Baseball Card People Are The Best.......

I received a package of cards from Mark over at San Jose Fuji a few weeks back, it took a day off school to get them scanned with a write up. Mark has been writing on that blog for more than a decade and it is easily one of the best blogs out there. Definitely worth your time to go check out.  

Here are the cards in the package.  

First up is an oversized card of former Cardinals second baseman Tommy Herr.  

The card comes from the 1986 Donruss All-Star Pop-Ups set.  You can see the outline around Herr, which can pull out or push in, the card stand-ups with the Metrodome in the background. The 1985 MLB ALL-Star Game was hosted by the Twins and Herr was the National League starting second baseman over Ryne Sandberg.  

The back of the card features the All-Star Game logo and directions for the fold-out.  No mention of Herr getting 110 RBIs with only 8 home runs in 1985, which I find to be one of the cooler stat lines from the decade. Still, I love these cards.   

Next up, a 1981 Kellogg's card of Gary Templeton.  

The 1970s and 1980s Kellogg's sets are always so much fun. This was the only full-sized, non-mini Kellogg's set from the 1980s and prominently featured all the concrete, cookie cutter stadium from this era of baseball in all their glory, including Busch Stadium.  

The arches.

The red seats.  

The concrete overhang.  

There are non-Cardinals players with pictures inside of Busch Stadium from this era as well.  Great card of a guy who was one of the better shortstops in the National League during the late 1970s and early 1980s.  

Next up, more 1981 Cardinals cards.  

This trio of cards is from the 1981 Topps Scratch-Offs set. Great little oddball set. Love that the Cardinals players are all wearing the powder blue road unis on these cards. Great hair on display here as well. 

Next up. 

This might be my favorite card in this package.   

I do not think I have ever seen this card and I have never heard of Holsum Bread. Still, I love the looks of this round card with the red border. Definitely trending towards some type of product that appealed more to kids during Vince Coleman's time with the Cardinals, I did some digging into the background here.  

The card comes from the 1990 Holsum set, which was a small 20 card set distributed in packages of white bread. Holsum was a common bakery brand during the 1980s and 1990s. However, there is not a Holsum Bread Bakery in St. Louis, rather the Holsum products sold in that market are contracted out to a regional bakery there that sells Holsum Bread under various brand names. So, the Holsum Bread Brand in the St. Louis area........

We did not eat Bunny Bread in my house.

I missed out, but I like this card even more after playing connect the corporate bakery dots online.  

Next up.....

One cannot have Vince Coleman and not Willie McGee.  This is from the 1988 Topps UK Mini set. Good looking design and I love the photo on the front of the card. Not many 1980s Cardinals cards with photographs inside of Busch, but these sorts of ground level shots are really rare. I believe this might be from a 1987 World Series game. McGee has a patch on his front sleeve, it is blurry, but those playoff games were the only time the team wore a patch that season.

Mark also included a nice relic card of pitcher turned outfielder Rick Ankiel. Before Othani, there was Ankiel. Not quite the same player, not the same circumstances either.  

Onward........

The next three cards are from the 1995 Signature Rookies Autographs, which borrow their design from the Old Judge tobacco cards. The majority of players in this set are from the high Minors with a surprising number being former Major League Players.  

Petkovsek was a long reliever for the mid 1990s Cardinals teams. He actually won 11 games for the 1996 National League Central team that came within a game of getting to the World Series. Since Petkovsek was in the Majors at the time this card was produced, I am curious as to where they got the uniform for this picture. Prior to being on the Cardinals, Petkovsek had been pitching for the Louisville Redbirds and Tuscon Toros.  Looks like neither.  

Frascatore was another 1990s relief pitcher for the Cardinals. He had played with the Cardinals in 1995, but spent a lot of time going in between St. Louis and Louisville.  This looks like a Memphis Redbirds uniform with a random "O" airbrushed onto the hat.  

Last up, T.J. Matthews. He was a high-leverage reliever who was Eckersley's set-up man when LaRussa first started managing the Cardinals. Matthews ended up getting traded to the A's in the Mark McGwire deal. Matthews is actually wearing an Arkansas Travelers uniform on this card. The hat may be altered slightly, but that was the Cardinals Double A team at the time.  

