5 Baseball Cards that Celebrated in the Wrong Place
Or were these just cardboard hallucinations?
Wade Boggs turns 67 years old today, and he also just recently (earlier this year) completed treatment for prostate cancer. Both are reasons to celebrate.
And, of course, Boggs is no stranger to celebrations on the diamond, having amassed more than 3000 hits, captured five batting titles, and won a World Series.
But while Chicken Man was one of the greatest hitters ever and was the first man to homer for his 3000th hit, that milestone was a bit quirky for a couple of reasons.
First, Boggs wasn’t much of a power hitter during his career, topping double-digits in homers just twice in 18 years. So the homer was unusual.
But not as unusual as the uniform Boggs was wearing.
After accumulating nearly 2100 hits and all of his batting titles with the Red Sox, and after winning a World Series with the rival Yankees, Boggs returned to familiar-to-him-but-unfamiliar-to-us climes to finish his climb to 3000 hits.
More on that below, courtesy of five baseball cards that celebrate big milestones scored in unlikely places and uniforms.
1967 Topps Eddie Mathews (#166)
Where the Braves went, Eddie Mathews went.
After debuting with the Boston Braves in 1952, Mathews spent the next 13 summers slugging home runs in Milwaukee while establishing himself as one of the greatest third basemen the game has ever seen.
He moved with the team to Atlanta for the 1966 season and, though his production slowed at age 34, Mathews still hit .250 with 16 homers and 53 RBI. That left the future Hall of Famer with 493 long balls in his career.
With Hank Aaron ending the season at 442 and still slugging at prime levels, it looked like Atlanta was poised to celebrate two new members of the 500 Home Run Club in the next few seasons, both career Braves.
Instead, the team traded Mathews to the Astros in December of 1966, a month or so after a deal to bring Clete Boyer over from the Yankees to play third.
Houston was a bad team, finishing 69-93, and Mathews was fading. His average slipped to .238 and he managed just ten homers in 101 games with the Astros before they traded him to the Tigers in August.
But, of course, the seventh of those Houston long balls was also the 500th of Mathews’ career.
On July 14, 1967, Cap’n Eddie hit a three-run homer off of Juan Marichal at Candlestick park to put the Astros up, 6-4, in the top of the sixth inning. They’d go on to win by an 8-6 tally.
By then, Mathews had already made his only Astros card appearance, the hatless 1967 Topps you see above.
Mathews hit three more homers before Houston shipped him to Detroit, where he’d hit nine more long balls through the end of 1968. Along the way, he appeared on one more major card, an airbrushed 1968 Topps “showing” him with the Tigers.
He was done after 1968, but not before earning his second World Series ring, as a member of that fabled Detroit club.
Read about another Mathews card here.
1982 Topps Traded Gaylord Perry (#88)
If you either didn’t see his career unfold or were a latecomer to the Vaseline’s Greatest Hits Tour, it might be hard to pinpoint a mental image of the uniform Gaylord Perry “belongs” in.
When I first started actually collecting baseball cards (as opposed to resenting them for not being toys) in 1983, for example, Perry was already an Ancient Mariner. That’s how I think of him most of the time.
But ask any “old-timer” or just look at the record yourself, and you’ll see that Perry won most of his games with the Giants, Indians, and Rangers, and nabbed a (second) Cy Young Award with the 1978 Padres
As the 1980s dawned, though, Perry was already in his 40s and starting to have trouble sticking with teams. The Rangers traded him to the Yankees late in 1980, and then he signed as a free agent with the Braves in 1981. He was on the market again by that fall, sitting on 297 wins.
Perry had to wait until March of 1982 before the Mariners came calling, but barely two months after that, he got number 300 — a complete game, 7-3 win over the Yankees at the Kingdome.
That fall, Topps gave us our first Perry-Mariners card, at #88 in their yearly Traded set. (Read more about this card.)
Seattle released Perry the next June, and the Royals signed him on July 6, 1983. Perry made 14 starts down the stretch for Kansas City to wrap up his career.
