#107T John Costello

Holy orgasm face! The one on the back ain't much better.

Best phrase on the back is clearly "gold-plated."



The

#98T Luis Alicea

This card features slanted photos on both the front and the back. The one one the front is particularly cool. I like cards with shadows as long as the shadow doesn't overlap the player too much. Here, Alicea and his shadow aren't even touching! This guy is a coach for the Red Sox these days.

My favorite word on the back is "pivot."

#23T Larry McWilliams

CARD

Holy frickin' mustache! Especially on the back!

STAT

In 1983, McWilliams threw 4 shutouts but won only 15 games overall. Turns out, that used to be pretty common. From 1956 to 1992, it happened 185 times, an average of 5 times per season. After 1992, though, it's happened only 3 times in 16 seasons.

CAREER

McWilliams had a remarkably up-and-down career, only once posting an ERA+ within 10 points of average (i.e. between 90 and 110.) He was either great or terrible, and I suspect that injuries had a lot to do with that. When healthy, he posted some great seasons.

#18T Dan Quisenberry

CARD

Two interesting things about this card:

1) This is the first card we've seen so far in this set that does not have a counterpart in the 1988 Topps Traded set. I'm not sure why Topps chose to ignore that Quisenberry changed teams in 1988. It happened midseason in 1988, so maybe they figured it was old news by the time they issued the traded set. Still, it's odd, given that he was still considered a star player at this time.

2) What an awesome photo!! If you look just at his right arm, it almost seems to have been Photoshopped backwards, but of course that's how he looked when he delivered the ball.

STAT

Quisenberry's 1985 total of 76 games finished is the 5th-highest total since 1901. It's interesting that many of the guys high on this list were closers. That sort of model isn't used much today, in the sense that closers are usually in games for saves, so their games finished totals rarely go above 60. Even Francisco Rodriguez, who saved 62 games in 2008, finished "only" 69 games.

CAREER

Quisenberry had a very good career, although he started in the majors pretty late at age 26. Thus, by the time he lost his effectiveness at age 37, he amassed only 10 really good years in the bigs. Thus, he was never seriously considered for the HOF and will never get in.

Quisenberry is the first deceased player we've seen so far in this set.

#7T Jose DeLeon

CARD

I just got finished talking about how great it is that Score put the uniform numbers on the backs of the cards. Check out the front--DeLeon wore #48, right? Well according to the back, he wore #26. What gives? Well check out the 1987 White Sox roster. He wore #26 with them. So, this is a traded set, but they used the number from his previous team? That's ridiculous.

STAT

For pitchers with at least 1000 IP and a W-L% worse than .450, DeLeon has the best hit rate of all time. (Too bad he walked tons of guys too.)

CAREER

We talked a lot about DeLeon on his card on the 88 Topps Cards blog. Only a pretty damn good pitcher could lose 19 games twice in his career. His career neutralized record is 106-101, compared with his actual figure of 86-119.

#5T Tom Brunansky

CARD

Contrast this photo to the one on card #1, Jack Clark. Very similar, and yet this photo sucks by comparison. Can't see Brunansky's eyes at all, and that ruins it. The difference between this set and other sets from 1988, though, is that Score makes up for it by putting a headshot on the back. Then it's OK that we can't see all of Bruno's face, since it's right there on the back.

STAT

Brunansky is one of 7 players to have at least 20 HR and 10 SB every season from 1986 to 1988. How many of the other 6 can you name? 5 are pretty gettable, and one is tough. Post how many you got in the comments.

CAREER

Brunansky got a lot of outfield assists in his career, 117 to be exact. That's an awful lot. I have no idea how good of an outfielder he was overall. But I guess he must have been pretty valuable just as a defensive presence. I think a lot of outfielders' value is in reputation. A first base or third base coach may decide that they will not try to run on a guy's arm based on his reputation (i.e. previous assist totals.) I think that's one reason why when an outfielder puts up a big year in assists, his assist totals often fall off dramatically in subsequent years--because there end up being fewer opportunities to nail runners.