Friday Five: My Favorite 1988 Topps and Topps Traded Cards

I got a copy of the 1988 Topps set from my parents for Christmas that year. I was excited about getting a complete set, so I opened the set box and sorted out all of the cards. Everyone from the 1980s knows you are supposed to leave your complete Topps sets sealed, right? I was in fifth grade and baseball cards are fun, of course I opened the box. Also, it's the 1988 Topps set.  You can probably find a copy of the set at your local thrift shop for $5.  

There are probably multiple copies for less than $5 at your thrift shop.  

Is the 1988 Topps set unpopular because it's really that bad, or because it lacks a signature rookie card Truth be told, I kind of dig the 1988 Topps set. The design is underrated.  

Topps is using the 1988 design as an insert set with the 2023 Topps set. Many have not liked the 1988 Topps set for the past thirty years, but you're going to love it now and buy all the retail packs from Target and Wal-Mart.  

I personally like the Nolan Arenado card.  

Now, let me get to the countdown. I am going to include cards from the 1988 Topps Traded set in this post, because there are some good cards in there and it is also a $5 set.  

Shall we?  

5T. 1988 Topps Traded Andy Benes #14T 

5T. 1988 Topps Traded Ron Gant #39T 

I did not touch the 1988 Topps Traded set until the Cardinals signed Andy Benes and Ron Gant as a free agents before the 1996 season. There was a high-end card store that was a few minutes from my house back in the 1990s. When the Cardinals signed Benes and Gant, they set out a huge stack of 1988 Topps Traded sets on one of their counters with all the sets costing $10. I bought the set expecting it to have a Ron Gant rookie and a bunch of junky cards. 

Not the case.  

As a Cardinals fan, I got cards of Jose DeLeon, Luis Alicea, and Tom Brunansky on top of Gant and Andy Benes. There was also David Wells, Jim Abbott, and Roberto Alomar amongst others. It's a pretty good set and I have no idea how it is only crispy Alexander Hamilton.  

4. 1988 Topps Traded Robin Ventura #124T

Robin Ventura is not quite a Hall of Famer. One of the best third baseman from the 1990s and early 2000s, just a step below players like Scott Rolen. In the aftermath of the 1982 Topps Traded set, every Topps Traded set had a potential Cal Ripken waiting to rising from the checklist. This was the "it" card from the 1988 Topps Traded set. Not sure it was every really all that expensive at any point, but the fact that the card costs less than a dollar is insanity.  

This card should cost at least a dollar at a minimum.  

3. 1988 Topps Vince Coleman #1 

I loved the design of the Record Breakers cards in the 1988 Topps set. That red background really pops and it was great to see a Cardinals player on the first card of a Topps set.  The Record Breaker was for Coleman's third consecutive season with more than 100 stolen bases. I believe that Topps has reused this design in one of their Throwback/Customer Direct products.  

Here is the moment.......

The previous record was held by Rickey Henderson.  

2. 1988 Topps Mark McGwire #580 

Mark McGwire with a Topps All-Star Rookie logo in the corner. It was a no-brainer. No goatee or crazy muscles, just skinny Mark McGwire holding a bat and posing for a picture. This is one of my favorite early McGwire cards. Topps also used a picture from this same photo shoot on McGwire's 1988 Glossy Mail-In card and the A's Team Leaders card.  

I am sure if I looked hard enough, Topps has probably recycled these photos on modern McGwire cards as well. It would be borderline shocking if they have not.  

1. 1988 Cardinals Leaders #351 

Great picture here with long-time Cardinals player, manager, and coach Red Schoendienst standing next to catcher Tony Pena. Most coaches do not get cards, so it was nice to see someone as high-profile as Red get the nod from Topps. It is somewhat surprising that Pena appeared on this card over some of the more popular 1980s Cardinals players like Ozzie Smith, Willie McGee, or Vince Coleman. 

Still, not a complete reach.  

If you weren't around for 1980s baseball, Pena was the premier defensive catcher in the league and the Cardinals were loaded with Gold Glovers. The Cardinals had outfielders to spare, but no catcher. Prior to the 1987 season, the Cardinals traded Andy Van Slyke to the Pirates for Pena. The Cardinals ended up winning the National League that season, but injuries caught up with them in the World Series and they lost in seven games. 

A card back.  

