A Venerable Old Card Part 49

I have done a few posts recently with 1990 Upper Deck cards, including a post on Mark Langston as an Expo, and the dilemma of how to finish off the junk wax set in the most economical route.  In the later post about finishing off the set I made mention of buying two really cheap boxes of 1990 Upper Deck.  I had a blast opening the boxes, so I picked out a card to talk about tonight and will be doing a post later in the week to talk about how I did in terms of closing out the set.

This week's card is a cool prospect from 1990......

At the time the 1990 Upper Deck set dropped Eric Anthony was one of the top prospects in the game.  Checking in with Baseball America, they had him ranked as the 8th best prospect entering the 1990 season.  He ranked behind Steve Avery, Ben McDonald, John Olerud, Juan Gonzalez, Sandy Alomar Jr., Kiki Jones (who?), and Todd Zeile.  Some of those players ended up having pretty good careers.  While Eric Anthony ranked behind a few other big name prospects on the field, he was pretty popular in the world of middle school baseball card collectors.  

Ken Griffey Jr. cards ruled the hallways of my middle school.  Mark McGwire and Cal Ripken types were also pretty popular, but Eric Anthony cards were probably in that neighborhood for at least a year.  Without much Major League experience much of his hype was driven by his Minor League performance.

In the two seasons leading up to his Major League debut Anthony had hit 29 home runs with Asheville in 1988 and a combined 31 in 1989 between Columbus, Tucson, and the Astros.   At the time of Anthony's debut the team had a young Craig Biggio and would pick up Bagwell in a trade with the Red Sox, yet neither one seemed to touch Anthony's star in the early 1990s.  

Fans raved about his talent.  Check out the back of this Upper Deck card.....

home runs, strong throwing arm, Triple Crowns....Sounds like a pretty good prospect.  Add in the fact that Anthony was an impressive player to watch in person.  His power was incredible and there were a lot of no doubt home runs in those early years of his career.  

In the end Anthony's career did not live up to the hype.  He played a total of nine seasons with the Astros, Mariners, Reds, Rockies, and Dodgers.  He started two seasons with the Astros in 1992 and 1993, but the rest of his time in the Majors was spent as a fourth outfielder.  At the end of his career he had 78 home runs with a .231/.305/.397 slash line.