Nice looking cards. All three have great signatures too.  Can you imagine signing 6,000 copies of a card?  

Last card from the package.  

I recently learned an interesting Sean Lowe factoid at the end of the 2022 baseball season.  

For background......Sean Lowe was selected by the Cardinals in the first round of the 1988 MLB Draft. His first baseball card was in the 1989 Bowman set. He was oft-injured and ended up spending the majority of his short career as a middle reliever for the Chicago White Sox.  

Cool factoid.  

On Jun 16, 2001 the Cardinals were playing the White Sox and leading 6-3 in the seventh inning. Shortstop Placido Polanco started the inning with a walk, which was followed by a J.D. Drew single. The White Sox brought in Sean Lowe to pitch to Pujols.  

What happened next, only happened once in the career of Albert Pujols.....

It's hard to read, but Pujols sac bunted Polanco and J.D. Drew over a base.  

Overall, this was a great package of baseball cards. I am always impressed by the generosity of the people in this hobby. Thank you, Mark, I will drop something in the mail for you one of these weekends.  

Hang It In The Louvre

I picked up an incredible custom art card this past week. Mark Mosley is the artist of the card and can be found on both Twitter and Instagram under the user name IDrawBaseballCards.  Mark also has an online store where he sells both single custom art cards as well as small sets. He is a great follow on social media. You will enjoy his work.  

I discovered Mark's work a few years back when I stumbled across The Baseball Beyond Batting Average Podcast. Mark is one of the podcast hosts along with Andy from Baseball Card Backs on Twitter. Besides beyond a great podcast, they are both locals. Meaning the Triangle region of North Carolina. There are roughly 75 episodes of the podcast. If you enjoy baseball statistics, it's worth a listen. Mark and Andy interact heavily with the listeners of their podcast and favorite all my tweets criticizing Andre Dawson's 1987 National League MVP Award.  

I'm drifting.  Back to custom art cards.  

Mark frequently will post custom cards of players on their birthdays. Longtime Cardinals outfielder Willie McGee turned 63 a few weeks back and got a custom card of his 1986 Topps card on the IDrawBaseballCards accounts.  

Happy Birthday Willie McGee! pic.twitter.com/L9pY7ZHTjJ

— IDrawBaseballCards (@mosley_mark) November 2, 2021

I commented on the Tweet about getting Mark to making a custom card of a Topps proof photo from sometime in the 1980s featuring Willie McGee. The picture is truly bizarre, a complete head scratcher.  I have seen this several times as a "Caption That Photo" on Twitter and in baseball card groups on Facebook.  

The picture speaks for itself in a way.  Nobody really knows what is going on here, but there are so many questions that run through my mind about Willie McGee's half home and half road uniform.  Oh, there is also Mike Ramsey in the background.  What happened here? 

A day later Mark posted a custom card of the odd Willie McGee photo.  

I’m not saying Willie McGee had anything to do with it… but I’ve got questions. (Special request by @TheSnortingBull ) pic.twitter.com/sACaB4drZO

— IDrawBaseballCards (@mosley_mark) November 3, 2021

I was surprised that he made the card, but the best part was that a made me a copy and stuck it in the mail.  Any odd spots on the photos are from my scanner.  It's smudgy at the moment.  

This is just simply an amazing baseball card.  It is definitely going to find a prominent spot in my baseball card room.  I have a sweet Willie McGee bobblehead in there.  This would look good next to it.  

As an added bonus, Mark also sent a custom 1989 Topps All-Star Ozzie Smith card.  

This is a phenomenal card too.  

I would like to thank Mark for providing some great cards to look at online and for his generosity in creating and send me the custom Willie McGee card.  My baseball card room is not exactly the Louvre, but these cards have instantly become two of my favorites.  

Set Appreciation Post #12 - 1988 Donruss

It has been a week.  I am doing a whole lot of nothing this weekend and it feels great.  Writing a blog post about the 1988 Donruss set seemed like a really huge time waster, so here I am.  Maybe I just hang out with the wrong people and follow the wrong accounts on social media, but the 1988 Donruss set seems wildly unpopular.  Is it just me, or does it often get lumped in with sets like 1991 Fleer?  