Solid numbers on the Cardinals Team Leaders. I am sure Red helped somehow, someway. 

I Love The 1990s Cardinals Part 41- Ron Gant

The Cardinals ownership changed after the 1995 season.  Anheuser Busch had owned the team since the mid 1950s, but after the passing of Gussie Busch in 1989 the team had been run by his son August Busch III.  Gussie loved the Cardinals and worked to put a winning product on the field.  August III liked the idea that fans spent money at Busch Stadium, but could care less about what happened on the field.

The new ownership group was headed by Bill DeWitt Jr..  He grew up in St. Louis where his father, Bill DeWitt, was a baseball executive with the St. Louis Browns, Yankees, Tigers, and Reds.  DeWitt Sr. even ended up owning the Reds for a few years in the 1960s.

DeWitt Jr.'s made many moves after taking ownership of the team in hopes of improving the on-field product.  Tony LaRussa was hired as manager, the team traded for half of the Oakland A's and Royce Clayton, and the team signed two high end free agents.  Andy Benes was signed to lead the rotation and long-time Brave Ron Gant was signed to bolster the middle of the lineup.

During his time with the Braves and Reds had frequently appeared in playoffs and was one of the better impact bats available that off season.  He had left the Braves after he broke his leg in an ATV accident before the 1994 season.  Gant proved himself worthy with a good year in Cincinnati....

which landed him a 5 million dollar a year contract with the Cardinals.  

Gant's first season with the Cardinals was a huge success.  He hit 30 home runs in just 122 games and the Cardinals got within a game of the NLCS.  Gant was clutch throughout the unexpected playoff run.  

Gant spent two more seasons on the Cardinals and they were not good.  In 1997 the Cardinals struggled to score runs during the first half of the season and Gant was a large part of the problem.  He had an OPS of just .698 and a slugging percentage of .388, or 50 points lower than leadoff hitter Delino DeShields.  

Mark McGwire came over to the Cardinals from Oakland at the end of July in 1997.  Gant was pushed down the lineup in 1998 in favor of hitting McGwire, Lankford, and Brian Jordan in the middle of the lineup.  The team eventually traded for Fernando Tatis and brought up top prospect J.D. Drew.  Add in the free agent signing of Eric Davis and Gant was toast in St. Louis.  

Gant's role as a starter eventually diminished after leaving the Cardinals, but he still had some nice moments down the stretch of his career.  Including a pretty good playoff game as a spot starter for the A's in 2001.

Baseball card wise, there are a lot of Ron Gant cards in a Cardinals uniform.  I had a few hundred to sort through to find a few for this post.  I narrowed it down to a small stack of cards.  More specifically, one marble and a few baseball cards.

Marble first.

One of the great oddball sets of the 1990s is the 1997 Topps Marble Shooters set.  The small plastic marbles are tough to find and can be pretty pricy at times.  I have managed to scrap together the complete Cardinals set, three different marbles, over the course of 20 years.  Gant was included in the set along with fellow outfielders Brian Jordan and Ray Lankford.  

Not my favorite Gant, but certainly a great conversation piece.  

Next up is a sort of cool low budget card.  

Who can forget the old "You Crash The Game" cards that Upper Deck used to put in their card packs during the 1990s?  Not sure how many people actually followed along with these cards and took advantage of the exchange program.  Gant went yard twice against the Cubs on in a July 12th win.  

Since Gant hit the home run, this card could be exchanged for a winning card.  

I have seen some people call these Winner cards, other Cell cards.  Whatever you want to call it, Ron Gant is wearing a Reds uniform on the card, but you just cannot see the logos on his jersey and batting helmet.  There is only one number 6 on the Cardinals......

and it is not Ron Gant.  

Last two quickly.  I am supposed to be writing a newsletter, but this has been a great few minutes of procrastination.  

This is THE Ron Gant baseball card.  It does not matter if you get the 1997 Topps or Topps Chrome version of this card, both are pretty incredible.  Same picture, just a matter of whether you want shine or no shine.   If someone asked me about Ron Gant, this is where I would point them.  This is what Ron Gant was as a baseball player.  Even when he was on the Braves, his arms were rather bulky.    He is still ripped to this day.......

Which brings me to my last card.  If the 1997 Topps card shows what Ron Gant was as a baseball player, the 1999 Topps card shows what Ron Gant was a Cardinals player.  This photo says it all....

