#783 Ron Roenicke

Why this card is awesome: Because it's a decent shot showing an alternate jersey for the Phillies, plus we get a free half-shot of Greg Gross.

Cool stat: In 1986, Roenicke amassed one of the highest RBI totals for a guy with at most 275 ABs and a .356 SLG. In part, that's because he drew a ton of walks and actually played more than it might seem.

Just for fun, I looked up to see if he had any bases-loaded walks in 1986, and he had two, including a walkoff walk against Ken Howell. That came after they walked STEVE JELTZ.

#782 Jeff Ballard

Why this card is awesome: Because after his terrible 1987 performance, didn't the Orioles think that Ballard just might contribute to a bad 1988 season? Perhaps, which is why he didn't start with the team until their record losing streak to start the season had ended. And, hey, the Orioles did go 10-15 in his 25 games, which might be better than they did with anybody else.

Cool stat: Ballard's 1989 shows what a bad job the guys who voted for Cy Young awards do sometimes. Ballard won 18 games that year and finished 6th in the CY voting. First of all, neutralized, he should have gone 12-11. Second of all, no 18-game winner in the last 60 years has had fewer strikeouts.

#781 Keith Hughes

Why this card is awesome: Because this guy was once really a prospect. What about his minor league numbers (see the back) suggest that he should have been?



See? In 1988, Score thought he was a prospect.

Cool stat: Hey, Hughes did have 7 games with more than 1 hit, at least. Wow.

Nominations

Just in case you missed it over the weekend, I am taking nominations for the best card in the set. See that post and make your picks by Friday.

#780 Fernando Valenzuela

Why this card is awesome: Because Valenzuela is one of the iconic MLB players of the 1980s. What he did in 1981 was absolutely amazing, and the fervor he created may never be duplicated. I also love the line on the back describing how he was acquired. The Dodgers went after him hard, and they got him.

Cool stat: Fernando led all of baseball in IP from 1982 to 1987. The guy was a horse. Two Braves hit the most homers off him.

Kevin recently posted a couple of Fernando cards here and here.

#779 Tom Glavine

Why this card is awesome: Because we're more than 98% of the way through this set but we've finally gotten there: what has proven to be the best rookie card from the 1988 Topps set. He's also one of the few players still active from the set, although there's some doubt as to whether he'll make it back next year. (The only other ones are, I believe, Greg Maddux and Jamie Moyer, although Barry Bonds is technically not retired.)

But, what's with those teeth?

Cool stat: Glavine has 5 20-win seasons, although his neutralized record is 285-208 with zero 20-win seasons. Interesting. It helps, of course, that he played for lots of great Braves and Mets teams. In the history of MLB, 23 pitchers have won 300+ games. Where do you think Glavine ranks among them, in terms of fewest walks. Given that he's got a great winning percentage and only just recently reached 300 wins, I thought he'd be pretty high on that list. Turns out he has the 6th-worst walk total, thanks in large part to the fact that there are so many more walks in the era he played in. Glavine, Clemens, and Maddux are the only 300 game winners to never record a save.

#778 Keith Comstock

Why this card is awesome: Because, at least for me, this is the card that started the downward spiral of the hobby. This card was originally released as an error version, where the team name was white instead of teal (see below.) For a period, the error card was worth quite a lot. What made me skeptical was how Topps fixed this error, as well as the two Record Breaker errors, but didn't bother fixing other errors, such as Garry Templeton, Mike Dunne, or Tim Conroy. I also remember that there were error variations--one where the "S" in "PADRES" was partially colored teal. I can't even find any of those on eBay...are they so rare? Anyway, as a kid, I remember thinking that it was intentional on Topps' part, mainly because the correction came out pretty late, so those of us who had already collected the full set from packs were inclined to buy more packs.



Cool stat: Somehow, even before I looked this up, I knew the answer. Who hit the most homers off Keith Comstock? See if you can guess and then click here.

Introducing 1988 Topps Traded Tiffany (part 3)

This is part 3/4 of a teaser series for the 1988 Topps Traded Tiffany set we'll crack and display on this blog as soon as we finish the regular 1988 Topps set.

