#32T Rick Dempsey

Again, the back of the card says Dempsey is #24, but the front of the card tells us that's bullshit.

I just noticed that Dempsey did not have an 88 Topps Card or 88 Topps Traded card. I wonder why. He played in 60 games in 1987 and was a long-time veteran. That was an odd decision.

So here's a stat for you: for catchers with at least 5000 career PAs, Dempsey had the 2nd-fewest RBI. Can you guess who was first? Probably not.

Third catcher card in a row!

#31T Mickey Tettleton

Here's another team that actually looks halfway decent with the bright orange borders.

Check out that photo on the back. "What the fuck are you lookin' at?"

That's two catchers in a row.

#30T Mackey Sasser

Here it finally is...the first actual rookie card in the Rookie & Traded set. That's right...the first 29 guys were all veterans (although Kurt Stillwell was a pretty young guy at the time.)

Anyway, it's rarely a good thing to see the bottom of a guy's shoe on his baseball card. I'm willing to bet Sasser's hitting coach wasn't too thrilled with the photo.

Sasser was all over the place in 1987, in both the big leagues and minor leagues with both the Giants, Pirates, and their affiliates. And his rookie card shows him on the Mets. Go Figure.

New format

Since we've seen just about all of these players in the 1988 Topps Traded set, I'm streamlining these posts a bit to focus on the cards themselves. We'll get back to having stats and such when we move onto the set next (which, incidentally, is going to be the 1989/1990 Topps MLB Debut set.)

#29T Dickie Thon

CARD

For the second card in a row, we see a player about to NOT get a base hit. Looks to me like that ball is going to be popped up and backwards. Pretty cool photo, though.

Weird thing about the card back is that it mentions what Thon did in 1988. I guess I don't totally understand why both this set and the 1988 Topps Traded don't have 1988 season statistics on them. I suppose the issue is that they came out sometime before the season was over, mainly to reflect off-season movement in 1987 or new rookies in 1988.

STAT

Tuna had 9 total bases 3 different times in his career, all team victories.

CAREER

Thon's career is pretty well-known, and if you don't know, just read the back of the card below. He had a very good year with the Phillies in 1989 and then petered out for good after that.

#28T Chili Davis

CARD

Another rubber bat, and this time it's a swing and a miss. Look carefully and you can see the baseball right behind Chili's ass. This is a Comiskey Park photo, of course.

STAT

Twelve players finished their careers with between 340 and 360 homers, including Johnny Mize, Yogi Berra, Ellis Burks, Dick Allen, George Foster, and Ron Santo. Oh, and Chili Davis.

Well, one caveat, Luis Gonzalez is still active and could move out of this group.

CAREER

Chili Davis is waaaay underrated in my book. He played for 18 seasons and finished with an OPS+ of 120. He did that without ever topping 150 and was never below 108 after his second full season. This guy reminds me of Harold Baines--very solid year after year, just without eye-popping HR and RBI numbers. But he was consistent and reliable, and won 3 World Series titles.

Add your content

If you have stories you'd like to share about players coming up in this set, email me at 88topps at gmail dot com with your story, as well as a link to your blog if you have one.

The checklist for the rest of this set is here.

I'm not looking for recaps of what we all already know about a player, but perhaps an interesting story you have about something that happened with that player, or his baseball cards, etc. If I like your story, I'll post it as part of that player's card page.

#27T Jose Rijo

CARD

I love the shot of beautiful Riverfront Stadium in the background. That's as good as it got.

Good call by Score on the back of the card, predicting that he would become a top starter, which he did.

STAT

Because it was so impressive and so easy to forget, I'm copying my Cool Stat from Rijo's 88 Topps card:

Cool stat: From 1988 to 1993 (6 seasons), Rijo leads the way in seasons with at least 111 IP and an ERA no higher than 2.84. In fact, he did that all 6 of those years and nobody else did it more than 3 times. Whew!

CAREER

Rijo is another great "what if" case for a starting pitcher. By the time he got his walk rate down in 1988, he managed to make 30 starts only 3 times in his career. I'm glad that he finished in the top 50 for career K/9 and also that he pitched so well in the 1990 World Series.