He's swinging, he looks happy, and I am not sure he hit anything.  I am not saying that Ron Gant was somehow happy about not hitting while he was on the Cardinals, but if I were getting paid a bunch of money to hit baseballs and have huge biceps I would be pretty happy most of the time too.  Gant was not actually on the 1999 Cardinals, don't worry Topps got him a Phillies card in 1999.

Let's procrastinate three extra minutes to talk about why Topps made a card of Ron Gant in a Cardinals uniform after he retired.  This is the card.....

Ron Gant got traded off the Cardinals at the end of the 1998 season because he could not hit consistently for power and then he and Tony LaRussa got into some sort of verbal spat.  Not sure much good came out of Gant's time as a Cardinals.  Why are we revisiting these three years?  I am sure there are some Braves fans who would love to see a Ron Gant card, maybe the Reds?  At least Topps stopped at one.  

Cardinals From COMC Part 2

A few more random Cardinals cards from my latest COMC run.  I made my first post about this batch of cards last week, which were all filling various holes in my collection, whether they be apart of a complete set, team set, or just cool card of a favorite Cardinals player.  A few more cards in this post, which is more heavy with veteran players.

The cards in this post span a decade, from 1997 through 2007, so I am going to post them in sequential order by year.  First up.....

Three Cardinals cards out of the Pinnacle Totally Certified set.  The set ran off of colored parallels, with each color having a different print run.  This is still a really popular set, a sure fire favorite of collectors from the late 1990s.  I already have the complete run of Lankford's out of this set, along with one or two different colors from the three players shown above.  I should probably try to assemble a complete set of these cards, but for the moment I am sticking with putting together the Cardinals cards.  These are three sharp looking cards.  

Next up, a card from a set that I am trying to put together.  I have a ton of 1997 Topps and Topps Chrome cards.  The base sets are both complete and I am deep on several of the insert sets.  Working on finishing out those missing cards, I actually got some non-Cardinals cards in this lot, but Andy Benes was the only Cardinals insert that I was missing.

This Eckersley is here for the same reasons as the Andy Benes card, but it's from the 1998 Topps set.  This scan really mangled his hat for some reason.  Looks like one of those old man baseball hats with the rope looking piece going between the bill and body of the hat.  Eck is old on this card, but not that old.  Plus, nobody with hair like Eckersley would ever wear a hat like that, way too cool.  

This Cliff Politte card is a spillover from the first post.  I had several of the Cardinals from the 1998 Leaf Stars & Rookie set in that post, but somehow I missed this card.  My bad.  

This is a set that I own,  Always liked the Black Diamond sets.  I have several of the parallels from the Cardinals players, just trying to finish out the team set of parallel cards.  I will have to double check my accounting, but I believe this is the last card I was missing.  

Non-Cardinal card of a former Cardinals player, Preston Wilson was on the 2006 World Series winning team.  Not specifically collecting Preston Wilson, never minded him as a player and I like him on television, but I actually really liked the Fleer Mystique set back when it came out.  I have the base set assembled, but I am missing a few of the short printed rookie cards which are all serial numbered.  

I am actually a little disappointed by the printing around the serial numbers on this card.  They looked scratched, or something happened to them.  I looked at a few other cards that I have from this set, none of them.  I am going to overlook the scratching for the moment, maybe I will go back later and get a different copy.  

I am not a big fan of the Donruss Fan Club set.  It was a pretty cheap box back in 2002 and the cards seemed somewhat repetitive from the Donruss base set.  If you cut off the words Fan Club, this feels like the runner up design for the Donruss base set.  I do like So Taguchi however, so this was sort of a necessary evil.  2002 had a lot of serial numbered rookie cards, at the time I skipped a ton of them. Slight case of fatigue from chasing down Pujols rookie cards from the previous year combined with the fact that Taguchi spent his first year with the Cardinals in Triple A.  

So turned it around and eventually became a pretty useful player for the Cardinals in the mid 2000s.  He hit an important playoff home run off of Billy Wagner in the 2006 NLCS and also was always brutally honest about the mosquito problems at Busch Stadium.  

It's a serial numbered Ray Lankford, and it's not a difficult one to find.  This is not already in my collection?  Well, it was, but child #2 somehow get her hands on this card.  I still have it, but it's in pretty poor condition at this point.  