I am going to hold my opinion to the end of the post, but I will probably give away it's ranking somewhere around the top of the post.  

Special guest appearance by Aaron Boone via screen shots.  I learned this week that I attended his Major League debut.  He was ejected after being tagged out at home on a throw from right-fielder Brian Jordan.  

 

Actual screen shot of Aaron Boone after getting run from the game.  Deion Sanders homered off of Matt Morris.  The Reds won.  The Cardinals fans booed Deion Sanders and none of them could tell you why they booed him. 

Let's go.  

BASE CARD

 

Many of the cards in the post were actually opened by the 10 and 11 year old me.  Pack fresh.  You're going to find this hard to believe, but I have never gone back and worked on improving my 1988 Donruss set.  The first base card in the set is Mackey Sasser.  Actually, the first two dozen cards in Donruss sets were always the Diamond Kings cards.  I will get to those in a few minutes.  

The Rated Rookie cards were always great.  That little logo in the corner of the card is always a bonus in my book.  One of the great things that came out of 1980s baseball cards. 

Shall we talk about the border design? 

 

I never quite understood what was going on with the blue, red, and black lines.  I have looked at these cards from time to time over the last 33 years and I have no idea how this design was picked for a large baseball card set.  If this was the best design option at the time, what did it beat out?  

The back of the card. 

 There were always pros and cons to the card backs in the Donruss set.  The con was when you got a card of some player who had been around forever, but they only put five years worth of stats on the back of the card.  I like the highlight section better than Topps and I also like that they put down how the player was acquired.  You could find some really bad trades on the back of these cards. 

Diamond Kings 

I wanted to pick a Cardinals card for this spot, but the 1988 Donruss set had Jack Clark with a pink background.  I like the pink background, but 1988 was not a great year to be a Cardinals fan and see Jack Clark in a pack of cards. 

Why?  

I am going to slip in a screen shot of Mike Bush from NewsChannel 5. I think Mike is a news anchor now, or somebody serious.  Hopefully Zip Rzeppa is still doing sports in St. Louis. 

It also started the Bob Horner era in St. Louis.  

I decided to pick this Mark McGwire card instead.  Big Mac was coming off setting the Major League rookie home run record.  If you didn't know the year of the card, you can tell it's early in his career, because he looks to be a normal size in the picture.  I like the colored bars in the background too, very 1980s.  

Aaron Boone screen shot. 

There are probably better Diamond Kings cards in this set, but I am sticking with McGwire.  Solid design and he actually had a really good 1987.  

Cool Card of 1988 

I never got the whole idea of spending a ton of money on players with very little Major League experience.  Yes, it's been really bad the past two decades with Bowman, but it's not like that was the start of the trend.  Bowman just made it worse.  The 1988 Donruss set had one of those "hot" rookie cards way back in 1988.  

The 1988 Donruss Gregg Jefferies card was a really big deal back in the late 1980s.  People were pretty sure that he was going to be the next great hitter in the Majors, win a few batting titles, and be in the Hall of Very Good or the Hall of Fame.  

A lot of people spent a lot of money on this card. 

 

Other people just pulled the card from a $0.35 pack of cards from Ben Franklin.  

While we are here.  It really bothers me when people label Gregg Jefferies as a "flop" or a "bust".  He was a really good player who just happened not to live up to very lofty expectations.  I saw him play for the Cardinals for two years in the 1990s, excellent player.  Great hitter. 

Best Non-Cardinal Card 

I am a sucker for flip-down sunglasses.  

Why don't players wear these types of sunglasses anymore?  

I don't wear glasses.

I don't wear sunglasses.  

If I did wear glasses, they would be flip downs.  

Thank you, Aaron Boone.  Yes, Eric Davis is also a really good hitter.  

Best Cardinals Card 

 

Wrigley makes a good backdrop for baseball cards.  The Ozzie Smith card is a Spring Training picture.  The Vince Coleman card was also taken in Wrigley, but he is bunting.  Easy choice here. 

 Thanks, Aaron. 

