(upgraded cards are indicated by bold blue text)
139 Terry Leach
224 Gary Ward
127 Rick Aguilera
23 Mike Smithson
303 Kevin Gross
612 Brook Jacoby
231 Eric Davis
629 Rookie Record Setter
441 Ken Caminiti
407 Jack McDowell
414 Jody Davis
178 Robin Yount
336 Vicente Palacios
378 Edgar Martinez
78 Chili Davis
Two more of the original twenty are replaced out of this pack.
This box of Fleer doesn't seem to be as obsessed with death as the box of '89 Bowman, but we do see the late Ken Caminiti here, and we've seen both Chris Brown and Frank Williams. There may be a few more players who are no longer with us, but I can't think of any right off the top of my head that have come out of this box.
We got an interesting mixture of some good photos and bad ones in this pack. Another Hall of Famer and the third card thus far featuring a fallen hero.
Bad photography:
It's a shame that such a great player got such a boring photo.
Hall of Fame? Admittedly, I'm not a fan of the DH rule, but Martinez put up some pretty impressive numbers. He's eligable next year and will probably get some votes, but I just don't think he's Hall of Fame material. If he had played at third base for fifteen years and then spent the last several years as a DH and still put up the numbers he did, then I think he would deserve consideration.
But of course, the same argument can be made against electing a closer to the Hall. I don't know the answer.
According to Baseball Reference, of those most similar to Edgar, only Orlando Cepeda is in the Hall of Fame. The list includes some of the great hitters of that generation though, and many of them are not yet eligable for Hall voting. So you can't read too much into it.
Here's a good shot of Eric Davis. Based on all the cameras in the background, I'll assume that this picture was taken during the 1987 All Star game in Oakland. Davis went 0-3 in the game with two groundouts and a strikeout.
I think, up to this point, this is the best looking card I've pulled. Davis is about to tag out a Reds baserunner at the plate.
Here's our Hall of Famer which also falls into the category of horrible picture. The Edgar Martinez picture is just boring, this one is downright horrible.
Look at the back of the card. Through 1987 Yount had 2,217 hits. He collected another 925 hits during the final six years of his career when players are supposed to start slowing down.
I'd have to look to make sure, but I think Yount was also the last player to retire who had been a teammate of Hank Aaron.
Here's that fallen hero...
6 comments:
It looks like the photographer snapped a picture of Robin just as he was flinging his helmet after an out.
Yeah that's what I think too. And it's funny how often a card has a picture of a guy striking out, popping up, or, in this case, after doing something bad.
I know it's impossible to get a picture of every homerun, but they could have tried a little harder to not make him look like a complete failure.
Cool blog man.
I think that base runner on the Jody Davis card is a Cardinal. If you notice the belt colors are dark white red and on the Eric Davis card the Reds belt is red white red.
I started thinking that it may not be a Red. After posting this I wanted to figure out who the other player was, so I looked through all the games the Reds played in Chicago in 1987 with a white guy wearing a number in the 20s.
There weren't a lot of them, but none of them made a play at the plate. So you may be right that it is a Cardinal. I can't think of another NL team that wore red and had a grey away jersey (Phillies wore blue on the road).
The only play at the plate that I can find involving Jody Davis and a Cardinal wearing a number in the 20s was in the top of the 3rd on June 6, 1987. The Cardinal runner in that play is Tony Pena, and the skin tone just doesn't look right...
A couple other cards from the 88 Fleer set of players who have passed away since: Joe Niekro and Bo Diaz.
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