Two more.  

I did work on the 2005 Upper Deck Reflections set back in the day, but did not touch the 2004 product.  Both were generally the standard mid 2000s Upper Deck product, but the 2005 set had some really distinctive dual signature cards.  The 2004 set was rather boring autograph wise, mainly just a few rookies, not sure any of them are really highly sought after, or worth much.  

Back to the card.  I liked Renteria a lot in the mid 2000s, but I really slowed down on collecting his cards once he left the Cardinals for the Red Sox at the end of the 2004 season.  There are quite a few serial numbered cards from his later years in St. Louis that I just never took the time to find, they are all very affordable now.  

I really like the looks of this card.  An obvious Upper Deck card.  

Last one.  I did not touch the 2007 Topps Rookie 52 set.  Seemed repetitive.  I think I have an Edward Muijica autograph, since he was on the Cardinals, but that's about it.  Did you know that it has a Jim Edmonds card in it?  I didn't either, now I own one.  

Venerable Old Card Part 18

This week I am going to skip by the card aisle and make more of a toy post, or at least it feels that way to me.  What is the oddest sports cards that are in your collection?  Sometime ago, like the early 2000s, I picked up a copy of a 1997 Topps Pro Shooters Ron Gant marble.  It was cheap, weird looking, and the seller swore it was super rare.  Here is a look at the Gant:

I think it sat in a box for about a year before I discovered that there was a Ray Lankford in this set and could not find it anywhere with good reason.  After checking into the set a bit it turns out that the Topps ProShooters set was a test issue that was released a few places, supposedly Canada and the northeast US.  You can find them every once in awhile on Ebay, but they can be rather pricey.  

There are actually three Cardinals in the ProShooters set.  Outside of Gant and Lankford, there is also a Brian Jordan marble.  I managed to pick up a copy of the Brian Jordan about six or seven years ago on Ebay.  It was selling for right around $20.  Not a bad price for one of his rarer cards, err, marble.  Here is the Jordan.....

Which left me with just the Ray Lankford.  I have seen several pop up over the past few years, but they have always been fairly pricey.  While I really like Lankford, and do as much as possible to collect as many of his cards as possible, I will not break the bank for things.  Last year I ran into an Ebay auction for one of those old Donruss Crusade cards and it nearly ended up at $200.  Too much for a Lankford.  

So, a week or two ago I finally find one for a reasonable price and even got the seller to know it down a bit more with a Best Offer.  It feels good to add this card, or marble, to my collection....

Definitely one of the more challenging Lankford's I have tracked down, both due to price and scarcity.  I am also happy to pull together the Cardinals team set out of this product.  While I am sure that someone out there has managed to put together the entire set of ProShooters marbles, it can't be that many, I am really proud of assembling a team set.  

and a little bonus for this week....

I don't go out of my way to collect oddballs, but outside of the ProShooters marbles that I just highlighted in this post, I have one other really cool test issue card from back in the day....

This is from the 1971 Topps Greatest Moments baseball card set.  It too was a test release by Topps and the cards carry a pretty hefty price tag for the most part.  I had a very generous individual give me this Nate Colbert card as a gift.  If I collected this set I would probably target the Cardinals cards, but Nate Colbert is from St. Louis, so this is still a really sweet card. 

Venerable Old Card Part 16

This year is the twentieth anniversary of the 1996 St. Louis Cardinals.  Not many people, unless you are a Cardinals fan, are going to recall exactly what happened that season with the team.  Here's a brief summary:

• August Busch III sold the Cardinals to current Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt.  Busch had a tight wallet and only spent money when he absolutely had to spend it.  Basically, they were a part of Anheuser-Busch and made a good marketing tool.  
• New owner Bill DeWitt hired former A's manager Tony LaRussa to manage the team. 
• DeWitt signs free agents Ron Gant, Gary Gaetti, and Andy Benes, traded for Dennis Eckersley, Todd Stottlemyre, and a bunch of other players.  

The Cardinals went from a 62-81 record in 1995 to a 88-74 record in 1996.  The team won the National League Central edging the Astros and Reds making the playoffs for the first time since 1987.  In the playoffs, the Cardinals beat the Padres in the Divisional round, before falling to the Braves in Game 7 of the National League Championship Series.  