Here's the first card out of the box. This is actually the bottom-most card, and oddly enough, it's labeled #2T.



This set contains #1T through #132T. The "T", of course, means "traded" and is used to distinguish these cards from cards 1-132 of the regular 1988 Topps set.

But I was surprised to see #2T out of the box first. I checked carefully inside the box to see if card #1T was stuck to the inside, but it wasn't. Then I thumbed through the next several cards ahead of #2T and saw that there was no discernible order. The cards were not packed numerically, or by name, or by team, or position, or number of years the guy had been playing. I checked with Ben Henry, and he says the traded sets are always packaged like this and that it most likely has to do with the order in which they are printed on the sheets and then cut up. While that makes sense, I don't understand why they are printed in such a weird order. Perhaps it has something to do with distribution of different inks across the uncut stock.

Anyway, the first thing you notice about the back of the card is that it's much brighter than the backs of any of the regular 1988 Topps cards. Check out, for example, the back of card #760:



The regular-issue cards were printed on plain matte-finish cardboard. The traded cards (not just the Tiffany version) were printed on card stock that was glossy on both sides (and was white instead of gray.) This was true of all of the Topps Traded sets I can think of--the card backs were always on glossy stock and were therefore much brighter than their regular-season counterparts.

Notice another thing about card back #760--a telltale wax stain centered on the lower portion of the card (around the words "CLUBHOUSE" and "the Mets" and "infielder." There's another nice thing about the traded sets--no wax stains since they come in a box. (Although I think that some of the traded sets were available in packs too in the 1990s.)

In the final segment of our teaser, we'll see the front of card #2T. Then, we'll start to post the actual cards!

#777 Lonnie Smith

Why this card is awesome: Bceause of Skates' cool necklace. He's in the club. It looks like his initials "LS" but I'm not sure.

My thunder was stolen back on Don Baylor's card about this, but Lonnie Smith was member of a whole bunch of different World Series teams. This guy was in the right place at the right time, and overall he was quite underrated.

Cool stat: I think that Smith is underrated because of TBS. When the Braves games went national on TBS, they were a bad team, and Lonnie Smith was often cited as the best player on a crappy team. Since they were bad, Smith looked bad too. But this had a good career and did a lot of great things in baseball. For example, he's 4th in stolen bases from 1980 to 1986. He's far behind Henderson and Raines, of course, but near the top of the pack compared to the rest of baseball.

#776 Checklist 661-792

Why this card is awesome: Because it's our last checklist of the set, and it mentions the final card #792! Woo hoo!

#775 Dave Stieb

Why this card is awesome: Because there's a lot to like about this card. Firstly, Pat Gillick, who went on to become a successful GM, is mentioned on the back. Second, I think that's 2B Garth Iorg in the background. Thirdly, Stieb is a very underrated player. I'm surprised, in fact, that he got a card number divisible by 25, but he deserved it in my book.

Cool stat: Stieb pitched some awesome games in his career. In addition to his 1990 no-hitter, I still find it incredible that both of his last 2 starts in 1988 were one-hitters, with the lone single coming with 2 outs and 2 strikes in the 9th inning in each game. I have talked a lot about Stieb, one of my favorite players, on the B-R.com SOTD blog, for example here and here.

#774 Gene Mauch

Why this card is awesome: Because this is the last manager card in the set, and it's a good one. Mauch had a very long managerial career and, although he had less success with his teams than a lot of other managers, he made a huge mark on the game.

Cool stat: Mauch finished his playing career with 104 BB and just 82 K's. That used to happen all the time in the early 20th century, but Mauch is the 6th most-recent player to do it.

Deceased players and managers: 20

Mauch died in 2005. He's the second of just two managers in this set who have already passed away.

Mauch is also the final deceased person from the regular 1988 Topps set. (I haven't checked to see if anybody from the 1988 Topps Traded set is deceased.)

#773 Frank Williams

Why this card is awesome: Because Williams is oh so close to giving the finger to the camera.