#26T Dan Petry

CARD

The copy on the back of Petry's card is a great example of Score's superior efforts in this area. Read it and you feel like you actually know something about the guy's career.

STAT

From 1981 to 1985:

Petry had the 6th-most innings pitched.

Andhe had the 4th-most wins.

Among guys with 900 IP, he had the 7th-best ERA+.


CAREER

Petry is one of those guys that had a 2-phase career. Up through 1985, he was one of the top starters in baseball, logging lots of innings and lots of wins. Although he benefited a little from playing on strong Tigers teams, his neutralized stats are pretty close to his actual stats. But from 1986 on, likely due mainly to injuries, he wasn't the same guy and he was finished by age 32.

#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.

#24T Rick Horton

CARD

I just love photos that capture the baseball coming right at you.

I note, too, that Score went for "Rick" here instead of "Ricky", as Topps did here and here in 1988.

STAT

Horton walked Keith Hernandez more than anybody else (and walked a lot of Mets in general.) He struck out Darryl Strawberry more than anybody else (and struck out a lot of Mets in general.) I'm sure that has to do with the fact that he pitched 103 innings against the Mets and 560 innings against 24 other teams, an average of 23.1 per team.

CAREER

I guess the most interesting thing I can find about Horton's career are the players he was traded with or for. He was in a trade with Lance Johnson and Jose DeLeon, two guys who had much better careers than Horton did. And Horton was the guy the Dodgers traded for when they gave up on super-prospect Shawn Hillegas.

#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.

#22T Pat Tabler

CARD

Nice shot of Tabler here. An action shot with visible jersey number is O.K. in my book. Plus there's the bonus mullet on the back.

STAT

Indeed Tabler drove in a lot of runs. Check out this list of most RBI by guys since 1980 with fewer than 50 career HR. He's way up on that list, but notice how many fewer games and PAs he had than most other folks on there.

CAREER

Tabler was known as Mr. Bases Loaded for good reason. In 109 career PAs with the bases loaded, he had 108 RBI despite homering only twice. He batted .489 with 43 hits in 88 ABs.

I picked two guys at random for comparison:

Reggie Jackson, 235 PAs, 187 RBI, .296 BA (60-for-203), 11 grand slams

Don Mattingly, 163 PAs, 127 RBI, .292 BA (38-for-130), 6 grand slams

Unfortunately for Tabler, his performance with the bases loaded is pretty much all you can say about the guy's career.

#21T Rick Cerone

CARD

Well there are two insanely crazy things about the photo on this card:

1) We have an up-the-nose photo of a player! Are you kidding me???

2) We have a photo featuring a catcher going after a popup, and someone on the card is discarding their face mask, and it's NOT the catcher! It's the umpire!

STAT

From 1981 to 1991, Cerone was by far the part-time-iest player in the big leagues, registering far more seasons with 200 to 300 AB than anybody else.

CAREER

Cerone is one of those guys whose impact went far beyond his stats. Offensively, he was not very good. True, in his only season with 500 AB, he had a very nice 107 OPS+, but he didn't hit well enough in any other season to warrant so much playing time. He also had a number of years with an OPS+ below 65 (ouch.) But he stayed in the big leagues for a long time, a sure sign that he was of value to his teams. After his playing career, among numerous other things, he founded the Newark Bears, a prominent independent team.

#20T Lee Smith

CARD

I wonder how many card backs feature a quote from Cubs catcher Jody Davis? This one does. I also can't help be reminded of what a terrible trade this was for the Cubs.

STAT

From 1991 to 1993, Smith was the top closer in baseball.

CAREER

Smith has a bunch of years left on his HOF eligibility but got only 44.5% of the vote in 2009. Voters still don't know how to handle closers, and I'm still shocked that Bruce Sutter got in. Smith's numbers compare very favorable with Sutters, and frankly I think he strongly deserves to be in the HOF. He was one of the best closers ever and was dominant for a number of years. I think he has only about a 30% chance of getting in, though.

#19T Don Slaught

CARD

Holy cow...there is a lot of cool stuff going on with this card!!

