#96T Nelson Santovenia

The back of the card would seem to contain an egregious error. It says that Santovenia and Rafael Palmeiro were the only Cuban-born players in the majors at the time. Right off the top of my head, I came up with Jose Canseco, who was born in Havana and was certainly in the majors in 1988. Checking out this list, we also see Orestes Destrade, who has a rookie card coming up in this set, as well as Tony Fossas and Barbaro Garbey.

Best word on the back is "smarts."

#88T John Dopson

And the honor of card #88 in 1988 goes to John Dopson, who appeared in the bigs in 1985 and yet gets a rookie card in 1988.

Anybody know who coached first base for the Cubs in 1988? That guy is probably in the background.

The best words on the back are the phrase "14-hit shutout." Here are the most hits allowed in a complete-game shutout.

#25T Graig Nettles

CARD

Anybody familiar with Nettles will cringe when they see this card. It's weird enough to see him in a Padres or Braves uniform, but seeing him in an Expos jersey is just ridiculous. I'm not sure why Montreal brought him there for 1988 after he showed very little in 1986 or 1987, and was 43 years old.

Nettles has some awesome rubber bat action in this photo.

I wonder why they out his position as "IF" and not just "1B, 3B" seeing as the last time he played an IF position other than those 2 was 1 game at shortstop in 1980.

STAT

That last season for Nettles is one of the more recent years where a guy appeared in at least 80 games but had no more than 93 AB. Pitchers are excluded from that search, of course.

CAREER

It's really tough to understand Nettles' career. On the one hand, he seems somewhat overrated for being on some of the great Yankees teams as well as a Padres team that went to the World Series. He had only one year with 100 RBI and 2 years with 30 HR. So it's sort of easy to write him off as someone who benefited from being in the right place at the right time (sort of like Scott Brosius.) But then look at the 10 players he's most similar to in his career:

1. Darrell Evans (905)
2. Gary Gaetti (895)
3. Ron Santo (860)
4. Dale Murphy (851)
5. Carlton Fisk (845) *
6. Brian Downing (835)
7. Johnny Bench (820) *
8. Chili Davis (818)
9. Don Baylor (818)
10. Gary Carter (816) *

That's 3 HOFers and 2 other guys (Santo and Murphy) whom many believe belong in the HOF.