#767 Jose Lind

Why this card is awesome: Because I was wrong. There's that ice cube again! This is also the final Future Stars card of the set.

Chico Lind was a pretty exciting player, at least for his defense at 2B, but off-field problems began to interfere with his career and eventually landed him in jail for a while.

Cool stat: Although he didn't run that much, Lind was a good base stealer. Since 1951, among guys who finished with no more than 19 CS, Lind had one of the top SB totals. (That ignores parts of players' careers before 1951.)

#312 Joey Meyer

Why this card is awesome: Because I swear this guy's name should be Meatball. That's all I'm sayin'.

Also, they mention on the back that the has a son named Tanner, but it turns out that his own first name is also Tanner.

Cool stat: Courtesy of his Wikipedia page, it turns out that Meyer is the only guy to hit a walkoff homer against Roger Clemens. In fact, it is the only walkoff PA against Clemens. The other 90 PAs were all wins.

#246 Mike Campbell

Why this card is awesome: Because it's the second Future Stars card (Kevin Elster was the first) but a future star Campbell was not.

Cool stat: HOFers hit Campbell well, especially Robin Yount, to the tune of 7 RBI in 10 ABs.

#18 Al Leiter

Why this card is awesome: Because it was one of the first big cards to feature the wrong player. Well, the above image is the correct card, with a baby-faced Leiter looking pretty awesome in a photo that was taken either at 5AM or 8PM. The actual error card, which was the only one available for a long time, is below:



Cool stat: Leiter absolutely owned Andruw Jones, striking Jones out 25 times in 84 at-bats. Jones had just 15 hits, with 5 doubles, no triples, no homers, and 5 RBI. He did manage 10 walks, though.

Another reason why this card is cool is because it says Al's brother Mark pitched in the minors until 1985, implying that he was out of baseball. It's true--he took 4 years off, came back to organized ball in 1989, and pitched in the big leagues from 1990 to 2001.

#8 Kevin Elster

Why this card is awesome: There's a lot to like about this card, including the fact that Topps used the same "Future Stars" logo as with the 1987 set, creating a nice tie-in between the sets. But the reason why this card is awesome is Elster's little baseball player necklace. It's AWESOME!

Cool stat: Elster didn't live up to his "Future Star" hype, due mainly to injuries. If I recall correctly, he had a long errorless streak at shortstop, and of course he put together one very nice year in 1996. But how about this game? He hit a grand slam off Manny Alexander, in Alexander's only career pitching appearance (since he was usually a shortstop himself.)