The Trading Post #80: Baseball Every Night

Even though he's a newcomer to the Cardsphere, Peter at Baseball Every Night already has close to a hundred posts under his belt. He's had a running theme since last month called "A Shoebox of Baseball Cards", which he's broken up into posts by individual teams. Adam at Cardboard Clubhouse recommended me as a potential trading partner for the Rockies, and thus a new trading partnership was born.

Shoeboxes were a terrific way to store cards when I was younger. Between my parents, my sister, and myself, shoeboxes seemed to be in abundant supply. Binders and 9-pocket pages were pricey things for a kid on an allowance, and hobby supplies were lower on the list than the cards themselves. So into the shoeboxes they went, biding their time until a box of 250 pages appeared under the tree.

Anyway, I'm clearly not the only one that stored cards in shoeboxes circa 1995, and while these will end up in pages soon, a few of them deserve a spot on the blog first.

1995 Donruss #476 Bruce Ruffin

About a year ago, I wrote that Steve Reed still holds a top-ten spot in career wins for the Rockies. A season later, and that's still true. But to further illustrate the kind of turnover the pitching staff in Denver has experienced, the guy pictured above is #4 all-time in saves for the Rockies, with 60. And most of those came in strike-shortened years. Ruffin retired as a Rockie, but even then, closers didn't have quite the importance as they do now, so his name isn't nearly as recognizable as one of the Blake Street Bombers.

1995 Donruss obviously went too far with the foil, as this card is barely legible unless it's under just the right light, Even the Donruss logo itself is pretty tough to read. But I do like how he's specified as a left-handed pitcher. Most card companies just stick a "P" on there and call it a day. They could go with LHRP if they wanted to be really accurate, but that would turn into alphabet soup pretty quickly.

1994 Upper Deck #105 Roberto Mejia

Upper Deck began their long fascination with copper in 1994, and gave us a much more readable design than 1995 Donruss. Roberto Mejia filled in at second base on occasion from 1993 to 1995, and might not have made it to the big leagues at all without expansion. Two new teams means fifty new roster spots, or even eighty once you factor in the September roster expansions.

What I'll most remember him for is colliding with Andres Galarraga while chasing down a foul pop in July 1993. Galarraga ended up missing about a month after suffering a knee injury on that collision, putting his run at the batting title and a possible .400 average in jeopardy. Galarraga ended up winning with a season average of .370, beating none other than Tony Gwynn, the second place finisher.

I don't know whether this photo was taken before or after that incident, but he's clearly calling off another fielder here. Statistically speaking, it's probably afterwards, as the collision happened just a couple weeks after Mejia's debut. It's also possible to see that he wears his batting glove under his glove, which is exactly what I did in little league, just to be like the big boys.

1994 Score #229 Freddie Benavides

So did Freddie Benavides, who played shortstop for the Rockies in 1993 before Walt Weiss left the Marlins to become the first player to suit up for both expansion teams. Benavides is putting the tag down on an unknown base-stealing Cub, and that looks like a caught stealing to me! We have a stadium, an infrequent starter, an action play, and a season. Time to do some sleuthing.

Vinny Castilla was the regular shortstop in 1993, and Benavides appeared in relatively few games that year. He only played in Chicago three times, and only one of those games featured a runner caught stealing. That happened in the bottom of the 5th on July 17th, 1993. With Armando Reynoso on the mound, Cubs left fielder Derrick May tried stealing second on the first pitch of Rick Wilkins' at-bat. He was caught by Danny Sheaffer, which is just as well, since Wilkins smashed a home run later that at bat.

The Rockies still lost that game, but this play was definitely a success and prevented them from going deeper in the hole. And backing up Benavides (as is the 2B's job on this type of play), is none other than Roberto Mejia, appearing in only his third Major League game.

It was a Saturday game right in the middle of summer break. There's a fairly strong chance I saw this play unfold on TV. I should have kept a few of my scorecards from back then.

1993 Topps #774 Curtis Leskanic (RC)

Curtis Leskanic, one of the bigger characters to ever grace the Rockies pitcher's mound, broke into the majors in 1993 as part of the rotation. He was shifted to a bullpen role in later years, even closing for the Brewers for a couple seasons. But non-Rockies fans will probably remember him for his 1995 Collector's Choice card.

1993 Topps did a good job with horizontal cards, and he was one of many Rockies and Marlins to appear in posed shots in their new uniforms. Not that anyone really cares, but this is Leskanic's Rookie Card, and we only get his minor league stats and school history on the back. It turns out that he went to LSU, a school that many of us got a good look at on Thanksgiving night, as they squared off against Texas A&M concurrently with the Steelers and Colts.

