5 Baseball Cards Tailor-Made for the Diamond - jan 5
A ballplayer by any other name is still...Matt? Jim?
Happy New Year!
(Yeah, I know that’s old news, but we haven’t met here in 2025 yet, so it counts.)
Now, down to business…
The late Earl Battey was born 90 years ago today, and he of course has a name tailor-made for baseball. To celebrate the underrated backstop, here are five baseball cards showing players with made-for-the-diamond names.
1966 Topps Earl Battey (#240)
Battey is hardly ever mentioned when it comes to talking about good or great catchers from the past, but he was a five-time All-Star and three time Gold Glove winner in the American League. He began his career with the White Sox but didn’t really come into his own until Chicago traded him and Don Mincher to the Senators for Roy Sievers in April of 1960.
He won his first Gold Glove and picked up his first MVP votes that year, then moved with the team to Minnesota in 1961.
Battey did a pretty good job living up to his last name, too. In parts of 13 seasons in the big leagues, he hit .270 with 104 home runs and 449 RBI. Coupled with his work behind the plate, Battey was good for 18.8 WAR.
But it was his catching gig that made for some great baseball cards, including this bright and classic 1966 Topps. We get a clear shot of Battey’s mug as he waits perpetually for an unseen (and photog-concocted) popup to fall from the heavens.
1975 Topps Dave Chalk (#64)
You may not remember Dave Chalk if you weren’t paying close attention to the California Angels of the 1970s or the 1979 Oakland A’s, who lost 108 games. None of those teams did a lot to make you remember them, after all, and Chalk was a steady-fielding shortstop without much power.
If you were collecting back then, you might have slid past him in your wax packs without a second thought.
But Chalk was a pretty solid hitter for a middle infielder of the time, batting .252 over nine seasons in the majors. He had a good eye for the strike zone, too, getting on base at an overall .325 clip.
Chalk was also a part-timer for the 1980 Royals team that went to the World Series. He even came to the plate once against the Phillies in that Fall Classic. He walked against Steve Carlton in the seventh inning of Game 2, stole second base, and came home on an Amos Otis double.
And, of course, the name sort of represents what the man meant to his teams — a little-appreciated but indispensable component. I mean, you can’t have a proper big league game without chalk, and the Angels (especially) couldn’t field their best team from 1973-78 without Dave Chalk.
Topps seems to give us a subtle nod to all of this with their 1975 Chalk card which shows him standing in front of (you guessed it) the chalk foul line.
1976 Topps Charlie Spikes (#408)
Charlie Spikes featured on several pretty cool looking baseball cards over the course of his big league career, which ran from 1972 through 1980. A lot of that had to do with the man himself, who always flashed some of the most severe 1970s facial hair in the game.
Spikes also always brought his game face to his baseball cards, making you feel like he’d be happy to use his namesake footwear to take you out on the basepaths if you tried to impede his progress.
I didn’t Spikes him play, but with a total of 72 doubles, 12 triples, and 27 stolen bases, his chances to actually exact that retribution didn’t come along all that frequently.
Probaby precisely because he was mostly a part-time player and didn’t have card companies keyed into his every move, Spikes was also able to finagle a career-capper from upstart Fleer in 1981. After wrapping up the 1980 season with the Braves, Spikes spent 1981 in Japan before hanging up his name spikes.
It was while he was overseas that Fleer gave us a parting shot of Spikes in his Braves cap and road blues.
The 1976 Topps card above does not show Spikes’ spikes, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. It does, however, show an old-school Indians sleeve patch and one of the cheek tornadoes Spikes used as sideburns in his heyday. A win-win.
Just don’t stand in the baseline.
1983 Donruss Cecilio Guante (#423)
Cecilio Guante was a long, lean relief pitcher who spent parts of the nine seasons in the big leagues. All of his 363 appearances came out of the bullpen…except for his very last appearance, that is.
On July 29, 1990, Guante started for the Indians against the Yankees in the second game of a double header at Cleveland Stadium. He gave up three runs in three innings before manager John McNamara replaced him with Colby Ward after Guante gave up a single to Randy Velarde to lead off the fourth.
And that was the last we ever saw of Guante. Well, sort of.
The Indians released him in August, and the Red Sox signed him a couple weeks later. Boston sent him to the minors for the rest of the season. Then, after missing 1991, Guante showed up in the Chinese Professional Baseball League for one season in 1992.
I can’t find any evidence that Guante suffered a career-changing injury or the like, but he threw his last MLB pitch that July 1990 day at just 30 years of age.
And if you’re wondering what all this has to do with today’s silliness, the Spanish-to-English translation of “Guante” is “Glove.” And you just can’t be a real major league pitcher without a decent command of the leather. Unless you don’t value your mug, that is.
Oh, and another great thing about Guante? His 1983 Donruss rookie card shows him as “Matt” on the front and “Cecilio” on the back. No explanation. No corrected version. No apologies.
It was a delicious, quintessential early Donruss move.
(Read more on Guante and his baseball cards here.)
1988 James Steels
Take a look at James Steels’ final MLB stats, and you might get the idea he was trying to run away from his strong and speedy last name: 111 games played, 149 plate appearances, 0 home runs, 5 stolen bases, 2 times caught stealing.
Add in a .180 batting average and just two doubles and one triple, and “Steels” seems more ironic than descriptive.
That wasn’t the case as he came up through the Padres minor league system, though. Indeed, Steels stole 30 or more bases twice in the bushes, and he topped 20 another three times. He also went off for double-digit homers three times and ten-plus triples twice, along with regularly hitting .300-plus.
In between (and after) stays in the majors with the Padres (1987), Rangers (1988), and Giants (1989), Steels found more Triple-A success before finishing up his pro career in the Mexican League.
And, while Steels’ time in the majors didn’t steal many fans’ hearts, it was enough to get him included in some 1988 sets, including Fleer Update, where he appeared as “Jim.”
Maybe that was just a warmup toss from Fleer as they prepared for Billy Ripken the next spring? Or maybe they hired Donruss as certified name consultants?
Either way, you can read more about Shields and his cards here.
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So, who are your favorite made-for-baseball names? As always, I’d love to hear your picks.
And again…Happy New Year!
And thanks for reading.
—Adam
Last week in the daily newsletter…
In the Baseball Cards Daily newsletter last week we continued our slanted rundown of the 2025 Hall of Fame ballot: for each candidate, we focus on a wax-pack era card of a similar player from history.
Here were the most recent oldsters in our lineup:
Matt Batts
Made-For-the-Diamond Baseball Names: Bob Walk and Homer Bailey come to mind for me, but your list is excellent! Love Steels! You guys continue to do a great job.