In summation, the 1996 season was the end of the pain and suffering that Cardinals fans experienced during the first half of the 1990s and began the Tony LaRussa era which yielded the Cardinals 2 World Series titles, 3 National League pennants, 7 National League Central crowns, and 2 Wild Card appearances.  Sure, the Cardinals still had some rough seasons in 1997, 1998, and 1999, but the teams were at least exciting with Mark McGwire, Ray Lankford, Edgar Renteria, and others.  

So, for this week's Venerable Old Card I am going to go with one of the least popular Cardinals of the past two decades: Ron Gant.  

Here's the card I am picking:

Two things to talk about here:

1.  Ron Gant had a bad falling out with the Cardinals at the end of the 1998 season.  There was a lot of back and forth with LaRussa and Gant, some name calling, failure to live up to his contract, etc.  The Cardinals ended up trading him to the Phillies for closer Ricky Bottalico and Garrett Stephenson in an effort to fix the team's bullpen.  Botallico flopped as the team's closer, but Gant was done as a full time player two years later.  

2.  Way back in the mid 1990s there were some card products that there inexpensive and still fun to collect.  Upper Deck's Collectors Choice product was always a good cheap pack, a pretty good sized set that was a little bit of a challenge to put together, and they had some good promotions inside the packs.  The "You Crash The Game" cards featured power hitters along with a date on the card.  If the player hit a home run in that time period you could mail the card in and get a prize card.  I never redeemed my Gant card, but this was a winner with two homers against the Cubs....

While the teenage version of myself did not find the effort to mail in this contest card to Upper Deck, years later I found the exchange card cheap on COMC.  Here's a look at the exchange....

Friday Five: Top 5 Durham Bulls Second Basemen

I must say that I really enjoy writing these posts on the Durham Bulls.  Minor leaguers are fun to research and there is a lot of work you have to do to connect some of the dots on the players.  So far I have published two Durham Bulls Friday Five posts on their Top 5 catchers and first basemen of all-time and I am already contemplating scrapping/revising those lists.  Actually I am at peace with my list of first baseman, but my catchers list will likely be redone at some point.  I started working on the second baseman post several weeks ago and did more work for this post than anything I have posted on here in a long time.  Hope you enjoy this list:


Shout Outs:

Some of the Minor League stats are records are not the best once you leave the 1980s.  How many RBIs did Joe Morgan have for the Durham Bulls?  I am not sure, but he .332 with 13 home runs and 20 doubles in only 95 games.  Don't worry, he's on the list and not in this shout out section.  The actual five second basemen on the list are ranked on both their time with the Durham Bulls and their impact beyond.  I am going to post a few players here who look like they might be deserving of the honor, but I could not find enough data of some sort to give the player a nod onto the list.  Almost all of the players in this section appeared for the Durham Bulls during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.  

Rewind to that first base post for a second.  I am going to add this one:

John Radulovich- This Tigers farmhand appeared on the 1953 Durham Bulls.  He is listed as a first baseman and a second baseman, but there is no exact break down of where he played in the field and how many times.  There are also many minor leaguers who start off playing a position and end playing another position.  It appears that Radulovich start out playing second, missed time for World War 2, and then returned to the Minors in the late 40s and early 50s as a first baseman.  In this case, there is a record for the 1953 Durham Bulls that Radulovich appeared in 101 games at first base for the Class B Carolina League team that season.  Why the late shout out?  In 395 at bats the 30 year old (very Crash Davis like) hit .349, with a .585 slugging percentage, 19 home runs, 4 triples, and 28 doubles.  All of that stacks up against the five first basemen I picked a few weeks ago.

now second basemen...

Mike Fontenot- I am throwing a curve for my first shout out player.  Mike Fontenot has spent the last two years playing a lot of second base for the Durham Bulls.  The long time Cub and Giants second baseman has been an invaluable part of two division winners and the 2013 Governors Cup Championship team.  All of the players on this list have better numbers than Fontenot, but he's also one of the few players on my Friday Five Durham Bulls Second Baseman list who I have seen in person.  I can tell you the Bulls probably would not have gotten as far as they had the past two years without this Major League veteran taking the field.