Best Durham Bulls Card 

Let's wrap up this post.  I thought about going Brad Komminsk on the Brewers, but I am going to fly under the radar a bit here and go with Milt Thompson.  Really, there were not that many great choices.  The Bulls produced a lot of Braves players during the 1980s, but none of them have great cards in this set. 

 

Milt Thompson, if you did not watch baseball in the 1980s or 1990s.  Good player for the Braves, Phillies, Cardinals, and back to the Phillies for a second time.  I think there might have been a few years with the Astros at the very end of his career.  Good hitter, good defender.  I like the portrait style photo, just wish the photographer had backed up a little bit.  Milt had a really unique batting stance, but I cannot find a good picture of it.  His bat is actually too high in this photo.  Normally it was behind his back shoulder, he stood deep in the box, but stuck his front leg out straight in front of him. 

 Yes.  

How Does It Compare?  

You're probably thinking that this set is going to end up being in the last spot, but that's not going to happen.  I have no problem putting the 1988 Donruss set ahead of the bottom 3 sets.  It's not better than the 2017 Topps Heritage Minors set, so I am really trying to decide whether to put it above or below the Emotion XL set.  

The major flaw with 1988 is its design.  If Aaron Boone had been a design manager at Donruss during the late 1980s, this might be a conversation he had with his team.

Aaron Boone was in high school in 1988. 

Emotion XL has a good design, but some of it's cards are really dumb.  Let's remember that Dante Bichette's "emotion" was "The Heat".  Still think that the Emotion cards are better overall set than Donruss, especially when the quality of the cards is taken into consideration. 

I am going to go ahead and put the 1988 Donruss set in 9th place in my Set Appreciation rankings. 

11. 2000 Pacific Paramount Update 

10. 2010 Topps USA Baseball  

9. 2000 UD Ionix  

9. 1988 Donruss 

8. 1995 Emotion XL 

7. 2017 Topps Heritage Minor League

6. 1998 Topps TEK 

5. 1986 Topps Mini League Leaders 

4. 2001 Fleer EX 

3. 1979 Kellogg's 

2. 2002 Topps Super Teams

1. 1983 Topps 

Sorry, I am out of Aaron Boone screenshots. 

Set Appreciation Post #6 - 1983 Topps

This was the first year that I collected cards, but I opened more packs of Fleer than Topps.  I went back and collected this set later on in life, and it is an absolute favorite.  This is the largest set that I have featured on one of these posts, so I have picked out more than one card for some of the categories.  

Design 

One of my favorite Topps designs of all-time, and in my opinion, the best from the 1980s.  I know a lot of people rave and rant about 1987's wood borders, but this is much better.  Maybe I am biased towards the sets from my childhood, but no matter where I am as a collector or what I am interested in collecting, the cards in the 1983 Topps set have always had a strong appeal to me.  

I like the two photographs on the front of the card and the color schemes that Topps used around the edges of the card.  I know there are some similarities to the 1963 set, but I like this version better.  Every team has their own color scheme, which often has nothing to do with the actually team colors, but still looks good.  

The back of the cards are nice too.

This might also be one of my favorite card backs.  The stat lines are the same old same old, but the contrast between the orange and gray background and black print is easy on the eyes.  It makes things easy to read.  I also like that the highlights and facts on the back of the card focus on that player and their performance on the field, not something random which is the case with other Topps sets.  Nothing like, "Tony Armas set a record for total bases in a Major League game", which is on the 1982 Topps Gene Richards card.   

The silhouettes are a nice touch too.  

Overall, I give this base set high marks.  Again, personal favorite, and I know that there are plenty of other collectors who have differing opinions of this set ranging from indifferent to dislike.  

The Super Veteran Bulls 

One of the most recognizable subsets in the 1983 Topps set are the Super Veteran cards.  The subset also has a strong connection to the early 1960s Durham Bulls, who were the Carolina League affiliate of the expansion Houston Colt .45s.  Two notable Major Leaguers rolled through the Durham Athletic Park during the 1962 and 1963 seasons.  

Rusty Staub appeared on the 1962 Bulls, winning the Carolina League MVP that season.  He was in the Majors with the Colts the following year.  During the 1983 season Staub was playing with the Mets, which was his second stint with that franchise. He was a good player for a long time, and not one that I place with just one team.  Staub was a bench player at this point during his career, so especially neat that Topps gave him this card.  Don't get many fourth outfielders and left-handed bats off the bench with subset cards.  I love the old photo with the Colts.  