Firstly, we have red, white, and blue bunting in the background, suggesting that this photo was taken on a special day. Perhaps Opening Day, or Independence Day?

Secondly, we have Slaught's back pocket going inside-out on his swing.

Thirdly, we can see most of the on-deck hitter. Who is that likely to be? Let's see if we can figure this out. Check out the Yankee batting orders for 1988. Slaught was in 87 games for the Yankees, comprised of 39 batting 8th, 27 batting 7th, 16 batting 6th, and 5 batting 5th. The guy hitting after Slaught appears to have somewhat darker skin and is likely either black or a darker-skinned Latino player. Looking through the lineups, possibilities include Gary Ward, Luis Aguayo, Willie Randolph, and Rafael Santana.

I'm going with Randolph. Know why? Because the Yankees are wearing road greys, and on the 4th of July, they played in Texas, with Slaught batting 7th and Randolph batting 8th. So there ya go.

Fourthly, check out the photo on the back. Thanks to help from Kevin, we've determined that's Mike Morgan back there. Pretty rare to see another player on a headshot photo like that.

STAT

Since 1901, only 31 catchers have amassed 4500 PAs and managed an OPS+ of at least 104. Of course, Sluggo is one of them, and his career BA puts him in the top half of that bunch.

CAREER

Slaught had the misfortune of being in the wrong places at the wrong times in a lot of his career. He left KC right before they got good. He was in Texas when they were (still) no good. He passed through the Yankees organization during one of their rare wasteland periods. Then he landed with Pittsburgh, who won their division 3 straight years but couldn't get out of the playoffs.

One of the things I remember about those Pirates taems is that they didn't sell out their home playoff games. I'm frankly surprised that Pittsburgh still has a baseball team, considering that fans didn't care about the team then, and they've been horrible ever since.

#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.

#17T Ray Knight

CARD

More words you probably never expected to read on the back of a baseball card: "Then the fun began."

STAT

Knight didn't hit more than 2 of his 84 career homers against anybody, except for 4 off of Steve Carlton. Knight's numbers against Carlton were excellent, something that not too many people can say. Of course, Lefty also struck him out 17 times in 87 AB, a pretty nice clip.

CAREER

All you need to know about Knight at this point in his career is that the card back talks entirely about 1986 despite being issued in 1988. Not much to say about 1987 or anything thereafter.

#16T Vance Law

CARD

This set has a lot of rubber-looking bats, including Law's. Any photographer know why? I'm assuming that it has to do with the speed of the film, and therefore how long the shutter needed to be left open in order to get the right amount of light. Topps' photos of the time didn't look like this--bats in motion were always crisp.

Notice too that the ball is passing right along the bottom edge of the photo. Looks like it's going to be a swing-and-a-miss for Vance.

STAT

What I wrote above got me curious to see how much Vance struck out. Here are all the players since 1901 with 600 to 610 career strikeouts. The list includes two active players. Law's total of 4298 PAs is pretty much in the middle in terms of career PAs to achieve such a a strikeout total. It's tough to say much more than that since this list would really needed to be corrected for average strikeout rates across different eras to make sense. But you can compare Law just to his contemporaries on the list: Boone, Doran, Kemp, Brookens, and Bernazard to see that his strikeout totals weren't particularly noteworthy.

CAREER

Law actually pitched in 7 games, probably among the leaders in the last 40 years for guy who really were not pitchers at all. One guy, Bill Almon, faced him twice, in two different games!

I don't have much else to say about Law's career...

#15T Bob Welch

CARD

Check out those sneakers Welch is wearing. I don't know what that style is called, but it's certainly dated to that era, with that extraneous flap of material coming out. I don't think that's just the tongue, pulled out.

More great copy on the back of this card, including mention of Welch's K of Reggie Jackson in the World Series.

STAT

I was shocked that Welch could rank as high as 6th in IP and G for the Dodgers, until I checked and realized my interpretation of the fact was wrong. He was 6th for LOS ANGELES only, not for the Dodgers franchise as a whole.

You can see the Dodgers all-time leaders here, and note that the leaders for G and IP all pitched pretty much before (or at the same time) Welch was with the team.

