Seriously.
This is the 1989 Bowman Tiffany Don Heinkel card.
Heinkel joined the team after spending seven years with the Tigers, mostly in their Minor League system, but they did use him as a reliever in 21 games during the 1988 season. He pitched a total of 7 games for the 1989 Cardinals, including 5 starts, ending the year with an ERA of nearly 6. All of the appearances came early in the season. I am not sure exactly what happened to Heinkel, but he was obviously injured and he never appeared in the Majors again.
Here is the back of the card.
The whitish color on the back is found on the Tiffany cards. Looks a little different.
This was Heinkel's last Major League baseball card. He would play in the Minors for the Indians and Padres in an attempt to reach the Majors, but ended up retiring from baseball and settled down in Birmingham, Alabama where he played several years while in the Tigers system. He went back to college, attended medical school, and now works as a physician in northern Alabama.
He is in the College Baseball Hall of Fame, the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame, and once got press coverage for getting a B in a biology class at Wichita State.
From a copy of "The Eagle", the Wichita State student newspaper, from the spring of 1980
“I made a ‘B’ in a beginning biology course last spring,” said Heinkel, a former three-sport standout at Racine (Wis.) Horlick High. “That upset me. It seemed like we had some games at bad times but that’s no excuse. There were just times when I just didn’t do as good a job of studying as I should have.”
Stinks that he did not have a longer career, but it seems like he ended up in a good place.
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