Joe Morgan was on the Bulls in 1963, and for a long time was their only former player who was in the Baseball Hall of Fame.  Oddly enough, the Durham Bulls had a former player in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, 1940s quarterback Ace Parker, before they had one in the Baseball Hall.  The old photo of Morgan is fantastic.  You get to see the front of his Colts jersey too.  Morgan played for a bunch of teams at the end of his career, but was still a decent player.  My interest in baseball and Morgan's career barely interested, so he's a player a mostly know about through others, reading, videos, etc.  It's weird not seeing him on the Reds.  No, I don't remember watching him play at all.  

Topps re-did the Super Veteran subset in the 2014 Topps set.  It was as disappointing as you can imagine.  That old fashioned photo of Matt Holliday feels really inauthentic.  

Just makes me sad.  

This is really the only thing not to like about the 1983 Topps set.  I am not sure how many times Topps has used the card designs from this set over the past decade, but I know it has at a minimum appeared in Topps Archives and as an insert set in a Topps base set.  They are never as good as the original.  

Best Cardinals Cards 

I have two favorite Cardinals cards in this set.  I have picked one in each of the other sets that I have featured in one of these posts, but none of those sets were almost 800 cards.  One was a no-brainer, so let's talk about that one first.  

There are three rookie cards that most collectors know in the 1983 Topps set, those are Sandberg, Gwynn, and Boggs.  However, there is also a rookie card of Willie McGee.  

He won more batting titles than Ryne Sandberg.  He won more World Series rings than Sandberg and Gwynn.  He won more MVP Awards than Wade Boggs and Tony Gwynn combined.  Also, all three of those players might be in the Hall of Fame, but none of them won a batting title for the National League while playing in the American League.  

Seriously, Willie was a good player.  There is some weird contingent of Cardinals fans who thinks he should be in the Hall of Fame (no), and that the team should retire his number (no).  If I made a list of really important must-own Cardinals rookie cards from the 1980s, this 1983 Topps Willie McGee card would definitely be on the list.  

Second Cardinals card.  

This was not my first Ozzie Smith card, that was likely a 1983 Fleer, but I still owned this card.  Ozzie was easily the most likable player on the Cardinals when I first started collecting cards and following baseball.  His cards were important to me as a six year old, and since he did not retire until I was in college, they have always remained important.  

I like the action shot on the card.  Not sure if this is a hit or not, but it looks like Ozzie has at least a chance to make it a close play.  I like that there is another player talking to a fan in the background.  

Favorite Former Durham Bulls 

There were quite a few to choose from in this set, but I went with two members of the Bulls teams from the 1960s.  First up, I will go with my second Rusty Staub card of the post.  

I really like the action shots in the 1983 Topps set.  I feel like many have a story to tell.  The photo on this card shows Staub dropping his bat and heading to first base, but I have always thought that this was likely a routine fly ball.  He looks a little disappointed in his expression with his eyes are up.  Maybe I am wrong, but Rusty's face is saying flying out to right field.  If you have this set, or even just a few cards, it's worth your time to flip through and look at the action shots.  

Next up.  

I had to go with the Greg Luzinski card.  

He was on the 1969 Raleigh-Durham Phillies, which is what the Bulls changed their name to after they were forced to merge with the bankrupt Raleigh Pirates.  They were also a Phillies affiliate, so there is that part of the name.

Raleigh is a city.  Durham is a city.  Raleigh-Durham is an airport.  

Back to the Luzinski card.  

"The Bull" was a feared power hitter who was paired with Mike Schmidt for the majority of his career, but his last few years were spent as a designated hitter with the White Sox.  Greg Luzinski was out of shape, and did not really look like a professional athlete when this card was made.  He could still hit though.  Love the action shot of him wearing the softball style White Sox uniform.  Not sure what happened in this at-bat, hard to tell, definitely a fly ball though.  

He does look really annoyed in the portrait photo though.  