Always good to have another game to flip to during commercials. My brother-in-law did an admirable job with the remote.

1993 Stadium Club #652 Armando Reynoso

Armando Reynoso has already been mentioned in this post, and here's his card from 1993 Stadium Club. I've seen this set more times than I can remember, and even opened a few boxes, but I don't recognize this card. It was a poorly-collated set, so while I may have a copy of this already, if I run across John Johnstone's or Domingo Martinez' cards again, I might scream.

1995 Fleer #324 Luis Aquino

The Rockies and Florida Marlins will always be inextricably linked. There are some obvious differences, like Florida's two World Series championships, but they came into the league at the same time, have unusual team colors, and their genesis coincided with the later days of the overproduction bubble. Peter thought the same, and combined the Rockies and Marlins in his post. I offered to take the extra Marlins off his hands when we set up the trade, primarily to get one card.

I can't help but wonder if Fleer's crazy 1995 set was somehow influenced by the purples and turquoises that suddenly burst onto the scene in Major League Baseball. This thermal camera design for the NL East they came up with naturally seems to have colors similar to Luis Aquino's hat. Plus they threw some of his personal stats on the front for good measure. Much more than that and it would be tough to tell the front from the back.

1994 Upper Deck Electric Diamond #233 Darrell Whitmore

This was the card I was after when I offered to take the Marlins. After Topps Gold, UD Electric Diamond parallels were high on my favorites list in 1994. A Giants catcher, probably Kirt Manwaring, makes a cameo, along with an umpire in a light blue shirt. Those shirts always make them look like mail carriers. That sparkly foil may have been an industry first, or perhaps right around the same time as red foil hit Diamond Kings cards.

On the back, the card offers an excellent view of the Marlins' inaugural 1993 logo. I've seen it countless times, but only now noticed a small "Carl" at the bottom of the logo.

1994 Upper Deck Electric Diamond #233 Darrell Whitmore (Reverse)

I did some research on this, and it was worn in honor of the late Carl Barger, President of the Marlins who died in 1992, just days after the expansion draft. The Marlins retired number 5 for Barger's favorite player, Joe DiMaggio, only to "unretire" it a few years ago when they became the Miami Marlins. Sure enough, that's on all the Marlins inaugural patches that year, including the John Johnstone card that I thought I knew so well.

1993 Stadium Club #734 John Johnstone (RC)

I know the Rockies' history pretty well, and quite a bit about storied franchises like the Yankees, but there are lots of surprises to be found in these expansion clubs. The Seattle Pilots' brief existence, for example, or this fairly obvious lettering on a patch that had eluded my attention up until twenty minutes ago.

Is there still no one in the Cardsphere interested in Marlins cards?

Antique Mall Mystery Pack: Marlins

That trip to the antique mall last year keeps on providing fresh material, and I haven't even opened two of the Mystery Packs yet, though I know they're for the Twins and the Expos. But for this round, we'll be taking a look at the Rockies' expansion counterpart, the Florida Marlins.

Yes, they're now called the Miami Marlins, partially because they haven't been the only team in Florida for close to twenty seasons, and partially because marketing got involved and decided they were in need of a re-brand. But all these cards are from the "Florida" era, and most from when their primary color was turquoise.

1994 Donruss Special Edition #5 Gary Sheffield

We see that color a little bit in their road uniforms, but there's more gold than turquoise on this card, thanks to baseball card trends of the time. Donruss wasn't quite fully on board with gold parallels, so this Special Edition set only had a hundred cards, fifty from each of the two series. Which is just as well, since the card number on the back is also done up in gold foil, making the it pretty tough to read. Hand-collating 660 of these would involve plenty of squinting.

It depends on the light, but sometimes these Special Edition cards look a little more copper than gold. But the giant Donruss logo provides plenty of area for the gold to look shiny and rainbowy. But more on copper later.

1994 Topps #20 Bryan Harvey

A common theme of these packs has been lots of 1994 Topps, and while this isn't quite the glamour shot we saw for a Giant, it's definitely a posed studio photo, along with some cartoony motion blur. Most of the card brands got into double or triple exposures and motion blur, but the flame thing that's happening here doesn't really reflect what it would actually look like if they did a long exposure.

1994 Topps #370 Benito Santiago

But there were plenty of great action photos in 1994 Topps, like this card of Benito Santiago, listed here as "Benny". I do recall various announcers referring to him by that nickname, but I heard his given name of "Benito" much more frequently. Maybe it's just one of those cases of Topps deciding what they wanted his name to be, sort of like their 1960s "Bob" Clemente cards.

