5 Baseball Cards that Outlasted The Rookie Buzz
74 years of diamond memories with the class of '74
Happy Sunday! Hope all your proms, graduations, Mother’s Day celebrations, and flowers are coming up roses (well, unless they’re crocuses, or something).
Today, we’re coming up Sundbergs, as in Jim Sundberg, the three-time All-Star, six-time Gold Glove catching star of the 1970s. He tends to get overlooked these days, but I’m telling you…if Sundberg had collected just a thousand more hits or hit 250 more home runs or raised his lifetime batting average to .300 we’d be talking about a Hall of Famer.
As it is, we’re still talking about a longtime standout and the tied-for-number-four man in the 1974 American League Rookie of the Year balloting.
Say, speaking of that 1974 ROY class, here are some career-capper baseball cards — or as close as we can get — for the top five.
1986 Donruss Mike Hargrove (#590)
Mike Hargrove may be best-known by later generations of fans as the manager of those fun/great Indians teams during their 1990s resurrection. Or maybe, if you were really paying attention, of some more forgettable Orioles and Mariners clubs in the 2000s.
But Grover’s first career in the major leagues began as a first baseman for the Rangers back in 1974, a young and talented team that featured fellow rookie Sundberg at catcher. Hargrove copped the junior circuit’s rookie award, though, thanks largely to his .323 batting average in 477 at-bats over 131 games played.
Hargrove and Sundberg remained teammates through 1978, until the Rangers traded Grover to the Padres that October in a five-player deal: Hargrove, Kurt Bevacqua, and Bill Fahey for Oscar Gamble, Dave Roberts, and money.
The west coast stay lasted only until June of 1979, when the Friars flipped Hargrove to the Indians for Paul Dade. It turned out to be a legacy-making sort of deal, as Hargrove hit .325 in 100 games for the Tribe the rest of the way. That led into six pretty solid seasons for Hargrove, who had developed into a steady on-base machine, regularly drawing enough walks and finding enough gaps to make it aboard nearly 40% of the time (.396 career OBP).
Hargrove was a free agent after the 1985 season but found no contract offers waiting for him. Collusion? It was certainly the era for that, though a 36-year-old first baseman without much power might have been a tough sell, anyway.
He did land a non-roster invitation to Spring Training with the A’s in 1986, about the time his new baseball cards started sliding out of packs across the land. The Donruss number you see above gives us one last look at The Human Rain Delay doing what he did best…at least until he made his next move.
When he didn’t make the cut with Oakland, Hargrove spent that summer of 1986 as a hitting coach in Cleveland’s minor league system, and the climb was on. By 1991, he’d be the Indians manager, and four years later, they’d win their first-ever division title.
(Want more Grover? See 1979 Hostess Mike Hargrove – Missing Link, Add Mustard.)
1984 Topps Bucky Dent (#331)
Unrecognizable to Red Sox fans the world over without his NSFW “middle name,” Buckey F. Dent actually began his pro baseball journey when the White Sox drafted him in June of 1970…after the Cardinals took a shot at him in both June of 1969 and January of 1970.
Three years later, in June of 1973, Dent made his big league debut with the ChiSox and played 40 games for the Southsiders that summer. But he didn’t log enough time to exhaust his rookie status, and he made a favorable impression in 1974, his first full season in the bigs.
That summer, he started 153 games at shortstop for the Sox and hit .274 with five homers and 45 RBI while scoring 55 times. That was good enough for a distant second-place finish in ROY voting.
Dent nabbed his first All-Star selection in 1975 but generally hit like a middle infielder the next couple of seasons. But his fortunes, and baseball history, took a sharp turn on April 5, 1977. On that day, the White Sox sent him to the Yankees in exchange for Oscar Gamble, LaMarr Hoyt, minor leaguer Bob Polinsky, and $200,000.
Two days later, Dent was the Yanks’ Opening Day shortstop.
Dent proved to be a solid upgrade over New York’s 1976 shortstop duo of Jim Mason and Fred Stanley (though Mason was a pretty slick fielder). Then, after two seasons on the job, Dent became an instant Bronx legend when he clubbed a three-run home run in the 1978 division tie-breaker against Boston.
He stayed with the Yanks until August of 1982, when New York traded him to the Rangers for Lee Mazzilli. Texas released Dent in April 1984, just about the same time his last Topps card (above) was making the rounds.
From there, Dent signed with the Yankees in June, but they released him in July without ever bringing him to the big leagues. The Royals signed him in August, and he appeared in 11 games for Kansas City down the stretch, taking the field for the last time on September 11.
In a case of two ships passing in the night, can you guess who missed that game for the Royals?
(See also: 1982 Topps Bucky Dent a Three-Headed Pinstripe Farewell)
1994 Topps George Brett (#180)
Yeah, that would be Hall of Famer George Brett, who sat out Dent’s final game, with Greg Pryor taking the start at third base for the Royals.
You know all about Mullet, so I won’t regale you with too much backstory here. There are a couple of interesting notes, though.
