Right before Christmas I received a number of packages in the mail, one of which was from Oscar of everyone's favorite trade bait blog. This was the smallest of the three packages I received from different people so therefore I scanned it in first as the others were quite large.
I'll start this off with two Barry Larkin cards that share a little bit in common. You might be wondering how a card from 2017 can share something in common with a card from 1988. Well, the answer is in the patch on the sleeve of Larkin on the All-Time All-Star card. In 1988, the Reds hosted the All-Star game, which I'm going to guess that picture is from. In that game, a low-scoring affair won by the AL squad 2-1, Larkin went 0-2 in two plate appearances with 1 strikeout. Other Reds in the game didn't fare much better as Chris Sabo appeared only as a pinch runner and registered a stolen base and pitcher Danny Jackson didn't even appear in the game. So, we've got a Barry Larkin card from the year the Reds hosted the game and a 2017 card featuring Larkin at bat in the 1988 game.
Moving on from that, there really is no way to tie these cards together but it's just a nice selection. No, the Morgan isn't an original 1973, it's one of those weird "Berger's Best" inserts.
A few more random Reds and playing off the 1988 stuff I mentioned previously, 1988 was Dave Concepcion's sunset season where he played a multitude of positions around the infield and even pitched and inning and a third! In 84 games that season, he only hit a paltry .198/.265/.244 and only came up with 8 RBIs in 216 plate appearances. Dibble was a teammate of Concepcion in 1988 but really had a great season in 1989 with a 10-5 record and a 2.09 ERA in 74 games.
The Reds weren't the only team represented, there was a good smattering of Indians cards as well. I know for sure the Kipnis GQ card is a duplicate but the Andrew Miller Heritage card is definitely a great addition.
I'd forgotten that Phil Niekro had played for the Indians in his sunset season of 1987. It wasn't too terribly notable though and after being traded from the Indians to the Blue Jays (which seems even more unusual) he was pretty much done, only appearing in three games as a Jay and being released a month after the trade. He latched on with the Braves for one game at the end of the season before calling it quits.
Speaking of Blue Jays, getting cards of Joe Carter in an Indians uniform is really a welcome sight. Yeah, he's most remembered for his World Series winning homer in 1993, but he had a pretty good run with the Tribe before being traded to the Padres. Here's an interesting trivia note, the trade from the Indians to the Padres in December of 1989 and then the trade from the Padres to the Blue Jays nearly exactly one year later both involved a member of the Alomar family. For the sake of saving spare you the details but suffice to say, they were both pretty notable trades.
A few more Indians cards. Both of these I like a lot for many different reasons. First, the Eckersley card features him with the old school 70s Indians threads. The Omar Vizquel card has him during the glory days of the Tribe in the 90s celebrating a walk-off victory. I really dig the picture on that.
Here's a whole awesome batch of Expos cards. Pardon the funky look to the 1988 Fleer card, my scanner decided to be grumpy. Take a close look at the Felipe Alou card, notice the position? That's right, it says "coach". I've heard of manager cards but never "coach" cards. Looking into this, it's amazing to me how long Alou stayed with the Expos. He played briefly for them in 1973 and then a year later retired as player and joined up with the organization in many different roles ranging from batting coach to minor league manager. Then in 1992 he became the manager and held that post until 2001.
I'll wrap up this trade package with a few Hall of Famers on top and then Pudge, Ichiro, and Terry Pendleton on the bottom. I'm not sure how those last three cards ended up in the package but I'm not going to complain as definitely helped out with the variety. I think Ichiro cards are some of the coolest cards out there you can get and maybe someday soon, I might add him to my PC collection list.
That wraps up another great trade package from Oscar. A big thank you to him for sending it over and including me as a part of his Christmas mailings.
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