Rufus Anderson- Rufus Anderson spent a few years in Durham during the summers of 1959, 1960, and 1961 playing shortstop and 2nd for the Class B Carolina League Team.  Again, the defensive records are not great, but it looks like he played 2B for 108 games in 1961.  I am not sure where he played in the field the other two years on the Bulls, but I can probably speculate that some of the time was playing second.  During his 1961 season the 22 year old Tigers farm hand hit 19 homers, 5 triples, and 21 doubles while posting a slash line of .272/.314/.439.  For the era, Anderson displayed a good deal of pop for a middle infielder.    Anderson never appeared in the Major Leagues.

Edward Richardson- This guy was Kevin Youkilis before Kevin Youkilis.  His last year of professional baseball was spent in Durham playing for the Class B Houston Colts affiliate.  It appears that Richardson played a lot of second base that year for the Bulls, but also spent time playing other places on the infield during his career.  During his one season in Durham his slash line was .256/.414/.426.  Not a typo, but that's a pretty hard line to duplicate.  For what it's worth Youk had a .382 OBP, but had a slugging percentage of .478.  Richardson's on base was greatly helped by his incredible 117 walks that season.  He also had 13 home runs, 25 doubles, and 73 RBIs.  You wonder what would have happened to a guy like this if he played during a different era.

Woody Fair- He's listed as having played second base on his Baseball Reference page, but I am not sure if he played there for the Durham Bulls.  What I do know is that he appeared for the 1946 Durham Bulls and played in 139 games that season.  During those 139 games he had 569 at bats and hit .348 with a .589 slugging percentage, 24 home runs, 7 triples, and 51 doubles.  Again, not sure if he played second base, but that's a really good season.  In fact, in talking to a few folks who witnessed the Carolina League in the late 1940s and early 1950s, they are hard to find, they describe Woody Fair as the best player in the league during that time.  He appeared almost exclusively for Carolina League teams between 1946 and 1951.  Interestingly his final season in 1951 was spent playing for the Raleigh Capitals managed by former Cardinals star Joe Medwick.

5.  Elliot Johnson

The most recent member of the team on this list, Johnson was an important part of the very successful Charlie Montoyo Era for the Durham Bulls.  Johnson appeared in games for the Durham Bulls during the 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 seasons.  He also appeared in 2 games for the 2011 team, but we are going to ignore those 9 at bats.  I am not sure if I can really point out a singular great season that Johnson posted during that time for the Bulls, but the team won and he was on the field a lot playing pretty well.  In 2009 the Bulls won the Triple A National Championship game with Johnson slashing .265/.324/.450 with 11 home runs, 11 doubles, and 7 steal in 68 games.  The slash line was pretty typical of Johnson's time in Durham and he usually had pretty good pop and speed to go along with solid defense.

4.  Tony Graffinino 

Graffanino appeared for the Durham Bulls as a farmhand for the Braves and Rays.  During his first trip through Durham he was a 21 year old second baseman playing for the Braves A ball team.  He posted a .275/.342/.460 line with 15 home runs, 30 doubles, 24 steals, and 69 RBIs.  Six years later Graffanino appeared for the Bulls as a late twenty-something trying to make it back up to the big leagues.  I might add that he was successful and ended up playing in the Majors until 2007 before spending 2007 and 2008 back in the International League.  During his second appearance in Durham Graffanino hit .313/.379/.499 with 9 home runs, 6 triples, 25 doubles, 58 RBIs, and 16 steals in just 87 games.  He also appeared in 10 games with the Bulls during the 2000 season, but it looks like it was a rehab appearance, but for what it's worth he had a .286/.405/.543 line during those games.

3.  Mark Lemke 

Lemke appeared for the Durham Bulls in 1987 and spent almost the whole summer playing for the second base for the team.  While you probably do not remember Lemke hitting in the Majors, he held his own during his time in the Minors.  During the 1987 season the Bulls second baseman hit .292/.364/.485 with 20 home runs, 28 doubles, 3 triples, and 10 steals.  Lemke went on to be an important member of the 1990s Braves teams including the 1995 World Series Champions.  