CAREER

Welch will be long-remembered for two things: that strikeout of Reggie Jackson, and winning 27 games in 1990. He also played in 4 World Series, winning just once. He missed out on the 1989 World Series due to injury when his team won it all.

#14T Goose Gossage

CARD

Score chose to go ahead and put "Goose" on the card, unlike Topps did, calling him "Rich."

Also, what the heck is that big green blob in the stands behind Gossage? It looks like someone dressed up like an ear of corn for Halloween.

STAT

To demonstrate the changes in how relief pitchers are used, check out this list of pitchers appearing in at least 1000 games since 1901. I ranked them by IP. Ignore Eckersley since he started over 300 games. Hoyt Wilhelm and Gossage pitched far more innings than everybody else, despite appearing in just about the same number of games. Even with nearly 100 starts, Jose Mesa isn't close.

CAREER

What can be said about Gossage's career? The guy is in the HOF already, the first HOFer we've seen in this update set. I think it's interesting how much people forget about the late part of his career. He had an off year with the Cubs in 1988, but then finished up strong with good years in San Fran, Texas, Oakland, and Seattle. His K/BB fell off quite a bit at the end, but his ERA was better than league average in all those years but one.

#13T Luis Salazar

CARD

Told ya! Here's Luis Salazar's own card, following his cameo on Bud Black's card. He's got funny looks on his face on both the front and back of the card. Maybe he made that face a lot and finally it froze like that.

Does anybody have any idea how Score ordered the cards in this set? I can't figure it out.

STAT

In 1984, Salazar had one of the worst OBP marks for a 3B with at least 220 AB in a season. It's amazing that his team made it to the World Series despite giving him so much playing time. Graig Nettles, his platoon partner that year, hit just .228 but still hit 20 HR and had an OPS+ of 108.

CAREER

According to the card back, Salazar is one of the most popular players in Padres' team history. Really? Does he sell as many jerseys as Tony Gwynn, Trevor Hoffman, or even Benito Santiago, Ken Caminiti, or Jake Peavy?

#12T Rafael Ramirez

CARD

Not much to say about this specific card, so I'll point out that despite having a "portrait" style back (instead of the "landscape" layout that Topps used during the same period), Score was still able to list full stats for all players, including minor league stats for many guys. They did, of course, sacrifice some categories due to lack of space. Comparing this card to Ramirez' 1988 Topps Traded card, we see that Topps also had triples, a pretty significant stat dropped by Score, plus walks, strikeouts, and slugging percentage.

This might not seem like a big deal these days, but remember that in 1988, baseball cards were one of the easiest ways to get a guy's stats. There was also the Baseball Encyclopedia and other publications, but there certainly wasn't Baseball-Reference.com.

STAT

Since 1901, there have been 1,076 player seasons in which a guy hit at least .297 and had at least 185 hits, as Ramirez did in 1983. However, Ramirez was in the bottom 30 for OBP, with just a .337 mark.

CAREER

I think the commentary on the back of this card reveals a lot about Ramirez. It starts off by saying that he was a fine offensive player. I'd say he was pretty good in 1983, though not great (as discussed above) but wasn't really "fine" in any year. Don't get me wrong--recalling that he played entirely before middle infielders were expected to produce any significant offense, he was certainly adequate in many years. But he did finish with a career OPS+ of 77, which is below average even for a SS back then. The copy on the card goes on to say that he was "erratic" defensively. His defensive stats show that he had a below-average fielding percentage and average range. So, hmm, draw your own conclusions on the guy.

#11T Bud Black

CARD

Luis Salazar has his own card in this set, but he shows up here first on Black's card.

STAT

In 1987, Black allowed 8 HR in just 11 IP against the Texas Rangers. Ouch.

CAREER

At the moment, I'm wondering how much longer Black will be the Padres' manager. That team is totally screwed up, with their owner looking to dump players and probably sell the team. They don't have a lot of talent and Black doesn't have much to work with, unfortunately.