Cool stat: Williams, interestingly enough, was one of the top relievers of the 1980s. In fact, among non-closer, only my man Mark Eichhorn had a higher ERA+ for guys with at least 400 IP.

#772 Sal Butera

Why this card is awesome: Because of the mention of assists by a catcher. Exactly when do catchers get assists? It's kind of complicated. A catcher gets an assist on, for example, a dropped third strike where the batter is put out by a throw to 1B. He obviously also gets an assist in a rundown when an out is recorded. And he gets an assist when he throws out a would-be base stealer.

Cool stat: Tough to find much on Butera stat-wise, but he did hit pretty well against Dennis Martinez, Frank Tanana, and Bob Stanley.

#771 Ruben Sierra

Why this card is awesome: Because here's another guy who deserved a better card number. Even in 1987, the year of the homer, a 22-year-old guy smacking 30 HR and 109 RBI deserved a little more press. Seirra is clearly in the necklace club.

Cool stat: Sierra's got the 4th-lowest career OPS+ for a guy with 300 homers. And he has the 13th-fewest walks in that club. But here's the really odd one: he has BY FAR the fewest hit-by-pitches in that group. How the hell did he manage to get hit only 7 times in his career? In fact, of the 135 guys to amass at least 7935 ABs in MLB history, Sierra has the fewest HBP. (Incidentally, my whipping boy Garrett Anderson has 7934 ABs and 6 HBP.)

Red Sox consecutive sellout streak ticket

I got this really cool giveaway from the Red Sox. Check out the full scans and details on my post at Things Done to Cards.

#770 Lou Whitaker

Why this card is awesome: Because Whitaker's hands sure look funny. I guess he's just letting go of the bat with his bottom hand because I don't think he could actually bat that way otherwise.

It's incredibly odd that the player Whitaker is most similar to is Ryne Sandberg, given how different their reputations are. It's even odder that the player Whitaker is 2nd-most-similar to is none other than Alan Trammell.

Cool stat: From 1901 up to Whitaker's last year of 1995, his rankings for second baseman are 6th in runs scored, 9th in RBI, and 4th in walks. He's a massively underrated player outside of Detroit.

#769 Cecil Cooper

Why this card is awesome: Because the screwing continues. Like the Phillies and Mariners, the Brewers got raked through the mud by Topps. In Milwaukee's case, it was assigning pretty pathetic card numbers to their star players. Cecil Cooper is not a HOFer and he was out for a lot of 1987, but the guy deserved a number ending in 5 for sure.

Cooper is rocking the beard and sunglasses, an awesome look!

Cooper is currently the manager of the Astros, and he's a great signer through the mail. Go ahead and send him a card and a SASE care of the Astros, and you'll get it back, personalized no less, in a matter of weeks.

Cool stat: From 1980 to 1983, Cooper had 3 seasons with 120+ RBI. Nobody else did it more than once. From 1970 to 1990, only Cooper and Jim Rice has as many as 3 seasons with 120+ RBI and a batting average of .300.

#768 Dickie Noles

Why this card is awesome: Because not only does is this one of the few cards in this set with the "NOW WITH" label on it, but it looks in the photo as if Noles has just been told that he's going to the Tigers. Why does he look so surprised? Well, how weird is this:

September 22, 1987: Loaned to the Detroit Tigers by the Chicago Cubs.
October 23, 1987: Dickie Noles returned to the Chicago Cubs by the Detroit Tigers as part of earlier loan.

Yes, apparently he was loaned (not even lent) to the Tigers. That is utterly bizarre. Waht actually happened is that he was traded for a player to be named later, but ultimately the teams couldn't agree on that player, so Noles was sent back for himself.

Cool stat: I noticed that Noles issued 11 intentional walks in 1980, mostly as a relief pitcher. I was curious so I check our his event finder for IBBs. Noles intentionally walked 3 guys in this game, including intentionally walking Dave Parker to get to Willie Stargell.

If you're curious, here is a list of games where a relief pitcher threw 3 or more IBBs. It used to be a lot more common. In 1980, Noles' such game was one of 9. It didn't happen even once in 2007.

#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.)