5 'What's Going on Here?' Baseball Cards

The joy of making up your own diamond stories

Rod Carew turned 78 on October 1, which was cause to celebrate.

I had planned to celebrate with a Carew-thingamabob here in this space but ended up writing about some other silly (but fun!) corner of the hobby.

But when I was perusing Carew cards (Carewsing?) around the big day, I ran into an old favorite. One that always looked sorta odd, but also one that I loved.

It’s kept me guessing all these years.

So, in honor of the man and of that card, which makes the cut below, here are a few baseball cards that give you plenty of latitude to build a story or three around what’s actually happening.

1975 Topps Vicente Romo (#274)

This one seems pretty fitting for the Halloween season, don’t you think?

I mean, you could make a case that Romo is …

• trying to levitate the Padres’ offensive game to give him some support

• casting a spell on opposing batters

• sneaking up to jump-scare Willie McCovey to see how the “old” man would react

Romo also sort of looks like he’s in one of those posed infielder shots that Topps loved, but he was only really an infielder on comebackers.

And, sure, maybe he’s supposed to be finishing his follow-through, but that just might make this one of the ineffective deliveries of all time.

If you look closely at Romo’s right hand, though, it appears as if he’s gripping a phantom baseball. But if you zoom in really closely, you might decide there actually is something in his palm.

It doesn’t look very baseball-y, though. Sorta brown and lumpy and jutty and like, well … the imagination reels. Especially in October.

1981 Topps Joe Pettini (#62)

I wasn’t collecting cards in 1978, so I didn’t get the shock-joy of pulling a Greg Minton “painting” firsthand.

But I distinctly remember pulling this card from wax packs in 1981 and wondering why this guy was in disguise. I thought maybe he was Gabe Kotter’s west coast cousin, forced to coach the high school baseball team as his extracurricular duty in exchange for the privilege of teaching history to the Golden Gate Sweathogs.

It was only a few years later, when I started sneaking SNL, that I realized what was actually going on here.

1982 Topps Larry Biittner (#159)

I’ve written about this card before and how it confused me as a kid (seems to be a common theme — me, being confused, that is).

Basically, I concluded that Biittner was moonlighting as a local Cincinnati talk show host and mixed up his gigs one day at the ballpark. Think he’s interviewing prospective mechanics to fix the Big Red Machine?

1983 Topps Rod Carew All-Star (#386)

I was a pudgy kid, and I was always trying to find ways to cheat my way to svelte-dom while still wolfing down my daily alotment of Reesie cups.

One of the contraptions I used a lot as I got a bit older was a tin-foil-coated plastic suit that made you sweat and was supposed to turn your body into a fat-burning machine.

So I’d slip it on and then spend hours slip-sliding around while I played Nerf basketball or batted around paper baseballs in my room.

Imagine my delight and shock when I pulled this card in 1983 to find that none other than the great Rod Carew was wearing my very own secret weapon.

No wonder the man stayed so slender even with all those cold Minnesota springs under his diminutive belt.

1986 Donruss Pat Tabler (#129)

By 1986, I knew my baseball stuff. After all, I had set aside basic teenage human functions like proper hair gelling and learning biology so that I could cram my head full of every diamond scrap I could find.

And I also knew at least something about Pat Tabler. He was one of those not-so-youngish prospects, along with the likes of Brook Jacoby and Mel Hall, who might someday pull the Indians out of the 100-loss club.

But…Mr. Clutch?

What, did this guy drive a 18-wheeler in the offseason, or something? Lots of clutching involved with that.

But as a batter? Mr. Clutch? Pat Tabler??

Well, it took a while for me to think of the obvious, but I finally turned the thing over …

Let me know when you see it, and then we can slap our foreheads, together.

—

So what cards make you reach for an explanation? And what stories have you concocted around them?

I’d love to hear your funnies.

Until next time, I’ll be right here in the corner, pondering my 1982 Topps Jon Matlack. Yo.

Thanks for reading.

—Adam