my dad used to take me and my siblings there to play arcade games. He sold baseball cards and stickers too. We were already watching baseball games and learning about the sport’s history, so we would always get cards and stickers when we went to visit his store. We used to sit and sort our cards for hours watching Yankees and Mets games. It was probably the only thing that could keep us quiet and in one spot as kids, so our family had no problems bringing us packs of cards or stickers on an almost daily basis.

What is the first card you can remember owning or buying?

I don’t remember a first individual card that I owned, but I remember so much about collecting the 1981 Topps cards when I was seven years old. I do remember some of my favorites from that set were the Reggie Jackson and George Brett cards. I also remember thinking it was strange that Dave Winfield was pictured in a Padres uniform even though he was playing for the Yankees. I don’t think I comprehended the idea of free agency at seven years old. One of the first cards I remember buying individually as a kid was the 1983 Topps Traded Darryl Strawberry. I was probably about 12 and the book price was out of my price range. However, I came across one in a store for much cheaper than the Beckett listing because there was a crease along the back. The card looked perfect from the front though and that was good enough for me.

Which sports do you collect?

I mostly collect baseball, but I still will have interest in NFL, NHL, and NBA, in that order.

What other memorabilia, besides cards, do you collect?

Lately I have been collecting autographs in my copy of a baseball history book I had published in 2016. My book (50 Moments That Defined Major League Baseball) takes a look at interesting games and moments from the past 100 years and I have been getting many former Major Leaguers to sign my copy. Reggie Jackson wasn’t too happy to sign the chapter I wrote about his fight with Billy Martin in Boston, but luckily he signed it before he saw what the content was. It was cool getting Pete Rose to sign my chapter on his 4000th hit. Other highlights include Gaylord Perry and Goose Gossage signing my chapter about the Pinetar Game, Paul Molitor signing my chapter about his hitting streak, and Ron Guidry signing my chapter about the game the Yanke

es played the night of Thurman Munson‘s funeral.

What is the focus of your collection?

Right now I am most interested in pre-1970s cards; the cards that seemed like unreachable historical artifacts to us as kids. The fact that I own 1934 Diamond Stars or 1951 Topps Red Backs now would have

blown my 13-year old mind.

Who are your favorite players?

The Mets are my favorite team and my favorite Mets players are Keith Hernandez, Dwight Gooden, and Mike Piazza. Historically, I’d choose Sandy Koufax, Roberto Clemente, and Satchel Paige. From a collecting standpoint, my favorites are Tom Seaver, Reggie Jackson, Johnny Bench, Willie Mays, and Hank Aaron.

Which are your favorite teams?

I have been a big Mets fan my entire life. I moved to the West Coast last year and have been rooting for the Dodgers despite their upset of the Mets in the 1988 NLCS.

Do you have a favorite card or set?

I’d say my favorites are all three 1981 sets (despite the Donruss being printed on tissue paper) because that set is the most nostalgic to me. I also like the 1975, 1978 ,and 1982 sets too. My favorite cards are the Dwight Gooden’s 1984 Topps Traded, Tony Gwynn‘s 1983 Topps, George Brett’s 1975 Topps, and Tom Seaver’s 1968 card.

Do you have a collecting project or goals you’re working on now?

I don’t have any specific goals I am working on now. Just like adding pre-1970 cards of Hall of Famers that I do not have.

How much time do you spend on the hobby these days?

I don’t spend much time on the hobby on a daily or weekly basis now. When I have some extra spending money, I will look around for some interesting purchases though.

Where do you buy most of your cards?

Ebay.

Which card or set have you always wanted to own but has always eluded you?

Any of the Mickey Mantle cards from the 1950s; I don’t have any. Also Tom Seaver and Reggie Jackson rookie cards and early Sandy Koufax or Roberto Clemente cards.

What’s your favorite hobby memory?

My aunt lived in California when we were growing up in New Jersey. She used to ship us packs, sets, and individual cards she would find at swap meets. We never knew what we would get or when a package would show up. One day a package came in the mail and among the cards was a Nolan Ryan rookie card that I still have. To a kid in the late 1980s, that was the Holy Grail, and somehow I had it. I also still remember being very happy to finally complete the 1981 set as a kid. I specifically remember that among the last few cards I needed were Jim Slaton and the Yankees Prospects cards. I ended up getting them both in a rack pack my father’s aunt gave me.

Do you have any other funny or memorable hobby moments to share?

One of my best memories connected to cards came when I wrote my first baseball book a few years ago. I interviewed over 50 former MLB players, many of them who played in the 1970s and 1980s. Throughout the process of interviewing them, I just kept thinking back to collecting their cards 30 years earlier. I must have pulled dozens of Fred Lynn, Rod Carew, and Rudy May cards from packs in the 80s, and 35 years later I was interviewing them. As a kid, I would have never thought in a million years that I would one day be talking on the phone to the same players I’d be pulling from packs.

Anything else you want other collectors to know about you or the hobby?

I think what makes baseball card collecting and baseball in general great is that it seems to span generations more than other sports. My connection to the game and to cards comes from my father and uncles passing their interest down to me as a kid. I would hope present day fans and collectors do the same. Collecting cards is the best way to learn about the history of the game for kids in my opinion.

How can other collectors get in touch with you?

My Twitter is @MLB100Years and I have a Facebook Group for my book 50 Moments That Defined Major League Baseball as well.

—

So much of this resonates with me, and, I suspect other collectors.

Who doesn’t love to bask in the glory of cards from the 1980s hobby boom years or dream about all those Mantle cards we might yet lay our hands on … someday?

Thanks, Rocco, for sharing your story. It’s been a great ride!

Now, though, I have a hankering for some 1981 Donruss gum. Who’s with me?

(Read all of our collector stories here. Want to share your own story? Let me know!)

Have you ever heard of Bruce Look?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flip it over, and you see …

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

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

So what happened?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Check out our other player card posts here.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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But …

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

Still …

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

There was time, and Griffin would improve.

But he didn’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As author John Feinstein explained it:

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

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

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

(Check out our other player card posts here.)