Best baseball card blog posts

I'd like to put together a list of the best baseball card blog posts out there. Note that I mean individual posts, not entire blogs. I'm looking for posts that are interesting, funny, insightful, creative, or otherwise worth checking out.

Here are a couple of examples:

Cardboard appreciation: 1975 Topps Herb Washington by Night Owl on Night Owl Cards

I love this post because it captures a rare, perhaps unique, label on a particular card, tells an interesting story, and displays a nice looking card.

The Fire Inside by Uglee Card on The Ugly Baseball Card Blog

Take a look at the card, then read the entire post, then look at the card again. The post is both hilarious and insightful, and shows a pretty neat card too. I love this blog and this post especially.

#89 Gary Thurman by Andy on 88 Topps Cards

This post on my own blog took on a life of its own after a throwaway joke I made about Thurman resembling Arsenio Hall. Read all the comments--it gets crazier and crazier as you go.


Photos that Kevin's aunt took of the Orioles in 1979

#10T Kirk Gibson

CARD

Lots going on in the photo here. First, it's always nice to see a photo taken at Wrigley. Second, there's nearly a complete batboy in the background. Third, I believe that's Mike Marshall, with his bat in a very unfortunate position.

STAT

Gibson is one of 4 guys to hit 20 to 29 HR every year from 1984 to 1988. More on this below.

CAREER

Gibson's career and legacy are very interesting to discuss. In his healthy years, he was a very good player, although never truly great. I think he's the only guy ever to win an MVP award without any All-Star game appearances in his career. He never hit 30 HR or drove in 100 runs. He never batted .300 in a full season. Injuries totally robbed him of lots of games.

And yet, Gibson is one of the greatest heroes in baseball history. He was a key member of the 1984 champion Tigers and hit one of the 2 or 3 most memorable home runs in baseball history in 1988.

I wonder what Gibson would choose, if given the choice: the actual career he had (great post-season moments and all) or an injury-free career that might have put him in the HOF. I assume he'd choose to stick with what he had, because all things considered, it was pretty damn good.

1953 Topps Mickey Mantle

Love the 1953 Topps set?

Check out this mosaic I made of the 1953 Mantle card using all the cards from the 1953 Topps set!

#9T Keith Moreland

CARD

Moreland's bat looks sort of rubbery in the photo.

This seems like a good time to point out how good the text on the back of these cards is. Take a read on the back of Moreland's card and you learn quite a lot about him. Compare this to the text on the back of his 88 Topps card, or his 88 Topps traded card (which are the same, incidentally.) At least those Topps cards feature complete sentences, a bit of a rarity for Topps from this era. The Score cards, by comparison, are always complete sentences and give a lot more info than the Topps cards.

Score did make some sacrifices in order to fit all that text on there. More to come on that later.

STAT

Moreland just crushed Kevin Gross and Bill Gullickson.

CAREER

I don't have too much to say about Moreland. He benefitted more than most from the homer-crazy year of 1987, taking the opportunity to post his only season with more than 16 homers. As a result, he's remembered in some circles as a home run hitter despite finishing with a career OPS+ of just 104. That's not a terrible number, just not what you'd expect from a true power hitter.

For me, the two other memorable things about Moreland's career are his performance in the 1981 NLDS for the Phillies and his having been traded for HOFer Goose Gossage.

#8T Tom Herr

CARD

Here's our second card in a row showing a different number on the back from the number visible on the front. Oops. And although the copy on these cards beats the crap out of the copy on Topps cards of the same era, I think they should have started it differently. The first three words seem to suggest that Herr is a patient (in a mental institution perhaps?)

STAT

Herr hit remarkably similarly from each side of the plate. He hit .270 as a lefty and .272 as a righty, and had a .703 OPS as a lefty and a .685 OPS as a righty.

CAREER

Herr's not remembered all that well, unfortunately. He was a good offensive second baseman with the Cardinals in the 80s but didn't hit well in their 3 World Series appearances. After he left St. Louis, he was a disappointment in each of his stops thereafter.

I do recall that Herr specialized in imitating other players' batting stances. I remember during a Phillies broadcast, they showed a replay of Herr imitating Babe Ruth homering and running the bases (taken before the game.)