Double Triple Play!

Triple Play was the range aimed at kids put out by Leaf in the early 90s. (It's had a revival recently in the Panini era with some quite strange cartoon cards.) 

A triple play is a rare piece of fielding skill where three players are put out, usually with a fast sequence of throws between different basemen, although it is possible for one fielder to get three opponents out, unassisted. I rather suspect that Leaf used the term because it had the word 'Play' in it, and they thought that would appeal to kids.

Card Number 334: Leaf Triple Play, 1992; #219

This is probably the oddest in-game photo of Tony on a baseball card that I own. He is a long way from that ball at the wall.

The colour scheme is pure 1992 and on this card it merges into the orange line of padding on the perimeter wall.

I have spent quite a bit of my career writing and editing.  (I know you might not believe that based on my writing on this blog.) I really dislike the sentence construct "not only... but" because it makes the sentence unnecessarily complicated, particularly for people reading English as their second language. I always remove "not only buts" when editing. This sentence would read more clearly as "Tony is a great hitter and a fine defensive player."

Sentence construction aside, this is from the interregnum when Tony hadn't picked up a batting title for a few years. Although he added four more batting titles to his name in the 90s, he never added to his gold gloves.

Card Number 335: Leaf Triple Play 1993; #51

This looks a lot more like a normal baseball card. Black bordered cards always look cool, so it has that going for it as well!

That's a cheeky grin on the back!

The card factoid writer has done a better job on this one, and that's a genuinely intriguing statistic. Whoever was pitching for Montreal and St. Louis were doing a good job!

Total: 335/394