For starters, Brett debuted for the Royals in August of 1973 but played in just 14 games as the season wound down. In 1974, he didn’t make it back to K.C. until early May, following a so-so stint at Triple-A Omaha and (more importantly) a trade on April 30 that sent incumbent third baseman Paul Schaal to the Angels for Richie Scheinblum.
Brett grabbed onto the hot corner job and hit .282 with 2 homers, 47 RBI, 21 doubles, and 8 stolen bases. He finished third in ROY voting, a single point behind Dent.
Fast forward 20 years, and Brett was a 3000-hit retiree with Cooperstown squarely in his future. And, even though everyone had known 1993 would be his last season, Topps broke their usual pattern and issued a career-capper in 1994. What better tableau than Brett taking his cuts with all of Kauffman Stadium waiting for him to rope another hit?
Want to read about a fun George Brett baseball card with a couple of sticky subjects? Check it out right here.
1987 Donruss Opening Day Rick Burleson (#134)
Take a look at the career timelines of the two men, and you might get the idea that Fred Lynn was following Rick Burleson around the game of baseball. And that’s true in a technical sense, right up until a late reversal.
See…
The Red Sox selected Burleson in the first round of the January 1970 draft after he passed when the Twins drafted him in the eighth round the previous June. Five months later, in June 1970, the Yankees picked Lynn in the third round, but he went to USC instead.
Three years after that, in June of 1973, the Sox took Lynn in the third round. By then, Burleson was holding his own and more as a middle infielder for Triple-A Pawtucket. He’d debut with the Sox the next May and never looked back.
For his part, Lynn brought a fairly polished game to the pros and made quick work of the Red Sox minor league system. He joined Burleson in Boston on September 5, 1974.
At the end of the season, Burleson landed fourth in ROY voting (tied with Sundberg).
Over the next six full seasons, from 1975 through 1980, Burleson and Lynn were mainstays (and frequent All-Stars) for a Boston club that always seemed to be in the postseason hunt and nearly took all the marbles in 1975. That was the season, of course, when Lynn followed and one-upped Burleson by winning both the ROY and MVP awards in the National League.
The Burleson-Lynn party finally broke up when the Red Sox traded their shortstop (Burleson) to the Angels in December 1980. But, thanks to an infamous contract gaffe, Boston was also forced to trade Lynn a little over a month later. And, wouldn’t you know it? He landed with the Halos, too.
And so, the duo settled in for another run together, one that lasted four seasons, until Lynn signed with the Orioles as a free agent after the 1984 season. The link with Burleson was finally broken, right?
Well, not exactly — more like delayed, and then reversed.
Because, when Burleson became a free agent after the 1986 season, he also signed with Baltimore, where old companion Lynn waited with open arms…or at least with potent bat. Burleson hit just .209 in 62 games with the O’s, though, and the team released him at the All-Star break.
Burleson was done in the majors, and almost with then-current baseball cards, but he did land a spot in the 1987 Donruss Opening Day set (see above) since he was, indeed, Baltimore’s Opening Day shortstop in 1987.
To close the loop, Lynn eventually followed Burleson into retirement, but only after another three-and-a-half seasons in the majors and a strange-looking final card of his own.
1989 Bowman Jim Sundberg (#227)
Our birthday boy was drafted three times — once by the A’s (June 1969) and twice by the Rangers (June 1972, January 1973) before starting his minor league run in the summer of 1973. He made short work of the bushes and, with just a half-season of, well, seasoning, Sundberg made his Rangers debut (as a late-inning defensive replacement) on Opening Day in 1974.
In 132 games that rookie season, he hit .247 with three home runs and 36 RBI, but he was more than solid behind the plate and made his first All-Star team. It was all good enough for fourth place (tie) in Rookie of the Year voting…even though he led the vote-getters with 4 WAR (to Hargrove’s 3.3, for example).
Sundberg would stay in Texas through 1983, developing into a .270 hitter with double-digit homer power during his peak years. He also claimed six straight American League Gold Gloves as a catcher, from 1976 through 1981.
The Rangers traded their veteran backstop to the Brewers in December 1983. After one solid season in Milwaukee, though, Sundberg was on the move again in January 1985, part of a complicated deal that involved the Brewers, Royals, Mets, and Rangers.
With the 1985 Royals, Sundberg saw the only postseason action of his career, culminating in a World Series championship.
In March 1987, the Royals traded Sundberg to the Cubs, who released him in July of 1988. The Rangers swooped in to sign him as a free agent a few days later, and he finished his career where he started, playing in Texas through September 1989.
In between his homecoming and hanging up his tools of ignorance, Sundberg also helped ring in the revived Bowman brand with the colorful and bright entry you see above.
(If you still have doubts about Sundberg’s stardom, well…This Card Proved Jim Sundberg Was a Star.)
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All in all, a pretty healthy Rookie of the Year class, don’t you think? And this lineup doesn’t even include the National League trio of 1974 freshman vote-getters: Bake McBride, Greg Gross, and Bill Madlock.
All of which got me wondering — which was the best rookie class ever, with the perspective of hindsight once all the careers were in the books?
Or, more to the point for us, which was your favorite rookie class?
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks for reading.
—Adam