Sports

Movember Day 11: Digging through my Baseball Cards

By November 11, 2011June 18th, 2018No Comments

 

random baseball and basketball cards

1. Pete Incaviglia, 92′ Fleer Ultra – Inky went straight from College to the Majors without ever playing minor league baseball (he was only the 15th player in MLB history to do that). Inky was Mark Reynolds and Adam Dunn before those guys existed. He could hit the long ball (he still holds the NCAA record for most HR’s in a season with 48) but also led the Majors in K’s in two seasons. This almost never happens but Incaviglia’s best season was his rookie year (he hit .250 with 30 dingers and 88 RBI’s). After that it was all downhill from there as he never hit 30 HR’s again and only hit .250+ in three of his next eleven seasons.

2. Chris Jackson, 93′ Upper Deck (Movember participant) – The beauty of this card is that it was the last year in which he went by the name Chris Jackson. In 91′ he converted to Islam and in 93′ he changed his name to Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. Jackson struggled with Tourette Syndrome and despite that still had a pretty productive NBA career (he averaged 14.6 ppg). If you want to learn all about Chris Jackson then watch this video.

3. Blue Edwards, 93′ Upper Deck – This card is awesome because there is one key thing missing…the ball. Everyone is looking up at Blue dunking but the ball is no where to be found. Blue’s real name is Theodore. Here’s a video of Blue Edwards dunking the ball and the announcer vastly overselling how good the dunk was.

4. Felix Jose, 92′ Studio (Movember participant) – You’ve gotta love anyone who has two first names. Studio tells us the following about The Cat (note: that’s not his real nickname but should be): he likes to watch scary movies, Eddie Murphy is his favorite actor, and his closest friend in baseball are Dave Henderson and Dave Stewart.

5. Rafael Belliard, 93′ Pinnacle (Movember participant) – To say that Rafael Bellliard was a light hitting shortstop would be doing a disservice to light hitting shortstops. Light hitting doesn’t even begin to describe how little power Belliard had. He played in 1155 games, had 2301 at bats, and hit only two home runs. Yes, two! His first home run was off of the Padres Eric Show and his second one was more than 10 years later off of the Mets Brian Bohanon. He went 1,869 at bats in between his first and second HR. I don’t know what is worse, giving up a home run to Rafael Belliard or Deion Sanders striking out looking to Jose Oquendo (who was a position player filling in at pitcher).

6. Ricky Jordan, 91′ Upper Deck (Movember participant) – The back of his card lets us know that Ricky was one of 31 NL players to homer in his 1st at bat and was the 4th Phillie to do so. His first season in the majors (in 89′) he only made $95k (let that marinade for a second compared to players salaries now). Here is a quick article that a Phillies fan wrote about how Ricky Jordan will always have a place in his heart (special bonus points for the Rico Brogna and Ron Jones references).

Rob Cressy

Rob Cressy

Sports loving free throw specialist and yinzer living in Chicago who is awesome most of the time, has run with the bulls in Spain, and is a graduate of Second City's Improv program.