Best Non-Cardinal/Non-Durham Bulls Card 

I will just go ahead and tell that this card is my favorite in the set.  It's even better than the Willie McGee card, which hurts a little to say out loud in public.  

Simply put, this is one of the best rookie cards from the 1980s.  

The spots are on my scanner.  Little people were playing with it while I was working.  

The picture is a little bit odd, but I think that's one of the reasons I like this card.  This is clearly a Spring Training picture with Gwynn wearing the 53, which he never wore in a Major League game.  Always love those pictures of great players and they're wearing some odd number. Albert Pujols is wearing jersey number 68 in several of his rookie cards.  Same idea here.  

 

I also miss those brown and yellow Padres uniforms.  I am glad the team is switching back to this color scheme for the 2020 season.  

Back of the card.  

Gwynn was not in the Minors for very long, but did hit in all three stops.  This is the one card where I would have actually liked the random fact box, so they could squeeze in that he played college basketball and was drafted by an NBA team.  I am sure it is on another Topps Tony Gwynn card.  

How Does It Compare?  

You should already know.   

Not sure we need a lot of discussion here.  If I were just doing the Topps sets from my life time, this might be first overall.  Really not much to think about, this is the best set I have written up on these posts.  

6. 2000 U.D. Ionix 

5. 1986 Topps Mini League Leaders 

4. 2001 Fleer EX 

3.1979 Kellogg's 

2. 2002 Topps Super Teams

1. 1983 Topps  

I Think We All Know Who The Real MVP Is.....

I do not write much about Panini cards, and I generally just tune them out.  Every once in awhile I will see a card of theirs that catches my eye, but that happens once or twice a year.  Like the other day I was scrolling through my Facebook page, when I ran across a sweet card of former Cardinals player/current Cardinals coach Willie McGee.  

Card.  

I know the airbrushed stuff isn't even close to a Cardinals uniform, but I love the attempt at recreating some 1980s graphics in the background of the card.  Strong effort.  I even like the picture of McGee batting.  Add in an autograph, and this card is MVP material.  

Back of the card.  

Nice write up about McGee's MVP season in 1985.  Excellent.  

A 1980s Card Part 6- 1983 Donruss Willie McGee

Willie McGee was not necessarily my favorite player at any point during his two stints with the Cardinals, but he was high on the list.  Even when the Cardinals traded him away to the A's during the 1990 season, it was still fun to follow his career.

One of my favorite non-1980s Willie McGee cards has always been his 1991 Donruss Highlights card.....

which shows him as the 1990 National League Batting Champion, but he is playing for the A's.  Only player in Major League history to win a batting title for a league while not playing in the league.  Willie McGee would go on to play for his hometown Giants, and the Red Sox, before returning to St. Louis to play out the last few years of his career as the Cardinals fourth outfielder. 

The 1980s Willie McGee cards are something I had to revisit a bit later on in life.  I had a lot of his cards, but there were definitely some holes in my collection of McGee cards.  No matter the holes, I flip back through my 1980s Cardinals cards, and the McGee card that always stands out to me is his 1983 Donruss rookie card. 

I like the design of McGee's other two major brand rookie cards better than the Donruss, but I am willing to over look a weaker card designer for a far superior player photo. 

Here is his Fleer rookie. 

This photograph makes McGee seem like a bit of an after thought.  The best you can do is a side photo of him swinging a metal bar at the on-deck circle?  At least the picture feels like it has focus, which is more than what Topps can say about their 1983 McGee card. 

This card has a lot of potential, but not the best execution.  The action shot is decent, but it feels out of focus, and really off center.  The head shot at the bottom feels even more out of focus than the action shot.  It's hard to get portrait style pictures wrong, but here we are....

Back to the 1983 Donruss card.  Here is the card back.  

Typical 1980s Donruss card back.  I love that they put the "How Acquired" section on the card.  Not sure that many talk about the lopsidedness of the Willie McGee trade anymore, but long ago it was a thing.  Sykes never played a game for the Yankees.  McGee won two batting titles, a National League MVP, and is a huge reason the Cardinals won the 1982 World Series. 

Willie will never be a Hall of Famer, although he is in the Cardinals Hall of Fame, just a popular player who had some great years.