A 1980s Card Part 54 - 1989 Baseball America Top AA Prospects Ray Lankford

I am not sure how many people have spent time looking at some of these late 1980s Baseball America Minor League sets, but they are completely worthy of your attention.  I am thinking I might have to do a post on these cards one of these days.  You can find the 1989 AA Prospects sets for less than $5, and there are some great 1990s players in here including several who went on to play for the Cardinals at some point.  

Beyond Lankford, there are also cards of Delino DeShields, Andy Benes, Tino Martinez, Scott Cooper, and Darryl Kile.  Back to the Lankford.  

Here is the front of the card.  

There are several different Lankford Minor League cards, about half of them are League All-Star cards.  This one is a little different since it features players from all three Double A Leagues.  If you ever buy any Minor League cards, All-Star sets are rarely sold by level.  The norm is that they are sold in a set by league, which is one thing that makes this Lankford card unique.  There is a Texas League All-Star card of Ray Lankford in addition to this card from Baseball America.  

Back of the card.  

A little typo here with the 1988 Springfield stat line being duplicated under the 1989 Arkansas stats.  The year is also listed as 1998.  That was also a pretty good year for Ray Lankford.  

Ray Lankford was the #1 Prospect in the Texas League, but somehow still ranked below Todd Zeile on the Baseball America Top 100 Prospect List entering the 1990 season.  I am not going to list Zeile's Minor League numbers, but he was no Bernard Gilkey.