2.  Ron Gant 

Gant played second base?  Absolutely.  Gant appeared in 135 games for Durham Bulls in 1986 all of them at second base.  During that season Gant hit .277/.372/.529 with 26 home runs, 10 triples, 31 doubles, 102 RBIs, and 35 steals.  I thought I was surely going to find a Carolina League MVP in there for that performance, but it appears that Ron was best by Mets prospect Gregg Jefferies who hit .354 with 43 steals in just 95 games with the Lynchburg Mets.  Still a great year for Gant and one of the better offensive seasons in the history of the Bulls.  Gant started off on the infield for the Braves, but eventually ended up as an outfielder for the majority of the team he played in Majors.  He was a feared power hitter, but ended up spending the second half of his career bouncing around the league.

1.  Joe Morgan 

Obviously the biggest impact beyond his time with the Durham Bulls, but he was a pretty special player during his brief stay with the team.  Again, the record on Morgan's time with the Bulls is incomplete.  He hit .323 with a .434 slugging percentage in 95 games with the Bulls, but their is no record of walks, nor his on base percentage.  Morgan also hit 13 home runs, 20 doubles, and 2 triples in just 322 at-bats.  Morgan went on to be an important part of the 1970s Cincinnati Reds teams hitting over 250 career home runs, driving in more than 1000 RBIs, and stealing almost 700 bases.  He won two World Series rings for the Reds in 1975 and 1976 and was elected to the baseball Hall of Fame in 1990.  Bill James called Morgan "the percentages player in baseball history"

Snorting Bull Award: Worst Card of the Year Part 1

SNORTING BULL AWARD: WORST CARD OF THE YEAR

I have done this award two years in a row and usually the worst card of the year just strikes me at some point during the year.  Two years ago I gave the nod to a Don Denkinger card.  For those not in the know, Denkinger blew the 1985 World Series.  How does that get you a baseball card almost thirty years after the fact?  Not sure.  Last year Topps put players in the Update set who had not played in the Majors for six months before the set was released.  Bad quality control makes for bad cards.  

I am not sure where to place the finger of blame with this year's worst card.  Follow Topps on any social media website and it will not take long until you are made aware of the fact that Topps has a long and illustrious history in the hobby.  Stick around a little bit longer and you will find that in spite of the rich tradition and history talk the company seems to frequently step on the toes of fan bases all over the place.  If you are going to claim that you have some grand sense of tradition and history then perhaps you need to make sure that your cards show that you are a knowledgable of the fans you are trying to please.  

This year there were two really really terrible baseball cards made by Topps.  

First up...Earlier this year I pulled a really cool Ron Gant autographed printing plate out of Topps Archives.  The card featured the slugging 90s baseball player as a Brave.  Braves Ron Gant was apart of some great 90s baseball teams.  Braves Ron Gant was an important player in the 1991 World Series.  Gant left the Braves and ended up on the Reds.   Reds Ron Gant was in the playoffs and won the National League Central and pushed the team into the NLCS.  Cardinals Ron Gant was a different story.  

He failed to live up to a big free agent contract, which is never a good start, but ended up alienating half of his former teammates and loads of Cardinals fans with complaints about the team and specifically manager Tony LaRussa.  Here's a run down if you want all of the nitty gritty dirty details.    Gant spent the rest of his career as a fourth outfielder.  LaRussa won a pair of World Series titles.  While Ron Gant may not be quite as bad as Garry Templeton, who flipped a double bird to the Busch Stadium crowd on Mothers Day, he might easily be one of the least popular Cardinals of the past twenty years or so.  

So, I have to honestly ask why Topps thought this card was a good idea?

In fact, I am really surprised that Ron Gant would sign a card like this...really.  I am guessing someone at Topps found this cool picture of Gant in a Cardinals uni and decided that the card would be a good idea.  Again, I am not picking on Ron Gant.  There are a lot of players who have forgettable stops in their careers.  Anybody remember Steve Carlton on the Twins or Giants?  Keith Hernandez on the Indians?  Randy Johnson on the Yankees?  These are all players who have had cards made during the past year by Topps.  Steve Carlton is a Phillie or Cardinal.  Keith Hernandez is a Met.  Randy Johnson is a Diamondback or Mariner.  No bad stops on cardboard.

While Gant is not as good as some of these players, he still more than 300 home runs, 1,500 hits, and an OPS over .800.  Does Ron Gant deserve to have a cool throwback baseball card?  Yes, but he also deserves something better than a Cardinals uniform, which makes this the co-winner of my Worst Card of the Year Award for 2014.