8 Baseball Cards that Do-Si-Do Through History
May they all promenade home to your collection on this day
Happy October 20th!
You may not realize this, but today is a pretty big day for baseball birthdays. Rather than explain that comment or list out today’s honorees right here, though, we’re going to daisy-chain our way through the cake and ice cream line.
We’ll be eating on cardboard plates, of course.
1961 Topps Mickey Mantle (#300) & Juan Marichal (#417)
Alright, so we start at the very beginning…not really the beginning, but at the beginning of the big-name players born on October 20 and that have touched my hobby life in some way or another.
Names don’t get much bigger in this hobby than Mantle, who was born on October 20, 1931.
By 1961, he was already an all-time great, and one who was about to battle with Roger Maris in a race for the single-season home run record. Move over, Bambino!
But other than that non-October-20 bit of baseball historicity, why do I care about 1961 here?
Good question, and that’s where the daisy-chain, silly-game portion of our exercise comes into play.
See, Juan Marichal was born on October 20, 1937. He made his major league debut on July 19, 1960.
The Dominican Dandy made his baseball card debut the next year, in the 1961 Topps set. Mantle was there waiting for him.
And so we have our first twin entry in the exclusive “Born on October 20 and Shared a Baseball Card Set” club.
We’ll ride this train pretty far.
1993 Action Packed Juan Marichal (#124) & Keith Hernandez (#148)
Truth be told, the track almost ran out on us before we got far from the station. But thanks to the early 1990s hobby explosion and a little creative suspension of disbelief, we’re soldiering on.
You know about Marichal from his 1961 exploits above.
But did you know that Keith Hernandez was born on October 20, 1953?
Well, you do now.
Hernandez made his big league debut on August 30, 1974. By then, Marichal was winding down his only season with the Red Sox. He’d go on to pitch in five games for the Dodgers in April 1975 to close out his career.
That same month, Hernandez was getting his first taste of early-season baseball with the Cardinals.
So, Hernandez’s and Marichal’s big league careers overlapped by about two months in all. But Marichal’s last card came in the 1974 Topps Traded set, and Hernandez’s rookie card was a multiplayer deal in the 1975 Topps set.
That’s a whiff.
But…
In 1993, Action Packed — they of the indestructible, metal-infused, three-inch-thick, bank-busting cardstock — issued their second “All-Star Gallery” set.
Guess which two gents were included.
So we didn’t really cheat to keep our streak going. It’s more like we walked all four times to the plate and thus live to streak another day.
1976 Topps Dave Collins (#363) & Keith Hernandez (#542)
This one is not required to get us from here to there, but it’s an interesting overlap, anyway. Consider it a side quest if you’re the gaming type. Or a way for me to introduce some Reds flavor to this conversation if you’re familiar with my homer ways.
Anyway, Collins is exactly a year older than Hernandez and debuted in the majors more than nine months after the soon-to-be-mustachioed one. Collins found semi-regular playing time for the Angels in 1975 and 1976 before the Mariners plucked him away in the expansion draft.
That gave Collins enough time to nab a rookie card in the 1976 Topps set, the same issue where Hernandez showed up solo for the first time.
It was the first of many shared sets for the two first basemen (though Collins played more in the outfield). They both stayed in the majors through 1990, with Hernandez outshining his contemporary. Collins put up several very good seasons of his own and was especially adept on the basepaths, stealing 79 bases in 1980 for the Reds and 60 in 1984 for the Blue Jays.
1990 Upper Deck Keith Hernandez (#222) & Juan Gonzalez (#72)
Juan Gonzalez debuted for the Rangers in September of 1989. And, though he hit just .150 with a home run and seven RBI in 24 games, he was also just 19 years old. He had hit 21 homers at Double A that summer, and the combination of youth and power potential reserved his rookie-card spot in the 1990 Upper Deck set (as well as others).
While Juan Gone was making his first appearances for Texas, Hernandez was taking his final hacks for the Mets. He would sign as a free agent with the Indians that December.
That late team change meant Hernandez would have one last cardboard dance with the Flushings in 1990 and set up this cardboard pairing.
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I’ll stop there, but you could surely extend our daisy chain past Igor and on to present day players. You might even be able to extend backwards from Mantle, though baseball cards of any given player get pretty sketchy once you back out of the 1950s.
Just a few of the other major league players born on October 20: Rudy Seánez, Choo Freeman, Michael Mariot, Ty Blach, Pat McGlothin, Sammy Hughes, Arnold Statz.
At any rate, this is yet another baseball and hobby rabbit hole you can use to whittle away the hours on any given day. You’re welcome, and use them at your own peril and discretion.
Thanks for reading.
—Adam