Don't forget that cameo of current Mets coach Tim Teufel. You can't quite tell what the outcome of this play was, but thankfully we can date this card! The Marlins visited San Diego (Santiago's previous team) twice in 1993, and a quick look through the box scores leads us to June 6th, 1993, about a week before I attended my first-ever Major League game. The Marlins won that one, helped out by an outfield assist from Jeff Conine on this exact play. So though it doesn't quite look it, Santiago got his guy!

1994 Topps Gold #161 Darrell Whitmore

Darrell Whitmore had a short, three-season career with the Marlins, and I don't really recognize his name other than from his various inaugural Marlins cards. But this is the Topps Gold parallel, which I'll be able to add to a sizable stack of these one-per-pack cards, a good chunk of which I got on eBay several years ago.

1993 Leaf #384 Charlie Hough

Charlie Hough was definitely past his prime by the time the Marlins signed him, as he built just a 14-25 record in his final two seasons. The Marlins employed a strategy similar to the Rockies, as Colorado signed Bryn Smith in 1993 to wrap up his long career. Smith in purple and Hough in turquoise must look extremely odd to most collectors, but since I found so many of their cards in my first year of collecting, they don't look that unfamiliar to me.

Flip this card over and you'll see the same gold rainbow foil on the team logo that Leaf/Donruss used the following year on those Donruss Special Edition cards. The premium brands always get the cool stuff a little earlier. Sometimes decades earlier, as 2016 Topps is finally losing the borders and going with full-bleed printing.

25 years coming on that one.

1993 Pinnacle #562 Cris Carpenter

This is probably our best look yet at the retina-searing colors of the early Florida Marlins, especially against the black borders of 1993 Pinnacle. It even has the Expansion Draft logo, just like the Rockies cards you've seen before. And that means this Marlins card has a tiny bonus Rockies logo, which more than makes up for a little bit of damage on the left side of the card.

Cris Carpenter might sound like a familiar name, but this is not the same Chris Carpenter who won the Cy Young Award for the Cardinals in 2005. Different guy entirely, although both played for the Cardinals, confusingly.

2002 Upper Deck MVP #226 Brad Penny

As in the Mets pack, this black-and-copper 2002 Upper Deck MVP remains one of my favorites. It's always nice to see some specialty sets like this in a 50-cent pack filled mostly with overproduction cards. I guess that's the magic of antiquing.

The color coding works really well with this design, and I've found that the black background is pretty sturdy, unlike say, 1994 Score, or 1993 Pinnacle. Or 1971 Topps, for that matter.

1996 Upper Deck #339 Al Leiter

Upper Deck was still pushing the copper envelope in 1996, and it's in a bold bar at the bottom of every base card in this and the following year's set (other than the numerous subset cards, of course). They hadn't quite thought to tone it down until a few years had gone by for that 2002 MVP design. This is a fairly boring photo of Al Leiter, but 1996 was the year he pitched the first-ever no-hitter for the young Florida Marlins, which happened to be the first no-hitter pitched against the Colorado Rockies. Interesting and unlikely trivia fact, isn't it? Both expansion teams had their first taste of a no-hitter while facing each other.

1996 Upper Deck #338 Pat Rapp

Pat Rapp never threw a no-hitter; in fact he only had one winning season his whole career. But we can all appreciate a card of a pitcher at the plate, right? As with most pitchers, it looks like unfamiliar territory for him. His uniform number is 48, but the bat he is using is marked #11, the number of fellow pitcher Chris Hammond. Maybe he was just trying to break out of a slump by switching out the lumber.

1998 Ultra #295 Todd Zeile

But copper is Upper Deck's color, not the Marlins'. Fortunately, the raised green lettering found on other 1998 Ultra cards happens to match well with the Marlins' colors. even if it is obscuring the catcher in this photo, Tom Pagnozzi of the Cardinals. Though Walt Weiss beat him to it, Zeile was one of dozens of players to play for both the Marlins and the Rockies, but that was still a few years off when this card was printed, as was his two-inning pitching career.

2000 Upper Deck Hitter's Club #77 Julio Ramirez HS

I have never heard of Julio Ramirez, who "Hit The Show" in 1999, but didn't play in 2000. Nor have I heard of Upper Deck Hitter's Club, a small 90-card set entirely devoid of pitchers. It has a little bit of mint green foil, an unusual but pleasing color for a card. But that's what cards were like around the turn of the millennium. You can spend a couple decades building a collection and never know of the existence of a set like this.

Who knows what I'll unearth in the next Mystery Pack?