1987 Topps Box-Side Steve Carlton (#B)
Steve Carlton was one of the most dominant starters in the game for the better part of two decades. And there’s no doubt he’s one of the greatest lefthanders to ever toe the pitching rubber.
But when his game started to fade, Lefty refused to let go.
After he started 4-8 with a 6.18 ERA in 1986, the Phillies released their longtime ace. The Giants signed him on July 4, and then on August 5, he picked up his 4000th career strikeout, fanning Eric Davis in an 11-6 loss to the Reds at Candlestick Park.
Problem was, Carlton went 1-3 with a 5.10 ERA for the Giants, and they released him two days after his big milestone. The good/bad news for collectors was that his brief stint with San Francisco gave Topps just enough time to mock up a sad, sad airbrushed card of Lefty in Giants garb for the side panel of their 1987 wax pack box (slotted at “number” B in the subset).
You can read more about the cardboard tears right here.
Of course, by the time this card saw the light of day, Carlton had signed with the White Sox…then became a free agent…then waited until April 1987 for the Indians to sign him.
He spent a rough 1987 with the Tribe and the Twins before finishing with a big 0-1, 16.76 ERA showing for Minnesota in 1988. They released him while April was still showering.
1999 Upper Deck MVP Wade Boggs (#199)
Boggs spent his preteen and high school years in Tampa Bay before the Red Sox drafted him out of high school in 1976. So, when he hit free agency after the 1997 season at the same time the expansion Devil Rays were descending on his hometown, it was too much kismet to pass up.
He signed on the dotted line with Tampa and took his talents to Florida with exactly 2800 hits under his belt, entering his age-40 season.
It took Boggs most of two summers to get where he was going, but he arrived on August 7, 1999, by going 3-for-4 against the Indians at Tropicana Field. That third hit was the 3000th of his career, a home run off Cleveland reliever Chris Haney.
By then, collectors had our choice of Boggs-Rays cards but maybe none was quite as humorous as the Upper Deck MVP card above. If only Wade could figure out what to do with that strange wooden implement, maybe he could finally get somewhere in this game!
If you prefer a bit more of an ethereal entry, you can always pick up the 2000 Topps issue below (#239e). Complete with god rays and a rising supernova behind old Poultry Pate, this is the last of five Boggs cards in the subset, each featuring one of his “Magic Moments.”
Which, of course, were all done by then since he played his last game on August 27, 1999.
2001 Donruss Rickey Henderson (#21)
Rickey Henderson built his star with the Oakland A’s and the New York Yankees, but he remained a star-level player — and better — even after his second stint in Oakland that included breaking Lou Brock’s all-time stolen base record (1991).
But once he left the A’s in 1993, pinning him down at any particular moment, or even in any particular year, got pretty tough. In particular, from ‘93 through the end of his big league career in 2003, Henderson’s team stops looked like a campaign trail:
Toronto Blue Jays
Oakland A’s
San Diego Padres
Anaheim Angels
Oakland A’s
New York Mets
Seattle Mariners
San Diego Padres
Boston Red Sox
Los Angeles Dodgers
So, pick out any of the hundreds of big moments in Rickey’s career, and the A’s or Yankees may come to mind. But the reality of where the thing actually happened might be another thing altogether.
Take the events of October 4, 2001, for example. On that day, Henderson broke Ty Cobb’s all-time record by scoring his 2245th run…for the Padres at home against the Dodgers.
The Pads had signed Rickey (for the second time) that March after playing for the Mariners in 2000. One of the results of that move was the very mixed-up looking 2001 Donruss card you see above.
BONUS! 1985 Fleer Pete Rose (#640)
On April 13, 1984, Pete Rose became the second man (after Ty Cobb) to record 4000 hits in MLB action. That safety didn’t come for the Reds or Phillies, though it did come against the Phillies, in Montreal…for the Expos.
The resulting 1985 Fleer card (above), along with various other Rose-Expos mashups, is still all kinds of wrong-looking. But also still fun to think, gripe, and write about, like I did right here.
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So…
Which baseball milestones strike you as having happened in the wrong place or with the wrong team? I’d love to hear your picks!
Thanks for reading.
—Adam
Nice read, thank you for the memories.