My Top 50 Players On Cardboard-#49 Kerry Wood

My Top 50 Players On Cardboard 
#49
Kerry Wood

1997 Bowman Kerry Wood RC

Hobby Impact-
Wood's card were highly sought after for a few years in the late 90s and early 2000s and still have a pretty solid following to this day, but the price has come way down and the availability has gone way up.  As a Cardinals fan, I was never a huge fan of Wood's, but I still rock some nice Kerry Wood cards in my collection.  It's not hard to find his autographs for under $10 and rookie cards for a few bucks.  There are still a few cards that still fetch some high dollars.  Always bothers me to see him on cards as something other than a Cub.  I have three players on my list who are Cubs, I also had Mark Prior on my initial list, and Wood is the third of the three.  However, sometimes when talking to Cubs fans I feel like some of them might right him higher than a certain bunny hopping outfielder and a second baseman turned manager.

On The Field Impact-
The one drawback to Wood always seems to be the fact the Cubs fans lament the fact that he did not live up to "the hype".  He was still an above average starter for four or five years and almost got the team to the World Series in 2003.  He had a couple of nice seasons as a relief pitcher, but I often feel like many cannot move on past the 20 strikeout game in 1998 against the Astros.  The slider to Derek Bell at the end of the game is my favorite pitch.  If Bell had been using a six foot bat I am still not sure he would have hit that pitch.




I don't get the obsession with this game or why it almost held against him, used as a measuring stick of what could have been, by Cubs fans.

Favorite Card-
I almost thought about putting the 1997 Bowman card down here again, or scanning a copy of his Bowman Chrome rookie.  To avoid redundancy, I am going to go with his 1998 Bowman's Best Autograph.  Wood signed a lot of cards during his career and was really generous with signing even later into his career.

1998 Bowman's Best Kerry Wood Autograph

Many of Wood's autographs were even on-card.  This one is a pretty hard one to find, is an on-card autograph, and features Wood in a Cubs uniform.  Good card to track down if you had to own an autograph from Wood.  Finally, I would like to share one of Wood's finer moments of his career captured on film: