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

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

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

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

Voila! The Texas Rangers were born.

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

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

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

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

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

(Card image courtesy of COMC.com.)

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

Check Prices on Amazon (affiliate link)

Check Prices on eBay (affiliate link)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For most teams, and for the fans of most teams, Spring Training is the beginning of “next year,” when everything will be different. The standings are wiped clean, and everyone can see a clear path to October — each club controls its own destiny.

For the defending World Series champions, well, it’s the beginning of their title defense. Can you do it again? How can we not?!?!

For grizzled veterans, ST is the beginning of another grueling haul through the summer that they hope will leave them with the fruits they so desire — a title, another few rungs on one all-time list or another, a performance good enough to get to do it all over again next year.

And for rookies or pre-rookies, Spring Training is the place to make all those hopes and dreams they’ve held dear since Little League start to come true. Will this be the year they make the Big Club? Crack the starting lineup? Win Rookie of the Year?

Get their first baseball card?

Ah, that’s the big one, isn’t it? No matter how jaded a player gets when it comes to hype and attention, there has to be a special sort of head swell that comes with pulling your own likeness from a wax pack for the first time.

And how much more special would it be if your first card also christened a new set, a new concept, no less?

(OK, so I’m asking a lot of rhetoricals here. I’ll try to tone down the question marks the rest of the way. Deal? lol)

That would be pretty special, but it doesn’t happen very often. In fact, until I started considering which “first card in a set” I wanted to profile for this Day 22 of my 2019 Spring Training Baseball Card Challenge, I would have said the list began and ended with 1989 Upper Deck card #1, Ken Griffey Jr.

But then, when looking at sets that had changed the landscape of the hobby, I remembered something — the old Topps Traded sets were alphabetized, so that lower numbers corresponded to a higher alphabetical ranking. You can bet, then, that if Hank Aaron had been traded during the 1981 off-season (I know, hang with me here), he would have been card number 1T in the 1982 Topps Traded set.

That “T” numbering actually only started in 1982, though.

Check Prices on Amazon (affiliate link)

Check Prices on eBay (affiliate link)

For their inaugural, season-ending boxed set of “Traded” cards in 1981, Topps just continued the numbering from their base set. All of that combined — the alphabet thing, the number-extension thing, the groundbreaking set thing — led me to the 1981 Topps Traded card of Danny Ainge at number 727. (In case you forgot, the base 1981 Topps set left off at #726, Rick Monday.)

I wasn’t actually collecting cards back in 1981, even though my mom bought me some here and there when she did the grocery shopping. But I do remember the 1981 Topps Traded set being a lukewarm item for several years, even as the hobby heated up through the middle of the decade. At first, I think, collectors just weren’t sure it was a concept that would catch on.

Then, when we did want Traded sets every year (at least sorta), the player selection from the 1981 issue kept it from jumping in popularity.

Still, you could always count on this Ainge card for a little bit of a thrill. And why not? (sorry)

Ainge was a high school star in football, basketball, and baseball, but he chose the diamond over all of them and made it to the Major Leagues with the (near) expansion Toronto Blue Jays in 1979. He was just 20 years old and looked to have a bright future, but things sort of stalled up north. In three seasons with Toronto, Ainge hit .220 with two home runs (both in his rookie season) and 37 RBI.

In the summer of 1981, Ainge entered the NBA Draft, and the Boston Celtics picked him in the second round with the 31st overall selection.

Ainge hung up his spikes for good at that point and, despite some early struggles on the hardwood, became a deadly three-point shooter who helped the Celts win NBA titles in 1984 and 1986. He was sort of like a hoops version of Bo Jackson, without the baseball success.

Still and all, Ainge and his 1981 Topps Traded baseball card changed the hobby, and they’re each an indelible part of cardboard history.

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

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